I'm up in the woods (I'm down on my mind)

by black.k.kat

Part 5 of Akatsuki!Kiba. A mission to find and capture Kabuto goes south, and Kiba has to decide what's worth sacrificing for the sake of his mission.

Rating: M

Warnings: Angst, graphic violence, mentions of genocide, blood, violence, very disturbed mental states.

Pairings: Konan/Tsume, implications of Kakuzu/Kotetsu, and crushes of the Itachi/Deidara, Deidara/Hidan, and Kiba/Neji variety

Summary: Part 5 of Akatsuki!Kiba. A mission to find and capture Kabuto goes south, and Kiba has to decide what's worth sacrificing for the sake of his mission.

---

"Don't you dare!" Deidara snaps, brandishing the brush threateningly. "If you ruin that I'm gonna shove my clay up your damned nose, un!"

Kiba freezes, hand halfway to his ear and the intensifying itch there, and groans. "I thought this stuff was quick-drying," he complains, but lets Deidara drag his hand back down to the table.

"It is!" Deidara insists. "Otherwise I'd be sitting here with a hair dryer, un. Not that you would know what that is."

"I have a—" Kiba registers the words half a beat before they come out of his mouth and switches track. Not I have a sister, but— "I have things to do, of course I don't just want to sit here!"

Deidara scoffs, pinning Kiba's wrist to the table and carefully applying another coat of light blue polish to his nails. "Training again?" he mocks. "It can wait until I'm done, un. Sasori mixed up a whole batch of polish and that's fucking rare. And since you don't even know what eye shadow is—"

"I know what it is!" Kiba protests. Still, the fact that the nail polish Akatsuki uses is something that Sasori created is more than enough to hold his attention, and he brings the drying hand up to his face, squinting at the coating. "Isn't it impractical to wear, though?"

"Danna's whole thing is art should be eternal," Deidara mocks in a nasally voice that sounds nothing like Sasori in real life. "His stuff doesn't chip, un. It'll deflect a kunai, too, but it's a shitty thing to try unless you have to."

"Do you think he could put poison in it?" Kiba asks curiously, mind already spinning possibilities. Before, he was never anywhere near motivated enough to make his own techniques, the way Hana did, but now, for all that he's using Shiranui poisons, he doesn't actually know all that many of their jutsus. He didn't have time to learn, and since poisons are already so different from what the Inuzuka default to, Kiba's just making everything up as he goes. Adding poisoned fingernails to his knives seems like a fun idea.

Deidara makes a rude sound, though, rolling his eyes and not even bothering to look up. "You're both obsessed, un," he says disgustedly. "If you scratched yourself by accident, it would serve you right."

A good point, Kiba thinks, deflating slightly. They'd be cool, but he'd have to figure out a way to make sure he didn't poison himself, and that would take some doing. Maybe actual claws that he could attach to his fingers with chakra?

"You're just jealous that poison is so much cooler than dirt," he retorts, a little grumpily, and ducks the swipe Deidara immediately takes at him.

"Fuck you!" he spits. "My art is perfect and you can't rival it with—damn it, just stand still, puppy! If you scratch those before they're dry there won't be any question how you died—"

Kiba laughs, ducking a sweeping kick and bouncing back several yards. "What?" he taunts. "You think you're going to do it?" He slides around Deidara's lunge, turns to bolt for the door, and pulls up short just before he crashes into Sasori.

Sasori gives him a long look, then casts a glance at his nails. "We should discuss your idea in the future," he says blandly, but Kiba's caught him trying to swipe his notebook enough times that he recognizes the glint in his eye. "Poisoned polish could be a decent backup weapon."

"Sure," Kiba says, only a little wary, and promptly ducks around behind Sasori as Deidara tries to grab him. Deidara isn't quite bold enough to go through Sasori to get to him, but he huffs, glaring at the puppeteer with deep offense.

"Move, danna!" he insists.

One red brow arches, just faintly. "No," Sasori answers. "Pein and I have been looking for you both. Come."

A little surprised, Kiba casts a glance at Sasori as he turns to leave, then another at Deidara, who meets his gaze and just shrugs. "A meeting?"

"Clearly," Sasori says flatly, and then, when Kiba slips around to walk on his far side, gives him a long look and says, "Itachi and Hidan will be joining us."

Deidara promptly makes a sound like a cat hacking up a hairball and spins on his heel. "No fucking way am I working with that bastard!" he snaps, tossing his hair back over one shoulder.

Kiba catches his elbow before he can make it more than a step or two, tugging him back around, and startlingly doesn't lose his head for it. A punch skims his cheek, but it doesn't connect and Deidara lets himself be moved, and that might as well be outright agreement.

"Come on," Kiba huffs. "If I have to endure Hidan and you dripping pheromones everywhere like sex-obsessed waterfalls, you can put up with Itachi for a single meeting."

"Sex-obsessed what?" Deidara splutters, but Sasori makes a quiet sound that's almost a snort.

"You aren't being given a choice in the matter," he tells Deidara, opening one of the doors and preceding them into the main chamber. The statue looms above them, and Kiba tries to avoid looking at it straight on—it's unspeakably creepy, a pair of chained hands bursting from the earth with their fingers outstretched, like they're reaching for something. The whole place smells sharp, too, not quite growth and not quite rot, something Kiba can't identify that sits uneasily on his senses. None of the others seem to notice, though; Deidara is still grumbling to himself, and Sasori is unruffled as he crosses the floor towards where Pein, Hidan, and Itachi are waiting.

Pein glances down from his contemplation of the statue as they approach, ringed eyes flat and cold like a snake's. Kiba has to fight a faint shiver; there are a lot of creepy bastards in the Akatsuki, but somehow, even with Kakuzu and his stitched-together body and Zetsu and his cannibalism, Pein always manages to strike him as the strangest. Maybe it's the fact the he has almost no scent of his own—all Kiba gets from him is metal and cloth, a trace of where he's been but not him, and most living people don't smell like that.

It's automatic, at this point, for Kiba to glance around the room, looking for Konan. She's been practicing hiding from his nose, and she's good enough at it that most of the time Kiba can't immediately pick her out. It means he works harder at tracking, too, which is fun—unless they're sent out on bounties, he doesn't usually get the chance. There's no trace of her now, though, and it's a little surprising; usually, when Pein hands out missions, Konan is right beside him.

If Pein is handing out missions, and Kiba kind of hopes he's not. The odds that he'd get stuck working with Itachi are high, and—well. He'll have to at some point, but Kiba really, really wants to put that moment off for as long as possible. His skin crawls a little whenever he has to look at Itachi, and all he can think of is Sasuke, the empty Uchiha compound and how it still smells like blood all these years later. Itachi smells like blood, too, and Kiba's avoided speaking so much as a word to him, being anywhere alone with him, tried to avoid looking at him whenever possible.

Working with murderers and missing-nin is one thing, because Kiba's never seen the aftermath of the actions that made them flee their villages. With Itachi, though? With Itachi he's intimately familiar with the aftermath, and he knows precisely what Itachi destroyed, just to prove himself stronger.

Dark robes flare as Pein leaps lightly down from one of the statue's fingers, landing soundlessly in front of them. He doesn't stand like most people Kiba knows, either; perfectly still, arms hanging limp at his sides, like he's a puppet held at rest. His stare is sharp, though, and Kiba can only meet it for a moment before he's dropping his eyes, looking at Sasori instead. The puppeteer has his arms folded into the sleeves of his robes, and he's watching with slightly narrowed eyes as Hidan lounges back against a stalagmite, looking bored. Much, much safer than staring at Pein, even if Kiba should probably look like he's paying attention.

Unfortunately, Sasori is next to Itachi, who looks cold like marble in the low light. Red-and-black eyes slide slowly over the five of them, resting for just a moment longer on Kiba than on anyone else, and Kiba bristles, doesn't even try to hide the way his lips start to pull back from his teeth. It makes Itachi's eyes narrow faintly, though there's otherwise no change in his expression, and somehow that's more unnerving than anything else, the thought that there's so much Itachi isn't showing, that there could be anything in his head underneath the blankness.

This is the man who killed his entire family just for the challenge of it, and Kiba can never forget that for even a moment.

"Sasori," Pein says quietly, drawing Kiba's attention back, and he turns to look at Sasori as the redhead hums.

"There is a mission," Sasori says precisely. "One of my sleeper agents has stopped responding and is no longer sending me information. As he was positioned high up in Orochimaru's organization, it's imperative that you find out both what happened to him and what Orochimaru is planning."

Kiba blinks, startled. Easy enough to remember the aftermath of the invasion, all the players, the need for a new Hokage by the time Orochimaru fled. And—a highly placed agent?

"Kabuto?" he asks curiously, because he heard Naruto mention the man and his role in the fight with Tsunade. That seemed like the only person Orochimaru relied on.

Sasori pauses, then tips his head. "Yes," he allows, watching Kiba closely. "Yakushi Kabuto is one of my spies. Were you aware of this?"

A little unsettled by the way everyone seems to be staring at him, Kiba shrugs, rocking back on his heels. "Guess," he defends. "But he was a traitor to Konoha, and he was helping Orochimaru, yeah? So it makes sense."

If someone's a traitor once, they could be a traitor for other people too, he almost says, but—that's a dangerous thought to plant in anyone's head, given his current position.

"I suppose it does," Pein says, sounding faintly amused, and finally lets his gaze slide away from Kiba to linger on the others. "Orochimaru is a dangerous opponent, even weakened as he is. The four of you will be enough to match anything he can conjure, though."

Fuck. He really is going to have to work with Itachi, Kiba thinks with a grimace.

"I'm not working with him, un!" Deidara protests loudly, a moment before Kiba can open his mouth. He levels a finger at Itachi, expression twisted in disgust. "Pick someone else!"

Pein's expression is perfectly mild, but somehow still more of a threat than a bared blade. "Kakuzu and Konan are seeking rumors of the Nanabi," he says coolly. "Kisame has a mission as well. Zetsu is gathering information in Suna. Who would you have me assign, Deidara?"

Deidara flinches slightly. "Anyone else, un," he mutters, but quietly enough that it can't really be counted as an objection. Folding his arms over his chest, he subsides with a huff, sinking in on himself a bit.

Pein clearly takes that as the surrender it's meant to be. His gaze slides on, from Deidara to Hidan, and he raises a brow. "No other objections?"

Hidan scoffs loudly. "Some people here aren't pussies," he taunts, and Kiba has to grab Deidara's arm before he can lunge at Hidan with a snarl. Hidan grins at him, a vicious challenge, and then adds with relish, "Besides, I've heard that the Snake's supposed to be immortal. Nothing makes Jashin happier than a sacrifice who thinks they're hot shit and can't die."

With a hum, Sasori tips his head in a brief nod. "Orochimaru's death would be a benefit to the organization," he says, and he never quite smells like emotion, only wood shavings and the sharpness of chakra, but Kiba's pretty sure that the emotion written across his face is pure, seething hatred. It's almost enough to make him take a step back. "If you happen upon the opportunity, take it."

Hidan laughs, vicious and eager. "Of course," he says cockily, grinning.

Satisfaction clear on his face, even under the quiet of his normally blank expression, Sasori turns his stare on Deidara and then Itachi. "I assume you will be able to deal with any of Orochimaru's forces," he says, raising a faintly mocking brow. It makes Deidara snarl at him, but Itachi's expression never changes.

"Of course," he echoes, though it's cold and faintly derisive.

"Like fuck a couple of foot soldiers are going to stop me, un," Deidara says, more retort than agreement, but he eases back, still tense but no longer about to go for Itachi's throat. He flips his hair over his shoulder with a huff, then hooks a thumb at Kiba. "And the dog brat? What's he coming for, or do you just want us to babysit, un?"

"Hey!" Kiba snaps.

At the same moment, Sasori snorts. "No," he says, amused, "and if there was any babysitting happening, it would likely be Inuzuka babysitting all of you."

Deidara squawks in pure offense, and Kiba snickers, ducking away from the swipe Deidara takes at him automatically. A few quick steps to the side put him behind Sasori again, and he gives Deidara a smug grin from behind the cover of the puppeteer's body.

Raising an eyebrow at their antics, Sasori steps sideways, removing himself from the line of fire. "Inuzuka will have to be the one to find Orochimaru's base, since my information on its location is incomplete," he says. "I assume this won't be a problem?"

"Snakes stink, and Orochimaru especially," Kiba says, wrinkling his nose. "I can definitely find him, as long as we get close enough." It was hard to even get near the arena where the matches were held after the invasion, or even the places where Orochimaru and the Sandaime fought. The reek of metallic scales, concentrated hatred, and vicious fury were so sharp the entire Inuzuka Clan had to stay away.

Sasori makes a sound of amusement. "Very well, then. You are to locate Yakushi Kabuto, discover why he has stopped reporting in, and ascertain Orochimaru's plans for the future. He escaped with far too much information about the organization, and if he thinks to tell anyone it will be…inconvenient."

Depending on who Orochimaru tells, if he does, it could be a pain in the neck for Kiba too, having to account for even more people who might be a danger to Konoha. It's already hard enough trying to keep tabs on Akatsuki and all of their actions. Besides, Orochimaru's a threat to Konoha, and to Sasuke in particular. Kiba might not be overly fond of Sasuke as a person, but—Naruto is. Naruto is his friend in a way Kiba can't quite understand, full of sharp edges and something that's a little like pack devotion but isn't. Kiba's never been able to figure it out, but…he doesn't need to. Just knowing that if something happens to Sasuke it will hurt Naruto is more than enough to make Kiba want to cut off whatever bullshit Orochimaru is planning.

"One of the Sannin, huh?" he asks lightly, cocky in a way he doesn't even begin to feel, and shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "Well, I already got one of the Konoha elders. It'll be cool to add a Sannin to that, too."

"Don't get ahead of yourself, puppy," Hidan tells him, snickering. "The Snake is mine, and you can't take me just yet."

Kiba growls, even though he knows Hidan is right. Poison won't take Hidan out, and beyond that, there's not much Kiba can do. "I bet you'd get a kick out of being paralyzed," he retorts. "Maybe I'd turn you into a mat for the main door, let everyone wipe their feet on you."

Hidan laughs, halfway between glee and a challenge. "Try it!" he says, reaches for his scythe and—

"Enough," Pein says shortly, and everyone freezes. With a flare of robes Pein turns and walks away, heading for the door, and says over his shoulder, "You have your assignment. Go."

"We have to leave now?" Deidara complains, but he starts walking regardless. "There's a rainstorm coming, un!"

"Pack your cloaks," Sasori tells him without sympathy, falling into step. "Were your art able to last—"

"That's not the point of art, un!"

The door falls shut on their bickering, and Kiba rolls his eyes, even though he's grateful he managed to escape without Sasori trying to swipe his notebook again. With a huff, he kicks at a lip of stone in the floor, then follows the pair, ignoring Hidan's muttering behind him.

The echo of steps beneath his own is entirely unwelcome.

Forcing himself not to edge away, Kiba ignores Itachi, turning down the hall towards his quarters. Unfortunately, Itachi's happen to be close to his, and the man follows, perfectly silent, one arm tucked into his cloak like a sling even if he doesn't smell like pain. Just his way of standing, Kiba supposes, and tries not to wrinkle his nose as a cross-breeze washes the scent of wet blood over him. He has no idea what Itachi gets up to that makes him smell like that all the time, but it's awful. Unnerving, too—even ANBU members don't normally smell like that unless they're fresh off assignment.

He's just starting to hope that this will be nothing more than two people heading in the same direction when there's a faint shift next to him, a brief turn of Itachi's head as the Uchiha glances at him.

"Konoha breeds traitors, it seems," he says coldly, but his eyes are Sharingan-red and don't waver from Kiba's face.

It feels like fingernails up Kiba's spine, and he has to grit his teeth, brace himself so his voice won't break, won't drop into a growl when he answers, "Yeah, well, I guess you'd know, right?"

Itachi pauses, but Kiba can't tell if it's because he wasn't expecting the answer or because he's containing some murderous instinct to kill Kiba on sight. Those eyes still don't waver, but all the money in the world couldn't convince Kiba to meet them.

"Not all enemies are defeated by their own tastes. Remember that," Itachi says, perfectly emotionless, perfectly cold, and it takes Kiba a second to understand the implication, to remember the rumors Tsunade spread. Bile crawls up the back of his throat, and he has to swallow hard to keep from gagging.

"Maybe," he says, coming to a stop, and it's hard not to meet Itachi's eyes when he glares, but the bridge of his nose is a perfectly acceptable substitute here, "you should mind your own fucking business, Uchiha."

Itachi stares at him for a long moment, then turns away. He opens the door of his room and passes through, then lets it fall softly shut behind him, and it's somehow more offensive than slamming it would have been.

Kiba takes a breath that shakes, rubs a hand over his face. Thinks about the way his knife slid into Danzō's kidney, smooth and quick, and the surprised hitch of his breath right after.

Thinks about Hana's face one morning, when she got back from a mission to find missing children, and how she'd looked away when he congratulated her for finding them alive.

Maybe, she'd said, it would have been better if they were dead.

He hadn't understood it, then.

Doesn't want to understand it, now.

Not all enemies are defeated by their own tastes, Itachi's voice whispers, mocking in memory, and Kiba wants to snarl.

There's a mission, though. Itachi's words don't mean anything, and Hidan and Deidara are going to be on the mission as well. They'll be a buffer. Kiba doesn't have to dwell, doesn't have to think about the man. Doesn't have to wonder just what he meant, if it was a warning or well-meant caution or something else entirely.

The smell of blood is overwhelming, and Kiba would be lying if he said he didn't flee from it.

---

As soon as the door of his room closes behind him, Itachi slumps back against the wall, pressing a hand over his mouth. His lungs ache, and there's a persistent itch in his throat that has graduated from annoyance to pain. He can't cough, though, can't give in quite yet. Kiba is still out in the hall, and he was in the same class as Hana; he knows precisely how sensitive Inuzuka senses are. He can't give away a weakness like his sickness, not yet.

His mouth tastes like blood, heavy iron-copper on his tongue.

Finally, finally, there are footsteps in the hall, light and quick, almost running. Itachi might be amused, if there were space through the relief, but as soon as the sound fades he collapses, dropping to his knees. The first cough is a wracking, tearing pain, flooding his mouth with wet heat, and he chokes on it, gags, hacks. Can't breathe through the force of it, grips the edge of the door desperately and just tries to stay upright.

It takes a long time for the coughs to dwindle—longer than it used to take, and Itachi can't tell if that's more a reflection on his condition or on the medicine Kabuto has been able to steal for him. Orochimaru only has so much, after all, and Kabuto can't risk his cover. Or, well. Couldn't, Itachi supposes now, since Kabuto has either been killed or ceased to care.

It grates, though. It grates. Itachi used to be so steady, so strong. And he still is, but—

This is like wasting away. This is dying by inches. This is everything a shinobi's death should never be, everything Itachi never wanted. Shisui would be so disappointed in how far he's fallen.

There's crimson smeared thick and dark across his palm, and Itachi takes a breath that rattles in his lungs, closes his fingers around the splash of blood and refuses to watch it drip it out onto the floor. Shoves to his feet instead, steadying himself when he sways, and tries to push away the lingering ache. It's easy enough to focus on the need to move, to pack, to gather his things rather than the way he's wavering, but then, missions are always easier than just—existing.

He coughs lightly into his stained fist, clearing his throat, and rinses his hands off in the bathroom sink, trying to calculate how many doses he'll be able to get out of the bottles Kabuto brought him. Not as many as he would like, especially for a mission with other Akatsuki members, but he'll survive. He has a reputation, and if he takes his own room whenever they stop no one will comment on it. Hidan and Kiba probably won't, at least; Deidara is always challenging to be around for more than a few hours, but any complaints he makes will likely be written off as meaningless noise. It's…almost amusing, really. Itachi can't think of many shinobi who act the way Deidara does. Not in Konoha, at least.

Then again, Itachi never did much mingling with the other ranks. Not after the Kyuubi attack, and even before that not outside of his Academy class and the other Uchiha. Hana was always particularly friendly without the fervor of the fangirls, but Itachi never interacted with her much beyond the classroom.

Maybe if he had, he would have recognized the thread of danger in her little brother.

Itachi's fingers go tight around the edge of the medicine cabinet, and he has to force himself to breathe carefully for a moment. Danzō, he thinks, and it's—fractured. Tangled. Danzō isn't a threat to Sasuke any longer, but—he was more of a threat than Itachi had calculated, and Itachi doesn't like that at all. Pein informed him of Kiba's past, watching for a reaction—some kind of test, Itachi can't help but think, though he knows he's given away no hints that Akatsuki doesn't have his full loyalty. Or maybe he just wanted to see Itachi's response to yet another Konoha nin deserting their village. He always seems to get a certain amount of satisfaction from hearing about Konoha missing-nin, more so than the others.

That, of course, is precisely the kind of information Konoha could use, could draw conclusions from and dig into as they uncovered Akatsuki's secrets. So many times Itachi has sat down with a piece of paper and a pen, ready to write out everything he knows about Akatsuki. Ready to send it back to Konoha, report in, act the spy he thinks of himself as. And—

Always, at the very last moment, he's stopped. Faltered, put the pen down, shoved away from the desk.

He doesn't belong to Konoha anymore, and he's tired.

(Something in him broke, he thinks, when Shisui died. Snapped, shattered, turned to dust. Shisui was the good shinobi, between them. Itachi only ever followed orders, kept moving, kept working, because stillness was uselessness and if he was useless what was the point of him? Shisui, though—he thought and planned and had beliefs, and he died. Was murdered. Committed suicide right in front of Itachi, who had nothing else, and—

For several long, long moments, Itachi had thought about revenge. He'd thought about Danzō dead, and Shisui's stolen eye retrieved. Thought about going to the Sandaime and asking, Do you really want them all killed? Just to be sure. Just to know.

He hadn't, though. It had felt like too much work, to think of another way when Itachi didn't care about the clan one way or the other. They were just people. Just figures that passed his line of sight sometimes. Killing them was simply…

Easy.)

Konoha is a goal, a place, but here and now, so divorced from everything, Itachi can hardly think of why it matters. Danzō was there, and that was reason enough not to share any knowledge, with the certainty that each message would be gleaned of useful information and hoarded, unshared.

And now Danzō is dead, because he looked at a boy Sasuke's age and invited him into his home. Because he gave a boy cause to kill him, and Itachi was spared those kinds of missions at that age, because he was a Clan Head's son and heir, but—

There's a reason seduction classes are taught at the Academy. Shinobi are just mercenaries; they'll do anything for pay, use any method to get their kill.

He thinks, for a moment, of Sasuke as he last saw him, collapsing in that hallway. It just feels empty, though; Itachi tortured his little brother, the child he used to hold, the boy who always asked to train with him, and there's nothing in his head. He'd been so sure he would feel something, so certain it would be hard to make himself do it. Kakashi, too—his old squad leader fell before him, and Itachi tortured him as well.

(That was easy, too.)

What Danzō did, what Danzō must have done—

Itachi stares at the water filling the bottom of the sink, running clear. Closes his eyes, and lets his vision have a moment of blessed darkness.

He's likely the only one in the base who thinks that Inuzuka Kiba is more dangerous for not simply going along with what the man wanted. For choosing to fight back, instead of giving up. For killing a man giving him orders, instead of following them.

Itachi knows which he would have done. Following orders is all he ever did, then.

The fact that Kiba didn't—the thought doesn't sit right with Itachi. Unsettles him, a little. Kiba didn't follow orders, he thinks, and rubs his wet hands over his face. That makes him unpredictable. Who's to say when he'll choose not to follow other orders, after all?

Itachi has interacted with other missing-nin from Konoha. He knows full-well that most of them left for similar reasons, that few of them obeyed their commanders and even fewer cared to. But something about Inuzuka Kiba leaves him…wary.

The boy's age? The fact that Itachi knew his sister once? The manner of his desertion? Or is it maybe his attitude, so brazen and vicious and unconcerned with the elder he killed, whose word was absolute?

(Or is it, maybe, that Kiba killed the man who pushed Shisui to his death, who stole the strongest manifestation of the Mangekyō from its host and ordered the deaths of an entire clan without hesitation? Is it that Kiba did what Itachi wouldn't, and killed the man who was the reason Shisui killed himself?)

Inuzuka Kiba will bear watching, Itachi thinks, and opens his eyes. The Sharingan glows in the dimness, bloody red and midnight black, and he stares at the revolving pattern, at the imagine in the mirror, and wonders if the reason he can't feel a single thing is because he's so very, very tired.

---

"A mission?" Shikamaru asks, a little disbelieving. "Me?"

Shikaku's amusement is not appreciated, not that he likely cares as he levels a smirk at Shikamaru. "You meet upstairs in about three minutes," he says, dropping the scroll and Shikamaru's mission pack in his lap. "Don't look at me like that. You want to stay a chuunin for the rest of your life? Chuunin do missions."

Shikamaru groans, but pushes to his feet anyway. "You volunteered me for this, didn't you," he accuses.

"Lady Tsunade chose you specifically," Shikaku says, which is…not actually an answer at all. "Go. Your team leader is already there."

Well. At the very least Shikamaru isn't going to be expected to lead anything, he thinks grumpily, turning to clump up the stairs towards the Hokage's office. And it will probably be something boring. Probably low-risk. He's only barely a chuunin, after all, hasn't gone on anything higher than a C-rank yet. Asuma never stuck them with anything more taxing than courier missions, so it's not as if Shikamaru has the experience for much more than that.

When Shizune opens the office door for him, though, it's not another chuunin waiting. It isn't even an elite chuunin, or a low-ranking tokujō. Yamashiro Aoba is perched on the arm of one of the chairs, twisting a loop of ninja wire around his fingers, and when Shikamaru steps into the room Aoba looks up and gives him a cheeky grin.

"Hey," he says brightly. "Shikaku's spawn. Good to see you looking bright-eyed and conscious for once."

Shikamaru regards one of Konoha's top intelligence officers warily, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "You're the squad leader?" he asks, hoping beyond hope that Aoba is just here to brief the actual squad leader, or that he just wandered in after getting lost. Anything.

Aoba snorts, twisting the wire into a loop and stowing it up his sleeve. "Don't sound so excited," he says dryly. "Yeah, you're stuck with me until we're done. Better strap your sandals on tight, kid. This is going to be a fun one."

Aoba is one of Inoichi's personal trainees, and also some vague kind of cousin to Shikaku. Shikamaru's had enough exposure to him at this point to know that whatever kind of fun Aoba gets into, he wants no part in it.

"Troublesome," he mutters, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a grimace. Still, if his father wants him on this mission, getting out of it will be more trouble than it's worth. "It's going to be more than just the two of us, isn't it?"

"Three other squad members," Aoba confirms cheerfully, tipping his dark glasses down to study Shikamaru over the tops. "You going to have a problem working with a couple of kunoichi? I know you're still on that bit of stupidity, judging by your match in the Exams."

"Will you take me off the mission if I say yes?" Shikamaru asks hopefully.

Unfortunately, Aoba just snorts. "Not on your life. I just want to know how much popcorn to bring."

"Bastard," Shikamaru mutters, and gives the man a scowl as he drops into the free chair.

Aoba laughs, but before he can say anything else the door opens again, and a familiar figure strides through. Shikamaru blinks in surprise, raising one brow, but Neji ignores him, bowing to Aoba instead. "Sir," he says politely.

"Hyuuga," Aoba returns easily. "Glad to have you. Gai's said some pretty awesome things about you."

It might be Shikamaru's imagination, but he thinks he sees a faint shadow of a smile cross Neji's face. When he looks up, though, his expression is as controlled as ever. "I'll do my best to live up to his praise," he says, and then glances over at Shikamaru. No change in his face, but Shikamaru still gets the feeling he's being looked down on anyway before Neji steps back, putting his shoulders against the wall and going still.

Troublesome, Shikamaru thinks, a little peeved. He taps a finger against the strap of his pack, trying to work out why Neji wouldn't like him. His promotion, even after he technically lost his match? That seems likely. At the very least, though, Aoba is good at picking out things like that. He won't let it stand for long.

…Not that that means much good in the way of some of Shikamaru's views, but still.

"Look at that! There's still someone in Fire Country who respects you!" a cheerful voice calls, and a vaguely familiar figure drops through the window, rolls, and comes to her feet. Their proctor from the second part of the Chuunin Exams, as well as Sasuke's new part-time teacher, Shikamaru thinks, eyeing her warily. He clearly remembers her licking blood off of Naruto's cheek, and he's seen Sasuke after his training sessions with her. This does not exactly bode well.

"Lots of people respect me," Aoba retorts, but he rises to his feet, holds out a hand and clasps wrists with the woman. "Hey, Anko. All healed up?"

"Yep!" The woman's grin is all teeth. "I heard you needed an expert in snakes and got the hospital to let me go a day early."

"Well, if Tsunade-sama signed off on it, I'm glad to have you along," Aoba tells her, and then glances over her shoulder at the other figure gracefully sliding in through the window. "Yūgao. I'm getting all the scary ones this time, aren't I?"

The woman with the sword makes an amused sound, landing lightly on the balls of her feet. "Genma wanted some experience to offset the children," she says in explanation, and casts a smile at Neji and then Shikamaru. "Hello."

Two kunoichi on his team? This is going to be troublesome, Shikamaru thinks, and raises a hand in a halfhearted wave as Neji nods politely.

A moment later, a hand cuffs him hard on the back of the head. "A little respect for your superiors," Aoba tells him, and his expression is mostly amused but there's a warning in the arch of his brow.

"Sorry," Shikamaru mutters, rubbing the back of his skull with a sigh. This mission hasn't even started yet and he's more than ready for it to be over. The mention of Genma makes him a little wary, too, even though he still doesn't have any reason to be beyond the most circumstantial bits of evidence. He watches Yūgao under the cover of sinking deeper into his chair, trying to call up memories of her, but he can't think of any. She's not someone who frequently interacts with his father, or at least doesn't do it unmasked, since there's an ANBU tattoo on her bicep.

Anko laughs, perching on the edge of the Hokage's empty desk and swinging her heels. "We all here?" she asks, and when Shizune peeks in offers the aide a wave and a wink. Shizune makes a sound like a squeak, quickly closing the door, and Anko beams.

"You," Aoba tells her, "are the kind of shinobi heartbreaker they warn civilians about."

"I'm doing my civic duty and improving Konoha's reputation in the world by being kickass in bed," Anko says cheerfully, entirely unrepentant. "Besides, Shizune's not a civilian."

"No, and if you break her heart Tsunade-sama's going to assign you to Suna border patrols for the next six months." Aoba rolls his eyes, only just visible behind the dark lenses. "But yeah, we're all here. Tsunade-sama wanted us to use her office for the brief, since this is might end up an A-rank mission, even if it's just intelligence gathering."

Neji lifts his head, eyes widening, and Shikamaru lets his own head drop back against the chair with a groan. Damn it. So much for hoping it was something easy, though those hopes had already started to crumble when he saw Aoba waiting. Ibiki doesn't usually farm out his best shinobi for milk runs, after all.

"Where to?" Yūgao asks curiously, settling against the edge of the window. "Genma only said to pack for a few weeks."

Weeks? Shikamaru protests this. Vigorously. Or, well, he would if he could muster up the energy through the crushing despair at the thought of working for weeks straight. Just the idea is torture.

Aoba flicks Shikamaru's ear like he can hear his thoughts, but doesn't hesitate to say, "Rice Paddy Country. Jiraiya was following a lead on Orochimaru's recent movements, but he had to be reassigned. Ibiki took over the mission and kicked it down the chain of command to me. We need to get in, locate whatever base Orochimaru is using, and hopefully blow it into dust once we've figured out where else he's holing up."

"So not just intelligence gathering," Shikamaru says a little grumpily, folding his arms over his chest, but his thoughts are racing ahead. He knows Konoha's bureaucracy, how the wheels turn. Two weeks ago Team Kurenai and Team Kakashi returned from a mission that went south because of Akatsuki, because of Kiba, and that seems like precisely the sort of thing a spymaster would be called to look into. Two weeks is about how long a non-critical reassignment would take, too, so it's probably safe to assume that Akatsuki is the reason Jiraiya was taken off this mission.

It's still unsettling, to think that Inuzuka Kiba, obnoxious and brash and bright, is a missing-nin. That he beat Kakashi, an experienced jounin, and made S-rank because of the threat he poses. Shikamaru can't quite wrap his head around it, even after hearing his father talk about it with Tsunade, even after filching the mission reports from his father's desk and getting the full story from Naruto in the wake of everything. Of course that's the kind of thing Jiraiya would be called to investigate, but—

It's Kiba. Shikamaru spent the last twelve years of his life at least vaguely acquainted with him, and he was always loud and goofy and a little lazy. That was all Shikamaru ever saw in him, and if he managed to miss a missing-nin's ruthlessness, a traitor's anger, what else could he have missed?

Not the note to Genma, at least. Shikamaru is sure that was Kiba's handwriting, as sure as he's ever been of anything.

"Life lesson, kid—nothing is ever just information gathering," Aoba says, and that smile has too many layers for Shikamaru's liking. The tokujō glances away from him, though, looks first at Anko and then at Yūgao, and says, "If you want to back out, tell me now."

Instantly, Shikamaru raises his hand. Aoba ignores him completely.

Yūgao raises a brow at Shikamaru as he subsides, grumbling a little, but doesn't comment on it. "Of course not," she says, and tips her head at Neji. "You need more than one close-range fighter for something like this."

Meaning Anko likely is long-range, or at least mid-range, Shikamaru thinks critically, casting a look over the other four shinobi. More distance fighters than not, then, and it makes sense for a team that's meant to be on reconnaissance, but all Shikamaru can think about is the Sandaime's funeral, the story Naruto told him about Tsunade's fight with Orochimaru. The fact that they're actually seeking out a man capable of that makes a pickle run down Shikamaru's spine, and he grimaces.

"As much as it breaks my heart to leave my cute little student," Anko says cheerfully, "I'd like to see you try to kick me off of this mission, Yamashiro."

"I'd like to think I've got more brains than that," Aoba retorts, but he's smiling. He looks at Neji, and asks, "Hyuuga?"

"I'm prepared," Neji says simply, mouth set, and Aoba nods agreeably.

"All right then," he says brightly. "Come on, Shikamaru."

Shikamaru groans, but levers himself to his feet. "I should have chosen to stay a genin for the rest of my life, not a chuunin," he laments.

Aoba claps him on the shoulder, steering him towards the door with a gentle nudge. "Genin have D-ranks, though," he points out. "I think your best bet would have been just not becoming a shinobi at all if you were looking to avoid work."

Shikamaru pulls a face. "Mom yelled," he admits grumpily, and Aoba laughs.

"She's living vicariously through you. Have some sympathy," he says. "You know how much she misses shinobi work."

She does, and it makes something small and guilty turn over in Shikamaru's chest every time he thinks about it. His mom used to be a top jounin until an injury took her out of the ranks permanently, and he's always known she hates it. Sometimes, when she sees him putting on his chuunin vest—

But it's not something that can change. Yoshino is a survivor, and she survived that mission, survived coming home. She'll adjust, Shikamaru knows. His dad helps with that.

"I guess," he mutters, looking away, and hears Aoba snort softly.

"Come on," he says, passing Shikamaru to lead the way down the stairs. "I want to at least get to the Rice Paddy Country border before sunset tomorrow, so we need to move."

Shikamaru mutters a curse on Aoba's ancestors before remembering that they're also his ancestors, gives up, and picks up his pace. Yūgao falls into step with him as they emerge from the Administration building, and she casts a smile at him before fixing her eyes ahead and leaping to follow Aoba up onto the roofs. Shikamaru trails her by a few steps, dodging around a pair of civilians and then jumping, landing next to Neji.

Neji doesn't deign to look at him, just keeps moving, and Anko giggles as she passes them both to bounce alongside Yūgao. Shikamaru rolls his eyes, mutters, "Troublesome," and brings up the rear as they head for the gates.

---

"This is stupid," Kakuzu mutters, tugging his hood down a little further over his eyes. "This is really fucking stupid."

Konan ignores him, keeping her expression politely warm as they skirt the edges of the crowd gathered in the market. The layer of paper that reshapes her face is a little too thick, and she brushes it smooth under the cover of tucking her hair back. Not point risking a henge when Konoha is the home of so many dojutsu users, but she's used this technique before. Even Itachi's Sharingan can't see through it.

Kakuzu growls, apparently irritated by her lack of response. "Pein is going to have my damn head," he snaps, though his keeps his voice low enough not to be overheard, practically glued to Konan's elbow as he is.

"Nagato will recognize that we need information," she says coolly, though she offers a small smile to a child with wild brown hair and a blue scarf around his neck. He grins back, bolting past into the crowd, and Konan tries not to think of how he's only barely younger than Kiba.

Glowing green eyes rest on her for a moment, then slide away as Kakuzu scoffs disgustedly. "Fucking hate this place," he mutters, folding his arms over his chest, though Konan notices how careful he is to keep the thick black threads stitched through his skin completely hidden.

"Do you really think I don't?" she counters, turning onto another busy street. More shinobi than civilians, here, but she doesn't let herself react, just keeps her steps purposeful and her gaze ahead as she walks. Easy enough to watch everything else out of the corner of her eye, marking the number of shinobi out. Too many—Konoha is ridiculously large, and the majority of its population is active ninja.

The thought makes her curl her fingers into a fist, concealed under the drape of false kimono sleeves that hide the cloud-patterned cloak beneath. Konoha has so many shinobi that it was easy for them to overrun a small country like Ame, and she hates to have to remember those years, all the suffering and fear. Hates to remember what came after, also because of Konoha. Because of Danzō, and Konan knows she's a vicious person, has cultivated the attribute carefully over the years, but—

The satisfaction she gets knowing Danzō is dead outstrips everything else she's ever felt.

"Separate?" Kakuzu asks quietly, though Konan can see the way his gaze slides over the shinobi around them, assessing and wary.

Konan considers it. Risky, without a doubt, and Nagato would yell at her for even considering it, but…

"All right," she agrees. "Anything about Danzō is valuable, but don't get caught."

Kakuzu gives her the look that warning likely deserves. "I've been a missing-nin since before your grandparents were alive," he says crankily. "Don't you get caught."

Allowing herself a slight smirk, Konan watches him stalk away, then turns her attention back to the street. Working with someone who is truly immortal takes some adjustment, but then, no one in Akatsuki is quite what they seem.

Being in Konoha is bittersweet, Konan thinks, turning down a side street and stepping back out into the market now that Kakuzu's vaguely intimidating presence is gone. People are a lot more likely to talk in the presence of a nondescript woman without any markings of a shinobi than they would when faced with a hulking man in a concealing cloak, after all. It also gives Konan space to look around, to watch these people who have no idea what sorts of misery their village has caused. Or maybe they do, and they simply don't care—Jiraiya certainly didn't, once he left them. Nothing changed, and it won't, not until they tear the system of shinobi out by its roots and burn it away.

But Konoha is also beautiful. Nothing like Ame with its towering metal skyscrapers and glowing lights, but—organic. Tangled in the way of old forests and wild groves, with an air of energy about it. Jiraiya used to tell them stories about it, and Konan can see why he did; it's a lovely place, for all the darkness that hides beneath the surface.

Keeping her steps even and steady, she wanders between the market stalls, one part of her attention on the conversations around her, another portion on the people. Mostly civilians at this hour of the afternoon, and there are some bits of interesting gossip but nothing truly of note. If she wants actual news about what's been uncovered regarding Danzō, she's going to have to find somewhere shinobi gather.

Ideally, she would slip into one of the standby stations, linger there as shinobi prepared for duty and took breaks between guard rotations. It's a risk that should be a last resort, though; even in a village as large as Konoha, an unfamiliar face will likely be commented on, and Konan doesn't know anyone but Jiraiya well enough to mimic their face and actions. Jiraiya is too much of a risk to impersonate, though, given his status and fame, so the next best option is—

"Got something you want to say to my face?" a woman snaps, sharp and loud enough even over the sounds of the market that Konan flinches and spins, eyes darting towards the source. Brown hair, long and spiky, a simple long-sleeved shirt and pants, but shinobi sandals as well. And, next to her, a massive black dog, head coming up past her elbow. The woman is leaning forward, hands braced on the edge of a stall, and the merchant is in the process of recoiling, eyes wide.

"Nothing, nothing, don't—" he babbles, but the woman cuts him off with a wordless snarl, then shoves away from the stand and spins on her heel, stalking away.

Konan has just enough time to catch sight of the marks on her cheeks, inverted red triangles like bared fangs. Her breath catches in her throat, and for a moment she can't move, because those are familiar. Kiba has the same markings, though one of his is skewed, dragged off-center and made crooked by the scar that bisects it. Clan markings, Konan knows, and the Inuzuka are one of the largest clans in Konoha, there's no saying that this woman and her nin-dog have anything to do with Kiba at all, but—

She looks like him. Their hair is the same shade, falls in the same way. Kiba's still a child, baby fat rounding his cheeks, but Konan can see a shadow of his features in this woman's face, like a premonition of how he'll look in the future. There has to be some sort of close relation.

It's a whim that has her moving, an urge she can't resist and doesn't try to that pushes her after the woman, ducking through the press as she follows stiff-set shoulders and the bristling fur of the nin-dog. Konan led Kakuzu here for information on Danzō, to see what had come of his death and how many of his schemes had been uncovered, because if he linked her and Nagato's names to the original Akatsuki, if he recorded their encounter, they're going to have to take extra precautions. But—

There was some buried piece of her that wanted to see if Kiba was getting justice. If he was the only victim of Danzō's perversion. Whether Konoha had done anything at all to correct what had happened.

This woman is so angry, though, so clearly linked to Kiba, that Konan doesn't think so.

She turns a corner off the main street, into a much quieter and more narrow road, and somehow it's no surprise at all to find the woman leaning back against a wall, rubbing a hand over her face as her ninken leans against her side, his one ear flat against his skull. Slowing her steps, Konan moves closer, careful, a little wary of approaching a shinobi in a strange place, but there's a familiar, tired sort of grief carved into the Inuzuka woman's posture. In the face of that, Konan doesn't just want to turn away.

"Are you all right?" she asks quietly, and stops a pace away, watching the woman closely.

There's a long pause, and then the Inuzuka raises her head. Her eyes are a little red, though she's not crying, and there's a terrible, twisted sort of humor in the set of her painted mouth.

"Why?" she asks roughly, almost a bark. "Going to try and tell me that it's not true? Because I've heard it before, so fuck right off."

Konan blinks, a little taken aback by the viciousness. "That what isn't true?"

Dark eyes narrow, and the Inuzuka looks her over, then laughs, short and harsh. "Just being kind, huh?" she asks, and presses a hand over her eyes. "You're not from around here."

It's not a question, but Konan still shakes her head. "Just visiting," she says, and takes a step closer, carefully leaning back against the wall beside the woman. "You looked upset."

Her smile is completely without humor. "I lost my son," she returns. "I think I have a lot to be upset about."

Son. It's entirely possible this has nothing at all to do with Kiba, but—what if it does? There's likely no better place to get information on Danzō than from someone with a grudge against him, and Konan can't imagine the boy's mother wouldn't hold some kind of resentment.

"I'm sorry for your loss," she says softly, even as her thoughts race ahead. If she's right—

The Inuzuka huffs, tired, bitter amusement, and slides down the wall to sit on the stone, burying her fingers in her ninken's fur as he presses against her side. "Loss," she repeats, and closes her eyes. "I thought he had a crush," she says, more to herself than Konan. "I thought that was why he was staying out late."

Something cold slides down Konan's spine to settle in her stomach, and she swallows, sinks carefully to her knees to sit beside the woman. "It wasn't a crush, I take it," she says quietly.

This time the woman's laugh sounds more like a choked sob, even though that bitter smile is still in place. "No," she says. "I didn't—I should have seen it. That bastard—"

The words have the sound of something she's heard too many times, directed at her by others and repeated to herself. I should have seen it, and Konan thinks of Kiba when she first saw him, vicious and angry and so young, and can't bring herself to argue.

"Someone hurt him," she says, and can't make it into a question.

"Kept hurting him," the woman says, sharp like broken glass. "Kept doing it until he broke, and I never fucking noticed."

Tsume, Konan thinks, dredging up the memory of the file Sasori put together on Kiba. His mother is Inuzuka Tsume, Clan Head and tokujō. A strong woman, by all accounts, but—

She looks like she's breaking, and Konan thinks of Yahiko dying in the rain, Danzō's cold eyes as he stood with his Root shinobi. Of her entire world ending because she hadn't been strong enough, had been too tired of fighting, unprepared for treachery, of thinking afterwards what if and having it feel like the kunai Yahiko drove through his own heart.

Sometimes, she thinks, reaching out, all you can do is break, and hope that you can salvage enough pieces on the other side to go on existing.

Tsume doesn't react when Konan takes her hands, tangles their fingers together and squeezes gently, carefully. Just keeps her head bowed, breathing ragged in the quiet of the deserted street as her ninken watches them with intelligent eyes, and Konan just—

Well. Kiba is like Yahiko was once, bright and burning. Tempered by tragedy, touched by fury, and Konan can imagine what it will make him into when he's had time to grow into himself. She's glad for what he is, in a way she had never expected to be, but she regrets it, too. Regrets what this world made him, because a man had too much power and no checks to hold him back from what he wanted.

"He got away," she asks, says, and it's too close to giving things away, but this is his mother. She blames herself, and Konan feels that's only right, but she's also suffering so much. Suffering in a way that reminds Konan all too much of eternal rain, of the weight of a body in her arms that never quite seems to fade. That can't, when every day she has to look into Yahiko's face with Nagato's eyes, has to face what happened to the man she loved so very much. What she caused by not being strong enough.

There's a pause, and then Tsume takes a breath. Grips Konan's hands, almost painfully tight, and says roughly, "Yeah. He got away. Took the bastard out, too." She shakes her head, wild hair falling around her face, and laughs grimly. "Doesn't change what people are saying about him. Kiba wouldn't have killed just for power. Why the fuck can't they see that?"

Of course. Ice curls down Konan's spine, and it takes effort not to let her disguise slide into weapons, ready to find the throats of anyone who would deny what happened to Kiba. But—Danzō was powerful. Of course some people would refuse to believe it, even if other bits of darkness revealed themselves after his death. Better to protect a dead man with a long list of sins to his name, rather than the child who was his victim.

"Someday they'll have to," she says, tries to make it a comfort.

Tsume smiles, bare and bitter, and tips her head back against the stone. "They're going to kill my baby boy," she says, closing her eyes. "They're going to kill him because he defended himself. They made him a missing-nin. They put a bounty on his head."

They won't, Konan swears. She can't say anything without revealing herself, but—

She won't let Kiba die at Konoha's hands. She'll remake the world, drown the corruption, destroy the darkness that made Kiba into who he is, that made her and Nagato and has destroyed so many lives. And, on the other side, when the dust clears and there's no more war, no more suffering at the hands of those the world won't hold accountable, Kiba will be there to see it. Konan will make sure of it.

Unable to say it, she grips Tsume's hands instead, watches the other woman breathe through he grief. Kneels there on the hard stone, thinking of a little boy with too much darkness on his shoulders, and holds on tight as Tsume grips her fingers in return.

---

It seems like Kiba always ends up stuck with reconnaissance, but at least in this case, he'd much rather be skulking through the brush in the ass-end of Rice Paddy Country than back at the inn. A solid week of traveling with the three youngest Akatsuki members and he's honestly ready to commit murder. Sasori at least wouldn't blame him. Konan probably wouldn't, either.

There's a crash from behind him, a curse, a bush waving wildly, and Kiba shuts his eyes and swallows a groan.

"Damn it," he mutters, but turns on his heel, trots back, and grabs Deidara by the end of his ponytail. "Have you never fucking heard of stealth before? What the hell?"

Deidara surfaces from the depths of the thorn bush with a yelp, flailing a little as Kiba hauls him out of the tangled branches. "Fuck off, un! Iwa has rocks, not bullshit like this. Ow!"

Kiba tosses the branch full of stickers that he pulled out of Deidara's arm aside, then rolls his eyes. "We're not in Iwa," he says, unimpressed. "If you can't walk through the woods without letting the whole world know you're coming, just wait here and I'll set up a perimeter. You weren't even supposed to come in the first place."

"Fuck you," Deidara mutters balefully, rubbing his arm. "Like hell I'm going to sit there with that fucking Uchiha, un."

It's not like Kiba can argue with that. He huffs a laugh, then ducks around the edge of the bush. "Whatever. Come on, just be quiet."

Deidara mutters something that Kiba can't quite catch, but he follows easily enough, minding his steps amidst the undergrowth. "Shouldn't you and him be joined at the hip, un?" he wants to know, and it's mostly derisive but Kiba can pick out the thread of honest curiosity underneath the surface. "You're both from that shithole, and you both stuck it to your Hokage."

Something like horror tangled up with rage claws down Kiba's spine, hot and tight and sharp, and he has to contain the urge to spin and grab for Deidara, shake him and snarl. No space for that on reconnaissance, though, especially here, and he lets out a shaky breath as he fights the impulse.

"You know why he was made a missing-nin?" he asks when he feels like he can talk without his voice breaking into a growl.

From the pause, Deidara can hear the edge to his words. "Yeah, un," he finally says. "Killed his family, right?"

"Not just his family," Kiba say, and stubbornly keeps his eyes fixed forward. "Every single person in the Uchiha Clan, in one night. All but one. Almost four hundred people all together. The only survivor was his little brother, and Itachi tortured him before he left the village."

Deidara stops walking.

"Fuck," he says, and when Kiba glances back at him his eyes are a little wider than normal, his face a little paler. "I didn't think it was that many."

"Most people don't," Kiba says, forces himself to shrug. He heard his mom talking about it with Hana, remembers Hana's incredulity and anger in the face of the Sandaime concealing the exact number of dead. "The Hokage didn't want anyone to know that the village was that much weaker."

Deidara laughs, rough and angry. "That sounds like a Sandaime," he says, and there's weight to it that Kiba can't really read. Deidara starts walking again, falling into step with Kiba, who casts him a curious glance but keeps moving. Deidara seems to be mulling something over for a long moment, weighing his words, and the next time he opens his mouth he says, "I'm trying to figure out how to beat the Sharingan in a fight, un."

Blinking, Kiba glances at him, because that's not what he expected at all. "Even Uchiha Itachi can't copy explosives when they're flying at his face," he says, a little confused.

Deidara scoffs. "Yeah, but I can't see where to throw the shitty things if I'm stuck in a damned genjutsu," he says. "That pretty bastard's the reason I'm even in Akatsuki—he beat me in a fight with those eyes of his." His hands curl into fists, and he makes a sound like a cat hacking up a hairball. "Fucking—I can't beat that kind of fucking art, un."

Kiba casts him a sideways look, carefully sliding down a steep hill and into a dry streambed. "Pretty bastard?" he asks, not sure if he's amused or horrified.

Waving a hand expressively, Deidara follows him down, leaping between outthrust stones. "That asshole's face, un," he mutters, sounding personally offended by the very thought. "And his fucking eyes."

"You have a crush on Itachi?" Kiba demands, firmly in the realm of horror now. "What the hell?"

"You don't have to like someone to want to fuck them!" Deidara hisses, though he's flushing bright red under Kiba's disbelieving stare. "And I can fucking think he's handsome without liking a single other fucking thing about him! I'm an artist!"

"You're fucked in the head is what you are," Kiba retorts, and ducks the grab Deidara makes for him. "Hey! And you're the one who brought up wanting to sleep with him, that was all you! I just said crush!"

"Shitty dog brat!" Deidara lunges for him again, trips over a protruding root, and almost overbalances into a tree as Kiba darts away. Kiba snickers, leaping up the trunk to land on a thin branch that sways under his weight, and when Deidara pulls himself up off the ground Kiba waves mockingly. Deidara growls, crossing his arms over his chest and looking away, and Kiba takes that to mean he's given up. He drops down, landing lightly, and heads up the opposite bank at a trot.

"Knowing how to beat the Sharingan would be really cool," he says, a peace offering, as they crest the hill. "Konoha's still got two shinobi who can use it, and they're going to make themselves a pain in the ass eventually."

Deidara looks slightly mollified by the agreement, and grunts as he ducks under a low-hanging branch. A pace behind him, Kiba rolls his eyes, plucks the loose hairs left behind off the bark, and pockets them. It's like trying to navigate a forest with an infant. Except not, because even infant Inuzuka usually have at least one parent's ninken with them, and the ninken are way better than this.

"We should train together, un," he proposes, glancing back at Kiba. "I've only seen Itachi fight, but you and Konan faced that other one, right?"

"Kakashi? Yeah, we managed to get around him," Kiba says, and gods, that's still mostly unbelievable, even though Kiba was the one who did it. Kakashi is one of the strongest jounin in Konoha, and Kiba absolutely stacked the deck, planned things out exhaustively and tried to account for every way it could go wrong, but—he managed to beat Kakashi. It's both thrilling and horrifying. He shakes off the thought, though, tries to keep his voice dismissive as he says, "My old jounin teacher was the best at genjutsus in the village, too. We might be able to come up with a way to break the Sharingan's, with some practice."

Deidara grunts, sounding satisfied. "Good, un. I've got some ideas, but I'd like to have an actual plan to knock the bastard on his ass."

And if Kiba ever gets found out, if he has to face Itachi hunting him down, knowing how to get out of the Sharingan's hold will be an ace no one would expect. He breathes out, firmly pushes the idea down; everything is fine for now, and he's going to keep believing that he can stay under the radar right up until there's no other choice.

"I'm always up for more training," he says, makes it cheerful. It's the truth now, after all, even if it wouldn't have been a year ago. Training is the only thing that's letting him keep up with the rest of Akatsuki, and he knows he's not at their level yet, that the S-rank Tsunade gave him was pretty much only to get him into Akatsuki to begin with, but with enough time, if he tries hard enough—

"You're a freak, un," is Deidara's verdict. "You and Kurotsuchi would have gotten along."

"Kurotsuchi?" Deidara asks curiously, because Deidara never talks about Iwa, or his past there.

Deidara looks away, towards the break in the trees ahead of them, and the line of his mouth goes tight. "The Tsuchikage's granddaughter," he says. "She was an arrogant little pill, un."

Kiba's never heard subject closed implied that loudly before, and though he considers pushing for a moment, it seems safer for the fate of their stealth mission not to. He lets the topic drop, leaping down into another slim stream and landing with a splash. It's not too cold, thankfully, and not much over knee-deep. The bottom is sandy, too, rather than rocky, and he takes three steps forward before realizing that Deidara is still on the bank.

"Oh, come on," he says exasperatedly. "Get in the damn water and cover up your scent. You're not going to melt."

Deidara makes a face at him, but gingerly steps into the light current. "So this is why you dropped your cloak at the inn, un," he mutters.

"Black's not a good color to wear in a summer forest unless it's night," Kiba says dismissively. "Pein can be dramatic all he wants, wearing them, but I'm not going to screw up a mission just to hang on to my sense of aesthetic."

Snickering, Deidara strips off his own cloak, twisting it into a long rope and knotting it around his waist. "Iwa nin track by chakra, un," he says. "Not smell."

"A couple of the ANBU squads can do that, I think." Kiba frowns a little, trying to remember what Hana told him about it. She wasn't ANBU, and didn't want to be—her specialty was medical techniques and tracking—but she had friends in ANBU. "Mostly Konoha leaves it to the Inuzuka, though. Or the Hatake, but they've pretty much died out."

"That shitty old man used to tell me war stories about that one Hatake," Deidara says, slips, and only just catches himself in time before he lands in the water. With a muttered curse, he staggers back upright, and adds, "He was a scary bastard—"

Kiba catches a scent on the breeze and leaps up, adding just a touch of chakra to propel him into the higher branches of the oak leaning over them. There's a bitten-off sound of surprise from below him, but Deidara seems to realize that he wouldn't be moving like that without a reason and follows a second later, perfectly silent. Without waiting for him to catch up, Kiba darts forward, slipping between the branches and darting towards the open space ahead of them. There's an overgrown path there, he can see now, something other people might dismiss as an animal trail, but to Kiba's nose it smells like humans. Lots of them, too.

It's not an empty road, either. There are a group of figures approaching around the edge of the trees, two in front and a much smaller one behind. Kiba tips his head up, breathes in, and—

Scales sliding across old metal, stained with blood. Anger, and vicious satisfaction, and seething hatred that burns in Kiba's nose like acid. He claps a hand to his face, focusing on breathing through his mouth until the urge to gag recedes, and turns his head to press his face to the bark of the old maple he's crouched in. Too much, and like this he doesn't want to get a single step closer, just wants to turn and bolt.

The sight of Orochimaru is secondary to the smell of him, but that's not overly pleasant either. His arms are dangling at his sides, unusable, and the expression on his face is undercut with inhuman rage. A white-haired boy about Deidara's age walks next to him, eyes scanning his surroundings, and there's a girl stumbling behind them, clearly exhausted, her red hair dulled with dust and her face drawn. Genin, Kiba thinks, watching her, and it's a start to realize he isn't associating her with himself when he uses the term.

A hand taps his shoulder, and he glances back at Deidara as the boy slides out onto the branch with him. Deidara flips a hand at him, then offers up a wildflower like the ones ringing the tree. Gratefully, Kiba takes it and shoves his nose into it, much happier to breathe in pollen and the cloying sweetness of lily-of-the-valley than Orochimaru's metallic reek.

"That bad?" Deidara murmurs, almost soundless, narrowed eyes on the trio as they make their way down the path.

"Worse," Kiba mutters, crushing one of the flowers between his fingers to make the smell that much stronger.

Deidara snorts, then drops from the branch, and Kiba wastes no time following him to the ground and back into the deeper parts of the forest. As they move, Deidara glances back over his shoulder and asks, "You'll be able to follow him later, right?"

Kiba makes a face, dropping the lilies into the stream as they pass and shaking his head to clear the smell from his nose. "Fuck. Yeah, unfortunately. Even if we wait a few days I'm not going to have a problem there."

"Wonder if that was a new prisoner, un," Deidara muses, glancing back towards the road. "She didn't look like she was trying to escape."

"Recruit?" Kiba offers, because he remembers Orochimaru's attempt to get to Sasuke during the Chuunin Exams, the seal he put on Sasuke. There's no saying just what it did, or how it kept effecting Sasuke after Kiba left. He hopes it wasn't anything too terrible, for Naruto's sake; he's ridiculously attached to the bastard.

"Maybe." Deidara sounds largely uninterested in the question. "That guy with the white hair and the Snake-inspired fashion sense, though—that's probably one of Orochimaru's soldiers, un. He looks like a strong breeze could knock him down."

Shino faced one of the weaker Oto nin during the Exams, Kiba remembers. If it had been anyone but Shino, they'd likely have had trouble. "We should still get Hidan and Itachi," he points out. "Just in case. Maybe wait for night, too—that road's pretty open."

Whatever Deidara mutters under his breath, it's too low to hear, but Kiba's probably better off not knowing what it is anyway. "Fucking fine, un," he snaps, as if it's some great concession, and Kiba rolls his eyes, leaping up the hill they come to in a few long bounds. He can't smell anything but deer and squirrels in the forest around them, and the sky is clear enough that it probably won't rain before tomorrow. Orochimaru's hideout will be easy enough to find, following the path he took, and the Snake Sannin likely isn't being too cautious about tails right now if he's wandering around in broad daylight. No sign of Kabuto anywhere around the area Kiba scoped out, so he's probably skulking in the hideout.

"Another late night, un," Deidara complains as they emerge from the trees and step back onto the road towards the inn. He folds his arms over his chest, looking entirely dissatisfied, and picks up his pace now that they don't have to try not to leave a trail. "I don't know why that asshole wanted us to keep walking until fucking midnight last night. It's not like we got here all that sooner, un, and now we still have to wait around for sunset."

Kiba shrugs. "I think he wanted to get out of Hot Springs Country," he says. "Not like I blame him. I don't like wandering around Fire Country all that much, either." More because he might be asked to kill other Konoha shinobi if they spot him than because of any sort of bad memories, but it's not like he's going to say as much. Hidan was pretty suspiciously tight-lipped about being back in his home country, too. Kiba's willing to bet it was because he really didn't want to be there. Anything less and he'd have been throwing a fit about it, but if he truly hated it, Kiba's pretty sure he wouldn't be advertising that fact.

Deidara makes a face, but concedes the point with ill grace. "Whatever. Had to take a fucking boat and Hot Springs Country was still the worst fucking part of the trip."

"If you'd actually taken the sea-sickness stuff Itachi offered you—"

"Shut the hell up or I'm going to detonate your ass!"

"It sounds like you're getting along," a deep voice says, and Kiba twitches, turning sharply to find Itachi emerging from the shadows beneath the eaves of the inn. Downwind, which is why Kiba didn't notice him, and he curses himself for not noticing. Sloppy, and he can't let it happen again.

Deidara takes one look at Itachi and snarls, shoving past him and slamming shoulder-first into him on the way. "I'll get the other bastard," he says, and vanishes into the inn without waiting for a response.

For a moment, Itachi looks after Deidara, face still expressionless but one brow raised just the faintest bit—Kiba probably wouldn't catch it if he wasn't paying close attention, the scent of blood putting every sense on alert. Kiba has no idea what expression it's meant to be, though, and he doesn't particularly want to know. Deidara potentially sleeping with Hidan is horrifying enough. Deidara wanting to sleep with Itachi is just—yucky.

At length, though, Itachi turns back to Kiba, expression settling into placid lines again. "You found something?" he asks.

Kiba rocks back on his heels, lets the motion soothe him—it looks like he's off balance, to anyone not used to the Inuzuka method of fighting on all fours. A small edge in a fight, but at least it's there.

"Yeah," he answers, makes it as unconcerned as possible. "Orochimaru was on a road we found, heading southeast. Two people with him, a girl and a teenage boy. I thought we should stake it out for a bit, at least until it gets dark and we can move."

Inclining his head, Itachi looks away, back down the road. No response, and it makes Kiba's skin prickle, unsettles him the way mocking or grandstanding wouldn't. He can deal with both of those things—he's an Inuzuka, and that's what they do—but silence is creepy.

"How's your room?" he finally blurts in desperation, when the silence wears his nerves too thin.

Itachi blinks once, turning his head to look at Kiba, and then says, "Plain but serviceable. The window is cracked."

"At least you're not next to Hidan and Deidara," Kiba mutters, because he got to wake up to the sound of them yelling at each other this morning. "Gods, I wish they'd just screw already and leave the rest of us out of it."

That earns him another blink, this one very nearly startled. "Screw," Itachi repeats, like the phrase is a mystery to him.

Kiba side-eyes him, because if he's missed the storm of sexual tension that happens every time Deidara and Hidan are in the same ten feet of space, he's definitely not the ninja Kiba thought he was. "Uh, yeah."

"Hn." Despite the dismissive sound, though, Itachi looks something close to taken aback, and he casts another look at the inn before he resolutely turns away.

"Kakuzu has a betting pool," Kiba offers, for want of anything else to say.

"Kakuzu has a betting pool for everything," Itachi says, and from anyone else it would be dry, amused, but this is just a statement of fact. "He has a betting pool on Konan and Hidan, as well."

It's possible Kiba's brain shorts out. For an instant white noise fills his ears, and he can't see anything beyond Konan's face upon hearing that. She's going to murder Kakuzu. Maybe Hidan too, just for good measure.

"Uh," he manages weakly. "She doesn't know, right?"

"I don't think so." Itachi's Sharingan eyes slide away from Kiba, to the road once more, and he checks the sky. "It might rain."

Kiba checks the clouds, too. They're not much closer than they were before, though, and when he takes a breath, the humidity hasn't increased at all. "Not until tomorrow at least," he corrects, and at Itachi's glance he shrugs. "Air's not heavy enough for rain, and it doesn't smell like it's raining somewhere else, either. Clouds'll wait to drop anything till they hit the mountains, most likely."

Itachi inclines his head, and Kiba is abruptly struck by the ridiculousness of all of this, the fact that he's talking about the weather with the man who tortured Sasuke and Kakashi all the way into a coma and killed his entire clan. The man who still reeks of blood, wet and fresh, like he's just come from the scene of a murder.

Thankfully, before the crawling sensation slides too far down Kiba's spine, the inn door slams open and Deidara stalks out, clearly still in a snit. "Fuck you!" he snarls over his shoulder.

Hidan laughs raucously, following Deidara out with his scythe slung over his shoulder. "You wish, bitch!"

Itachi studies both of them for a long moment, then looks at Kiba. "I see what you mean," he says, perfectly flat, and starts walking.

Despite himself, Kiba snorts, turning away from the sound of Deidara's outraged demand to know what they were talking about, and trots after Itachi. He gets ahead of him, then turns off into the trees as soon as the slope is mild enough that they won't have to roll down it. "Shortcut," he says over his shoulder, and leaps for the branches.

Itachi follows readily, Sharingan eyes fixed ahead. Kiba has no freaking idea what's going on behind that cool expression, but…he remembers when they had to carry Sasuke and Kakashi back to the village. In light of that, he honestly doesn't want to know.

---

"Why are we camping?" Shikamaru asks with no little dismay. "There's an inn five miles from here."

Aoba ignores him, but Anko laughs. "Not in the budget," she says cheerily, laying out her bedroll under a tree. "T & I's trying to cut back on costs, so summer missions get to rough it."

"Troublesome," Shikamaru mutters, and means it wholeheartedly. He drops his pack on the ground and follows it down, tipping his head back to study the sky. Not clear, which is nice; there are a handful of puffy grey clouds drifting closer, and a gap in the forest that frames them perfectly. Shikamaru usually prefers grassy, open hills for his cloud watching, but a mossy forest floor will do in a pinch.

Except, of course, that he's traveling with sadists. Yūgao leans over him before he's even fully settled, purple hair swinging just above Shikamaru's stomach, and gives him a smile. "Come on, Shikamaru," she says. "We need to set up a perimeter and a watch. Do you want last, middle, or first?"

Shikamaru thinks it over, even as he groans and sits up. First means he has to stay up late, middle means he has to wake up and function in the middle of the night, and last means he has to get up before dawn. There are no good choices here.

"Last," he finally decides, though grudgingly, because at least he can get some sleep that way.

Yūgao smiles at him. "Then you won't have to pull watch tomorrow," she tells him. "There are enough of us to rotate through shifts."

Thank goodness. At least they have some mercy, Shikamaru thinks, and drags his exhausted body up off the ground. "How big a perimeter?" he asks.

"Two hundred meters," Aoba says without looking up from the map he has spread over his knees. "Clear another three hundred beyond it and set traps in zone between the lines. I don't want any Oto patrols sneaking up on us without a lot of warning. Hyuuga, what's your range?"

Neji sits back on his knees, his own bedroll neatly laid out beneath an overhanging jut of rock. "A hundred meters," he says. "A hundred and fifty if I strain my eyes."

Aoba hums. "That'll do. We shouldn't need more than a hundred for now. Go with Anko and Shikamaru and make sure there's nothing beyond their sensing range while they set the traps."

"Yes, sir." Neji rises to his feet, looking expectantly at Shikamaru.

"Troublesome," Shikamaru mutters, rubbing the bridge of his nose, but he heads into the trees, trying to pull up Asuma's lessons on traps. There were quite a few of them, but Chōji was always better than him at it. Ino too, really, but that's mostly because she's utterly vicious and sometimes forgets to hide it.

A moment later, arms loop around his shoulders and Neji's, and they're abruptly hauled into a tight hug, squashed right up against fishnet covered breasts. Neji splutters loudly in offense, and Shikamaru yelps, but it just makes Anko laugh as she gives them both a squeeze. "I get minions!" she crows, releasing them and bounding past them into the trees. "Come on, minions, we've got traps to lay!"

It's like dealing with an adult Naruto on a sugar high, with too little clothing and too many kunai, Shikamaru thinks, staggering upright again in her wake. He groans, but offers Neji a hand up from where he's fallen. Neji looks at his hand like he dipped it in something nasty first and gets to his feet alone, then turns and stalks away.

…Well. That wasn't friendly at all, Shikamaru thinks, staring after him and considering the reaction. Personal? Maybe. Irritating? Mostly. Troublesome? Definitely.

With a sigh, he pulls out a coil of ninja wire and follows the sounds of Anko's cheerfully bloodthirsty orders. Something to worry about later, he tells himself. Maybe after he's gotten a solid ten hours of sleep.

---

All of her warnings to Kakuzu to be careful and it's Konan who ends up in the middle of things.

She smiles to herself, and maybe it's a little bitter, but the cup in her hands is steaming gently and the smell of it is crisp, green, touched with something floral. It's surprising; Tsume doesn't seem the type to enjoy flowers.

There's a clatter on the stairs, the slightly off sound of a shinobi who doesn't quite remember how trying to make noise for a civilian, and a moment later Tsume appears in the kitchen, her wild hair still dripping with water and her face scrubbed clean. "Sorry about that," she says a little gruffly, turning to set the kettle on the stove again.

"Waiting is no trouble," Konan tells her. "Forgive me the intrusion."

Tsume's smile is crooked as she takes the seat across from Konan at the well-worn kitchen table. "Not an intrusion," she corrects. "I'm grateful that you listened. Most people wouldn't care about a stranger like that."

Most people are actually strangers, Konan thinks, and doesn't let her grip on the cup go tight. Most people couldn't solve the vast majority of this woman's grief by saying I know your son, I know him and I'll protect him. No one will ever touch him like that again. Konan isn't foolish enough to actually say it, won't endanger Nagato's plans like that, but—

The words are on the tip of her tongue. She wants to speak them, and that means everything, doesn't it?

"The loss of a child, especially like that, seems like the sort of thing everyone should feel sympathy for," she says instead, because she has a mission, even if it's self-imposed. They need information, need to know just how many of Danzō's plans have been discovered and how many have been left to rot in the darkness.

Tsume scoffs, and there's so much bitterness in it that it tastes like poison on Konan's tongue. "A child or a traitor?" she asks, and rubs a hand over her eyes. "That's the question, isn't it."

Konan remembers her words to the vendor, the way the man recoiled in the face of her anger. Remembers Doesn't change what people are saying about him. Kiba wouldn't have killed just for power. Why the fuck can't they see that? She feels too much in the face of that, or maybe too little—too much anger, and too little care for her cover here.

Konoha killed Yahiko, just as surely as if they had driven the knife into his chest themselves. She won't let them kill Kiba, too.

"A traitor for the right reasons," she says mildly, and when Tsume looks up Konan catches those sharp brown eyes, holds them steadily.

Something flickers across Tsume's face, suddenly sharp and wary and calculating. She pushes to her feet, taking a breath, and Konan has worked with Kiba enough to recognize that particular action. Freezing, she wonders how good Tsume's nose is, how much of a trace of Kiba's scent is left on her skin after two weeks of traveling and the careful application of perfume.

There's no fury flashing over Tsume's face, though, no shouted accusations that Konan give up the location of her son. Just realization, and then something bitter and bracing and dark.

"Kunoichi, huh?" she asks, and her fingers curl into the table, painted nails digging into the wood. "No civilian gets that kind of motivation. And you smell like secrets."

Konan takes a careful breath and stays where she is, hands wrapped around her cup. She doesn't move, doesn't present herself as any sort of a threat. Just holds Tsume's gaze, and says steadily, "Nothing I've said to you has been a lie. My sympathy wasn't, either."

Tsume's nostrils flare, her eyes narrowing. There's a low, rumbling growl from behind Konan, making her stiffen, and she curses her carelessness in forgetting the massive ninken, now crouched barely a meter behind her chair.

And then, without warning, Tsume drops back into her chair, sprawling out in it with careless grace, animalistic and predatory as she stares at Konan. "No," she says. "I guess it wasn't. Good for other villages when Konoha's missing-nin count goes up, right? Especially when a councilor dies in the process."

"I won't say it wasn't fortunate for us," Konan says, picking each word carefully. She can survive a fight with Tsume, if it comes to it. She doesn't want to have to kill Kiba's mother, though. "But—given the circumstances, I regret that it happened at all."

"Me too," Tsume says, an awful twist to her mouth. She closes her eyes, tipping her head back, and then says, "Ease up, Kuromaru. Whatever the hell she wants, as long as it's not going to hurt my clan, I don't give a damn."

Unexpected. Very unexpected, and Konan eyes her warily for a long moment. "It's just an intelligence-gathering mission," she says. And then, because the tired grief in Tsume's expression drives the words right out of her mouth, "I'm from Ame."

Tsume makes a considering noise. "Lots of reasons for Ame to hate us," she says, touched with wry humor. "I believe you, though. You don't smell like you're here to kill anyone."

Inuzuka noses are a definite danger, Konan thinks. A benefit, too, given that Kiba is now on their side, but…certainly something she's going to have to start accounting for. "I'm not," she confirms. "You just—looked like you hurt."

"I always will," Tsume says, and it's blunt and honest and not looking for sympathy, gutting in its simplicity. Her smile is tired, and she looks away, out the kitchen window.

Konan couldn't say what pushes her to her feet. Doesn't know what it is that makes her round the table to catch Tsume's face between her hands. Sharp eyes regard her, but Konan doesn't waver, sinks to her knees and lets all the honesty she can spare slip into her voice when she says, "Someday the pain will fade. Your story will have a happy ending, I'm sure of it."

Tsume laughs, a bare and sardonic thing, but her hands are gentle as she curls them around Konan's wrists. "Maybe," she says. "He got away."

Konan's own words repeated back to her, but they make her smile, make her think of Kiba in the Mountains' Graveyard, the way he lets Deidara paint his nails and teach him about makeup, the way he bickers with Hidan and hovers over Sasori's shoulder as he crafts poisons. "He did," she agrees, and Kiba might be a missing-nin now, might be hurt and jagged around the edges and full of fire, but he's out of Konoha's reach, and that's worth celebrating.

Tsume's mouth tips into an answering smile, and she tugs Konan's hands away, leans forward.

Somehow, the kiss is no surprise at all, but it still takes Konan's breath away.

"I don't care if you're a spy," Tsume says, and her eyes are fierce. "Stay the night."

Everything wise says Konan should refuse, that she should get up and walk away and leave the village all together. But—

One night of care and closeness, one night of something soft with shared hurt and secrets. She wants, and it's been so long.

"All right," she whispers, and pulls Tsume down into another kiss.

---

Sunset washes the color from the forest, and sends long shadows stretching into darkness. Kiba slides through the patches of sun as they grow scarcer, bleach from red-gold to bruise-violet, and minds his steps until he's almost perfectly silent. The overgrown deer path is empty, the smell of snake faded enough that it no longer makes Kiba's eyes water, and it smells like no one else has passed by since Orochimaru that morning. Kiba keeps his own path parallel to it, attention trained on the scent as he waits for it to veer off and give away Orochimaru's hideout.

Deidara and Hidan, twenty paces back and arguing in hissing whispers that carry perfectly, are nowhere near as stealthy.

Kiba swallows a groan, trying not to look back and snarl at them, but it's like trying to drag Naruto and Sasuke through a forest without giving their location away. No, worse, because at least Sasuke pretends that he's above the arguing thing; Hidan is very, very much not. So like trying to drag Sakura and Ino at their worst through a forest, and that's slightly more accurate but probably wouldn't tempt Kiba quite so much with the thought of ramming their heads into a tree trunk.

Small comfort that Itachi, ghosting alongside Kiba in perfect silence, no longer looks quite as blank-faced as he did an hour ago, placid acceptance sliding closer to a grimace with each too-loud snarl from behind them.

"Can we tie them up somewhere and leave them?" Kiba mutters, avoiding a turn of the path in favor of keeping to the woods. There's some kind of trap on the ground, a seal that smells like Orochimaru, just heavily faded.

"We'll need their assistance when we find the base," Itachi murmurs in return, as if Kiba doesn't actually know that. He ignores the scowl Kiba gives him, eyes fixed ahead, and then says, "Neither of them require stealth in their techniques."

Mostly true, Kiba admits reluctantly. Deidara uses subterfuge, and so does Hidan to an extent, but stealth doesn't usually factor into it. Kiba's a tracker, though, like the rest of the Inuzuka; a good part of that is sneaking up on prey without being seen, like ANBU would. He huffs, allowing the correction, and pauses on a small rise, taking a breath. Normal forest scents, for the most part, and he's been traveling with the others long enough to automatically filter out the new blood, old blood, and wet clay scents from Itachi, Hidan, and Deidara respectively. It leaves the old reek of metal and scales, a faint trace of something like antiseptic that makes him want to sneeze, and the distant smell of dark, still air that smells of earth and stone.

"Do you smell something?" Itachi asks, and Kiba refuses to be creeped out that he's been watching Kiba closely enough to be able to tell that by the shift in Kiba's expression.

"Maybe," Kiba says, frowning, and takes another breath, trying to pinpoint it. A faint smell, new and close and already fading, just a swirl of air that's markedly different from the rest. It's like—

"Someone opened a door," he realizes with a start, and turns, leaping back to Deidara and Hidan. Hidan catches the movement at once, turning his head sharply, and Kiba makes a gesture for silence. Eyes narrowing, Hidan nods, grips Deidara's shoulder, and pulls him down into a crouch. A moment later Itachi flows down to join them on the ground, his eyes still on Kiba.

Creepy, and Kiba honestly doesn't know what he did to get that attention, but he forces himself to ignore it despite the way it vibrates down his spine like panic. Focuses instead on everything around them, building a picture of the forest with every inhale. A stream here, a stand of mossy rocks beyond it. Dry grass in the field, rustled by something small passing through. Dirt turned over beneath a deer's hooves as it scrapes the ground to look for soft roots. Green grass, trampled by unwary feet, the smell of it sharp and heavy.

Kiba opens his eyes, that scent filling his nose, and says quietly, "I think a patrol just went out. Three shinobi, carrying weapons. They're headed away from us, though."

There's a sound of disappointment from Hidan, but before he can say anything Deidara elbows him hard in the ribs and asks, "Can you find where they came from?"

Probably. "Yeah," Kiba says, and glances out, to where the heavy twilight is casting the forest's shadow across the meadow. "We're probably going to have to wait for full dark, though. It's across the field."

"Where's Konan when you need her, un," Deidara mutters, but he rocks back off his heels and sits down with a thump.

Hidan scoffs, settling against a tree. "Chasing rumors with Kakuzu," he says. "I can't tell who got the worse deal there."

"Are you kidding me? Konan's art," Deidara protests. "And she's an artist, un. Traveling with that shitty immortal bastard's like traveling with Sasori. Or you," he adds snidely.

"What the fuck was that?" Hidan makes to rise to his feet, catches Itachi's flat stare, and apparently thinks better of it. With a huff, he flops back down, then says, "Kakuzu's a fucking skinflint. Bet he's having fun wandering around with a woman."

Kiba rolls his eyes. "Konan's a missing-nin," he says. "Just like you assholes. Get your head out of your ass. It's not like she spends extra time in the shower on a mission."

"But she always smells so good!" Hidan honestly looks surprised, and Kiba eyes him warily. It's not like Konan needs to have her honor defended, but it's the principle of the thing. "How the hell does she do that?"

"Regular baths are amazing, aren't they?" Deidara says pointedly, flipping his hair over his shoulder. He ignores Hidan's protest, and says right over the top of him, "I wonder if they're going to bang. Konan's clearly got a thing for guys who have a couple of screws loose. Just look at her thing with Pein, un."

"Let's not," Kiba mutters, sinking down a little further. He takes a careful breath, checking that the patrol hasn't changed direction, but he can't even smell them anymore.

"Is the puppy jealous?" Hidan mocks, and laughs when Kiba glares at him. "Oh, fuck off, you might as well be hanging onto Konan's apron."

Kiba rolls his eyes, refusing to be baited. "She's cooler than all the rest of you put together," he tells Hidan, unimpressed. Some of the kids in the Academy thought it was cool to rag on their parents, or to pretend not to like them, but Kiba's never felt the urge to defend himself when it comes to respecting the alpha bitch.

"Fine," Deidara says, and that smirk is pure, concentrated evil; Kiba doesn't have to see the slash in his hitai-ate to know that he's a bastard, as long as he's wearing that expression. "If it's not Konan for you, who is it? Who's the puppy got a crush on? I won't hold it against you if you say me, un. After all, no one could blame you." He tosses his hair again, and it's so exactly like Ino attempting her seduction jutsu that Kiba snickers.

"I've got better taste than that," he tells Deidara, and Hidan laughs at the insulted expression that rises on Deidara's face. "I've got better taste than liking any of you."

"But you do," Hidan says, grinning the way he does when he's heading out on a mission guaranteed to end in a fight. Lazy and expectant, like a cat in front of a mousehole.

That's the expression that makes Kiba flush, and he looks away with a huff, getting to his feet. "Fuck off," he says flatly.

Hidan grabs him, reeling him back in and slamming him down between Hidan and Deidara. "Come on, puppy," he says, and it's more of a threat than anything else. "Kakuzu has a lot of money up for grabs. Tell me who it is and I'll split it with you, fifty-fifty."

"What? You asshole! I was going to make that offer, un!" Deidara protests, driving his elbow into Hidan's shoulder.

If Hidan even feels the blow, he doesn't show any sign. "Come on," he cajoles, draping his arm around Kiba's neck. "Don't you want to separate Kakuzu from some of his money? Buy some dog biscuits? Get a tree of your own to pee on?"

"Fuck you!" Kiba goes for a knife, just happens to pull the black one with its sedative instead of the white with its poison, and decides that's good enough. He lashes out, just missing Hidan's throat as he uncoils, and Hidan leaps back with a laugh, grabbing for his scythe without hesitation.

"You fuckers!" Deidara snarls, following them up. He lunges, grabbing for Kiba, but Kiba launches himself straight up over a swing of Hidan's scythe, catching the branch above, and Deidara yelps a curse. Hidan's eyes go wide, and his weapon just misses Deidara, but he's not fast enough to sidestep completely. Deidara crashes into him, knocking them both to the ground, and then gets kicked free and goes rolling with a loud curse.

Kiba takes one look at his path and decides that he's more than happy to let this happen.

Given the uphill slant to the bank, Deidara's slowed enough that the next thing he hits he doesn't flatten. Just crashes into it, swearing, and claws his way free of his hair, shaking leaves and twigs and bits of moss from it. Then looks up, and—

Itachi stares down at him in silence for a long moment, then says, "Do you need a hand up, Deidara?"

Deidara flushes crimson, shoves to his feet, and jerks his shirt straight with three sharp tugs. "Asshole," he spits at Itachi, but for him it's almost contained. He turns, and with a ferocious scowl he levels a finger at Kiba, who isn't even trying to contain his snickers. "You. I'm going to kill you for that, un! You're going to suffer, you stupid mutt!"

"I didn't do anything!" Kiba protests, and it's the practiced innocence he always pulls—pulled on Hana, wide-eyed and indignant at the accusation. A front, of course—he totally could have topped Deidara's crash if he'd wanted to. But he didn't, obviously.

"Shitty dog," Deidara hisses at him, like he thinks it's an insult, and Kiba would laugh at him if he didn't want to give the game away.

"If you're done being stupid—" Kiba starts, and then stops short as a curl of smoke makes it to his nose. He takes a deep breath, testing, trying to pinpoint the direction, but the wind is a little more uncertain in between the trees, which doesn't help.

"Something up?" Hidan asks, and there's an edge of eagerness as he drops his scythe over his shoulder.

Kiba tips his head up, trying to get another whiff. "Yeah, maybe. Campfire. Just a small one, though. Not burning anything green, either."

Itachi steps past him, folding his hands into his sleeves, and asks, "Can you pinpoint the direction?"

"I'm trying," Kiba snaps, and leaps up to a higher branch, slipping out onto the narrow end of it to try and get a better vantage point. Another breath, and that's definitely smoke, with a trace of something else familiar beneath it. Kiba breathes it in, frowning as he tries to place it, and—

"Weapons," he realizes with a start. "Lots of honing oil and metal, covered by cloth. They're either bandits or shinobi."

With a harrumph, Deidara crosses his arms over his chest, though it's noticeably quieter than he was bothering to be a moment ago. "Rice Paddy Country's only got Orochimaru as far as shinobi go, and I don't think he's going to be sweeping the roads for bandits, un. It could be them."

Kiba supposes he's right, though something about the conclusion feels off. He doesn't bother saying so, just points back in the direction of the road and says, "Over there."

Itachi makes a small noise of acknowledgement, lifting his head, and then there's a flicker of chakra that prickles across Kiba's skin like cold fire. Dark eyes slide into crimson, and it takes effort for Kiba not to recoil. He saw what Itachi did to Kakashi and Sasuke, the coma they were in when he got through with them. It was the kind of thing only Tsunade could fix, and that's more than enough to put Kiba on edge. He tries not to slide back or twitch, but it's moot—Itachi isn't even looking at him. His Sharingan eyes are focused away, trained in the direction of the smoke.

"Chakra," he says, and glances up at Kiba. Kiba looks at the bridge of his nose instead of his eyes. "There are traps."

Traps that were probably placed by the campers, which rules out bandits. A lot of them are Academy-trained, shinobi who went through the required classes but failed to make it onto a genin team, but most of them lack the technical knowledge of how to lay a trap or put down more than the basic explosion seal. In that case, they're probably shinobi, and Kiba wonders who could be wandering around so close to Orochimaru's base. No one friendly to Orochimaru, or they'd have already gone inside his hideout.

Hidan laughs, eager and amused, and turns without hesitating. "Sacrifices for Lord Jashin? Fuck yeah," he says cheerfully. "It's about time."

"We're here for Kabuto," Kiba protests. "We need to find out if Orochimaru stuck him in a jar somewhere or if he's just tired of Sasori's creepy eyes. We're not supposed to be picking fights."

"Hn." Itachi casts a look at Kiba, then inclines his head. "Inuzuka is correct. We have a lead on Orochimaru's base. The mission—"

"Shove the mission up your ass!" Deidara snaps, and stalks after Hidan. Fucking predictable, Kiba thinks with a roll of his eyes. Whatever Itachi says, Deidara's always going to do the opposite. It makes Kiba want to bash his head into something solid even more fervently. Deidara's head, that is, not his own. Kiba's got enough problems right now without adding a concussion to that list.

"Deidara!" he hisses. "Come on, just—oh, fuck you!"

Deidara flips him off over his shoulder, not even bothering to turn around, and Kiba groans in disgust.

"I'm fucking thirteen and you're a mass murderer," Kiba tells Itachi. "Why the hell are we the reasonable ones?"

Itachi blinks, long and slow, and tips his head. "They're getting further away," is his only response.

For a moment, Kiba wavers, but—

Desperate times, and all that.

"Hey," he says, just loud enough to carry. "Hey, assholes. Get the fuck back here and I'll tell you who I have a crush on, okay? You can massacre the traveling shinobi after we finish the damned mission."

Hidan stops, almost at the top of the hill, and turns to squint suspiciously at Kiba. "Really?" he asks.

"Pinky swear," Kiba says sarcastically, and drops from the branch, landing in a crouch next to Itachi. "Come on, it's going to be dark in like an hour, and then we get to fuck up one of the Sannin. I bet there'll be better fights there than from a couple of random shinobi who wandered by."

Deidara scoffs, but he stalks back their direction, grabbing Hidan by the sleeve of his cloak as he passes. "I don't give a damn. Just tell us already, mutt. I've got a hundred ryō on it being me."

"You're such a conceited ass," Kiba groans, and gods, that's—pretty similar to Neji, but he's not thinking about that. He definitely doesn't have anything close to a crush on Deidara, so the universe has been at least that merciful.

"Orochimaru's going to make Lord Jashin happy, as a sacrifice," is Hidan's verdict. "I can skip some small fry for now, in the name of that. 'Specially if you're ready to cough up, puppy."

Kiba rolls his eyes, ignoring the way Itachi is watching him closely. "It's not anyone you guys know, so why is this even a thing?" he demands, and when Deidara opens his mouth, he cuts him off with, "His name's Neji. Hyuuga Neji. From back in Konoha."

"Fuck," is Deidara's verdict. "You lost me a hundred fucking ryō!"

"You lost you a hundred fucking ryō!" Kiba retorts. "Why the hell would I have a crush on you?"

Hidan cackles, catching Deidara by the scruff as he makes to lunge at Kiba and dragging him back. "Got me two hundred, though," he says gleefully. "Kakuzu's going to shit a brick. It's gonna be glorious."

Somehow, Kiba suspects that Hidan isn't going to see a single ryō of that money, or if he does, it won't be for long before Kakuzu repossesses it. "You thought it was someone in Konoha?" he asks, a little surprised. That seems…not like something Hidan would guess.

"Well, yeah." Hidan smirks at him. "You're a sentimental bitch."

Kiba blinks, caught off guard by the word before he remembers that most people don't use it the way the Inuzuka do. "Oh, fuck you," he mutters, rolling his eyes, and glances at the stone-faced Itachi, who hasn't moved at all. "What about you?" he asks grumpily. "Are you making money off me too?"

"I didn't expect you to have a crush," Itachi says simply.

…Right. Kiba supposes emotions like that just aren't a thing when you kill every last member of your extended family at thirteen years old, barring one that you leave alive just to torture. He swallows, but forces himself to keep going, huffing and saying, "It's stupid anyway, he's a complete asshole who almost killed my te—former teammate. He's just pretty and good at taijutsu, that's all."

"Like Maito Gai?" Itachi asks, tipping his head.

It's possible that Kiba's brain shorts out. "What," he says. "No, I—I said Hyuuga Neji, not—not Gai, how the hell is he pretty?"

Itachi blinks. "He's attractive," he says, like it's the most self-evident thing in the world. "And very competent in his field."

Hidan is cackling, probably at whatever look Kiba is currently wearing. He leans in to throw his arm around Kiba's neck in a parody of a friendly half-hug, then says cheerfully, "This asshole—does he know he's got a puppy panting after him?"

"I just told you he almost killed my old teammate," Kiba snaps. "Of course he doesn't know! I wouldn't tell someone who did shit like that!"

That makes Hidan huff, more like he's considering the statement than a dismissal of it. "Adds to the appeal," is his verdict, but then he's turning away, peering towards the meadow. "We could—"

"We wait for dark," Itachi says, uninflected, and sits down at the base of a tree, folding his hands into his sleeves.

Kiba has no fucking idea why he couldn't have done that ten minutes ago, because Deidara makes a face but he drops to the ground and flops back, arms behind his head, as Hidan takes a seat beside him.

"I hate all of you," Kiba mutters, and then says, "I'm going to scout."

"You've been working with Konan too much," Deidara huffs. "'S fucking unbearable."

"You're just jealous she's a better ninja than both of you put together," Kiba retorts, entirely unimpressed, and slides out into the bushes, headed back towards the meadow. Whatever he finds there, it's going to be a hell of a lot better than sitting around here.

---

"Did you hear something?" Yūgao asks, tipping her head.

Shikamaru kind of wants to groan, but he has no good choices here; if he ignores it and someone sneaks up on them, things will be twice as troublesome. "Maybe," he admits, a little grudging, and takes a few steps in the direction the possible noise may have come from. Away from the road, too, which makes it more likely to be something aggravating, rather than just a careless civilian.

Yūgao shadows him in the branches, perfectly silent as she slides through the gloom. Behind them, Neji turns, but she waves a hand, signs for him to hold his position, and leaps up to a higher branch.

At the very least, Shikamaru thinks, eyeing the area around them, a fight is going to be over quickly right now. The shadows are thick and plentiful, and if he strains a bit he can probably control the whole wood. Not that he's going to strain himself, because ugh, but the thought is there.

"I don't see anything," Yūgao murmurs, scanning the forest. Her eyes are narrowed, and one hand is on the hilt of her sword, ready to draw it.

There's a sound of agreement from Neji. "Whatever it was, it's outside my range," he says.

"Does that mean we can go back to camp," Shikamaru asks without much hope, but there's a voice yelling at him in his head that sounds suspiciously like Ino, and he takes a few steps forward into the darkness, listening carefully. He's used to forests, used to picking out the sound of deer and small animals from any human noises, and there's a definite lack of the former here. Proximity to Orochimaru's base, maybe; if Orochimaru sets humans on edge he likely does the same thing to animals, and Shikamaru can't image much wildlife wants to hang around his base.

"Don't make that face," Anko says with a laugh, unexpected enough to make Shikamaru startle. He twitches around, but Anko catches his shoulder and propels him forward a step, following closely. "Yamashiro, you good?"

Still buried in maps and reports, Aoba waves a hand. "Yūgao, stick close," he says. "And you three, don't go too far. If it's not an immediate threat, we don't need to worry about it. Orochimaru's going to be a bigger one. I don't want us stumbling into his base before we're ready. The traps are to keep them out, not to give us an excuse to go looking for a fight."

Shikamaru grimaces at the idea of Orochimaru or his soldiers wandering into their camp. Wandering anywhere, really; the briefing Aoba gave them on the way here was unnerving enough, and Shikamaru now knows a lot more about Konoha's history with human experimentation than he ever wanted to. Asuma's mentioned Orochimaru offhand before, but—

Hearing about all the details, all the possible soldiers Jiraiya recorded before he was reassigned, makes it a hell of a lot more unnerving.

With the barest rustle of footsteps, Neji slips up on Anko's other side, gaze trained ahead of them as they pass through the rows of traps. Anko is grinning, wide and bloodthirsty, with malice in her eyes, and Neji looks grim. They both make Shikamaru tired, if for different reasons, and he sighs to himself even as he keeps a close eye on the trees. This isn't the Nara forest, open and full of light; it's thick with undergrowth, tangled in a way Konoha's forests rarely are, and it's hard to see more than a handful of yards with normal eyes, especially in the growing gloom.

There aren't any more sounds, or at least none that are quite so obvious, but Shikamaru isn't ready to take that as a sign that there was never a sound to begin with, as convenient as that would be. They all heard it, after all, something out of place and just slightly wrong against the normal forest sounds. Shikamaru doesn't like it; he wants to go back to Konoha, to his favorite cloud-watching hill with Chōji. Wants to sleep in his bed instead of on the ground, and not have to deal with Anko or Aoba or Neji or Yūgao. This is all so troublesome.

Anko catches his arm, then Neji's, and pulls them both to a halt, eyes narrowing. Opens her mouth, tipping her head back, and flicks out her tongue like she's tasting the air, then hums almost soundlessly. Shikamaru raises an eyebrow, curious, and—that's a snake gesture, isn't it? snakes do that in place of smelling, and Anko had said, when she first arrived in the Hokage's office, I heard you needed an expert in snakes. She's training Sasuke, who was targeted by Orochimaru, and Orochimaru's whole thing is snakes, isn't it?

Logical. She was probably one of Orochimaru's genin, or at least trained with him. Shikamaru swallows carefully, doesn't pull away. Sending Orochimaru's student to help hunt him down is a good idea, but—if anything, Anko just got scarier. Shikamaru's not overly fond of scary women.

If Anko notices his sudden hesitation, she doesn't show any sign as she suddenly grins, wide and vicious. "Bodies," she says triumphantly. "Warm-blooded."

Which, presumably, means they're not dead yet, or Orochimaru, Shikamaru supposes. When she lets them go and bounds forward, he curses, but hurries to keep up with Neji as the other boy follows. Up a hill, across a small creek and then up another rise, around a stand of boulders with trees growing out of the cracked stone, and now Shikamaru can hear voices, low but steady.

Not afraid of detection, he thinks, even as Anko leaps up, landing in the branches of a tree. But why would they care so little about detection, so close to Orochimaru's base? The civilians Aoba talked to on the way here were all terrified of what was in the woods, and there were practically no bandits. Any shinobi worth their kunai would notice the reaction to the forest, and surely they'd be wary enough to keep out for fear of other shinobi or worse things. If they aren't wary, if they're bold enough to be talking almost normally, they're either stupid or—

"Oh, hey," a loud voice says, and a man laughs. "Look at that, the sacrifices came to us! The little shit can't even complain!"

Dangerous, Shikamaru finishes, a chill sliding down his spine. Sacrifices is never a good word.

"About fucking time something interesting happened, un," another voice says. "Hey, asshole, don't you dare hog the fight!"

Anko laughs, because of course she does. "Boys fighting over me?" she mocks, rising from her crouch. "Boring. I hope you're more interesting fighting than you are when you're talking."

There's a splutter, and the second snarls, "You fucking Konoha trash—"

Not allies, then. Shikamaru probably should have known better than to hope foe any kind of peaceful resolution here, but he groans anyway. There's a quiet scoff at his elbow before Neji leaps forward, redirecting off a tree to land on top of a boulder. It's enough to make Shikamaru want to bang his head on something hard, because is he the only one with—

But then Neji takes a step back, the closest to off-balance Shikamaru has seen him since the Exams. "Uchiha," he says, half-strangled, and draws himself up, bristling like a housecat facing a tiger.

There's absolutely no way he's talking about Sasuke, Shikamaru thinks with a sinking feeling. Damn. Damn, damn, damn. He takes three long steps sideways, slotting himself up behind Neji's rock, and presses his knuckles hard to his forehead, trying to think. Uchiha Itachi. Uchiha Itachi, prodigy ninja, ANBU captain at thirteen, genius and missing-nin who slaughtered hundreds, just counting his family.

There's no possible way this could get worse.

"Hyuuga," a cool voice returns. "Mitarashi. You are far from Konoha."

"Seeing the sights, you know?" Anko says cheerfully, and if she cares that they're outnumbered and very definitely outmatched, it doesn't show in her voice. "And you three—lemme guess, missing-nin convention? Assholes party? Evil shinobi gathering?"

Three of them. Itachi and two unfamiliar shinobi, both missing-nin. Shikamaru frowns, trying to calculate distances, and eyes the shadows around him. He'll be able to hold one of them, probably, with his chakra levels as they are, but too long and the Shadow Bind will break, and then they'll be fucked. Even numbers, but this definitely isn't anywhere close to a fair fight.

"Wait, wait, wait," the first unfamiliar man says loudly. "Hyuuga? You know this guy, Itachi?"

"I know of his dojutsu," Itachi corrects coolly. "The Hyuuga are a large clan. Mitarashi is—"

"Hey!" the man says right over Itachi, loud and gleeful. "You! Kid! What's your name?"

Bewilderment crosses Neji's face for just a moment, but Anko doesn't give him a chance to answer. She laughs, rocking forward on the balls of her feet, and points a kunai at the three missing-nin. "Don't go asking questions," she tells them. "You're interfering with our mission, assholes. One chance to get the hell out of this forest, and then we take you out!"

Oh gods. Shikamaru squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose. She's picking a fight with Uchiha Itachi, who just a year ago tortured his former ANBU captain and his little brother into a coma so severe that Tsunade herself was the only one able to save them. He probably wouldn't let them get away anyways, but goading him is a bad idea and Shikamaru doesn't need his IQ to be what it is to know that.

"Interfering?" Itachi sounds ever so faintly amused, but mostly flat. "I believe you are the ones who have gotten in our way."

"Enough talking," the loud guy says, and laughs. "Lord Jashin could do with more sacrifices, and you're mine!"

"What did I just say about hogging the fight, un?" the second stranger snaps. "Fuck off, Hidan, one of them's mine!"

"Cool it, blondie," Hidan tells him. "Why don't you go keep the puppy company while I deal with this?"

"Fuck you!"

"You wish—"

"Booooring," Anko decides, and in a flash she's gone from the branch, launching herself forward and out of Shikamaru's line of sight. There's a yelp from the second stranger, a laugh from Hidan, and a surge of chakra that is—

Strong, Shikamaru thinks. Stronger than it needs to be. But why is Anko wasting chakra, given who they're facing? Is she really that much like Naruto, throwing herself into the fight headlong and recklessly? It's—

It's a signal, not a mistake. Aoba definitely noticed that, and it means he'll know they encountered trouble, if he hadn't guessed as much already. Shikamaru breathes out, not quite a sigh of relief, only to lose it against instantly as Neji says coldly, "Will you face me, Uchiha, so I can prove the superiority of the Byakugan?"

No, Shikamaru thinks, strangling a groan. No, that is not a good idea, and is he the only one on this team with common sense?

"If you face me, I will crush you," Itachi says, perfectly uninflected. It sounds like cold fact, instead of a threat, and Shikamaru has no doubt that that's what it is.

"That," Neji says, "is not my fate." And then he's gone as well, leaping down into the dip.

Damn it. Shikamaru hisses soundlessly between his teeth, but—two unknown missing-nin, and by the sound of it Anko's dealing with them. And on the other hand, Itachi, who Neji won't be able to beat without a miracle, regardless of how much of a genius he is. Shikamaru can hold all three of them for a handful of seconds, or one of them for longer, with less risk of the jutsu breaking.

This is why the Nara fight with the Yamanaka and the Akimichi. Everything is just easier with complementary abilities.

Taking a breath, Shikamaru brings his hands up, shaping the Rat seal even as his mind races. One chance to make an impact, and this isn't a sanitized match against a haughty girl in an arena, put of more for show than anything. It's so troublesome. Shikamaru wishes more than anything that he was back home in bed, or watching clouds, or literally anything except for this.

The shadows touched with his chakra twist and surge, whirling up in thick swathes, spreading out. Shikamaru can feel the moment they catch, hold, and opens his eyes with the uncomfortable awareness of another person right against his skin that always comes with using the Shadow Bind. He hears the sharply indrawn breath, the only sign of surprise, and turns, leaping up to the top of the rock.

The hop Itachi gives in echo of his movements is almost, almost funny, except that they're all very definitely going to die in a few minutes, which makes it less so.

"Neji," he warns, "if you're going to do something—"

There's a loud sound of astonishment, but not from Neji. On the other side of the battlefield, the second stranger spins, and Shikamaru has a sudden, bewildering thought that it's Ino for half a second until the faintly different features and darker blond hair comes into focus.

"Neji?" he repeats loudly, and levels a finger at a very confused-looking Neji. "Hyuuga Neji? You're Hyuuga Neji?"

"What?" Hidan says loudly, and turns, completely ignoring the kunai that sinks into his shoulder as Anko flips free. "That Hyuuga Neji?"

Shikamaru can see the shiver that runs down Neji's spine as he takes two quick steps back, expression shading towards alarm. Hard to blame him, honestly; Shikamaru definitely wouldn't want two unfamiliar missing-nin knowing his name. though Shikamaru would be a lot more sympathetic if he wasn't literally holding Konoha's most infamous missing-nin in place right now, with the binding ready to break. He hisses, trying to catch Neji's attention, but before Neji can so much as glance over, Hidan cackles.

"Oh, fuck," he says gleefully. "Lord Jashin can spare this one sacrifice for now, I think."

The blond snickers, and he's turning too, cracking his knuckles. "I think we should pick up a present for the puppy," he says, grinning. "He'll be so surprised, un."

"Gotta keep the little bitch happy," Hidan agrees, and tosses his huge, three-bladed scythe over his shoulder. "Sorry, sweetheart, I'll finish you later," he says over his shoulder to Anko, who makes a miffed sound. "Just need to grab one thing real quick. Blondie—"

"On it," he says, and digs a handful of something pale out of his weapons pouch, brings it up, and—

Hidan lunges, leaps, and Neji immediately drops low and whirls, the familiar dome of his Rotating Heaven sending Hidan careening sideways into a tree the moment he hits it. In the same moment, Shikamaru's Shadow Bind strains, and he grits his teeth, doubling down and slamming his eyes shut on instinct. No eyesight means no Sharingan, he knows at least that much, and that's Itachi's main advantage.

"Anko," he gets out.

A hand touches the top of his head as a familiar figure bolts past him, and Anko snarls out a jutsu. The hissing of snakes fills the air, and Itachi grunts, jerks. Through the connection of the shadows, Shikamaru can feel the snake summons climbing up his legs, twisting around his body. Can feel the twitches as he tries to move each time one bites him, and has to pour more chakra into the technique to keep him still.

"Not a fan of snakes, huh?" Anko asks, cheerfully malicious, and there's a hiss as she draws a kunai. "I see that look on your face. Bet you've had a few run-ins with my old sensei, huh? Sorry about that, I just haven't gotten the chance to kill him yet."

"Orochimaru's death will certainly be a benefit," Itachi says, and the binding stretches, strains. Five minutes is Shikamaru's limit, and that's rapidly decreasing as Itachi pushes against the technique. Too much longer, and he's going to slip.

"So will yours," Anko says brightly, and her kunai slashes out—

The jutsu snaps, Itachi slamming his chakra into it all at once and practically bowling Shikamaru over. He yelps, almost falling off the boulder, even as Anko just misses Itachi's throat. With a curse, she ducks down, lunges for his knees, but Itachi leaps over her head, lands lightly, and looks up. Shikamaru catches half a glimpse of swirling red and black eyes, braces himself with a surge of horror only to have a thing crash right through the space between them.

Big, Shikamaru thinks, throwing himself over the edge of the boulder. Big, made of that while stuff the blond pulled out of his weapons pouch, but shaped like some kind of bird. It very nearly hits Itachi as it barrels past, makes both him and Anko leap to avoid it, and doesn't pause as it grabs for Neji. Neji hisses out something, turns, and comes up with a fingertip blow that bursts like a detonation.

The blond squawks, offended, and with a laugh Hidan drops into the same space, the cable on his scythe dropping over Neji's head. A spin sends it flying, and Neji retreats, twisting around the blows Hidan throws at him, then jumping another coil of cable that nearly catches his ankle. The bird-thing isn't dead yet; even headless it's picking itself up, turning to follow, and Shikamaru groans, catches its shadow just long enough to pause it, and the blond almost runs into it. He curses, jumps onto its back and keeps going, dropping down nearly on top of Neji. Neji twists into a spin, making him rebound with a cry, and then leaps back to slide around Hidan's cable again as it tries to catch him.

There are too many people on this battlefield, Shikamaru thinks, bringing his hands up again. But—Hidan and the blond don't seem to be trying to kill Neji, and Anko and Itachi are with a doubt fighting to kill, so he shapes the seal, concentrates. There are so many shadows that it doesn't even take a second to catch Itachi, and even though he immediately tries to break the jutsu again Shikamaru's ready for the push. Doesn't have to hold him long, just—

Anko whirls in, kunai driving up in a gut-strike, and Shikamaru slams his eyes closed, braces. He's not prepared for the wrench, though, not full-body but just around the eyes, quick and sharp like the chakra is dagger-edged. He yelps, feels Itachi's eyes snap open too late to shout a warning, and Anko cries out, stumbling. She crashes to the ground, limp, expression twisted with horror and pain, and Itachi shatters the rest of the Shadow Bind with casual ease, drawing a kunai and stepping up to loom over Anko. Shikamaru can see the intention in his face; he's going to kill her while she's helpless, stab her, and he leaps even though he knows it's stupid, flicks a shuriken from his pouch and directly at Itachi's face, then hits the ground and lunges.

Itachi tips his head, letting the shuriken skim past his cheek, then meets Shikamaru's punch with a single hand raised to catch the blow. Knocks it to the side, and Shikamaru has half a second to curse himself for not training in more taijutsu with Asuma the last time he offered before a palm blow hits him in the center of the chest and sends him crashing back. He catches his balance, grabs for the shadows, and Itachi is getting better at shaking off the binding but he's still vulnerable in that first second. Shikamaru leaps back, Itachi mirroring him, then grabs for another shuriken and throws it—

Ino staggers, lips parting, eyes going wide. She reaches up, tugging weakly at the shuriken embedded in her chest, and Shikamaru falters, stumbles, feels horror surge as her knees buckle with a faint, breathless whimper. She collapses to the ground, blood bubbling past her lips, and Shikamaru can't breathe, can't move, wants to cry because that's Ino—

A hand catches him by the throat, and Itachi drags him up onto his tiptoes, ignores the way Shikamaru claws at his arm, trying desperately to get some air. "A Nara," Itachi says, and his eyes are cold in the most unnerving way Shikamaru has ever seen. "Just a genin. How pathetic. You'll break so quickly."

Shikamaru's never felt this kind of fear before, this surge of terror that makes it hard to think, hard to plan. He grasps desperately for some kind of strategy, tries to plan, tries to think but Itachi's eyes are spinning, pinwheels turning hypnotically, and he can't—

Crows shriek, and they're suddenly surrounded by beating wings, stabbing beaks, tearing claws. Itachi jerks back, his hold on Shikamaru slipping, and Shikamaru scrambles free, landing hard and throwing himself out of the line of fire. Through the cloud of summons there's a flash of dark hair, the green of a flak jacket, and Aoba kicks high, catches Itachi in the side of the head and then drops low, avoiding the strike of his kunai and slamming a knife-hand blow at his knee. Itachi dodges in a whirl of his dark cloak, and Aoba rises to meet him, taijutsu quick and almost brutal. Not a Nara style, Shikamaru thinks, dragging himself back to his feet and coughing hard against the pressure at his throat. Too much effort in each strike for it to be from his clan, but it's effective. Itachi is retreating, sliding back, and Aoba doesn't seem like he's caught in a genjutsu, either.

If Shikamaru ever has to suffer through another jutsu, it's going to be way too damn soon, he thinks grimly, and shapes the Rat seal once more.

"Help Neji," Yūgao says, right in his ear, and then she's past him, sweeping up behind Itachi with her tantō already swinging. Itachi ducks it at the last moment, but one of Aoba's crows catches him in the face, knocks him back, and her next thrust skims his arm, parting fabric and drawing blood.

Bless backup, Shikamaru thinks with relief, and catches Hidan in his shadow just as he makes to snatch Neji up bodily. Hidan swears, lurches as Shikamaru forces him back a step. The blond is close, and Shikamaru drags Hidan's body down, makes him pick up his cable and pull it hard, and it catches the blond's foot, makes him stagger. Neji takes the opening without hesitation, fingers flashing out to hit tenketsu points in a blur. The blond hits the ground, and Neji turns on Hidan just as Shikamaru's technique gives way.

"Ha!" Hidan shouts triumphantly, and his scythe whirls out, flat side swinging hard. He catches Neji in the side, and it's not the sharp point of the blades, not even enough to draw blood, but the force sends Neji crashing back into a tree, his skull rebounding off the trunk. He crumbles, and the blond is rising again, laughing. When Hidan holds out a fist with a wide grin, he rolls his eyes but taps their knuckles together.

"The puppy better be glad for his present, un," he says, and pulls a roll of ninja wire out of his sleeve.

"Yeah," Hidan agrees, snickering, and when Neji tries to pull himself upright, dazed and bleeding, Hidan catches him, drags his arms up behind his back and holds him still. "Hey, don't be a dick and I won't sacrifice you to Lord Jashin until the puppy's done with you," he taunts, and Shikamaru's stomach turns over. He's running low on chakra, but he reaches desperately for more, grabs for shadows that are rapidly becoming full darkness, and wishes like hell he'd had more time to learn other clan techniques before this mission started.

Whatever these guys want Neji for, it's definitely not something good. They want him as a gift, and Shikamaru heard Neji's words in the arena during the Exams, all the talk about stealing eyes and the Caged Bird Seal. Something like that, when Neji's father died the way he did—well. Shikamaru might think Neji is a pain, but he's not about to let that happen to a fellow Konoha shinobi.

And then, with a snarl of pure rage, Anko crashes into Hidan, barrels into him and slams him into the ground. Her eyes are wild, full of fury, and there's a snarl on her face, a mark with three tomoe glowing with a dark, unpleasant light on her shoulder. A kunai stabs deep into Hidan's throat, and Anko flips free, lunges for the blond without hesitation. He curses, leaps up on top of his bird-thing, and in an instant the creature is splitting, scattering into a dozen smaller figures. One catches Anko in the chest, knocks her back, and then explodes in a burst of heat and light and smoke.

Shikamaru throws up a hand to cover his eyes, expecting blood, maybe body parts, but in the center of the whirling smoke Anko laughs, vicious and half-mad.

"Nice try, pretty boy," she mocks, and when she staggers free of the smoke she's breathing hard, covered in blood and bits of flesh, but it's not her own. A summons, Shikamaru thinks, swallowing. She had a summons take the blow for her, or the detonation might have killed her. "You're going to have to try harder, though. If my old sensei couldn't kill me, you've got no chance."

"You assholes always think that's an insult, un," the blond retorts. "I'm the prettiest damn boy and I'll kick your fucking ass!"

A flicker of movement out of the corner of Shikamaru's eye is his only warning, and he grabs for the shadow with his own, drags it to a stop for a fraction of a second as he calls, "Anko!"

It's enough. Anko flips over the blades of the scythe, lands on the trunk of a tree and drops, eyes wide. "I killed you," she hisses, sounding offended. "What the hell?"

Hidan laughs, only a little rough, and tosses the kunai she drove into his throat at the tree beside her. "You're going to have to try harder," he mocks, grinning. "Come on, snake girl, don't you want to play?"

There's no sign of the wound. A bit of blood, but otherwise nothing, and Hidan is just—standing there. Unkillable, something in Shikamaru's mind whispers, and he swallows hard. This fight just got a hell of a lot harder.

---

The reek of snake is strong enough to make Kiba gag, but at least that means it's easy to find Orochimaru's base.

Kiba carefully skirts the edges of the small grove of trees, keeping to the long grass and staying low. There are probably traps in the trees, and it smells like guards linger there sometimes, though he can't smell any right now. The entrance is clear, a door set into rock, and Kiba makes note of it, of how fresh the scents are—this one at least is used frequently, and by a lot of different people. Not their best bet if they want to sneak in, and Kiba certainly hopes they're sneaking, but with Deidara and Hidan in the group that could be up in the air.

Containing a snort, he ducks lower, slides past a fallen log, and follows the line of trees around the edge of the meadow. There are vents scattered in a trail, leading towards the forest on the other side, and the smells coming up from them make Kiba wrinkle his nose and move a little more quickly than he might otherwise. Pain, pain and anger and fear, and it almost puts Kiba in mind of the basement at the Akatsuki base, but more concentrated. More people suffering, and Kiba's heard what Orochimaru did in Konoha, what he's done since Sasori started keeping tabs on him, but it's horrifying to be so close to that.

Ahead of him, there's another stand of rock, an outcropping that looks like it's bursting out of the meadow. Tall, and Kiba tips his head back, trying to judge height. At least twenty feet, and it's a good vantage point. A good place to hide another entrance, too, and he breathes in as he slips close. Less snake-smell, thankfully, but there's something else, something he's smelled before. A little dusty—not mustiness, but road dust from traveling, touched with something bright underneath. Like flowers in green grass, and Kiba takes another breath, trying to figure out the source. Tracks it back to where it gets stronger, at the edge of a metal door that's not quite closed, and grins in satisfaction. No way of knowing the base's layout inside, but this entrance at least doesn't smell frequently used; there's the grass-and-flowers smell, a bone-and-blood-and-medicine smell, but nothing else fresh.

Even if Deidara and Hidan decide to go with a frontal assault, Kiba can slip in here, try to pick out Kabuto's smell and track him down. He met him at the Chuunin Exams, and that should make him familiar enough for tracking in a contained area. It's—

"Who are you?"

Fuck. Kiba flinches hard, twists around, but there's no one behind him, no smell—

"Up here," the voice says, unimpressed, and Kiba mutters a curse, glances up. No one's looking down at him, but that voice definitely came from the top of the rock. He leaps up, channeling just a touch of chakra into his hands and feet, and scales the sheer face. The top is scattered with trees, carpeted with grass, and Kiba pulls himself up, breathes in.

Flowers and grass, he thinks, meeting red eyes behind black-framed glasses. He dismissed it as fresh, not still present. Kurenai always chided him for getting caught up in the scents without looking at the rest of the world.

"Good senses," he says, and wonders if he should grab his knives. Being found out is bad, but—

It's the girl he saw on the road earlier, red hair still dusty, curled in on herself with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her arms are scattered with scars, some newer than others, and fresh needle marks, and she smells like misery and uncertainty and anger.

"I'm a sensor," she says, and shoves her glasses up enough to wipe her eyes, then uncurls a little. Her gaze is sharp, wary but not hostile, and she looks…sad. "Your chakra is really bright."

Kiba blinks, then frowns. "You see chakra?" he asks in surprise, because he knows most sensors just feel it. Ino described it feeling ripples, once, but actually seeing chakra seems like something different. Worse for Akatsuki, if she's going to notice them coming, and Kiba hesitates. He has his black knife with its heavy sedative, his white knife with its poison, and if he wanted to he could kill her right now. He should, even, because she's seen him and that's enough to make her a threat.

She just—she smells sad, though, like Hinata when her dad's being a particularly big ass to her, and Kiba doesn't want to attack her.

"I told you I'm a sensor," she says tartly, and crosses her legs under herself, sitting up a little straighter as she looks him over. Her eyes linger on the scratched hitai-ate, widen faintly. "You're from Konoha?"

"I was," Kiba says, and crouches down like he's settling in. Easy enough to move, if she tries to do something, but it doesn't look like he can. He glances at her again, and—those marks in her arm are really dark. He frowns a little, but even if he's going to put her in a near-coma, he doesn't have to be an ass about it. Rocking back on his heels, he digs some of his bruise cream out of one of his pouches and holds the jar up. "Want some of this? It's just herbs and shit, but it'll make the bruises go away faster."

Red eyes widen, and the girl hesitates, gaze flickering down to her arms. She wraps a hand around the marks for a moment, mouth pulling tight like she's about to cry, and then nods. When she makes no move to reach out for it, though, Kiba unscrews the top himself and moves a little closer, crouching at her side.

"Smells pretty awful, doesn't it?" he jokes. "Sorry about that. But my sister taught me how to make it, and it's the best for getting rid of sore muscles and bruises."

"I don't think it smells that bad," the girl says, and she dips her fingers into the cream and raises it to her nose for a moment, a tiny smile crossing her face. "My mom used some of these herbs, too."

"Yeah?" Kiba asks with a grin. "Guess everyone's got their favorite smelly mix."

She laughs a little at that, carefully rubbing the bruise cream around the needle marks in her skin. "Thank you," she says. "I—Konoha nin are nice."

Not exactly what Kiba expected to hear from someone sitting on Orochimaru's doorstep, and he snorts, taps the deep scratch in his hitai-ate. "Not a Konoha nin anymore," he corrects. "Thanks, though."

Her eyes flicker from the hitai-ate to Kiba's face, and then her expression firms. "That doesn't change what I said," she says stubbornly. "You, and there was a boy during the Chuunin Exams—"

"You competed?" Kiba asks in surprise, taking another breath of her smell. Not something he remembers, but she doesn't look all that much older than him, maybe a year at most.

"I didn't get past the second round," she admits. "But in the forest, there was a bear, and a boy from Konoha saved me. He was—he had soft dark hair, and black eyes, and he smiled at me."

Except for the smile, that sounds like Sasuke, Kiba thinks. "Blue shirt, pale, fan crest on the back of his shirt?" he asks curiously. When the girl nods quickly, he sits back and tips his head. "Huh. That sounds like Uchiha Sasuke. Who'd have thought he could smile without straining something?"

The girl laughs, nudging her glasses up. "I'm Uzumaki Karin," she says. "Thanks for telling me his name."

"Uzumaki?" Kiba loses his balance, almost falls over before he can brace himself again. "Are you related to Naruto?"

Karin's eyes widen sharply, and she twists forward, comes up on her knees and grabs for his arm. "There are other Uzumaki?" she asks, and there's something close to desperate. "You know other Uzumaki?"

"Yeah," Kiba says, studying the shape of her face, and—he can see it. She looks a bit like Naruto, just with red hair and eyes instead of blond and blue. "He was in the Exams with us. Short, blond hair, loud voice, lots of chakra."

Karin hesitates, and then her eyes slip closed, like she's trying to call up an image. "I—I think I saw him. But only from a distance. There were a couple of people with really strong chakra there."

Between Gaara, Naruto, and Orochimaru hiding as part of an Ame team, Kiba's willing to bet there were. "He's an orphan," he says, and it's one of those things his mom never talks about, though the one time Kiba asked she looked like she wanted to tell him. "I didn't know there were any other Uzumaki around."

"There aren't many," Karin says, and it's angry, full of sharp-edged grief. "Our village was razed by Kiri and Kumo, and most of the people were killed. Everyone who left got…scattered. My mom ended up in Kusa, and she didn't know how to find anyone else."

Kiba hesitates, sinks his teeth into his lip. He wants to say something, but—he needs to keep his cover. He's supposed to hate Konoha.

But Naruto is all alone, thinking he doesn't have any family at all, with so much of the village still whispering hatefully when he walks past. This—everything Kiba's doing is for him, because he wants to protect Naruto, because he wants him alive and happy and not threatened by Akatsuki just because of what someone else sealed inside of him.

Damn it, Kiba thinks, closing his eyes. Damn it. Fine.

"Look," he says, and closes his hand over Karin's on his arm, meeting her eyes squarely. "Do you want to be here? Those needle marks—Orochimaru's been experimenting on you, right? You've been here for maybe a few hours and he's already running tests on you. Is that what you want?"

Karin's mouth tightens, and she looks down at the marks, fingers tightening on Kiba's arm. Pauses, and then quickly shakes her head. "I don't," she whispers. "But he took me out of Kusa, and—they killed my mom. And then they wanted me to—" She presses a thumb to one of the scars on her arm, a faded crescent that looks like a bite mark, and Kiba's stomach turns over.

"Go to Konoha," he tells her. "Look, this place is going to turn into a battleground in a few hours. Grab whatever you brought with you, whatever supplies you need, and run. Get to Konoha and find Shiranui Genma. He'll help you get to Naruto."

Karin looks at him, startled, and wavers. "But—" she starts, then pauses. "You—are you sure they'll take me in?" she whispers.

"Yeah," Kiba says, giving her a smile. "Just—don't tell anyone but Genma that you met me. Say you overheard Orochimaru talking about Naruto or something. But you need to go quickly, okay?"

Gods, this is fucking stupid, but Kiba can't stop himself. Breathes out, tells himself he's the biggest fucking idiot on the planet, and slides his hand down to grip Karin's fingers. "Please," he says. "I don't—I don't want to have to hurt you later. And I don't want Orochimaru to hurt you, either, especially if you're Naruto's family."

Karin's face softens, and with a rough, quiet sound she throws herself at him, wraps her arms around his neck and hugs him desperately. Kiba jerks, overbalances and sits down hard, but—

It's been months since he left Konoha. Months since anyone hugged him, and he doesn't know Karin, but she smells of flowers and grass and Hana's bruise cream, and Kiba wraps his arms around her in return. He has to close his eyes at the warmth of her, pressed right up against him, and he misses this, misses Akamaru and Hana and his mom, the casual touches with Hinata and Shino. It's—it's so nice.

"Please don't tell anyone," he whispers, even as he hugs her in return. "Please. I can't—"

Karin's smile is sad and understanding. "You're a spy," she says softly. "It's okay. I won't tell. Is there—can I carry a message back for you?"

Relief that's almost enough to make Kiba's hands shake trembles through him, and he loses all of his breath in a rush. "Thank you," he breathes. "Fuck, thank you so much."

"I don't want to be a thing that people just want for healing," Karin says, and there's something fierce in the words. "I want—I want to be something else, something that I want to be. So—so thank you for giving me a place to go."

Kiba laughs, rough and relieved. "You don't even have to tell anyone in Konoha that you can heal, ever," he promises. "You'll just be Naruto's clan member. That's more than enough, right?"

"Yes," Karin says determinedly, and pulls back, settling on her knees. She wipes her eyes again, then meets Kiba's gaze and says, "Shiranui Genma?"

"Yeah." Kiba breathes out, and—gods, this is such a fucking risk, but he wants to believe that she'll do what she says she will, that she really is Naruto's family. And—that's worth the risk, isn't it? This is for Naruto. All of this is for Naruto, so he doesn't have to be scared of Akatsuki, so he doesn't have to be lonely. Kiba's willing to risk a hell of a lot for that.

Taking a breath, he pulls one of his scrolls out of his weapons pouch and offers it to Karin. It looks like more poison recipes, but now that Genma's got his cypher, that's all Kiba needs to send. "Tell him pink rose and white camellia. Exactly that, okay?"

"Pink rose, white camellia," Karin repeats, and nods. She glances down at the meadow, pauses, and asks, "Do you—if you have even just—just ten ryō I'll leave now, and get supplies in the next village."

Even better. Kiba nods quickly, drags out the money from his mission with Konan and only keeps a handful of bills for himself before he passes over the pouch. "I've been taking missions," he says. "I'll be fine. Just—go quickly."

Karin nods firmly, rising to her feet. When Kiba rises, too, she throws her arms around him again, clutching him tightly for another minute. "Thank you," she says again. "Thank you, thank you."

Kiba presses a hand between her shoulder blades, breathes in the flower-and-grass smell of her. "Of course," he says, and makes it lighter than he feels. "You're Naruto's cousin or something. That means you're good in my book."

She laughs a little, faintly wet, and pulls back to rub at her eyes. "Be careful," she says. "Kimimaro is here, and he's one of Orochimaru's favorites. He's the one who was traveling with us."

"What about Kabuto?" Kiba asks, remembering the white-haired boy he saw. Gaunt, but definitely a shinobi, and if he's one of Orochimaru's experiments, he's a threat.

Karin winces faintly, pressing a hand over the needle marks again. "He's helping Orochimaru," she says. "They were—it was the two of them doing the tests."

Well, at least Kiba's not going to feel guilty when they drag the rat back to Sasori. He grins at Karin, trying to make it reassuring and cocky. "We'll kick their asses, no worries. Thanks."

Karin nods, gives him one last lingering look, and then turns and leaps down from the rock, landing lightly. She hurries into the forest, moving fast, and Kiba watches the shadow of her red hair disappear into the gloom. He gives it another ten minutes, making sure she doesn't come back or change her mind, but her scent is fading, passing out of his range even with the wind blowing past her, and she doesn't so much as pause.

Well. That's definitely not how Kiba expected things to go, but he's got a message headed back to Genma, a family member Naruto didn't know about coming to crash into Naruto's life, an entrance to Orochimaru's base, and proof that Kabuto is present. He's willing to call that a successful scouting mission, even if it's not quite standard.

Pleased with himself, he slides off the far edge of the rock, immediately ducking into the long grass and keeping low. Hopefully Karin was Orochimaru's main sensor, or better yet his only sensor—they're pretty rare, as far as Kiba is aware. It's one of the reasons the Yamanaka are so valuable to Konoha, beyond just their clan techniques; they produce lots of sensors with every generation. His mom worked with a lot of them when hunting bounties, because a sensor plus a tracker meant catching their prey was a sure bet. Kiba's wishing now that he'd listened to more of her stories about it, at least enough to be able to plan for sensors better, but he'd never thought to end up on this side of the fight.

Carefully, Kiba skirts the main entrance, keeping his attention on the air currents and any hint of a patrol or guards, but if they're around they're better at hiding than he is at finding, and he's willing to bet that's not the case. Across the deer path, the forest looms, and Kiba ducks into the trees with a breath of relief, glad to be under cover again. There's—

"Motherfucker!"

Hidan. Undoubtedly Hidan. Kiba freezes, because that was loud, blatant, and close to him. Takes a breath, even as he leaps up into the trees, and the scent of blood hits him hard, the reek of bare guts and turned earth and sweat, the scorched edge of a Katon jutsu and the scent of scales. Not Orochimaru, but—similar, somehow. And then, under it, something even more familiar, remembered from grassy hills when he was skipping class, sunny days of cloud-watching and laughing and friends, and—

Kiba has a really bad feeling about this.

He leaps across branches, darts between trees in the deepest shadows, high in the air, and the sounds are definitely coming from the spot where he left the other Akatsuki members. With a muttered curse, Kiba draws his knives, hurls himself up into the higher branches of the next tree up the slope, and takes half a second to glance over the fight before he leaps down, white knife flashing up.

The blade of a sword crashes into it, slides, and Kiba disengages, goes low and drives his shoulder at the kunoichi's gut even as he recognizes her. Uzuki Yūgao, Hana's friend, he thinks, gritting his teeth, and fuck but she's ANBU, how the hell is he supposed to fight her—

Itachi slides around him, twists through Yūgao's footwork and hits her with a blow from one hand that knocks her right off her feet. She lands on one hand, flips over to land in a crouch, and lunges without pause, sword swinging up to gut him. Itachi darts back, but not fast enough, and the blade opens a line in his cloak, drawing blood.

There's no time to help him, though; another man is rising in front of Kiba, bleeding from the lip, sunglasses knocked askew, and he brings his hands up to flash through a jutsu. Kiba curses, dodges the kunai-shaped tips of the jutsu, and grabs a smoke bomb out of his pouch. It detonates the moment it's past his fingertips, and he leaps high, slams a knee at the man's head, and when he gets an arm up in time to block Kiba bounces off of it, lands and lashes out at hamstrings with a vicious slice.

"Puppy!" Hidan crows, loud and obnoxiously gleeful. "Fuck, I'm glad you're back!"

That means absolutely nothing good, Kiba is sure. He growls, rolls under a kick that skims his hair, and kicks out one of the man's ankles. He falls with a yelp, but instantly there's a big black crow diving talons-first for Kiba's eyes, and he lashes out, slashes right through it only for it to vanish with a puff of smoke. Summons, then, but that means that no matter how easily they're dismissed there's an unlimited number the summoner can call.

"Little fucking busy," he snarls at Hidan, twisting to his feet and ducking under another kick. A flicker of motion seen out of the corner of his eye makes him leap, flipping over the violet-haired blur that almost takes out his spine, and this is the snake-scent. Their exam proctor from the Forest of Death, and Kiba takes a breath, smells the snakes half a second before they surge out of the sleeves of her coat, and hurls himself up into the branches of the tree above him. Yūgao is stabbing out, and Itachi is in the middle of trying to catch the crow-guy with his Sharingan, so Kiba lets himself drop down right on top of Yūgao, Anko's snakes following, and Yūgao cries out as they crash into her. Kiba leaps free, twists to land on his feet, rolls forward and back upright, and comes face-to-face with Nara Shikamaru.

"Fuck," Kiba says, and in the half-second when Shikamaru is frozen in pure shock Kiba snaps his body forward and headbutts him right in the face.

"Puppy!" Deidara calls, and he sounds just as gleeful as Hidan, which is even more not good. "Stop playing, un, and get over here! We've got a present for you!"

"Why are you both fucking freaks?" Kiba groans, but he leaps over Shikamaru's dazed body and across a large boulder, then down to where Hidan and Deidara have cornered—

"Oh you fucking assholes," he hisses, and flips his white knife around, driving it towards Hidan's ribs.

Hidan cackles, ducking around the blow. "What, did you want him wrapped? We could put a bow on him, maybe some ribbon—"

"Be grateful, un," Deidara agrees, tone full of unholy amusement, and he grabs Kiba around the neck, hauls him back into a cheerful stranglehold, and waves a hand at Neji, who's here, who's wavering on his feet and sporting a lump on his head that Kiba can see from two meters away but is still in the Gentle Fist stance.

"You're fucking jerks," Kiba snaps, fighting his way out of Deidara's grip. "And while you were being assholes I found Orochimaru's base, so can we actually get this mission finished with already?"

"You're no fun, un," Deidara huffs, but he tosses a small ball of explosive clay at Neji's feet with a careless flick of his wrist, then hops back several feet, pulling Kiba with him.

No, Kiba almost cries, but snaps his teeth shut on the word half an instant before it comes out, swallows it down. Thinks I'm going to watch Neji die, and it's sick and awful and knots in his chest like acid leaking noxious smoke.

Thinks I could save him if I moved now.

Thinks I can't save him with everyone watching.

Thinks I could save him, but I won't.

Like it takes an eternity, he watches Neji's pale eyes widen. Watches him jerk back only to hit the tree behind him, and the realization that there's nowhere else to go flash across his face. Kiba had a crush on him from the first time he slipped into the Hyuuga compound to pick up Hinata and saw Neji training, saw the grace and the care in each motion, the careful concentration as he taught himself, and he knows precisely how powerful Deidara's explosives are.

Someone has to, he tells himself, and it's a sick, horrified, twisted thing.

The ball bursts, Explosion Release shaking the whole forest, and Deidara hauls Kiba, unresisting, back towards the main clearing. "Uchiha," he calls. "The puppy found the base. Are we going now, un?"

Itachi looks up, sidesteps one of Yūgao's blows. "We should kill them," he says flatly, and catches the crow-guy's arm, hauls him up and back and lashes out with his other hand. The bone breaks with a wet, meaty crack, and Kiba is still too caught up in his horror to even wince as the guy shouts and stumbles.

With a grunt, Deidara raises two fingers, eyes narrowing in concentration, and all around the edges of the small hollow small figures made of explosive clay straighten up and spread out their arms. "Faster than Hidan sacrificing all of them, un," he says carelessly, and grins. "Let them see real art as they die. It's a bang!"

Itachi clicks his tongue, but catches Yūgao's gaze as she lunges for him. He sidesteps as she falls, a strangled scream cracking from her throat, and says, "Then I believe we're done here."

Kiba can't breathe. Can't think, can't speak, wants to throw himself in front of all of the Konoha nin in the hollow and take the blow or get Akatsuki away from them or anything. He swallows down the bile that fills his mouth, remembers what was left of their last bounty when Deidara lost his temper and used too much clay, and then thinks of the same thing here, Yūgao and Shikamaru and Anko and Neji all dead because of Akatsuki.

He was laughing with Deidara just a few hours ago, making plans for how to beat the Sharingan. He'd forgotten that Deidara could be like this. That this could happen to people he knows and thinks of as friends.

Shikamaru is on the ground where Kiba left him, unconscious, and maybe that's a blessing. He won't feel the blast.

Someone has to do it, Kiba thinks, and Akatsuki wants to conquer the world with the bijuu. Someone needs to stop them, and Kiba is the only one in that position.

He turns his face away, lets Deidara pull him on. "Hidan!" he calls, and it's a miracle that his voice doesn't crack. "Come on! Kakuzu's not here to stitch you back together if Deidara gets you too!"

"Oh, shut up," Hidan huffs, dragging his scythe out of a tree with a wrench at the cord. He kicks Anko out of his way as she lunges, then scoffs. "Fucking waste of sacrifices. Lord Jashin, please forgive me for my failure, but these assholes are impatient pussies."

"Don't let Konan hear you use that word, un," Deidara says, and laughs, leaping up the slope. "Come on, fucking move, I haven't been able to make art since we left."

Each step hurts, but Kiba keeps walking anyway, lets Deidara haul him along and is almost grateful for it. His heartbeat is a cacophony in his ears, too loud, too fast, but when he feels Itachi's eyes lingering on his face he doesn't let himself look back. I'm saving Naruto, he thinks, but—

Shikamaru is his friend, too. Yūgao is Hana's friend.

Fuck.

"Kabuto's here," he says, forces himself to think of the mission, to call up the mantra of I hate Konoha, I hate it, I hate it. It burns in his chest, but he keeps moving. There's nothing else to do. "I caught his scent from one of the vents. Seems like he's doing experiments with Orochimaru."

"Not a fucking prisoner, then," Deidara scoffs, and pauses, turning back. Raises his fingers again, the Seal of Confrontation, and—

The explosion shakes the whole world, and something in Kiba's chest shatters, destroyed forever.

---

Kiba hasn't so much as glanced back.

Logical, Itachi thinks. There's nothing to look back at. The Konoha team is dead, because there's little chance they pulled themselves together in time to block Deidara's explosives. Even so, Itachi was perhaps expecting…sentimentality. He's heard that it's something Konoha nin are known for, though he can't entirely tell if he's seen it himself. ANBU certainly had no room for it.

Shisui, though. Shisui likely didn't show it; he was a shinobi to the core, ruthless and clever. He'd cut down enemies and smile and walk away without looking back, and—there are similarities, maybe.

Itachi wonders if he wants to see similarities. Wonders if he doesn't.

Kiba hasn't looked back yet, joked with Deidara when their teams separated. He's scanning the field in front of them as they skirt the edges of the forest, testing the air and pausing at each of the vents to check for occupants, and it's entirely normal. Itachi watches him, because there's nothing else to watch, and Kiba is faintly tense but it's possible that's his reaction to Itachi rather than the mission.

Like Shisui, Itachi thinks, and then pauses, considering. It's…apt. Kiba is like Shisui.

Itachi wonders if he'll die as easily as Shisui did.

But there are differences. Kiba killed Danzō, and Shisui wasn't able to. Kiba disobeyed Danzō's orders, and Shisui couldn't.

He puts the thought aside, raising his head to study the just of a spear of stone rising above the field. Kiba's secondary entrance, their path to Kabuto, who is likely with Orochimaru. Itachi has fought Orochimaru before, and it was simple. Just a fight, though Orochimaru was angry, avaricious. Wanted Itachi's eyes, and it was before Madara told him about the coming blindness or Itachi might have let him have them. When he loses his Mangekyō he'll be useless, and there's no point to a useless shinobi.

"Over here," Kiba says, and heads around the edge of the rock, steps quick and sure. No fresh scents, Itachi assumes, and follows closely, sliding his hand inside the top of his cloak to rest his arm. Darkness is spreading, leeching the light from the air, and he lets the Sharingan spin to life, the abrupt sharpening of his vision bringing the world into focus.

He's gotten used to the Sharingan being his only form of sight, to functioning in a blurred world whenever he deactivates it, but he's a shinobi. Function is all he needs.

(Shisui used to give him books, sometimes, little gifts he brought back from his missions. If Itachi read them now he'd never forget a single word. They must be sitting in his room in Konoha, and he wonders if not forgetting anything would improve the experience of reading them or ruin it.

Shisui would have known. Shisui always knew.)

"The door is open," he says, studying the heavy metal portal, the deadbolt that's not quite flush with the frame and can't fully close. There's a stone in the door's path, holding it cracked open just an inch, and Itachi shifts his gaze back to Kiba. Hard to tell if he'd been in a fight before he returned, but it seems logical that he took someone coming out by surprise and left the door open so they could slip in.

Kiba snorts. "Great job using those eyes of your," he says, and presses his nose to the crack, breathing in. Wrinkles his nose, lip curling away from his teeth, and then pulls back. "Ugh, snake. But the hall's empty."

"Very well." Itachi waits for him to ease the door open, then follows as he ducks in, kicking the stone out of the way. Looks him over, and when he steps forward without bothering to be stealthy Itachi asks, "Your knives have different properties?"

"Wouldn't you like to know." Kiba sounds distracted, that particular furrow between his brows that means he's concentrating on scents.

"I would," Itachi confirms, because why else would he ask? When Kiba shoots him a disbelieving look, he blinks, long and slow, trying to register what earned him that expression.

It makes Kiba roll his eyes and huff. "Don't worry about it," he says dryly, and where a passage branches off the main corridor he pauses, sniffing and then pulling a face. "Smells like prisoners down there. No one's had a bath in at least a week."

That fits with Sasori's assessment of this area's base—a prison and laboratory, with plenty of fodder for Orochimaru's experiments. Itachi inclines his head, watching as Kiba starts walking again, and keeps pace.

He didn't look back, he thinks, glancing ahead of them. No sign of chakra, and he turns that thought over in his mind. Konoha has lost Kiba's loyalty. He would have killed Aoba with his knives, tried to kill Yūgao as well. It is…what Itachi was trying to do.

He broke Aoba's arm, like snapping kindling. He gave Yūgao a vision of Hayate dying, looped it so she would live it a hundred thousand times in the space of a minute. Anko he trapped in a vision of Orochimaru, a room full of scalpels and knives and no way to escape or kill her former master. It was so very like giving Sasuke the vision of their parents dying, Itachi's blade taking their lives as they knelt defenseless in front of him.

Aoba always smiled at him, when he was a Konoha shinobi. Yūgao was his teammate, and she was kind to him.

He felt absolutely nothing when he hurt them, and he's very close to disappointed. If Sasuke's torture gave him no satisfaction, no regret, he isn't sure what he was expecting with Yūgao's and Aoba's and Anko's, but—he had still hoped.

He wonders, suddenly, what he would feel if he had trapped Shisui in a genjutsu.

The thought doesn't quite finish. Shisui would never have gotten trapped in one of Itachi's genjutsus to begin with, so it's impossible to say how they would have affected him. Maybe it would have touched him, slipped through the emptiness, but—it wouldn't, so it doesn't matter.

"Up ahead," Kiba says quietly, jerking his chin at the bend in the passage ahead of them. "Two people, coming this way."

No mention whether it's someone he recognizes, which Itachi assumes means it isn't. He inclines his head, and Kiba huffs, but leaps up, twisting in midair, and catches the top of a doorway, clinging there with a touch of chakra and his eyes trained on the hall. A surprise attack, Itachi thinks, considering. He seems to favor those more than most missing-nin who want to capitalize on their reputations. Then again, it's only been a handful of months since Kiba killed Danzō. He doesn't have the reputation that Kisame or Sasori do, not yet.

Quick footsteps come clear, hurrying people, and Itachi refocuses as a pair of figures round the corner at a run. Armed, one with a sword drawn, the other already shaping a jutsu, and they must have been noticed. Not that it will make a difference.

Itachi ducks under the water jutsu that skims past his head, comes up, and the swordsman is already looking at him. It's impossibly easy to catch his gaze as he charges, to take one neat step back as the man stumbles, eyes going wide and shocked. The swordsman hits the ground with a scream that cuts off abruptly, and Itachi didn't pull any power this time; it's a full Tsukiyomi, insanity and an endless coma, just like he gave to Kakashi and Sasuke.

He'd realized, after he'd done it, that neither of them would likely recover, that they would never wake up after that, and it was a shock, unpleasant and unsettling. He'd been acting on impulse, pushing, but—

Right now it doesn't matter. One of Orochimaru's foot soldiers is hardly going to be a loss.

There's a snarl, high and sharp and vicious, bestial in a way that puts up the hairs on the back of Itachi's neck with some instinctive sort of alarm, and he turns in time to see Kiba drop from the ceiling, right on top of the other shinobi. The white knife flashes out as Kiba knocks his arms wide, and there's a burst of blood as the Oto nin's throat opens beneath the blade. He collapses, and Kiba flips free, landing in a crouch.

He has blood on his face, Itachi thinks, watching him. Surely that can't be a benefit, given his sense of smell.

If it bothers Kiba, though, he doesn't show any sign of it. Wipes away a larger streak, shakes his head like a dog emerging from a stream, and then lifts his head to scent the air again. "Nobody else close," he says. "'Least not close enough for my nose to catch."

In the tunnels, with so many offshoots, his range likely isn't what it could be. Itachi tips his head, calculating the odds that these two have backup coming behind them, and it's probable, but the backup is likely still a distance away.

"Will you be able to find Orochimaru's main lab?" he asks, glancing ahead of them. The base is a maze of passages and rooms, and there was no way for them to map it ahead of time. Finding one particular room will take far longer than Itachi would prefer.

Kiba wrinkles his nose. "Yeah, and it's going to take me for-fucking-ever to scrub the snake stink off my skin. Sasori'd better appreciate us hunting down Orochimaru's notes."

"They will be useful," Itachi says, because Kiba's attachment to the former Suna nin is…strange. Kiba's attachment to all of the Akatsuki members is strange, really. Beyond Konan and Pein, none of them are close. Or rather, none were close—there's been a significant increase in time spent together, since Kiba's arrival. Itachi hasn't tried to participate, between his illness and his general discomfort with groups, but he's witnessed it happening.

"Maybe it'll distract the bastard from tying to steal my recipes," Kiba says, though not like he's overly hopeful. Before Itachi can answer, he starts moving again, quick and light-footed down the hall. Itachi follows, sliding his hand back into the top of his robe, and touches a fingertip to the pill bottle in one of the inner pockets. He still has doses left, and took another before they left the inn; hopefully it will be enough to carry him through the night, and once they find the lab he can locate Orochimaru's stash of the medicine. He'll need a stockpile if Kabuto gets killed, because asking Orochimaru, should he manage to escape Hidan, is not a viable option.

Of course, Itachi's plans assume that Kiba will follow orders, and Itachi finds himself…uncertain of that fact. Kiba seems to be a dutiful shinobi, but —

He's refused to follow orders before, and it makes Itachi wary of relying on him here and now. If he went against Konoha, the village where he was born and raised, what's to say that he won't change his mind and disobey Pein at any moment? Danzō likely had far more authority in his life than Pein has had, and the idea is unsettling.

He didn't hesitate to let the other Konoha nin die, though. Itachi supposes that's a sign in favor of him obeying Pein, at least for now. Like Itachi himself, Kiba has very few places to go if he leaves the Akatsuki.

Itachi tries not to consider the fact that he himself stays with Akatsuki largely because the structure is familiar, because the orders are clear. To find information, he tells himself, but—

There have been so many chances to send things back, even to simply let Konoha know that Uchiha Madara, Konoha's oldest enemy, was a participant in the death of the Uchiha Clan. Itachi could have told someone, should have told them that Madara was alive and still set against Konoha, but it was another set of orders. They didn't even contradict his orders from Konoha. So simple, really, to follow them.

Itachi wonders if Shisui would have. Wonders, before he can help himself, whether Kiba would have.

He doesn't have an answer, and he doesn't know if he wants one, either.

"Up here," Kiba says, breaking into his thoughts, and Itachi raises his head in time to see Kiba leap forward, flinging himself through a doorway near the next bend in the corridor. There's a laugh, vicious and angry, and a shout.

"Kabuto," Kiba says as Itachi steps into the room, and he's grinning, crouched on the floor with blood still dripping down his face. "I thought I smelled a rat."

Kabuto clutches at one arm, dark eyes flickering from Kiba to Itachi and back again, and he straightens, pushes his glasses up his nose. "Inuzuka Kiba," he says. "And Uchiha Itachi. You're an unlikely pair."

Itachi thinks of all the ways to keep Kabuto alive in this fight, because they have orders. Killing him would be easier, but Itachi can be careful. Hopefully Kiba can as well.

"Kabuto," he returns. "Sasori requests your presence at the base."

"I'm sure he does," Kabuto says mildly, and a shimmer of green turns into glowing scalpels, braced between his fingers like a fan of blades. "However, I find myself otherwise occupied here."

Kiba huffs, impatient, and switches out his knives. Black blade this time, instead of white, and he raises it in front of him. "Yeah, yeah, we get it, you're a popular guy. Sucks to be you, hang on while I cry. Let's fucking go."

He lunges in a rush, a blur of brown hair and black blade, and Itachi brings his hands together, narrowing his eyes. Kabuto is already moving to block, but if they draw this fight out Itachi won't be able to control his cough.

Black crows burst into being in a wash of feathers, sweep forward, and Kiba slides beneath them, rises. His knife flashes out, cutting right through the crows as he bursts out of the cloud, and—

Oh, Itachi thinks, and he feels…something. Stunned, maybe. Taken aback. Kisame doesn't fight like this, doesn't fight with Itachi, and the last person who did—

It was Shisui. Shisui once, and now Kiba, and Itachi had almost forgotten what it feels like, to work with someone instead of just alongside them.

He curls his fingers into a fist, breathes out. Doesn't let himself falter in their attack, but keeps pushing, and Kiba matches him step for step as they advance.

---

That last image of Kiba's face is all Shikamaru can see.

He fights his way up through the smoke and falling debris, even as Neji's whirling shield flickers and dies. Neji himself staggers, as pale as a ghost, and Shikamaru lunges to catch him around the waist before he can fall, no matter how it makes his own head spin. There's a ringing in his ears, a sharp, nauseating horror curling through his stomach, and Kiba's face won't leave his mind, even as he stumbles upright.

"Ugh," Neji mutters, and his eyes are dilated unevenly, his hair singed. There's a bit of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth that's enough to alarm Shikamaru, because he knows how dangerous broken ribs are, but Shikamaru doesn't know medical ninjutsu, can't stop to help. They need to get up, get moving—the missing-nin might come back to check for bodies, though they'd seemed perfectly dismissive right before the blast.

Still, Neji saved his life, even halfway dazed from the previous explosion, so Shikamaru's careful as he pulls Neji's arm over his shoulder, wraps his other arm around his waist. They take a lurching step forward into the newly expanded clearing, and Shikamaru peers through the smoke and shadows, trying to make out—

The golden light of a barrier seal glows at the base of the rock, and as they stagger closer Shikamaru can make out the figures inside. Aoba, braced upright with one hand raised, Yūgao on the ground behind him, Anko just barely inside the barrier. As they approach, Aoba glances at them, and his sunglasses are gone, as is his hitai-ate, but his mouth is a tight, firm line, and his broken arm is hanging limp at his side but he's not even wavering on his feet.

"You okay?" he asks hoarsely, and the barrier fades away one inch at a time.

Neji spits out a mouthful of blood, grimacing. "Fine," he rasps, and proceeds to prove it by fainting dead away in Shikamaru's arms.

"Troublesome," Shikamaru mutters, even if it's halfhearted, and closes his eyes as his vision spins. Concussion, probably; he doesn't have a lot of experience with them, but this fits the parameters he's learned. He's also got a bloody nose and probably two black eyes, both from Kiba headbutting him, but they're a lot less important in the long run.

With a snarl of pure rage, Anko rises to her feet, and there's the print of a sandal on her cheek but she doesn't seem to notice, so tense with fury it's like she's about to explode. "Those bastards," she hisses, and takes a step like she's going to go after them.

Aoba catches her arm. "No," he says quietly. "Help me with Yūgao. We need to retreat and regroup."

Anko pauses, torn, and flicks a look in the direction the missing-nin went, then growls under her breath and spins, picking Yūgao up and hefting the other woman over her shoulder. Yūgao makes a strangled sound, twitching, so it's likely not a coma only Tsunade can reverse, but—

Four missing-nin who weren't even trying, and Shikamaru's squad might not be the most powerful, but Aoba is a seasoned intelligence office, Anko is Orochimaru's former student, and Yūgao is ANBU. They should have at least had a chance, but Shikamaru can't even really comprehend how badly outmatched they were. It's unsettling, bewildering, and that's even before he factors in Kiba's presence.

He sees Kiba's face again, inescapable: slashed hitai-ate, scar through his clan marking, mouth set in a snarl. And most unsettling of all were his eyes, hard and cold in a way Shikamaru would have sworn Kiba wasn't capable of. They went right through Shikamaru, or at the most looked at him as another enemy to be taken down, and Kiba hadn't even hesitated. Shikamaru was caught off guard, couldn't react in time, couldn't adjust to the sight of the boy he used to watch clouds with suddenly set against him, but Kiba didn't have that problem. There wasn't even a pause.

All Shikamaru was able to do was play unconscious, and then use a shunshin to grab Neji out of the tree where he had thrown himself right before the final explosion. The tree in question is little more than kindling right now, and it's too wet for fires, thankfully, but the smell of scorched earth and greenery could so easily have been scorched flesh if one of them had been a half-second slower or a bare bit more hurt.

"Back to camp?" he asks, and they'll need to in order to grab their remaining supplies, but staying there long term is—

"Too dangerous," Aoba says. "At least to stay there more than a few minutes. We need to find another place to hole up."

Shikamaru almost suggests the inn, but there's every chance the Akatsuki members are staying there, since they don't have T&I enforced budget crunch to deal with. Troublesome, but not as much so as it would be to run into missing-nin the baths or something.

"There was a lake a mile back," Anko says, and her eyes keep straying towards where the missing-nin disappeared, but despite the anger still on her face she isn't making any move to follow them. "And that tiny island in the middle, with the trees."

Aoba pauses, and without his glasses it's easy to see the calculation that slides across his expression, quick and determined. "Good lines of sight," he agrees, and glances around the clearing, then tips his head. "Let's go. Shikamaru, you've got him?"

"He's heavy," Shikamaru complains, but doesn't try to let go. There's no one else to carry Neji, after all; Aoba can't do it when he has a broken arm.

"That's what I thought." Aoba is probably trying for amusement, but the words fall flat, tired and pained more than anything. He brings a hand up, narrowing his eyes as he forms a seal, and the ground rumbles, shifts. Four patches rise up, then fall back, leaving disturbed rectangles in the earth. They're each about six feet long, and Shikamaru stares at them for a long moment, knowing what they are, but—

Graves. Aoba is making fake graves, so it will look like most of their squad died, but they could so easily have really needed the graves. That last explosion, or the one that almost caught Neji, or Uchiha Itachi, or the apparently immortal shinobi—any one of those things could have tipped the scales. Even Kiba, and Shikamaru heard Kurenai say he'd almost caught Kakashi twice, saw his father make the mission where Teams 8 and 7 encountered him pubic just so that people could know what they were up against. Watching him on the battlefield, though, was…shocking.

Shikamaru hadn't known it was him, at first. Had seen the blur that leapt between Yūgao and Itachi, dodged Anko, knocked Aoba back, but he hadn't recognized that it was Kiba moving like that until his old classmate was squarely in front of him, knife in hand. He didn't kill any of them, but given absence of hesitation Shikamaru's willing to put that down to lack of chances over lack of willingness.

As they crest the rise headed back towards the campsite, Shikamaru can't resist one look back at the ruined stretch of forest, feeling cold. He hadn't recognized Kiba, and Kiba had moved differently, nothing like the genin Shikamaru remembers. Logical; before he had Akamaru to help him, to balance him, and now he's fighting alone. It's still strange, though, to see Kiba faster, more focused on acrobatics and coming at people from unexpected angles. Fighting Inuzuka is always tricky, and he's heard his father complain more than once about facing Tsume in a spar, but an Inuzuka who has the training but has adapted to one-on-one combat—

He almost killed Naruto, Shikamaru remembers, and has to swallow. Looks down at Neji's limp form, and thinks of how Hidan and the blond were trying to capture him. For Kiba, now that Shikamaru can guess who they were calling puppy. Kiba wasn't pleased about, reacted like they were continuing a long-standing joke, but if he'd attacked Neji, who knows what might have happened. There are too many possibilities in Shikamaru's head right now, too many spinning thoughts that leave his stomach churning, his head throbbing.

"Save the thinking for when we're safe," Aoba says from next to him, and he's limping a little, strange without his ever-present sunglasses, but his eyes are fixed determinedly ahead. "Right now we need speed more than plans."

Shikamaru looks down, swallows. Curls one hand into a fist, breathes out, and then asks, "Are you going to send a message back to Konoha?"

Aoba shoots him a look, and there's a smile on his face regardless of the circumstances, smug and satisfied. "I already did," he says. "Why do you think it took me so long to jump in?"

Shikamaru stares at him for a moment, startled, but—his crows. Of course. They're summons, so it's not like they need verbal instruction, and they can easily cross all of Fire Country in a day without needing to stop and rest. They're also exactly the same size as regular crows, so even if the Akatsuki members noticed a bird taking off they won't be able to track it.

Going by Aoba's snort, he finds Shikamaru's bewilderment utterly amusing. "Intelligence, kid," he says, tapping his temple. "It's not very intelligent if I don't share what I know and then get myself killed."

It's a little horrifying for Shikamaru to realize that he wasn't thinking that far ahead. Through the fight, definitely, and through all the moves Akatsuki could make, at least with the knowledge he had of them. But…that's a small picture. Aoba was thinking of the big one, not just ten moves ahead but to the next game entirely.

"Good," Shikamaru says, and means it, but just—not for himself. Not about how he handled it. And…he knows Ino has been training, with her cousin Fū and with Sasuke and Anko, and also begging lessons off Ibiki in Interrogation. Knows that Chōza and Chōji have been working on Akimichi techniques, and Asuma has been teaching Chōji about politics in between team meetings. But Shikamaru has just been pulling shifts on gate duty and watching clouds. He's helped out his genin teammates a few times, done their exercises, more or less kept up on his training, but—

Kiba took him out in one hit and half a second, and maybe part of that was down to him catching Shikamaru off guard, but it's stupid. Shikamaru knows how to fight. He's good at it, when he tries.

He just hasn't been. Or at least, hasn't been trying hard enough to change anything.

Realizing that makes him swallow down nausea that has nothing to do with his concussion. Kiba poisoned Naruto so severely that Naruto was unconscious for two days. He beat Kakashi. He joined Akatsuki, became a member alongside people like Uchiha Itachi, and that says a hell of a lot. Meanwhile, Ino still has to badger Shikamaru into getting out of bed before noon.

Oh, Shikamaru thinks, and glances over at Anko, at Yūgao. Both of them almost caught Itachi, almost killed their opponents. Shikamaru knows the limits of the Shadow Bind, but he'd still been something close to useless. The Nara have offensive techniques, and he's been meaning to learn them, but he's simply never gotten around to it.

Damn it. Damn everything, and Shikamaru's own instinct for laziness especially. It might not have hurt the mission, but it sure as hell didn't do anything to help, and despite his genius, Shikamaru gets an uncomfortable, sinking certainty that he's falling behind.

He thinks again of Kiba, of those hard eyes, the snarl on his face. Breathes out, unsteady, and turns his attention ahead of them, trying to remember the lake Anko mentioned. They're going to need defenses once they get there, and Shikamaru's brain has to be good for something.

---

Fingers on her skin wake Konan, but slowly. It's not a touch meant to hurt, but an indulgence, an easy sweep of callused fingertips across her bare skin, down the muscle of her bicep, then back up. She hums in appreciation before she even opens her eyes, and the touch firms, slides up and then over her collarbone and down.

The blankets fall away as Konan rolls over, letting her eyes slide open, and she smiles up at Tsume before she can even think to stop herself. Tsume grins back, fierce and sharp, and leans over her, one hand planted on the pillow.

"Hey there," she says, on the edge of sly, and Konan feels something like laughter bubbling up in her chest. Just a thread of it, but it's warm and soft and sweet beneath her skin.

"Good morning," she answers, raising a brow, and Tsume chuckles, leaning down. The kiss is light, familiar, and it's been so long since Konan had something like this. Decades, at this point. She slides her hands up Tsume's arm, feeling out the muscle, the scars, the firm skin, then closes her fingers around Tsume's shoulders and twists.

Laughter jars from Tsume's throat as she hits the mattress on her back, and Konan slides over her, straddling her waist. She leans forward, and Tsume's dark eyes are a challenge, full of heat.

"Feeling frisky?" she asks.

"Inspired," Konan corrects, amused, but it's true. She brushes a thumb across Tsume's ribs, slides her hand up, and there are so many scars, so many signs of a life spent fighting, but the hands on her hips don't even bruise. Konan's slept with a few Ame shinobi, over the years, a handful of civilians, but Tsume is sharper than all of them combined, more dangerous. Just—not right now.

She kisses Tsume, slow, drawing it out so that she can remember every moment down the line. Hums, drawing back, and smiles down at Tsume feeling her grip tighten just faintly on Konan's hips.

"Inspired like to paint a masterpiece?" Tsume teases, rubbing at Konan's hip bone. It's almost an idle gesture, except that it's entirely deliberate. "Or inspired like you're going to make me miss my meeting with the jounin commander?"

"Can't it be both?" Konan counters, and leans down again, tightening her thighs against Tsume's side, cupping a breast to see the way Tsume's breath hitches. She kisses her, deeper this time but still slow—

"Mom!" a voice shouts through the door, a metaphorical bucket of ice water dumped right over Konan's head, and a moment later a fist bangs on the wood hard, loud knocks that echo through the room and make Konan twitch hard. "Mom, get up!"

Tsume groans. "Hana, get lost!" she calls back.

"It's a summons from Tsunade-sama!" the girl informs her, unimpressed. "Shizune's waiting for you!"

Tsume growls, short and low, and it makes Konan shiver despite herself. She convinces herself to slide off of Tsume, though, and Tsume sits up with a sigh, shaking out her wild hair.

"Fuck, I'm sorry," she says, and Konan can tell she means it. "What a way to end things."

The pull of her is magnetic, irresistible. Konan hums, tips her head, but she can't quite pull her eyes away from Tsume's mouth. "I don't know, I thought it was decent," she offers.

Tsume laughs, reaches up to cup her cheek, and kisses her again. "Decent's a good start," she allows. Pauses, looking Konan over, and asks, "Your intelligence gathering's almost done?"

Right. Konan takes a breath, tries not to lean into the heat of Tsume's hand. "Yes," she says softly. Pauses, watching Tsume watch her, and has to smile a little. "You managed to distract me from my mission."

With a grin, Tsume kisses her one more time. "Distracted you right into bed," she agrees. "Now that's a sword I'm happy to fall on for Konoha's sake."

Konan laughs a little, sliding her fingers into Tsume's hair. I'll save your son, she thinks, fierce, and the years since Yahiko's death have been grey, grim, but this—this is a point of light. This is a mission far more immediate than a dream of world peace, and she can feel it resonate through her bone. Tsume is beautiful, and broken, and she can laugh because Kiba escaped Konoha's hold. Konan will never let him fall back into their hands. For Kiba's sake, and for Tsume's as well.

"You were very thoroughly distracting," she agrees throatily, and smiles when Tsume's eyes dilate. Kisses her one more time, because she can't resist—

"Mom," Hana complains loudly. "Shizune is waiting!"

Tsume mutters a curse, pulling away, and calls back, "I'm coming, don't get your panties in a knot."

Konan lets out a breath of amusement, but when Tsume slides out of bed she follows, picking up her clothes. The cloak with its coating of paper still looks like a haori, and she folds it over her arm, doesn't bother pulling it on. Tsume is already in her uniform, though without her flak jacket, and she watches Konan dress with a lazy sort of appreciation that curls through Konan's stomach, warm and pleasant.

"If you're ever on another mission nearby and want to be distracted," Tsume offers, the slant of her smile taking on a wry edge, "consider my door open and my body willing."

Konan laughs, and it feels freeing, heady. "And if you ever want to defect to Ame," she says, "consider me the same."

Tsume sighs, runs a hand through her hair. "I'm a Konoha nin, no matter how much I hate people in the village sometimes," she says wryly. "Leaving through the front door?"

Kakuzu will likely have a conniption just at what's happened already. It's better not to risk his blood pressure further by walking right through the middle of a clan compound in broad daylight. "Through the window," she says. "If you don't mind."

Tsume snickers. "Better for you to dodge Hana anyway," she says. "She's got a good nose on her, and neither of us is going to be subtle."

The Inuzuka as a whole must have more gossip about the rest of the village than any other clan, Konan thinks, amused. She pulls her cloak on, then leans in to give Tsume one last kiss.

"Your story will have a happy ending," she says softly, insistently, and Tsume meets her eyes, holds her gaze.

"I hope so," she says roughly, then touches Konan's cheek and turns away.

Konan is out the window before her footsteps even start down the stairs.

Konoha just after dawn is quiet, almost sleepy; there are shinobi patrols on the rooftops, but they move quickly and don't pause, and Konan keeps her head down as she heads towards the market. It's practically deserted, only a few figures setting up stalls, but there's a familiar figure leaning back against the wall of a building, mostly in shadow. Kakuzu looks rested, at least, and when he scowls at Konan it's a little milder than she would have expected.

"Found somewhere to spend the night?" she asks, raising a brow at him.

"Isn't that my question?" he retorts, and levels a judgmental look at the curve of Konan's shoulder where it's revealed by her dress.

With dignity, Konan smooths a hand over the mark, letting her layer of paper slide over it, and very determinedly ignores the sense-memory of Tsume's mouth there. "Did you actually pay for a room at an inn?" she asks. She doesn't expect that he did, but he also doesn't look like he slept outside somewhere.

Kakuzu scoffs. "Of course not," he says. "Why bother? You're not the only one who can pick up a piece of ass."

It seems counterproductive to tell him that's not how things went at all, so Konan doesn't bother. "Are they still in one piece?" she asks dryly.

The question gets her a sour look. "Don't worry," Kakuzu tells her, tone dark, as if that will persuade her not to ask anything further. "He was chatty as hell and in possession of all limbs this morning."

Chatty? Now Konan really wants to know who it was, especially if he escaped the night intact. She'd thought that was one of the things that would drag Kakuzu straight to the end of his patience.

Apparently reading that in her face, Kakuzu snorts, crossing his arms over his chest and slouching a little deeper into his cloak. "It's satisfying making people like that finally shut the hell up," he says, and there's a distinct thread of smugness to it that makes Konan roll her eyes.

"Find anything?" she asks, because Kakuzu is clearly content to keep his secrets.

Kakuzu grunts, gaze sliding past her to watch the market behind them. "Konoha has shit security," he says disgustedly. "But they keep their files locked up tight. If I'd killed a few people, I could have gotten in, but without that…"

Well, Konan was more or less expecting that. She grimaces, then tugs her cloak a little more firmly over her shoulders. "No information on Danzō, and the Nanabi vanished before we could get to it," she says quietly. "Nagato won't be pleased."

"He's not going to be pleased with your idea of a detour," Kakuzu mutters, tugging his hood down as a patrol passes overhead.

Konan ignores that, because Nagato will live with it. She got a little information on Konoha's reaction to Kiba, and that satisfies her well enough for now. Maybe Sasori can dig up more, once he figures out what happened to Kabuto. The information is important, but not vital; she and Nagato already made sure that every bit of Danzō's information on them was far out of date, and they haven't left any trails for Jiraiya to follow, either. Not that he ever tried. Apparently a year of training was sufficient for him to abandon them in the middle of a ruined country without a backwards glance.

Sometimes Konan forgets just how fiercely she hates Konoha, both the village as a whole and the people inside of it.

When she claws down the cold fury that's threatening to drown her, Kakuzu is watching her closely, eyes narrowed. His mouth is a flat line, but there's a touch of concern buried deep in his expression. "We leaving?" he asks.

Konan breathes out, closes her eyes for a brief moment, and nods. "I think we're both ready," she says wryly.

Kakuzu grunts, glancing back at the market as it slowly fills. "Not as bad as Taki," is his verdict, even though his expression is grim.

They all have their pits of despair, and no two are alike. Not even hers and Nagato's, Konan reflects. Nagato's world ended in Ame, and he blamed Hanzō, the world at large. Konan's ended in the same place, but her anger falls squarely at Konoha's feet. Konoha had a hand in Kakuzu's fall, as well, but Taki is where his anger lies.

Before she can respond, though, there's a flicker. A flare of familiar chakra behind her, touched with an abrasive edge that hides beneath the bright surface, and she very carefully doesn't stiffen. Turns her head, looking out, and—

There. At the edge of the market, the figure of Konoha's jinchuuriki, small and golden-haired and standing together with another boy, also familiar. They're bent over a book, and the Kyuubi jinchuuriki's face is furrowed in a confused scowl as he scratches at his head.

Slowly, deliberately, careful not to make the motion jerky, Konan turns around and puts her back to the genin. Kakuzu is watching her, eyes narrowed suspiciously, and Konan tips her head. "The Kyuubi," she says, and Kakuzu's eyes widen sharply. "And Itachi's little brother, too."

Kakuzu mutters a curse, but he doesn't move, either. "They saw you on that last mission," he says, and it's not a question. Konan doesn't bother answering, just glances at the boys' reflections in the closest shop window, contemplating all the possible courses of action here. There are no adults with the pair, and they're entirely caught up in each other and their book, distracted. Vulnerable. Of course, this is the center of Konoha, and there's no saying how many shinobi are close by.

Kakuzu seems to be thinking the same thing, because he's scowling deeply as he watches them. "Fucking stupid having him right there and not doing anything," he says, and flicks a glance towards the looming walls. Konan does, too; she can be past them in seconds with her wings, even carrying another person's weight. But—

"We need at least four of the beasts sealed before the statue can contain the Kyuubi," she says, dissatisfied with the reminder. "It's too strong otherwise."

"Containing a tailed beast isn't the same as containing a genin," is Kakuzu's verdict, and there's a cold light in his eyes, something calculating. "Itachi's planning to kill the other kid, right?"

Konan frowns, but…she seems to recall something like that. "He left him alive to taunt him," she offers. "And so he'd be a decent opponent later."

"He's an arrogant little bitch," Kakuzu mutters, but meets Konan's eyes. "They look close. We could snatch the Uchiha and use him to control the jinchuuriki."

The idea has merit. Konan tips her head, weighing the odds, and…they're rather good. Judging by Naruto's reaction to Kiba, he's very devoted to his friends, even after they betray him. And to take a teammate—

"We can't take them yet," she says, and turns enough to study the boys, the way dark and bright heads are bent together and almost touching. "We haven't finished locating all of the beasts, and it could take long enough to give them a chance to escape. But I think it's a far better plan than we currently have."

Kakuzu's smirk doesn't have an ounce of humor in it. "Itachi and Kisame already showed Konoha they could walk right in," he says, and the flick of one hand has a genjutsu curling up around them, hiding them from view. "Should we make a statement?"

Konan snorts, but lifts her hands in front of her. "A bit of terror can be motivating," she says, and paper rises from her skin, dozens of sheets splitting off. They fold themselves into butterflies, whirl up and out to fill the market with razor-edged wings, and Konan smiles. Hears a shout, alarm and surprise and anger, and then more and more, and meets Kakuzu's amused gaze.

"Shall we?" she asks politely.

Kakuzu follows her down a side street, then onto the main one, headed right for the gate. They don't hurry, keep their steps even and steady as shinobi flash over the roofs and past them, and it's as easy as breathing to fall in behind a departing band of farmers as they head through the gate.

"Any more bright ideas?" Kakuzu asks, but he sounds a good bit easier than he did before. There's a chuunin to one side of the gate, and when he glances up to look them over Kakuzu catches his eye. The chuunin promptly flushes to the roots of his spiky black hair, ducking down to hide behind his clipboard, and Kakuzu smirks.

Konan looks from Kakuzu to the chuunin, who is definitely not chatty right now, and raises a brow. "What did you even do to him?" she asks.

Kakuzu huffs, but turns back towards the road. "Gave him what he begged for," he says, that note of smugness back in his voice, and Konan rolls her eyes again.

"No more details and I promise to keep my plans to myself," she offers.

Kakuzu only has to mull it over for a second. "Deal," he agrees, and then levels a threatening finger in her face. "And you don't just keep them to yourself, you don't go through with them, either."

Konan gives him her sweetest smile and makes no promises.

---

"That was boring," Kiba complains, and it's only partly for show, only partly to distract himself from the scene they left in the woods. He'd been expecting a hell of a lot more of a fight against Orochimaru's apprentice, though working with Itachi probably means a quick end to all fights. Hana always used to tell him that the Sharingan was a cheat, and Kiba's definitely starting to see her point.

Itachi straightens from checking Kabuto's pulse, stone-faced, and inclines his head. "He was not expecting Akatsuki's retaliation," he says, and folds his hands into his sleeves. "Nor was he expecting poisons beyond his own."

Kiba scoffs, and if he didn't feel sick and empty and aching there might be a seed of pride in his chest. Genma's recipes were enough to throw Kabuto off balance, and between that and the fact that Itachi can see through genjutsu, the asshole didn't have a chance. "Wonder if Orochimaru was expecting us," he says, because Naruto said that Orochimaru and Kabuto were close. It seems weird that Orochimaru wouldn't have told Kabuto if he caught wind they were coming, but it also seems weird that Orochimaru just…wouldn't know. He's Konoha's biggest boogeyman, has been outsmarting ANBU and Jiraiya of the Sannin for decades. Him getting caught by Hidan and Deidara feels strange to think about.

"The Sandaime injured Orochimaru during their fight," Itachi says, and Kiba blinks. Naruto had mentioned something like that, hadn't he?

"His arms, I think," Kiba confirms, squinting as he tries to remember. Thinking of Konoha makes him feel a little sick, but—the village. Old things that happened before. Not an exploded clearing and the bodies of his friends. Shit. He has to swallow against the building horror, shove it back down and focus on something else before he can say, "That's why he was trying to find Tsunade or some shit. You think he still hasn't fixed them?"

For a long moment, Itachi is silent. Then he inclines his head again. "It would explain Kabuto's withdrawal from Sasori, if he were forced to pick between masters due to Orochimaru's injury."

Yeah, that's what Kiba was thinking, too, as unnerving as it is to have something in common with Itachi. He looks away, checking Kabuto's limp body for any sign of movement, but Kabuto's still out of it, and likely will be until Kiba gives him the antidote; he wasn't expecting Kiba's blades to be poisoned, had taken the hit in the name of avoiding Itachi, who seemed like the bigger threat. A stupid mistake, but Kiba figures it's pretty understandable. He hasn't exactly been advertising the fact that he uses poisons, and it's definitely not something Inuzuka are known for.

He can't remember if he hit one of the Konoha squad with his knives or not. Maybe the crow-guy. It probably doesn't matter anymore.

"We'd better check on Hidan an' Deidara, let 'em know we got Kabuto," he says, and when Itachi makes no move to touch Kabuto, Kiba growls low in his throat and does it himself, heaving Kabuto's body up over his shoulder and rising to his feet as best he can. Kabuto's a hell of a lot taller than him, and his knees practically drag on the ground, but at least Kiba's standing. No thanks to Itachi, of course, who's staring at him without blinking, without moving so much as a single facial muscle.

Kiba is so far past creeped out that he's come right around to zen. This is fine. Awful, but fine. He can deal. All he has to do is keep breathing.

"Back out the way we came?" he asks. Itachi doesn't answer, just turns and starts walking back towards the door, and Kiba pulls a face at his back. The smell of fresh blood isn't just coming from Itachi now, and that makes it easier to mutter, "Asshole," as he hefts Kabuto up and follows.

If Itachi hears it, he shows no sign, just keeps walking. That's even more aggravating, but Kiba locks his comment behind his teeth, reminds himself of the comatose Oto nin in the hallway, and follows. It's possible he bounces Kabuto's head off the edge of the doorframe, but that's not technically his fault; he's thirteen, and Kabuto is a fully grown man. Just asking Kiba to carry him is already hard enough, and Kiba won't be blamed for what happens to stray bits.

Also, Kabuto deserves it. Traitors fucking suck, and Kiba would know.

Thankfully, they don't meet anyone else in the corridor, and the only sound is the echo of explosions from near the main entrance. Things are on fire, and people are screaming, which absolutely means that Hidan and Deidara managed to get through the door. Kiba cranes his neck, trying to see where they are, but it's hard to tell. Some of Deidara's clay creatures scurry past, vanishing through a vent and dropping into the caverns, but Kiba can't exactly ask them for a status report, and Itachi seems content to meander towards the fight without hurry.

There might be less stress about being found out when Kiba's not working with Konan, but gods, he misses her. She'd already have this mission done and over with.

Ahead of them, there's a deafening blast, sending pieces of stone raining across the meadow to the sound of Deidara's laughter. Kiba sneezes, shaking his head to get the suddenly overpowering scent of scorched flesh and scattered blood out of his nose, and—

He almost gags, hit by the overwhelming reek of fury and metallic scales and chemicals. Snaps a hand up to cover his nose, reeling back, and snarls, "Itachi!"

Instantly, Itachi spins, leaps to the side in a blur. A massive white snake slams into the ground where he just stood, then lunges again, and Itachi darts sideways, out of the way of flashing fangs.

Kiba would help, honest, except for one small detail. There's a shadow rising behind the snake, a figure full of fury, and the redoubled surge of Orochimaru's scent is enough to prove it's him, even if the body looks wrong. Like a puppet with an ill-fitting mask, slightly skewed, and pure horror curls through Kiba's stomach.

"I think," Orochimaru hisses, "that you have something of mine."

Fuck.

"Back the hell off, snake-face," he snaps, and doesn't let himself step back. "I'm the only one with the antidote, and Kabuto really doesn't make an attractive Sleeping Beauty."

Orochimaru snarls, and there's something moving under his skin, a ripple of flesh that should not be able to move that way but does. "You're going to challenge me?" he demands, and laughs. Somehow, that's even worse than the face thing. It crawls down Kiba's spine like ice, and he can't tell if he wants to dive for cover or just turn tail and run. "Little boy, I will keep your head in a jar."

"You are one fucking psycho asshole," Kiba says, voice cracking from what he tells himself is puberty and not terror, and leaps three long jumps back as he grabs for his soldier pills. Pulls four of them from his pouch, and that's the very edge of what he can handle without a week-long crash afterwards, but there's no choice. He doesn't have any plans here, didn't expect this, doesn't know all of Orochimaru's abilities. Orochimaru killed the Sandaime, and he's been a missing-nin since before Kiba's mom was Clan Head. Desperately, he brings a hand up, summons a clone, and as it appears he heaves Kabuto's limp body into its arms.

"Go!" he snaps, and the clone doesn't waste time. It bolts, dragging Kabuto with it as it heads for Hidan and Deidara, and in the same moment Kiba draws his white knife and flings himself forward, right at Orochimaru's throat. It's a feint, a reckless charge he knows won't work, but when Orochimaru slashes a hand down Kiba leaps, twists around the blades, and drops to the ground on all fours. Launches himself straight forward, but a kick catches him in the chest before he can bring his knife to bear. Kiba hits the ground hard, rolls back to his feet, and tries desperately, wildly, to think of a plan.

"Out of my way," Orochimaru threatens, and a forked tongue slides past his lips, snakelike—

Kiba realizes in a sudden rush that he's fighting another clan shinobi. Another shinobi from a clan that's impossibly close to their summons, the same way the Inuzuka are. Orochimaru acts like a snake because he's part snake, at least where his chakra is concerned. Specialized for generations, and it makes for a strong shinobi, but there's always a drawback.

All he needs to do is confuse Orochimaru long enough for Hidan to get here, or for Itachi to finish off the snake. Kiba grabs for one of the smoke bombs in his weapons pouch, yanks it out and throws it up. "Eyes!" he shouts in warning, sees Itachi's head snap his direction, but doesn't pause as he brings his hands up. Fire surges, hits the glass ball—

Black fire leaps across the body of the snake summons just as the powdered metal in the bomb ignites. There's a flare of brilliant white light, searing, blinding, but Kiba slams his eyes closed, darts back with his mouth clamped shut. The magnesium crackles, flares, and the other powders hit the ground, billowing grey-green smoke that surges upwards. It reeks of herbs and chemicals, and Kiba checks the direction of the wind, calculates how long the magnesium can burn, and lands lightly. Turns, looking for Itachi, and takes a step forward.

Hands grab his arms, drag him back, and he yelps, wrenches around with his knife leading. It just misses Orochimaru's cheek, and Orochimaru laughs, victorious, opens his mouth like he's going to sink his teeth into Kiba's throat—

"Fuck off!" a voice screeches, high and familiar, and Hidan plummets down, slamming feet-first into Orochimaru and sending them both crashing away, rolling across the grass. Orochimaru is the first to find his feet, twisting up like a cobra striking, and he rises just in time to catch a bird-shaped bomb right in the face.

"Ha!" Deidara says, and high above them on a larger bird, he brings two fingers up. "Take your shitty permanent art and stuff it up your ass!"

The detonation is almost deafening, and Kiba staggers upright shaking his head hard. "Got him?" he shouts up to Deidara.

Deidara flashes him a thumbs up and kicks the motionless bundle at his feet. "Hurry the fuck up!" he tells Hidan. "I want to a bath, un!"

"An' I want a fucking sacrifice to Jashin-sama!" Hidan cackles, grinning. He spins his scythe, then hurls it forward, flipping up into the air. A hard wrench at the cable as Orochimaru dodges and the blades come flying back, but Orochimaru twists through them like he's boneless, lands, and slams a hand down on the ground.

"Manda!" he snarls, and the air shudders. A massive snake bursts into being, easily ten times Hidan's height as it curls up and over, looming above them. Its body slides right over the magnesium fire, snuffs it out in an instant, and it doesn't even seem to notice. Snaps at Deidara, and Deidara squawks, sends his creation rocketing higher to get out of its range, but it keeps going, keeps rising—

Kiba hurls three of his bombs as high into the air as he can, and shouts, "Deidara!"

Deidara curses, but drops an explosive into their midst, and it detonates with a clatter of exploding glass, a billow of smoke that's choking-thick. Manda lashes out, tail a destructive sweep through the cloud, but it's cover enough. Kiba ducks away, sees another figure through the smoke, and grabs at the distinctive black and red cloak. "Let's go!" he hisses.

Itachi inclines his head, takes a step. There's a whirl of leaves, a blur of motion, and they're suddenly halfway across the meadow. Kiba staggers, not expecting the sudden change, and turns but Deidara's bird is already swooping towards them.

"Fucking summons," he snarls as soon as he's close enough, and brings it in for a landing, jerking his head at Kiba. "Come on, un. I don't have enough clay to take out a summons that big without blowing myself up too."

"Shit," Kiba mutters, but he scrambles up onto the sculpture's back, Itachi hopping up behind him. "Can you see Hidan?"

"That asshole deserves whatever the hell he gets down there," Deidara says scornfully, but takes off again, and as the bird circles Kiba cranes his neck over the side, trying to see any hint of movement.

"When the hell did Orochimaru get his arms back?" he asks. "I thought he was hurt."

"We did too, un." Deidara makes a face. "I guess we caught him stuffing himself into that new body. It's fucking creepy."

"You can say that again." Kiba tries not to shiver at the memory of other things moving beneath Orochimaru's skin; apparently the jutsu wasn't quite finished when they interrupted him.

"There." Itachi leans past Kiba, pointing down past the lash of Manda's body. "He's fighting the summons. I don't see Orochimaru."

"Of fucking course," Deidara says disgustedly, and looks at Kiba. "You got any ninja wire on you?"

Kiba blinks, looks down at the tiny shape of Hidan getting punted across the field by the massive angry snake, and then looks back at Deidara. "You want me to lasso him?" he asks incredulously.

Deidara tosses his hair over his shoulder and smirks. "If we're lucky, you'll cut off his head, un," he confirms.

Silently, Itachi pulls a coil of wire from his robe and offers it up.

"I fucking hate all of you," Kiba says, and takes it.

---

The island Anko remembered is large enough to hide on, thickly lined with trees and brush, and Aoba posts several of his summons in the branches to keep watch, since they're in no fit state to do it themselves. Shikamaru is vaguely desperate for a soft place to lie down, maybe a fire and some warm food, but what he gets is a patch of rocky, stick-littered ground and no ability to clear the bushes away if they don't want people noticing their presence immediately.

"Who else is willing to risk the inn for a soft bed?" he mutters, even as he lowers Neji to the ground and shoves his pack under his head.

"I already got my ass kicked once today," Aoba says dryly, sinking to the ground and bracing his back against a tree with a sigh. "I think that's enough for me, but if you want to, Shikamaru, I'm not about to stop you."

Shikamaru rolls his eyes, but he grabs Yūgao's shoulders as Anko starts to set her down, and Anko flashes him a sharp-edged smile. "Good little minion," she says, though Shikamaru can tell her heart isn't in it.

Yūgao makes a quiet, pained sound, reaching up. Her hand closes convulsively, and with a gasp she opens her eyes, wrenching out of their hold and rolling to her feet. She staggers, grabs for her sword, and misses, and Anko catches her as she almost collapses.

"Anko?" she asks dazedly, tangling her fingers in Anko's coat. "Hayate was—"

"Dead," Anko finishes, bluntly, almost angrily. Yūgao's face twists in pain, and her breath shakes as she exhales, but she nods once and doesn't let go of Anko's coat. Mouth tight, Anko curls an arm over her shoulders and drags them both to the ground, where Yūgao practically curls into her lap.

The tokujō who was the first casualty of the Suna invasion, Shikamaru thinks, and his stomach turns over. Their exam proctor. And if Yūgao knew him well enough that Itachi chose to torture her with a genjutsu of him—

"What is Akatsuki doing here," Anko says, blowing her hair out of her eyes with a hard breath. "Don't they have something to do with jinchuuriki?"

"They want to capture them," Aoba answers, almost absently as he digs for bandages, carefully holding his broken arm to his chest. "Apparently not that badly, since they didn't make an attempt last time a team encountered them."

He's talking about Naruto, Shikamaru realizes. He means that mission to the eastern border, where Team 7 and the remainder of Team 8 ended up facing off against Kiba and a woman from Akatsuki, and only just got out alive. A chill curls down his spine, and he takes a step bank, sinking down next to Neji. Thinks, again, of Kiba in that moment. He used to know Kiba, watched clouds and skipped class with him, and he never would have thought—

"Shikamaru?" Aoba says, in a tone that means it's not the first time. Shikamaru glances up wincing inwardly; now of all times he needs to pay attention. Aoba doesn't offer a comment, at least, just lifts a brow at him and asks, "You were in the same class as Inuzuka, right?"

It's easy to understand why he wants to know—an information on the enemy is good, and the fight seemed to snowball after Kiba showed up. One more body set against them was enough to throw them off, and even if they hadn't been doing great beforehand they'd at least been holding their own. Kiba threw the balance off, turned the fight upside down; now there's the potential that he'll do that for any fight, and it's better to know his capabilities. And yet—

"Yeah," he says, and meets Aoba's gaze. Swallows, and offers helplessly, "He always used to have Akamaru, and he used Inuzuka techniques."

Not knives. Not poisons. The way he moved was familiar, but only in the broad strokes; brutal, animalistic, like Inuzuka taijutsu, but with an added edge of unpredictability, a longer reach due to the knives. And he didn't hesitate—Shikamaru is stuck on this, can't get his brain to stop replaying that instant. Kiba had taken just enough time to swear before he knocked Shikamaru out, but he hadn't looked caught off guard. There wasn't even a thread of alarm on his face. Just a snarl, twisted into something unfamiliar by the scar across his cheek and the sheer malice of it.

Kiba was cheerful. He could be brash, and he get angry, but underneath that he was always smiling, always laughing. Shikamaru can hardly even begin to connect the harsh Akatsuki member he just saw with his Academy classmate.

Aoba's expression twists, and he reaches out, dropping a hand on Shikamaru's shoulder. One squeeze and he lets go, picking up a roll of bandages with a sigh. "Don't twist your brain into too many knots," he warns. "I need you in one piece."

Shikamaru makes a face at him, though his heart isn't in it. "Are we waiting for backup?" he asks instead, glancing down at Neji.

Aoba hesitates. He closes his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose, and breathes out. Thinking face, Shikamaru's mother calls it when his father makes it. In any other situation, Shikamaru might be amused by the similarities, but right now he's just…tired.

"Even if nothing delays my crow, it will still be at least two days before anyone can get here," Aoba finally says. "More likely three. Ibiki will have to verify the information, pull corresponding intelligence reports, take it to the Hokage, verify it for her before they can even think of sending out another squad."

Then when do we leave? Shikamaru wants to say, but the words die on his tongue. They can't. He knows that. Akatsuki is a threat, and leaving an active threat unobserved so close to Konoha's borders, especially in close proximity to another enemy, would be utterly idiotic. But—

"Kiba said he'd found Orochimaru's base," he remembers, and it's a little hazy; there's no image to go along with the sound of Kiba's voice, but Shikamaru knows what he heard. "They must be after him, too."

"To recruit the bastard, probably," Anko says viciously, and she's practically vibrating in her own skin, looks like she's about to leap up and go find Akatsuki and Orochimaru by herself to tear them to shreds.

Aoba grimaces. "Most likely," he agrees. "They've got a thing for missing-nin."

Especially Konoha missing-nin, Shikamaru doesn't say. Between Itachi and Kiba and Orochimaru, though, that's definitely a pattern.

With a soft breath, Yūgao pushes up from Anko's shoulder, rubbing a hand over her eyes. Her face is dry, and there's no indication that she's been crying or is about to, but the set of her expression is something deep and hurt. She squeezes Anko's hand tightly, then sits back, shakes herself, and says, "Don't bother wrapping that, Aoba. I might not be a medic but I can at least set a broken bone."

"Thank you," Aoba says in relief, and drops the bandages. "Shikamaru has a concussion, too."

"Neji was spitting blood," Shikamaru says, in the name of full disclosure. He can't hear any sort of irregularity in Neji's breathing, and he's been paying attention, but it seems like the kind of thing that's important.

Anko gets to her feet, and tugs on his ponytail as she passes behind him to kneel next to Neji. Carefully, she tips his head back, opens his mouth, and makes a dismissive sound. "He bit his tongue," she says, and runs a quick, practiced touch over his chest. "I don't even feel any bruising, so he should be fine. He probably has a concussion, too, but I think it's mostly chakra exhaustion."

It makes sense, Shikamaru thinks, and pretends his next breath doesn't shake with relief. Neji's technique is good enough with blows and projectiles, but keeping out the sheer force of several explosions has to be trying. Especially since he was protecting Shikamaru at the time as well. Shikamaru hadn't even known the Gentle Fist techniques could be extended to include another person. Which likely means they previously couldn't, and Neji changed the technique with no warning, in the middle of a fight, with barely seconds to manage it.

Shikamaru's smart, and tactical, but other types of genius are just as impressive.

"How about you, Anko?" Aoba asks, even as Yūgao carefully straightens his arm. His face goes white, but he keeps his voice even, his eyes on Anko.

Anko scoffs. "I'm fine!" she says, and rolls upright, making a fist and raising it. "I'm going to shove that bastard Itachi's face in a pile of manure for not letting me kill Orochimaru in my dream, but all he did was make me angry!"

It sounds like bravado, grandstanding, but—Shikamaru finds that he believes her. Whatever vision Itachi gave her, it wasn't the type to break her, the way it almost did Yūgao. It feels like another parallel to Naruto, in Shikamaru's mind. He's pretty sure Naruto would react the same way to that kind of thing.

With a quiet snort, Aoba tips his head back against the tree trunk. "I don't think Itachi gets the difference between crippling trauma and trauma that makes you stronger," he says, a little absently. "Or—trauma that you use, I guess."

Shikamaru frowns, trying to process that. "Use?" he repeats.

Aoba cracks one dark eye open, looking at him. "Yeah," he says wearily, but he smiles, too. Just barely, but it's there. "For motivation. If the stories about why Kiba snapped and killed Danzō are true, he's probably using that trauma, making sure he's never weak enough to be a victim again. Tsunade, after her fiancé and her brother died—that was crippling trauma. It works both ways. Some things just hit people to where they can't even move, and some things drive them like they've got demons at their heels. Some people get both at different points. Neither one's healthy, but they're pretty common in shinobi."

Shikamaru's never looked into different types of reactions to bad things happening. He hasn't really needed to; even with his mother's injury, she was okay. Frustrated with herself, but alive and whole and still normal. And—it doesn't make sense. Kiba was always fine, always happy. He lost in the Exams, but he got over it. By that evening he was joking around with Naruto like normal. What possible trauma could he have gone through?

"Trauma?" he asks, faintly incredulous. "Kiba?"

There's a moment of complete, utter silence. Yūgao and Anko both glance at Shikamaru, then at Aoba, and Yūgao's expression twists with something like shame or pain or regret.

"Asuma didn't tell you?" she asks softly.

"The Sandaime and that old creep were close," Anko says fiercely. "Maybe Asuma doesn't believe it."

"A lot of people don't believe it. They're rumors." Aoba rubs a hand over his face, slides his fingers into his hair and sighs, tugging lightly. He looks at Shikamaru, catching his gaze, and the slant of his mouth is something bitter. "What do you know about how Kiba ended up a missing-nin?"

There's something here, Shikamaru thinks, and it's uncomfortable, icy. They know something and he doesn't, and maybe Shikamaru relies on Ino for all of his gossip but she normally tells him everything going on in the village even when he doesn't want to know. Did she miss something? She hasn't talked about Kiba much, but—he'd thought that was just because there was no news.

"He killed Shimura Danzō," Shikamaru says warily, looking between the three shinobi. "And he stole poisons from the Shiranui clan on his way out of Konoha."

Another look, this time between Aoba and Yūgao. "Yeah, pretty much," Aoba says, though he looks grim. "Yūgao and her squad caught him when he was halfway over the wall, but he got away and bolted. Tsunade named him a missing-nin barely two hours later. And then about two hours after that, the first rumors started."

"Rumors," Shikamaru repeats flatly, but there's a prickle down his spine, like foreboding. Something bad, he knows. Aoba wouldn't be wearing that expression if it wasn't.

Aoba takes a breath, but when he meets Shikamaru's eyes again he doesn't waver. "People couldn't figure out why a kid like Kiba would have been at Danzō's house late at night," he says, and it's like there's ice forming in the pit of Shikamaru's stomach. "They'd seem him around there beforehand, too, for a couple of weeks. Danzō didn't have much of anything to do with the Inuzuka, and he didn't have much to do with genin he couldn't snatch for Root. And the way he was killed—it was vicious, but it was pretty desperate, too. Like Kiba was willing to do anything to get away."

Shikamaru's going to be sick. He tips forward, putting his head between his knees, and curls his hands over the back of his head like he can protect himself from this new knowledge. "It's a rumor," he says.

"Yeah," Anko agrees, and a moment later she crouches down next to him, serious and solemn even as she offers a crooked smile. "Lots of things that no one wants to admit end up as rumors."

Shikamaru's father has used that exact phrasing before. It's—they're a shinobi village, and that means they do what they're paid to do no matter what. Sometimes it's protection missions, or courier missions, or weeding gardens, and sometime it's clan eliminations and assassinations and spying. And sometimes it's things even darker than that. Shikamaru knows that.

But this is one of Konoha's elders, making use of his political power. This is Shikamaru's friend, trapped and angry and willing to kill to escape.

"If that's—Kiba could come back," he says, and the words come out something like plaintive. He sounds like a child, and he hates it. "If someone can figure out if it's true—"

Anko shakes her head, laying a hand on his back, and there's something dark in her eyes. "Utatane and Homura would never believe it even if they saw it themselves," she says, and the words are light, but there's an edge of anger underneath. "And besides, that wouldn't change what happened, you know? Danzō's still dead, and that's what matters to most people."

Shikamaru knocks her hand away. "So Kiba should have just gone along with it?" he demands, and his voice cracks. He has to swallow hard, looks away, and finds Aoba watching him, expression perfectly unreadable.

"There's no good answer, Shikamaru," he says quietly. "But with what we know, and what we can't prove, things have to stay like this. The only thing that's certain is that Kiba murdered Danzō, and Tsunade made him a missing-nin for it."

And then Akatsuki recruited him, or he went to them. Shikamaru looks down, and it feels hard to breathe, hard to think. Easy enough to think again of Kiba in the moment they were face to face, scarred and cold and unflinching, but now there's an image overlaying it, a terrified Kiba who fought back, who killed a man who fought in every world war and then fled, knowing there was no justifying it.

And then he attacked Naruto, hurt Shino, almost killed Kakashi. Then he joined the organization that wants to kidnap Naruto. But he was always Naruto's friend, and they strengthened that friendship after the Chuunin Exams. Kiba is a loyal person, Shikamaru has always known that about him. That he's trying to capture Naruto, that he'd go so far when Naruto had nothing to do with his situation in the village—it doesn't make sense.

There's also the note, Shikamaru thinks, letting his eyes close. The note sent to Genma was undoubtedly in Kiba's handwriting—Shikamaru has a good memory for such things. Recipes for poisons, Genma said, because it's his family Kiba got his poisoned weapons from. Long notes, because there were four scrolls that were each fairly large. And—after Teams 7 and 8's mission, there was that moment in the Hokage's office. Genma's body language was strange, and Tsunade had that expression, just for an instant—

With a groan, Neji stirs, and Shikamaru's head snaps up fast enough that his vision lurches nauseatingly. He strangles a groan too, putting a hand to his head, and a moment later cool hands settle on his temples.

"Easy," Yūgao murmurs, eyes narrowed in concentration. Her fingers flicker green, and she casts Shikamaru a tired smile and says, "I don't know enough to fix everything, but I can start things off. After a night's sleep you should be fine."

"Thanks," Shikamaru says, and means it. Yūgao almost managed to get Itachi before he caught her in a genjutsu, even drew blood more than once. That's…impressive. No one else managed that except for Anko.

"Hey there, how are you feeling?" Aoba asks, leaning over Neji with a raised brow. "Still fine?"

Neji makes an aggrieved sound and carefully raises a hand to rub at his forehead. "No sign of them?" he asks.

"Not yet," Aoba says with a shrug, and as if in response there's the distant boom of an explosion. Shikamaru twitches, and Aoba and Yūgao are instantly on their feet, spinning towards the source of the blast. When Shikamaru looks, there's a column of smoke visible through the treetops, hazy and uncertain in the falling darkness but definitely substantial.

"What do you wanna bet that's the bastard's base?" Anko says, viciously amused, and bounces on her toes. "I guess Akatsuki's not here to recruit him after all."

"It seems that way," Yūgao agrees, slowly sinking back down and releasing the hilt of her sword. "Maybe Orochimaru did something to offend them?"

"But how? He's got the cutest personality!" Anko jokes, as full of sharp edges as a handful of broken glass. Her eyes haven moved from the smoke, but when Yūgao catches her hand and tugs lightly she rocks back on her heels and crouches down, settling again.

Lightly, Aoba pushes Neji back down from where he's trying to get up. "Get some rest," he orders. "We'll see about scouting in the morning, but for now none of us are in a fit state to do anything."

Shikamaru breathes out, tugging at his earring and closing his eyes. He wants to sleep, but there are pieces laid out in front of him, things he wants to understand. Something to do with Kiba, and Genma, and he feels like if he worries at the threads for long enough they'll finally come loose.

---

"Finally, un!" Deidara says, dropping into the bath with a splash. Kiba rolls his eyes, but it's a little amused, too; Deidara has his hair pulled up in a loose bun on top of his head, and when Kiba looks at him out of the corner of his eye, he looks almost exactly like Ino.

"Didn't anyone ever teach you manners?" Kiba complains, but it hard to be too grouchy when he's submerged up to his chin in water that's on the edge of too hot, all of the grime from traveling and then the fight freshly scrubbed off. He might even manage to get the smell of snake out of his pores sometime this month.

Deidara makes a rude sound, closing his eyes and slumping back against the smooth stone. "It's not like anyone is here, un," he says, waving a hand.

The inn's more or less deserted, and Kiba doesn't think it's just from their presence. Orochimaru can't be good for business. It's a shame, though; the pool is pretty, ringed with rocks and trees and flowering bushes, and on one side the pool goes right up to the edge of the steep incline, looking out over the small valley as the ground falls away. Pushing away from the edge, Kiba drifts over to it, looking down into the darkness that's only broken by a few spots of light. There's splashing behind him as Deidara wades closer, and a moment later he collapses next to Kiba, folding his arms on top of a rock and resting his chin on them.

"Facing down your old village is shitty," Deidara says, and Kiba glances over at him in surprise. Deidara isn't looking at him, though; his eyes are trained on what must be a farmhouse far below, half-hidden by the curve of the forest. He looks vaguely unhappy, shoulders not tense but eyes heavy-lidded, and Kiba wants to say I'm sorry but it's not even vaguely close to the right thing.

"It shouldn't be," Kiba says, and it comes out rougher than he intends. It's a surprise, but he means it; what he's doing is for the good of Konoha, the good of Naruto, and he should be able to focus on that, keep moving, keep fighting. As long as Naruto survives, as long as the village is standing, that's enough. Except it's not, because Neji and Shikamaru and Yūgao are probably dead, and they would have died whether Kiba was here or not, would have been killed even if he turned on Hidan and Deidara and Itachi, and yet—

Deidara huffs. "But it is," he says, sounding disgusted. "Iwa is a shithole, and I always knew it. I even figured out more bullshit after I left, and still, the first time Kurotsuchi came after me I—"

He breaks off, and Kiba closes his eyes. He thinks of Naruto on the forest road, so determined. Thinks of Konan's words in the darkness, about almost being killed by a Konoha nin for a bag of rice when she was a child. There's no way she was lying—Kiba could smell the touch of old grief on her, the fury, the determination. That kind of thing can't be faked, not easily. Iwa is a shithole, he thinks, and can't help but wonder if Konoha is, too. Konan said the war ruined Ame, and Kiba hasn't been there, but he knows the basics. It's poor, barren, can barely support itself. Hana took a mission there once and said it was the most depressing place she'd ever been. And—how much of that is Konoha's doing? How much should Kiba care, when he's going to such lengths already?

"The Tsuchikage's granddaughter?" he asks instead of focusing on his thoughts, because Deidara has mentioned that name before. Arrogant little pill, he'd said, but this—this is something different.

Deidara's mouth pulls tight, and he buries his face in his arms. "Yeah," he says, and the disgust is back. It's more self-directed than anything, Kiba thinks. "She used to call me fucking Deidara-nii. What the hell."

And she came after him, once he left Iwa as a missing-nin. Probably tried to get him to come back, by the sound of it, and Deidara was tempted. But they've had at least one mission in Iwa, running messages to Sasori and picking up his reports, and Deidara hated it there. Had hated the Iwa nin they encountered, too. And yet—he can still feel something for Kurotsuchi. At least enough to get upset.

People Kiba grew up with are dead, just so he can save another one of his friends, keep Konoha safe. Shinobi aren't the good guys, and he knows that, has always known that. Deidara is a murderer, but most shinobi are. Deidara's killed shinobi from his own village, but Kiba has, too. He still remembers the way the knife slid into Danzō's gut, the surprise on the old man's face as the poison hit.

My first kill was a Konoha nin, Konan had said, cold and empty and quiet, and Kiba's was, too. Deidara hates his village, but he still remembers the girl who called him Deidara-nii. He still understands what it's like to face the place that created him, fight against people who are supposed to be comrades. Kiba wants to hate them, especially after today, especially after the fight and Deidara's gleeful destruction and Hidan's wanton violence. And yet…

It's all bitterly hilarious in the end.

Closing his eyes, Kiba tips his head back, breathing in the nighttime smells. Lots from the inn behind them, but there's also a faint breeze twisting up from the valley, carrying with it the scent of grass and leaves and weathered metal. A water wheel, probably, from the wet-wood smell, though Kiba isn't entirely certain. It makes him think of Hinata, guiltily honing her Suiton jutsu when she's supposed to be practicing the Gentle Fist style. He wonders how far she's come, if she's any better; it's been months, and he knows what she can do if she's determined. She just doesn't seem to know, and he was trying to push her, trying to get her out of her comfort zone just a little. Trying to bring up Shino more often, even if it was just in the frame of their rivalry, so that people would pay attention. Kurenai used to smile at him whenever he did, knowing and warm, and—

Kiba gave all of them up to find himself in this moment, shoulder to shoulder with a murderous missing-nin who just killed some of Kiba's friends, who killed Kiba's crush. And yet Kiba wants to lean over, knock their shoulders together so Deidara loses that dark, grim expression and looks up again. Kiba misses his team, misses his family so damn much that it hurts, but here and now, he just feels confused. Not quite conflicted, but—maybe something similar. Mixed up, like he's gotten turned around in a forest that all smells exactly the same, and he can't see his way out of the trees.

---

For the first time in Shikamaru's life, sleep won't come.

Everyone else is sacked out, quiet and still, and the camp is dark and perfectly silent. Even having to bed down on bare ground normally doesn't bother Shikamaru too much, but dawn is breaking and he's only caught a few moments of rest. Every other moment has been spent turning over Aoba's words, Asuma's, the way Kiba reacted, the memory of Teams 7 and 8 limping back to Konoha after their mission, the note to Genma, Genma's reaction—

There's too much but also not enough. It feels a little like trying to sort through a pile of puzzle pieces only to realize there's not one or two puzzles in the pile, but dozens, just similar enough that everything looks alike. Shikamaru knows he's good at working things out, at planning moves and making tactical decisions, but this is something entirely different and a thousand times more frustrating.

Groaning inwardly, he finally give up on sleep and sits up, wondering why it's chosen now of all times to betray him. His head still aches, and he can feel the point where Kiba headbutted him like a throbbing bruise, but even closing his eyes can't stop the whirl of his thoughts, obsessive and caught up in the mystery. Shikamaru's heard his father complain about insomnia before, but he'd never realized it can feel like this, a river in flood that he can't dam up.

There's no use staying where he is, likely disturbing the rest of the team. Shikamaru hauls himself to his feet, pulling a twig from his hair, and carefully picks his way to the edge of the camp, then past the circle of bushes edging the island. It's still dark, the air cool, and he rubs a hand over his arms, then shakes himself and checks the far shore. He can't see anyone, and Aoba's crows are still in the trees, quiet and watchful.

Ino would tell him to go train. Chōji would remind him to get breakfast. All Shikamaru wants to do is make his brain go quiet for a little while, and preferably get some answers, but he doesn't know how. The only person who knows for certain what happened with Danzō that night is Kiba, and judging by his reaction to Shikamaru and the rest of the team yesterday, he's not about to sit down and spill his problems to a persona he used to know. But—

Shikamaru can't sleep because of what he knows, and what Aoba said yesterday about trauma as driving force—what if that's true? What if Kiba really is being pushed by something terrible that happened to him? Shikamaru can't imagine that he'd rest any easier, honestly. And odds are, the Akatsuki team is staying at the inn up ahead. If Shikamaru goes there, if he scouts it out, maybe finds some clue as to Kiba's mental state, that might help him work things out. People tend to give away more than they know, and Shikamaru can probably pick up on hints Kiba doesn't even mean to drop. Or, if Kiba isn't there, any information he can get on one of the other members would be helpful. Konoha doesn't have pretty much any information on Akatsuki, and even little things can help in the long run.

Decided, Shikamaru tugs his chuunin vest a little straighter and glances up at one of the crows. "Tell Aoba I've gone to scout when he wakes up," he says, and the bird cocks its head, then bobs in agreement. Relieved, Shikamaru nods back, then steps out onto the water of the lake and hurries across, the open expanse an itch at the back of his neck. Uncomfortable, when there could be eyes on him, and it makes him quicker in a way even Asuma at his heels has never managed.

Shikamaru wonders, just a little, what his team would say if they were here. Nothing complimentary, probably, and he can't help but agree with them, deep down in a dark, frustrated place. He didn't see before. Didn't realize. He's supposed to be a genius, but the reality of being a shinobi, having lives depending on him, having to make choices and sacrifices, having to fight or die, never made an impact before. He just—hadn't understood.

Again, he thinks of Kiba, scar slanting across his clan markings, hair grown long and shaggy around his face. Not the genin he knew, not at all, and he wonders if Kiba had his own realization. Not the same, but—

Inuzuka think as a pack, one part of a whole. They're better at teamwork than most, don't tend to go off on their own, follow orders well. They're used to existing as cogs in a greater mechanism, and have been since long before Konoha was even a thought. For Kiba to keep a secret like what Danzō was doing to him for him to hide that and not ask for help and then run, what kind of understanding did he come to? That no one was going to help him? That no one could?

Shikamaru feels sick just thinking it. Wants to stop and gag and put his head between his knees again, but he forces himself to keep moving, to leap from the bank to the treeline. It would be so much easier to stop, to go bac to camp, to lie down and shut his eyes and try for sleep again, but Shikamaru can't get the image of Kiba walking out of the hollow to leave his mind. The blond had slung an arm over his shoulder, and the unkillable man had elbowed him playfully, and they'd been laughing and joking and…

A team. Kiba found himself a new team. Those three and the woman who was with him when Teams 7 and 8 met him, the other Akatsuki members. They're his new team. He abandoned Konoha, probably thinking that no one would save him, no one would help him, and he was right. As soon as people found out what he'd done, he was labeled a missing-nin, and now the only people who will take him are other missing-nin, cold and cruel and insane.

Shikamaru doesn't ever want to think that Kiba fits in with them, but…what if he does?

Gritting his teeth, Shikamaru forces himself to pause, high up in an oak tree. He's close to the inn, but he needs to be careful about this. Aoba very deliberately made it look like most of their squad had died, and if Shikamaru ruins that ruse, Akatsuki might decide to hunt them down. As they are now, they won't survive something like that. So he can't leave traces, and he'll have to be careful of the wind's direction, given Kiba's nose. If any of the others have sensor abilities, he's probably screwed, but he doesn't think they do. Anko was able to take them by surprise before, and so was Aoba, arriving late to the fight. So that's not a problem, but Kiba will be. A tracker's nose, and an unparalleled awareness of the scents around him, won't exactly be easy to fool without preparation.

Shikamaru is downwind right now, at least, and hidden in the trees. The inn is up ahead, not completely ringed by forest, but there's enough cover that Shikamaru won't be obvious without someone actually looking for him. And if the Akatsuki members are sure that his squad is dead, that's another advantage. He can do this. He'll just…have to be careful.

Once, Shikamaru would have said he was good at careful. But now, after yesterday, he's not entirely sure.

Settling on his heels, he breathes out, scanning the front of the building. There are shadows moving in a few of the rooms, people rising, a woman in an apron sweeping the stone of the entrance. Shikamaru can't see anything suspicious, though; there are no Akatsuki cloaks hung out to dry, no bloody bodies stacked in front of a particular door. Just people, getting ready for the day, and Shikamaru considers circling around to the back, checking the rooms there—

"Stupid fucking asshole!" a voice shouts, and the blond careens out of the inn, trips over the edge of the cobblestones, and almost falls flat on his face. Catches himself just in time, then rakes his long hair out of his face and turns like he's going to march back into the inn, puffed up and furious.

There's a laugh, familiar and sharp, and Kiba saunters out the door a moment later, grinning. "Nice morning?" he asks, snickering.

The blond snarls and throws his untied hitai-ate at Kiba. "Fucking puppy!" he snaps. "Go pee on that shithead's bed and I'll pay you half of my mission cut, un!"

"Fuck off," Kiba retorts, rolling his eyes, then leans in close and sniffs. Deliberate, Shikamaru thinks—he's making a show of it, since he doesn't actually need to be that close to catch a scent. When he pulls back, his grin is back, and even wider than before. "Hidan dumped the snake asshole in bed with you?"

"I'm going to cut his throat and stuff him full of clay, un!" The blond fists his hands, pure rage written over his face. Shikamaru can't help the shiver of trepidation that washes down his spine, because he's seen Ino wear that exact same look, and it never ends well. "If I have to wake up to that shitty Kabuto's fucking face, everyone else has to suffer with me, un."

Kiba laughs, and when the blond takes a swing at him, he dances back out of reach. "Come on, Deidara," he taunts. "If you can't even hit me, how the hell are you supposed to take out Hidan?"

Deidara gives him a dark look, but folds his arms over his chest. "If I hit you, Konan will have my guts as koto strings," he says disgustedly. "But that shithead is fair game. And if I get Kabuto too, that's just fucking collateral, un."

"Sasori will kill you before Konan manages it, if you do that," Kiba warns, then steps away. "I'm going to train, you coming?"

Deidara levels him with a disbelieving look. "It's damn, un," he protests, then before Kiba can respond he waves him off. "You idiots and your obsessions with training, un. You're just like Kurotsuchi."

Kiba grins, like this is a compliment instead of an insult. "And you're lazy," he retorts, ducks the kunai Deidara launches at his head, and picks up a loping run as he heads into the woods.

With a muffled curse, Shikamaru follows, skirting the edge of the inn and keeping to the deep trees. Kiba isn't trying to hide his path, and he's using an old deer trail that cuts through the forest and along the edge of a small stream, so he's not hard to track, but Shikamaru isn't used to having to pay attention to the wind, to making sure he keeps to the highest branches so he won't leave a noticeable scent to mark his path. The deer in the Nara forest have good noses, but they're also perfectly tame, and as long as Shikamaru doesn't wander around smelling like blood, they never seem to care.

By the time he manages to find where Kiba stopped, Kiba is halfway through a kata, slow and careful to start with. It's a familiar pattern that Shikamaru has seen him use before, basic Inuzuka taijutsu, and it looks strange without Akamaru to copy his movements, to echo him perfectly. Shikamaru pauses, frowning, because it's just—odd. Almost eerie, to see Kiba without his ninken, and Shikamaru knows he left Akamaru behind, has seen the puppy in the village with Shino or Hinata or Naruto, but knowing is one thing. Seeing the effect is another entirely, and it's unsettling.

As he watches, Kiba shifts, falling out of the first kata and drawing the twin knives sheathed along his thighs. He steps forward into another pattern, but this isn't an Inuzuka kata. It's something entirely different, uses the knives to the full advantage of their added reach, focuses on skimming cuts. Poison, Kurenai said, poisoned knives, and—

Odd. Odd that Kiba knows this kata when it's so clearly not an Inuzuka one, when it's designed with the poisoned knives in mind. The knives Kiba stole from the Shiranui, from Genma. It's a kata that's made for blades and poison and swift footwork, and Shikamaru digs his fingers into the trunk of the tree trying to even out his breath, trying to think.

Kiba sent notes to Genma. Kiba took Genma's knives. Kiba knows a kata that's likely Shiranui Clan-specific.

Kiba's in the midst of an organization that's specifically intended to hunt down jinchuuriki like Naruto. Kiba was Naruto's friend. Kiba is stupidly, bewilderingly, astonishingly loyal.

Someone hurt Kiba, and he killed them, and he became a missing-nin. And then, months later, he joined a group of missing-nin hunting down the jinchuuriki.

Opportunity, Shikamaru thinks distantly, distractedly. He breathes, and weighs what he knows, and remembers the look on Tsunade's face when she heard that Kiba was dangerous and in league with Akatsuki. Something bright, Shikamaru had recognized, and even time and distance haven't changed his impression. It wasn't—it wasn't a happy expression, but there was something in it that was close. Victory, maybe, or satisfaction.

Aoba was telling the truth when he said that Kiba's motivations didn't matter. Shikamaru's heard his father's mutterings about the council enough to know what Utatane and Homura are like. They're perfectly devoted to Danzō, and as an elder, as an advisor, as a highly-respected jounin and veteran, Danzō still has a lot of allies. If Kiba ever goes back to Konoha, they're going to demand his death, regardless of his reasons. Regardless of anything he's done since. Shikamaru knows that, even as he breathes out. Even as he brings his hands up, shapes his fingers into the Rat Seal, and lets his eyes half-close as he concentrates.

It's early morning. The sun is only just starting to rise, and right now, the world is more shadow than light. Shikamaru doesn't have enough chakra to touch all of them, but he doesn't need to. What shadows are already in the clearing are more than enough. Half a second of concentration, a surge of intent, and the shadows snap closed like a noose pulling tight.

Kiba catches the flicker of movement half an instant too late. His head snaps up, and he turns the low twist of the kata into a high leap, launching himself up and over the first lash of shadow. Shikamaru sees the instant he realizes what's happening, hears the sharp curse as Kiba tries to redirect, but there's no time. He hits the ground in a crouch, tumbles forward, dodges the next two twists of darkness—

Two steps ahead, but not three. The last dodge puts him right in line with Shikamaru's tree, and the shadow surges up, catches his limbs and pulls tight, and Shikamaru feels the jutsu settle, a sudden awareness of someone else's kin under his control. He breathes out, rising to his feet, and leaps down from the branch, landing lightly right in front of his former friend.

"Kiba," he says, and doesn't let himself look away.

Shock twists Kiba's features, then fury. "Shikamaru," he spits back. "I thought Deidara killed you. Managed to wiggle out of it, huh?"

"More or less," Shikamaru says lazily, opening his fingers to make Kiba drop the knives and then taking four long steps forward. Kiba copies him, even though Shikamaru can see him fighting the Shadow Bind, and he snarls as Shikamaru bends down to carefully pick up his daggers.

"Keep your damn hands off of those," he snaps, and just for a moment Shikamaru has to double down on the grip of his shadows to keep Kiba from breaking free.

"Because they're poisoned?" Shikamaru asks dryly. "Or because I'm going to give them back to the clan you stole them from?"

It's a bluff. Shikamaru doesn't want to give them back to Genma, not really. All he wants is answers. But he can see Kiba's expression twist, the flicker of his eyes to the blades and then back up. Indecision, some level of panic, and it makes Shikamaru's throat a little tight that he's the one causing it, but—

There's a bruise shaped like Kiba's forehead spreading between his eyes. He's not feeling that sympathetic.

"Because they're mine," Kiba snaps. "You Konoha assholes keep getting in my way and I'm getting tired of it."

Shikamaru considers this for a moment, weighing his next words. "Naruto keeps crying," he finally says, and has the satisfaction of catching the faintest flicker running through Kiba's eyes. just an instant, and Shikamaru likely wouldn't catch it if he weren't looking for it, but it's there. Just like with Genma, the faintest reaction that's only a tell when someone knows what to look for. Shikamaru files the thought away to consider later, breathes out, and says, "Your sister's started taking back-to-back missions, too. My father almost took her off the roster for suicidal tendencies."

This time the reaction is easier to see. Almost a flinch, really, and Shikamaru smiles thinly, tips his head as he watches Kiba carefully. "Those new friends of yours seem scary," he allows. "What do they give you?"

"An outlet," Kiba says, and it's almost a growl. There's almost fury in his eyes. Almost, but…not quite, Shikamaru thinks. "For how I want to fucking murder every Konoha bastard who comes after me."

"And Itachi?" Shikamaru asks. "Even the fact that he killed every Uchiha except for Sasuke and tortured our classmate doesn't matter?"

Kiba bares his teeth, and it's nowhere close to a smile. "What," he says, with a barking laugh. "You think everyone else in that shitty village has their hands clean? Itachi's batshit, but it's not like the rest of Konoha is all that much better. Look at fucking Danzō, with his Root. The Sandaime had to know about that shit."

"Probably," Shikamaru agrees, and he's smart. He's seen bits and pieces of his father's work, of the ANBU missions, of the after-effects of what Konoha does. They're a shinobi village; Shikamaru has always known that. Most of the clan kids do. "But that's justification, Kiba. That's not why you left."

Kiba's next breath shakes, anger and fury and bitter, twisted humor. "You want to know, Shikamaru?" he challenges, and laughs. "Fuck that. All you want is to lie down and sleep away your problems. But not all of us can do that. Not all of us are born geniuses. Some of us have to fight for a little recognition and a little bit of skill. Not that you'd know what that's like."

It stings, just a little, especially in light of what Shikamaru's come to realize about himself in the last twenty-four hours. True, though, and he doesn't let it rattle him, tips his head in acceptance of the insult and says, "Tell me that you wouldn't sleep away your problems if you could."

Kiba's mouth twists, angry and derisive, and it's such a strange look on him, so unfamiliar, that Shikamaru almost takes a step back. "Not hardly," he says. "I've got plans, and I'm not going to let anyone get in the way of them. Not you, and not the little brat I used to be. So just—"

"Sorry about this," Shikamaru says, though he doesn't fully mean it, and snaps his head back hard. Kiba's eyes widen, but he doesn't even have time to struggle. His skull slams into the tree behind him hard enough to make Shikamaru wince, and he collapses to the ground, unconscious.

"Ugh," Shikamaru mutters, letting his Shadow Bind drop, and rubs a hand over his face. This was…not well thought out. Not at all. But he did it, and now he has to figure out what to do next.

Aoba might be sympathetic, but he's also the squad leader, and he knows his duties. He'll wrap Kiba up in seals and ninja wire and drag him back to Konoha to be executed. Shikamaru isn't about to let that happen. Not now, not with so many questions unanswered. But they can't stay here, either, with the inn and the rest of Akatsuki so close. Getting caught by them would mean Shikamaru's death sentence, and he's not overly enthusiastic about the idea.

Damn it. There had to have been a better way to do this. Why didn't he think of it?

Slowly, carefully, Shikamaru lets out a breath. Because he saw a chance and took it. because there was half an instant when he could see something, some sort of connection between the unconnected pieces, and all he wanted was to see if he was right. And, since Kiba is the only one who could possibly confirm that, he needs to get the answer from Kiba himself, who likely won't talk if given the choice.

"Troublesome," Shikamaru says, and has never meant it more. He stalks forward, crouches down to heave Kiba over his shoulder, and staggers back to his feet, calling up the layout of the area as best he can remember. There's a valley to the east, below the cliff the inn sits on, but it's full of water and wet earth and tall trees and a lot of things that can cover his passage. It's as good a hiding spot as any, and Shikamaru steels himself, tightens his grip on Kiba, and starts moving.

---

Kiba said the sedative on his knife needs an antidote administered before the victim can wake up, and while Deidara hadn't quite thought he was bragging—Konan would have knocked him on his ass for that kind of shit—he hadn't exactly been convinced. The fact that it's been twelve hours and Kabuto isn't even stirring, though, is a sign in Kiba's favor.

"Anything?" Hidan asks, though he's not paying attention to much more than the poison bomb stolen from Kiba's pack, which he's tossing towards the ceiling like it's a little brat's ball. Deidara rolls his eyes, contemplating flicking a Katon jutsu at it and making it explode, but he squashes the impulse. He's in the room, after all, and Kiba's poison has a tendency to spread.

"Nothing from this asshole, un," he says, and gives the dick drawn on Kabuto's cheek one last flourish before turning his attention to the mustache and goatee he started. It would be nice if he had other colors, but his only permanent marker is plain black, so he has to make do. "And nothing from the puppy, either."

Hidan scoffs, and the glass orb taps the ceiling. "Who needs that much fucking training?" he demands. "I'm fucking fantastic and I don't train nearly as much as he does."

Just for fun, Deidara adds a crown of starts to the dick. "He's—"

Still just a kid, he's going to say, but before he can, a throat clears from the doorway. "He's late," Itachi says quietly. "Kiba's normal routine runs for an hour and thirty-five minutes. It's been two hours and forty-seven."

"That's fucking creepy, un," Deidara complains, but he caps his pen and rises to his feet. Kabuto's face is mostly covered anyway, and he was getting bored. "Do you time all of us like that, creeper?"

Itachi blinks at him, just once. "It's simply knowledge," he says, and Deidara wants to punch him in his stupid, placid face and finally, finally get a reaction from the shitty bastard.

"It's knowledge that Kiba's late," he snaps. "And we need to leave, un. Sasori wants us back as soon as possible."

Itachi pauses for a long moment, and his eyes are perfectly cold, his expression like marble, unmoving. "Then we should leave," he says, as if it's just that simple.

"Fucking finally," Hidan says, and stuffs the bomb into his pocket, rising from the bed. He grabs his scythe and pack, shouldering both, and then grabs Kabuto and hauls him up. "It's fucking boring in this place, let's go."

Deidara splutters, caught off guard. "Wait, damn it!" he snaps. "What about the puppy?"

"Perhaps he deserted," Itachi says, flat and uncaring, and turns to leave the room. "He is a traitor to Konoha. There is no saying what else he might betray."

Maybe he's had too much exposure to Kiba, but Deidara growls, feels indignation and fury in equal measure bubbling up in his chest. Maybe it's the fact that can't hear one of Itachi's orders without a knee-jerk contrariness surging to the forefront, but he plants his feet, crosses his arms over his chest, and says, "Konan will gut us if we come back without the puppy, un."

Hidan makes a loud, rude sound, and damn it, Deidara can't even fucking imagine how twisted his taste has gotten that the asshole ever looked vaguely appealing. "Konan's a missing-nin," he scoffs. "And so's the puppy. He'll find his way back, or she can hunt him down and spank him later."

Deidara watches the door swing shut behind them, closes his eyes, breathes out. Kiba's dedicated to his training, but he keeps a schedule. For him to be a full hour over it is weird, and Deidara shouldn't care, but—

He never wanted to be part of Akatsuki. If Itachi hadn't beaten him, he'd have blown them off, gotten the hell out of there and kept making a living as a mercenary missing-nin with a valuable skillset. And, sometimes, he looks at Kiba, running from his own village, full of fear and fire and determination and hatred, and thinks that they're the same in a way. When Kiba faced down his village yesterday, he'd reacted like Deidara had, the first time. Pushed down his feelings, buried them, but—Deidara could see it.

"Fuck," Deidara mutters, shoving his hair out of his eyes, tucking it back behind his ears. He hasn't told anyone about Kurotsuchi before, and maybe that's because no one has asked, but Kiba is the first person he's wanted to tell. Akatsuki doesn't invite closeness. They're all bastards of one color or another, all screwed in the head and out for themselves, and Kiba's been dropped into the middle of that, the same as all the rest of them, but different, too.

He's not hard. Not the way Pein and Sasori and Kakuzu are. Not quite the same type of cold. Angry, of course, but—

It's more like Deidara's anger than anything, and that makes Deidara almost like him.

Besides, Konan really will kill them if they come back without her puppy.

Groaning, because this is fucking stupid and he's doing it anyway, Deidara grabs his pack, then shoves the window open and vaults out, landing in the courtyard just as Itachi and Hidan emerge from the inn.

"I'm going after Kiba," he says. "He probably just fell asleep or some shit, un. We'll catch up."

Itachi stares at him for a long moment, and Deidara hates his face. He's pretty, and he's strong, and he makes Deidara want to scream and claw and rip and kiss him, but he strangles down the urge and spits, "Got a problem with that, fuck-face?"

There's the faintest change to the slant of Itachi's mouth, almost like consternation. "He has no loyalty," he says quietly.

The words make Deidara laugh, sandpaper-rough in his throat. "You don't know the first fucking thing about him. Or loyalty," he says, because he remembers the woods yesterday, when they were scouting together. Remembers the look on Kiba's face when he said Itachi slaughtered his own clan, and the wary, almost hostile distance he keeps from Itachi at all times. Kiba gets loyalty. Deidara gets it too, especially Kiba's type. Wounded loyalty, maybe, but it's still there. Kiba's still looking for someone to give it to.

Who knows, maybe Deidara still has a thread of that in him, too. Kurotsuchi certainly thought so.

"Later, assholes," Deidara says, and turns on his heel. He remembers the direction Kiba disappeared in this morning, and despite what he said to Hidan, he has a sinking feeling that Kiba didn't just pass out somewhere. He'd have come back if he could. They're a team, after all, and Kiba's still stupid enough to believe that means something.

Not that Deidara can talk, because he's stomping into the fucking forest after Kiba's lost ass. Apparently he's fooled himself into believing it means something, too.

---

Karin is tired and stumbling by the time she makes it to Konoha's gates, sandals dragging, barely able to see through the dim dawn light. Her feet hurt, and her head is spinning, but her first glimpse of greenery-topped walls feels like confirmation that she's finally escaped Orochimaru. Shivering, she pulls herself up, straightens as best she can, and wishes briefly that she hadn't dropped her hitai-ate in Kusa when Orochimaru first found her. Unaffiliated shinobi are usually at least mildly mistrusted, and she doesn't know what she'll do if they stop her and don't let her into the village.

Sneaking in is always an option. Karin breathes out, tightening her grip on the scroll she's carrying. She promised Kiba she would get his message to Shiranui Genma. If they refuse her entrance, she'll just find a way in that isn't through the gates.

The doors are already standing open, though. Despite the fact that the sun is only just rising, there's already a group of travelers heading out, waving goodbye to the pair of shinobi manning the gates. One waves back, and the other nods, busy scribbling something across a clipboard. Behind them, on the other side of the gate, Konoha is a fire-bright blaze full to bursting with chakra, and Karin wants to squint even though she knows it won't make a difference. She can pick out more signatures, though, two more shinobi on the inside of the gate, two squads a distance away, heading for the entrance. Lots of security, she thinks, and has to keep her feet from faltering.

The faint stumble is enough to make the kunoichi look up, one hand automatically going to a scroll at her belt, but as soon as she sees Karin she smiles brightly. She steps out into the path, but her chakra is soft and quiet, not anything like hostile, and Karin is a little ashamed of how her relief shakes out of her, almost a silent sob. Smoky brown eyes widen in alarm, and the kunoichi takes two quick steps, grabbing Karin's elbow to steady her.

"Are you okay?" she asks, and her fingers are heavily callused and stained with ink, but they're gentle too.

Karin closes her eyes, lets herself lean on the girl for a moment, and then pulls away, forces herself upright. "I'm sorry," she says, shoving her glasses into place, and it feels like shame, or maybe like weakness. "I just—"

The girl's smile is pretty, sweet. "You look like you've been traveling for a long time," she says. "To get here?"

Karin nods, fingers tightening on Kiba's scroll. "I'm delivering a message," she says, because that seems like the easiest way to get into the village. "To Shiranui Genma."

"Oh!" The girl grins, bright and suddenly enthusiastic. "He's in the village right now, and I think he's off until noon today. Do you want me to show you the way to his house?"

Konoha feels massive and overwhelming even from outside, and the thought of having help navigating it makes Karin's whole body want to slump. "Yes please," she says, and if it's pathetic she can't even bring herself to care. She's been running since she left Oto, and before that Orochimaru and Kimimaro barely stopped on the trek from Kusa. She's tired, and the possibility of rest is still probably hours away, even though she's reached Konoha.

"Are you okay for a minute, Izumo?" the girl asks, turning to look at her fellow guard.

The older chuunin gives an affirmative sign. "Kō and Torune are here, too," he reminds her with a smile. "Just get back before your shift is over, all right?"

With a laugh, the girl steps up next to Karin a little closer, hand still cupped under her elbow. "I'm not that slow," she defends, and turns that smile on Karin. "All right, let's go! You look like you could use some time to sit down."

"I wanted to get here quickly," Karin says, and it's true. Kiba was so determined to get her out of Oto, was so sad at the same time. His chakra ached, so wistful it made Karin want to cry when it wrapped around her. The spark of hope when he told her about another Uzumaki, about finding a place in Konoha—that was so bright that Karin wanted to cling to it. Still wants to, and if she can honor that by doing what Kiba asked her to, she will.

"That's good in a messenger, right?" The girl steers her through the gate, smiling at a lean man with almost colorless eyes and a boy wrapped from head to toe in black, with a mask over the top half of his face. The pale-eyed man nods back, while the other shows no reaction at all. If it bothers the kunoichi, she doesn't show it, just guides Karin right into the maze of half-overgrown streets. Karin saw Konoha before, during the Exams, but seeing it now, without the stress of competing, feels a lot calmer and more soothing, even with the wild tangle of chakra here.

"I'm Karin," she says belatedly, then remembers she can't say she's from Oto, won't say she's from Kusa. Scrabbles for a location, and—

Just for a moment, all she can think of is her mother, red hair and a tired smile and cool hands. She was always tired, in Kusa, but sometimes, when her work was light and she didn't have to stay late, she would sit next to Karin's bed at night and tell her stories about a village on an island and how the whirlpools made rainbows of mist dance across the shore.

The memory crystalizes into determination, slides into quiet rebellion. "From Uzushio," she finishes, and it's a defiance of Kusa, of Orochimaru, even if no one else will ever know.

"I'm Tenten," the other girl offers, and when Karin glances at her, her eyes are bright with something that might be interest. "Uzushio? I've studied fuinjutsu from there, but I don't think I've ever met someone from Whirlpool."

"It's mostly gone now," Karin admits, and nudges at her glasses again, trying to hide any trace of panic in her expression. She doesn't know anything about Uzushio's fuinjutsu, and she's not sure she knows enough about its actual history to survive this conversation, either. "A messenger job to Konoha seemed like a good idea."

"Well, Konoha and Uzushio were always allies," Tenten says cheerfully, and then thankfully, blessedly, she changes the topic. "Are you going to stay in Konoha for a few days? I can show you around the village if you want."

Konoha nin are kind. Karin sinks her teeth into her lip, trying to contain the curl of emotion in her chest. First Sasuke during the Exams, and then Kiba in Oto, and now Tenten here. Konoha nin are kind, and Karin wants to stay here, close to that kindness. Kusa was awful, and cold, and cruel in every way, but Tenten's hand is warm on her arm. She's holding Karin up, offering friendship without even hesitating, and Karin thought she cried more than enough when Kiba gave her a way out of Orochimaru's control, but her eyes are hot again.

"Thanks," she says, ducking her head. "I—I would really like that."

Tenten laughs, not mean but sweet. "Of course," she says. "Konoha looks intimidating, but it's a nice place."

"It is," Karin says, and she doesn't need to see more to know that. Between Kiba and Tenten and Sasuke, it's been proven more than well enough. She glances around them, because they're headed away from the village center, out towards long stretches of green and brown that are probably training fields. A path curves off from the main road, turns past a stand of cherry trees with glossy leaves, and beyond it is a bridge over a small stream, a wall carved with a clan seal that looks like a spark of misty light. The gate stands open, and the air smells sweet, like flowers blooming.

"That's the Shiranui Clan lands," Tenten says, and offers Karin a smile. "Do you want me to walk you up?"

Karin almost winces. She does, but it's a bad idea given what she's here to do. "No," she says, and smiles back. "But thanks for leading me here. I appreciate it."

Tenten winks and gives her a silly salute. "No problem!" she says brightly. "If you want to find me, I'm on shift at the gate until two today, and the same tomorrow, but then I'm free."

"I'll do that," Karin promises, and means it. if she's going to be staying in Konoha, it would be nice to have a friend, and Tenten seems like she would make a good one. As Tenten turns and picks up a trot, she waves, and Karin waves back, watching her until she's out of sight. Then, taking a breath, she turns back to face the house and steels herself.

If Genma is Kiba's handler, and Kiba sent her, she can trust him. She has Kiba's message, and Kiba's code, and she knows, which should be proof enough. Hopefully this won't end with her in an interrogation room, but—even if it does, at least it's not one of Orochimaru's labs.

Setting her shoulders, Karin lifts her chin, then marches through the gate, up the stone path, and straight to the door. She can feel chakra inside the house, quiet but alert, so Genma is at least awake. That's good enough, so Karin reaches out, raps her knuckles against the wood, and waits.

She doesn't have to wait long. Almost instantly, the chakra in the house is moving, approaching the front, and a moment later a lock is being undone, a seal deactivated. The door swings open, and the man who raises an eyebrow is undoubtedly a shinobi, senbon between his teeth, something sharp and herbal clinging to his skin. He looks her over, quick assessment of a possible threat, and doesn't relax on seeing she's just a genin, and a dusty, dirty, exhausted one at that.

"Can I help you?" he asks lightly.

Easy to assume this is the man she's looking for, especially since it's his house and he's the only one here, but Karin still asks, "Shiranui Genma?"

The man's smile is slightly crooked, but honest. "That's me," he agrees, and his eyes flicker to the scroll she's clutching. "You have a message?"

Karin has been repeating two phrases to herself for the last twenty-four hours, terrified of what might happen if she didn't remember them correctly. "Pink rose," she blurts. "And white camellia."

Immediately, the man's eyes widen, his shoulders stiffen. His glaze flickers to the path behind her, then across to the forest, and he steps back, pulling the door with him. "Come on in," he says, an order rather than a request, but Karin is more than happy to duck past him, quickly tugging off her sandals and following Genma deeper into the house. A gesture from him makes seals spring up behind them, a tight net of chakra that snaps closed over the house, but it's defensive rather than aggressive, makes Karin feel like a blanket just settled over her to block out the rest of the world.

"Kiba sent you?" Genma asks over his shoulder, stepping into a large kitchen. "Where did he find you?"

"Oto," Karin says, not about to lie to him, not when telling the truth could help keep Kiba alive. "Orochimaru took me in, but he was running experiments on me, and when Kiba found me, and when I told him I was an Uzumaki —"

Genma stills, hand stretched up to take a glass from the cupboard. Then, slowly, he resumes his movement, fills it with water from the sink and turns, setting it on the table and nodding to the chair in front of it. "Uzumaki, huh?" he asks wryly, and pulls the senbon from his mouth, leaning back against the counter and flipping it through his fingers. "Yeah, that would probably be enough to make Kiba do something reckless."

Gratefully, Karin slides into the seat, setting the scroll on the table, then picking up the water and taking a long swallow. "I'm not going to tell anyone," she offers, and meets hazel eyes as squarely as she can. "He—he was nice."

Genma smiles at that, small and sad. "Yeah," he says tiredly. "He's one of the nicest damn people I've ever met, and a hell of a shinobi." He rubs a hand over his face, then snorts. "You have no idea how nice it is to hear someone say that and mean it."

Karin curls her fingers around the glass, and for the first time she really thinks about Kiba being a spy, thinks of the slashed hitai-ate and what it means. No one in Konoha except for Genma and maybe his superiors really know that Kiba isn't a traitor. They probably hate him here. And—and that's terrible, and it hurts, deep down in Karin's chest. She can't help a sound that tears from her, not quite a sob, and ducks her head, setting the glass down and shoving up her glasses to press her palms against her eyes. She's not going to cry. Kiba's a spy but he's strong, he's still kind, and Karin knows that, even if no one else does. That's going to have to be enough.

There's a soft sigh, a step. A moment later, a hand settles in Karin's hair, and Genma crouches down next to her chair. "Well," he says gently, "you already know, but I'm Shiranui Genma, Kiba's handler. And if he sent you here with those words, it means he trusts you a hell of a lot. So welcome to Konoha."

Even with Kiba's assurances, even with her own determination, Karin hadn't really expected to be allowed in, to be welcomed. She raises her head to stare at Genma, startled, and he doesn't pull away, keeps his hand on her hair and smiles at her. And—Karin wasn't expecting it, but she wanted it, so very desperately that getting it almost feels impossible.

"I'm—I'm Uzumaki Karin," she says. Closes her hands into fists, thinks of the run here, desperate and terrified of Kimimaro or Kabuto or Orochimaru on her heels, and asks before she can help herself, "How do you know?"

Genma pauses, watching her for a moment, considering something. Then he rises to his feet, offering her his hand, and tips his head towards the wide kitchen window. "Can I show you something?" he asks.

A little bewildered, Karin takes his hand, lets him pull her to her feet and over to the window. There's a garden outside, lush and almost wild, only just contained by the walls on either side. Leaning forward, Genma points to a stand of rose bushes along one wall. "Pink roses," he says, "for trust. Kiba wouldn't have sent you with that message if he didn't mean it."

Karin swallows, wrapping her arms around herself. She met Kiba for maybe twenty minutes, but he still trusted her without hesitation. He took one look at her and decided she needed help, and then he helped her. Gave her bruise cream, gave her a place to go and an ally there, even though by all rights he should have killed her for interrupting his mission halfway through.

"And— the white camellia?" she asks carefully, sweeping a look over the garden to find it. When she does, the bush is in the very far corner, right beside the gate, with a scattering of white blooms on the ground beneath it.

Another long second of silence stretches, and then Genma hums lightly. "Waiting," he says. "Kiba's in the middle of things, and he's not coming back any time soon."

"Oh," Karin says, and there's a sinking feeling in her chest, even though that's logical. Kiba is on a mission, a long-term one, and it he seemed like he was in a position to do things. But it's still hard to hear, even if Karin might not have expected differently.

"Yeah." Genma's expression is wry, but he puts a hand on her shoulder for an instant before he pulls away. "I've got an extra room collecting dust, if you want it. and I'll talk to the Hokage about getting you registered as a Konoha nin as soon as my shift with her starts this afternoon. In the meantime, help yourself to anything you want in the house. I was about to make breakfast, if you want some food."

Karin doesn't have the first idea how to react to that, but before she has to come up with a response, there's a knock at the door, a cautious crackle from the wards. Karin flinches at the flash of brightness, shoving her glasses up higher like that can block it, and Genma makes a sound of annoyance. He turns, and quick footsteps sound as he heads for the front. Karin follows, though not all the way; she stays half-hidden behind the corner of the kitchen, peeking out to check who it is with visions of Kimimaro or Kabuto spinning in her head. Ridiculous, illogical, but her heart is pounding and she can't make it stop.

It's not either of them, though, or anyone else Karin met in Oto. When the door opens, there's a young woman on the other side, with long brown hair caught in a tail and inverted red triangles on her cheeks, just like Kiba's. Three large brown-and-white dogs are milling around her, though she doesn't even seem to notice as she gives Genma a grin that's full of teeth.

"Sorry, Shiranui," she says. "Tsunade-sama is calling you in early. It's important."

"Damn," Genma mutters, but glances back at Karin, who tenses. The woman looks too, eyes widening, and one of her dogs picks up its head, then another, then the third. The first barks, sharp and almost accusing, then breaks into a growl, and Genma says calmly, "Karin, why don't you go get yourself something to eat."

It couldn't more clearly be an order, and Karin doesn't hesitate to take it. she ducks back into the kitchen, hears the door swing firmly shut, and freezes, not wanting to get too close to the window. It's cracked open, and through it she can hear a sharp, angry, "Genma, what the fuck?"

"Easy, Hana," Genma says, still an order, still calm, though there's the faintest edge to it.

A growl, not canine but from a human throat this time. "Easy? Shiranui, that girl smells like my little brother, and she's sitting in your house. There had better be a good fucking explanation for this, or I'm going to get Mom and we'll tear this damned place apart —"

"She's from Oto," Genma interrupts, sharper now. "Back off, Inuzuka. If you're accusing me of treachery, you'd better have a hell of a good reason, and it had better not be Karin."

There's a startled silence. "Oto?" Hana asks, and her voice cracks. "Aoba—he said Kiba was at Orochimaru's base. And she's form the same place? Let me talk to her! She must have seen Kiba —"

"She did," Genma says evenly, and Karin tenses, wondering if he's going to give Kiba away so easily. "Karin was one of my spies, Hana. As soon as Kiba and Akatsuki hit, she got the hell out of there. So you're going to leave her the hell alone. Kiba tried to take her head off with my family's knives, and she's still trying to figure out how she's not dead. She doesn't need you harassing her about it on top of that."

Silence, again, and then a ragged breath. "Fuck," Hana spits, and one of the dogs whines, soft and wretched. She laughs, bitter and angry, and says, "I guess that means you already know what was in Aoba's message."

"Least I can confirm if for the Hokage," Genma says, and his voice is wry. "Let's go, then. I take it you're on the response team?"

"Yeah." There's a long pause, and then Hana asks quietly, "Did she say…"

"He's alive," Genma answers, equally quiet. "Vicious little bastard, too. That's about all I know."

He's one of the nicest damn people I've ever met, and a hell of a shinobi, Genma had said, just a minute ago, and Karin wraps her arms around herself, slides down the wall to sit on the floor with his chest aching as if it's been hollowed out. She's not sad for herself, but she's sad for Kiba. Kiba with his fur-warm chakra and careful hands and bright, fervent hope, his impossible willingness to help and the way he laughed with her. He's good, and she wants to scream it, wants to shout it at the woman out there who must be part of his clan, but —

The best way to be loyal to Kiba, to repay his trust in her, is to keep silent. So even if Karin hates it, she traps the words in her chest, keeps her mouth shut, and prays that Kiba's mission will finish soon.

---

Kiba wakes with his head throbbing, his hands and feet tied with rope, and wet grass under his cheek. The memory of what happened earlier is instant, infuriating—he let Shikamaru get the drop on him so fucking easily, pretty much tripped over his own feet instead of even managing to get away, and he completely failed to think.

Shikamaru's smart, and Kiba has always known that. He was one the worst in the Academy, but only because he never bothered to try, and judging by the fact that he hunted Kiba down and cornered him, that at least has changed. Not that Kiba's surprised, with the benefit of hindsight; Deidara's bombs probably took out his whole team, and that would be motivation enough to get anyone up and fighting.

It makes everything harder, though. Shikamaru's smart, captured Kiba, and if Kiba doesn't watch his step around him, something is going to slip through. Kiba's going to have to hope that his recent training and a few desperate plans will be enough to get him out of this, because there's not much chance otherwise. At least when he took on Kakashi he had the benefit of time to prepare, and a setting he's altered to give himself the advantage.

"Already awake?" Shikamaru asks lazily, and there's a shift, a step. A sandal slides under Kiba's side, rolls him over with a jerk until he's sprawled on his back, bound hands an uncomfortable lump under him.

"Are you?" Kiba retorts, and the image of the bruise in the middle of Shikamaru's forehead makes him grin. Hana's fond of headbutts, and Kiba learned from her. Even if he's a traitor, he thinks she'd have approved of that one. "Nice bruise."

Shikamaru doesn't react; his face is cold, his expression set, and he stares down at Kiba like they're strangers. He has Genma's white knife in his hand, and Kiba eyes it for half an instant, calculating the chances that he can get to it. They're decent, especially with his hands hidden from view; he's got a senbon tipped with sedative in the seam of his sleeve, and even though Shikamaru grabbed his weapons pouch he's got a miniature smoke bomb hanging around his neck like a pendant. Also Genma's idea—even given the fact that they only had a week to train, Genma spent a whole day on how to escape if he'd been captured. Kiba hasn't had to use any of it yet, but he's more than willing to try.

"Really?" Kiba mocks. "You drag me all the way out here, tie me up, and then play the strong and silent card? Fucking boring." They're in the valley below the inn; he can smell the wet metal and sodden wood of the waterwheel, much closer now, and he doesn't quite dare take his eyes off Shikamaru, but out of his periphery he thinks he can see the inn itself, distant but still visible above the treetops.

"You want to know what's boring?" Shikamaru asks coolly, and he turns away, sweeping a look over their surroundings. "Trying to figure out if I just always missed how much of an asshole you were, or if you were just really good at hiding it."

Kiba likes Shikamaru. He's always thought of them as friends. Still, facing him doesn't even touch facing Shino, and Kiba got through that. Tipping his head back, he laughs, makes it a sharp bark of sound. "Nah," he says, and bares his teeth without even trying to make it a smile. "I wasn't always like this. Your fucking village made me this way. So you can just stop trying."

He thinks, just for a moment, that he catches a flash of something in Shikamaru's eyes, a hesitation, a pause. Doesn't try to hide that he's seen it, but cocks his head, letting his grin spread. "Oh? They finally let you in on the secret of why I killed Danzō? Or did you figure it out all by yourself, like a big boy?"

Shikamaru doesn't flinch, but there's a flicker in his face, like he wants to. He's definitely heard the rumors Tsunade started, then. "Funny you didn't mention that to Shino and Hinata, when you ran into them."

Kiba can't figure that tone out. It's testing, careful, like Shikamaru's trying to get him to say something in particular. A dangerous tone, and Kiba doesn't like it at all. "Yeah, well, I was a little busy pounding their faces in," he says, makes it cocky and a little lazy, like Hidan after a kill. "I'll be sure to bring it up next time, though."

Shikamaru snorts softly, but he crouches down, right next to Kiba's head. "Why did you join Akatsuki?" he asks flatly.

It's easy to laugh in his face. "Akatsuki doesn't hire," he says. "They recruit. Guess another S-rank criminal from Konoha was too much for them to pass up. Funny how Konoha keeps making so many, isn't it?"

Because he's looking for it, he catches the faint widening of Shikamaru's eyes, the flicker of something rising before he strangles it down, hides it away. "Recruited, huh," Shikamaru says lazily, and takes another glance at the knife in his hand. There's calculation in his eyes, thoughts flying, but Kiba can't focus on that. All of his attention is on the sudden shift of the wind, a trace of familiar scent on the breeze. Still far away, but approaching steadily even so, and Kiba can't imagine why Deidara is coming looking for him, but the fact that he's doing it is more than enough of a push. Kiba's tied with ropes, after all, a hurried job done with bonds he must have found by the waterwheel, since they smell of mildew and age. They're decent enough, but they're also made of natural fibers. Kiba would have a problem getting out of ninja wire, but even if it's going to hurt, he can deal with rope.

"Leader came and snapped me right up," he says cockily, and as subtly as he can he twists his arms against the ground, sliding his sleeves up. There's no need to cause himself more pain than he has to, after all. "Konoha was holding me back. Now I've got every damn thing I need to get stronger."

Shikamaru snorts, but he glances away, frowns like he heard something. Rises —

Kiba lashes out with his bound feet, almost manages to kick out Shikamaru's kneecaps. His feet just miss as Shikamaru leaps, twisting over him, but Kiba's already moving, rolling away and summoning his chakra as he shapes a sloppy hand sign. With a crackling burst, fire surges up around his wrists, and Kiba strangles a scream between his teeth, wrenches at the ropes even as his wrists blaze with pain, and feels the fibers snap under the pressure.

Jerking his arms forward, Kiba grabs for the ropes around his feet just as the shadows reach him.

Being pinned by Shikamaru's shadows feels a little like his own body betraying him, like Kiba is completely out of control and can't force his muscles to obey him, but there's also a sense of something other holding him down that makes it a little easier to bear. Kiba grits his teeth, fights through the first surge of panic, and focuses on Shikamaru's face as he brings his hands back up. It's eerie to feel his own body copying the motion, but Kiba can feel the weight against his limbs, the sense of Shikamaru's shadows lying across his skin.

"You're really just a one-trick pony, huh?" he gets out, and there's no saying how complete Shikamaru's ability to feel the motions of whoever he has in a Shadow Bind is, but he's not making Kiba drop the glass bomb tucked against his wrist, even though the ignition tag is burning. Kiba knows exactly how long the fuse burns for, has calculated it a thousand times since he started making them, and even with that big burst of flames to weaken the ropes, he should still have another fifteen seconds.

"At least," Shikamaru says evenly, "I didn't betray my village to pick up some new tricks."

It's a dumb enough statement that Kiba can laugh and not feel even a little bad about it. Hell, if Shikamaru even knew just why Kiba's doing all of this. He's always been devoted to Naruto, was one of the first people to ever try to make friends with him; Shikamaru would definitely have done the same if he'd seen the same opportunity Kiba had.

Or maybe he wouldn't, because there's not a hell of a lot that's smart about Kiba's plan. But Kiba's going through with it, getting results, and that's why he betrayed the village. That's all that matters.

"Now there's a pity," Kiba says cockily, and wrenches at the Shadow Bind, throwing all of his chakra into the motion. Shikamaru's eyes narrow, and he brings his hands snapping up into the Rat seal as he doubles down, but there's half an instant of give. Kiba sucks in a breath, holds it, and opens his hand, letting the bomb drop just as the burning tag reaches the glass.

There's a high, sharp crash as it detonates, the powder exploding out, catching fire in a rush. There's a heavy whump, a cry, and all at once the Shadow Bind is gone, lost to the cloud and Shikamaru's distraction. Instantly, Kiba snatches at the ropes, wrenching the knot loose and then scrambling to his feet. He dodges sideways, keeping low, and grits his teeth as he tries to think what Shikamaru will expect him to do next. Tries to think what he would have done, half a year ago, and all the other options open to him.

Shikamaru still has Genma's knives, too. There's no way Kiba is leaving without those.

He can hear Shikamaru coughing through the expanding cloud of poison, turned to gas by the flames. Can track his movement, stumbling back, probably blinded by the flash. It's an advantage; Shikamaru works by sight, and he's never had to rely on anything else. Kiba has five senses and knows how to fight with pretty much all of them. That's how the Inuzuka work. Even if he doesn't have Akamaru—

The bite of pain inside his chest isn't a surprise at this point. It's something familiar, well-worn, and Kiba shoves it down, focuses on a hard, high leap that carries him up. Not over Shikamaru, the way he might have tried before, but into the closest tree, and he hits the branch without a sound, flings himself deeper into the forest. Changes direction, sliding around towards the waterwheel until he can hear the slow, rusty creak as it turns. Sight and hearing are what most shinobi focus on, in their training, and if Kiba can handicap those two senses in his opponent, he'll have the advantage.

Shikamaru also won't expect him to retreat, to shift their fight to terrain of his choosing. Kiba always used to rush in, to fling himself headlong into a match without worrying about his surroundings. It was one of the things that always drove Iruka nuts in the Academy, but Kiba used to have Akamaru. He didn't need to worry about things like that, because he had the advantage of numbers. Now, without Akamaru, it's going to take some doing.

He catches Shikamaru's scent well before he sees him, as he'd hoped; there's a moment of wind rustling the treetops, a scent of something sharp and biting like anger, or antler velvet. The Nara are always a strange mix of predator and prey-scent, and Kiba breathes it in, letting his eyes narrow, letting himself settle in the shadow of the waterwheel. The sun is rising, banishing a portion of the shadows, but it's also darkening the shadows beneath the trees, and Kiba tries to remember the fight Shikamaru had in the Exams, the way the shadows stretched to catch Temari. This is going to have to be a fight based on surprise, and that will only work the first few times before Shikamaru starts thinking, calculating.

Kiba managed to catch Kakashi, though. He can catch Shikamaru too.

Breathing out silently, he sinks back on his heels, trying not to let his burned wrists touch anything. The skin is already blistering, but it's bearable, since he got free. That was one of Genma's big lessons, they day they trained for escapes: get free, get away, and then worry about getting medical attention. Until then, do whatever it takes to put some distance between you and your captor.

Kiba's taking that last part a little liberally, but he can't just bolt the way Genma may have wanted him to. Somehow, in some way, Shikamaru managed to survive the earlier fight, and if Kiba leads him right back to the rest of Akatsuki, there's no way he'll be so lucky. Kiba needs to knock him out, tie him up somewhere that he can eventually escape and then head back. They were planning to leave Rice Paddy Country this morning, so if he just delays Shikamaru long enough, he might be able to get out of this without killing another Konoha nin.

Crouching down, Kiba checks the shadows around him, then raises a hand. Konan is good at Suiton jutsus—most Ame nin are, she said, which makes sense. Kiba hasn't directly asked her to teach him anything, because they're both Akatsuki and he's supposed to be an S-rank missing-nin, but he's watched the handful of times he's encountered her while she's training. No doubt she knows exactly what he's doing when he hunkers down to watch her pound Hidan or Kakuzu or Sasori into the dirt—because she's the alpha bitch, and there's no way she'd miss something like that—but she hasn't mentioned anything yet. Hasn't tried to drive him away, or change her schedule, and that may as well be permission, really. Kiba may not have learned a lot, watching like he does, but—enough.

Breathe in, breathe out. Water's like chakra, moves the same way, and low-level jutsus are simple enough, don't need a lot of chakra but can still move a lot of water. Kiba remembers how Shikamaru was in their classes about sensing; with Ino certain to be on his team, with no real reason to push and make himself better, he was on the low end of average. This should be enough to pass beneath his notice, and the river gives Kiba plenty of ammunition. He keeps his focus on it, pulls water over the bank in a slow, steady creep, and floods the grass between the river and the treeline.

Shikamaru's dad is the jounin commander. There's little chance that Shikamaru doesn't know at least some of the details of Kiba's fight with Kakashi, so Kiba has to assume he knows all the details. If he sets up the same trick that he used to catch Kakashi before, Shikamaru will follow that step, expect Kiba to repeat himself. And at the same time…

The water is ankle-deep now, stretching across the open space and under the trees. Carefully, Kiba breaks the jutsu, lets the river drop back into its banks, and pushes up. Keeping his steps silent, he slips under the slow movement of the water wheel, one eye on the shadows for any sense of movement. Shikamaru's scent is getting closer, but he's still not dangerously close, and there's an acrid burned-poison smell clinging to his clothes. He must have held his breath when the bomb exploded.

It makes Kiba cock his head, a flicker of satisfaction rising. There's one step he won't have to worry about. And for the second…

Kurenai was never an overwhelmingly powerful jounin, but she was strong. No one on Team 8 was ever going to be a chakra powerhouse, not even their sensei, but Kurenai at least didn't need to be; she was careful, deft, knew a lot of little tricks that made her unpredictable. Kiba always used to like the idea of big, flashy jutsus capable of bringing down mountains and taking out armies, but—they're not practical. Not for an Inuzuka, and definitely not for a tracking team. He learned Kurenai's tricks, because that was what was logical, and Kiba knows how shinobi fights normally go. The person with the most unexpected attack wins. That's why Naruto beat Neji. It's why Kiba was able to beat on of Konoha's top jounin, all on his own.

He eases the sedative-tipped senbon from his sleeve, uses just a spot of chakra to attach it to the edge of the water wheel. Teases that chakra out, like a long, thin thread that he tangles around his fingers. It's possible to throw off Shikamaru's Shadow Bind, if only for a second, and Kiba's going to make sure that second is all he needs.

Deidara's getting closer, too. Kiba doesn't want to fling him into a fight against Shikamaru, because he's pretty sure Shikamaru will die, but knowing there's backup close by is enough to steady Kiba's heartbeat, even out his breathing. He watches the senbon turn with the water wheel, one more flicker of wet metal that won't do more than briefly catch the eye, and keeps moving.

By now he can hear Shikamaru's steps, almost soundless but not quite. Steady, but carefully so; Shikamaru is used to walking silently in a forest, even more than most Konoha shinobi, and against anyone else it might be enough, but Kiba can smell him, knows precisely where he is. With that, with the faint, faint rustle of his steps, it's enough to pinpoint him.

He breathes in, checking the sharp-harsh burn of the poison bomb's remnants, and leaps up into a tree, landing lightly on the branch without swaying the leaves. Judges angles, the length of the shadows, and sits back on his heels, bringing his hands up. A shadow clone pops into existence, and Kiba grimaces at the feeling of half his chakra being sucked away but sends it down, darting across the open space just in time to vanish before Shikamaru's smell reaches the edge of the clearing.

That bruise on his forehead is still one of the most satisfying things Kiba has seen in a while.

Perfectly still and silent, he watches Shikamaru slip through the trees, eyes sweeping the area and then narrowing. Fitting his hands together, he shapes a Rat Seal, then steps forward, his shadow stirring. There's a splash, a sandal landing in ankle-deep water, and Shikamaru immediately throws himself back, even as Kiba's clone flickers out of hiding on top of the water wheel. A ball of half-formed lightning drops from his fingers, and—

The shadows catch him.

The clone shouts, pure offence and indignation. Mimicking Shikamaru's motion, he leaps backwards, out of the water even as electricity crackles across its surface, and lands in the river with a splash. Instantly, Shikamaru is moving, launching himself up and over the electrified field, dropping down to land on the surface of the river and plunging a hand in. He comes up with the clone, still awkwardly mimicking his motions even as it splutters, and presses a kunai to its throat.

Just like Kiba would, the clone goes stiff, tilting its chin up. It meets Shikamaru's eyes, and says exactly what Kiba would in that situation.

"Well, Shikamaru? What're you waiting for? I haven't got all day."

Shikamaru doesn't falter; he's at least got that going for him. "I'm waiting," he says flatly, "for you to tell me why you tried to kill Naruto."

Kiba rolls his eyes hard, though the clone laughs. "Really?" it mocks. "One chance for a question and that's how you use it? Pathetic."

Shikamaru's mouth tightens. "I'll have the whole trip back to Konoha to question you," he says evenly, and his expression is perfectly cold. "But this is something I've been wondering about since Naruto got back to Konoha."

The clone makes a rude noise. "He got in my way," he says cockily. "'Sides, I had to show him that beating me was a one-time thing. I had an off day in the Exams, and I wanted to rub his nose in the fact that I'm better than him, even with that furry little secret he's keeping."

Shikamaru doesn't so much as twitch, though that could either mean he already knows about the Kyuubi or that he's good at hiding it. Kiba's suspected the former right from the moment he learned about Naruto being a jinchuuriki; Shikamaru's more observant than a lot of people give him credit for, at least where his friends are concerned. And Naruto is definitely his friend—he was the first of their class to ignore the adults' warnings and make friends with Naruto anyway.

"Just spite?" he asks flatly. "And here I thought you were better than that."

Kiba rolls his eyes at that, too, this time in synch with the clone. "Oh, fuck off, Shikamaru. I killed a village elder. I stole clan secrets. I joined Akatsuki. You're really fucking disappointed that I've got a grudge?"

"No," Shikamaru says, perfectly bored. "I'm disappointed that you won't bother giving me a better lie, Kiba."

The kunai flashes, and the clone launches itself up and forward. At the same time, Kiba drops, ending the Raiton jutsu with a flicker of chakra and ducking behind a tree trunk. He hears a splash, a curse, and closes his eyes as the clone's memories come rushing back to him, making him shake his head to clear them. It dropped into the river again, swam down and dissipated, and that gives Kiba the opening he needs while Shikamaru is distracted looking for it.

Crouching down, he brings his hands up, shapes the signs for a jutsu he's seen Kisame use to try and get the drop on Konan, breathes out. There's mist curling from the ground, thickening the threads left by the dawn, and Kiba tangles them together, spreads them out through the valley. Fog muffles sound, covers sight. That's two senses down, and Kiba has the advantage. It will hopefully be enough to throw Shikamaru off, too—the sudden appearance of the fog, the unreliability of his shadows in such a dim environment. If Kiba can actually pull this off—

Breathing out, he rocks up to his feet, steps out into the clearing, sandals finding traction on the water's surface. Keeps silent, following his nose, and it's a little harder in the mist but Kiba's a tracker by blood and training; if this was enough to fool an Inuzuka nose, they'd never have gotten to be as strong a clan as they are.

Curling his fingers a little tighter, Kiba tugs on the string connected to his senbon, feels it spinning with the slow, groaning creak of the wheel as it turns. not underwater, but close to the surface each time, and Kiba just needs one hard twitch of the chakra thread to trigger the trap and send it flying. Shikamaru's almost in line with it; six more steps to the right and Kiba will have him.

"You really want the truth, Shikamaru?" Kiba calls, pitching his voice to the roll of the water wheel, to make it that much harder to track. "All right. I don't like the idea of a monster wandering around Konoha. I was trying to get rid of him for the good of—"

"Lie," Shikamaru says, terse. Kiba can smell him close by, but the mist is thick enough that he can't see him. Silently, he darts away, putting more space between them, and ghosts around the edge of the tree line. There's a smell like cordite on the breeze, black powder and the inn's shampoo, and Kiba swallows a curse, hopes the mist makes it harder for Deidara to move as well. The last thing he needs is Deidara barging into the middle of his plan.

There's a splash, an incautious step. Kiba can feel the ripple of the water under his sandals, and he uses that, uses the scent to follow Shikamaru's careful edging around the mill, along the river's bank. Not the way Kiba needs him to go, of course. Shikamaru's a pain in the ass even when he's not trying.

"Even regular shinobi can feel something off about Naruto's chakra when he's angry," Shikamaru says. "And I bet the Inuzuka are a hell of a lot more sensitive. You had to have known exactly what he was, long before the rest of us."

Damn it. Kiba swallows a curse, but—observant. This is why his mom hates working with Naras. Kiba's heard that she threw Shikaku through a wall when he commented on her marriage going badly, weeks before she actually chased his father out, and it's not Yamanaka mind-reading; it's all about noticing tells most people wouldn't.

"Knowing a guy stinks like rage all the time isn't the same as knowing he's got a chakra demon trapped in his soul," he retorts, smells Shikamaru changing direction. Heading across the clearing, and that's what Kiba needs. He skirts a twist of shadows that reach out, looking to grab anything near them, and stops when he's right in line with the water wheel. "You really think he'd have beaten Neji without a hell of a lot of luck and all that demon chakra on his side? Look at that fucker Gaara. You really think Naruto's all that different when he cuts loose?"

"Yes," Shikamaru says, and the faith is perfect, unwavering. It aches, sharp as a knife-blow in Kiba's chest. "It's Naruto."

Kiba kind of wants to laugh. Kind of wants to cry, but he doesn't want to risk taking his attention off Shikamaru long enough to rub his eyes, even momentarily. Fuck. At least Naruto still has that in his corner, and Shikamaru can be a hell of a lot more blatant about it than Kiba can right now.

"Well," he says, and feels another quick set of steps rippling through the water. "We'll see if you still feel the same after the next time the Kyuubi breaks loose and wrecks the village. Not that I give a damn anymore. Not my village, not my problem."

"It's always going to be your village," Shikamaru says, and the pale shadows on the ground bend out, reaching for something Shikamaru can't see.

Kiba scoffs. "You know that really big, obvious scratch in my hitai-ate?" he asks mockingly. "That means it's not, asshole."

There's a pause, like Shikamaru is trying to pick out where he is by the sound of his voice. "It's still Konoha's leaf," he finally says. "It's still a link."

Kiba goes still, eyes widening just a little as the sentence hits him. Shikamaru probably didn't intend those words to make him feel better, but—they do. They do, and it's a bewildering relief. Reaching up, Kiba presses his thumb to the leaf-mark, breathes out.

"Of course you'd buy into that bullshit," he says, makes it harsh even though his chest feels hollowed out, lighter than it has in days.

A flicker of movement in the fog, almost too close, sends him sliding away, stepping carefully around a shadow that's just a little more distinct than most. Tipping his head, Kiba breathes in, catches an odd-doubled scent, and only has to frown for an instant before he realizes what it is and rolls his eyes. If Shikamaru thinks a shirt tossed into the trees is enough to fool him, he's never run a mission with an Inuzuka before. Which, honestly, Shikamaru probably hasn't; the Ino-Shika-Cho don't do a lot of combo missions, given that their teamwork is so tailored.

Still, he twists his hands into a seal, lets another shadow clone shimmer into existence and head for the diversion. He's not going to need a ton of chakra any time soon, anyway; he doesn't have a lot to start with, and though he can usually supplement that with chakra pills, Shikamaru still has his weapons pouch with all of his tools. Kiba's stuck with his regular limits until this fight is over, and that's the sort of thing that would have been a hell of a lot more distressing a year ago.

"One thing I can't understand," Shikamaru says, and he's close, barely four feet from where Kiba needs him to be but not moving anymore. "You left Akamaru behind."

Kiba's next step very nearly falters, and whatever good feeling Shikamaru's words about the hitai-ate gave him vanish in a gut-twisting rush. He grits his teeth, forcing himself to keep breathing, keep moving; for several long seconds he's entirely sure he won't be able to keep his voice steady, but somehow, when he scoffs, it sounds entirely normal.

"One more piece of Konoha," he says cockily, even if getting the words out feels a little like swallowing glass. "One more ball and chain to weigh me down. Can you fucking believe I thought I needed someone else to make me strong? It's fucking bullshit."

Shikamaru snorts, derisive and unamused. "The only bullshit here is what you're spilling," he says. "Why, Kiba?"

In the same moment, there's a whirl of shadows, like a wave of black beyond the edges of the mist. A cry sounds, and there's a momentary scuffle, and then—

One step forward, a turn. Shikamaru's looking for him, and Kiba moves. Makes it incautious, too quick, and there are shadows snapping up behind him even as the clone's memories hit him, a quick lash of movement right on Kiba's heels. He twists around them, watches his own shadow as he ducks back, and Shikamaru follows. One step, two, three—

That's all Kiba needs.

With a wrench, Kiba pulls the chakra thread around his fingers tight, snapping the tie holding the senbon to the water wheel. It flies forward, too fast to see, thin enough that it barely casts a shadow, and Kiba covers for it, throws a big, flashy fireball right at Shikamaru's bruised forehead just to make him jolt back with a shout.

Sloppy, Kiba thinks before he can help it, with the instinct of his missions with Konan, her derision at the shinobi they've faced who overreact. Gritting his teeth, he drops low, one eye on the way Shikamaru's shadow is still moving, the rest of his attention on Shikamaru as he turns to put his back to the water wheel—

Dark eyes go wide, and Shikamaru stumbles. In an instant, Kiba fouls his feet, rises with a twist and slams a shoulder into his chest, and Shikamaru's block is a half-second too slow, nowhere near what his reaction time should be. He goes down hard, and it's sheer chance that has him not landing on the senbon planted in his shoulder.

"Hey, nice trick with the shirt," Kiba says smugly, leaning over him to give him a grin. "Gotta hand it to you, that probably would have gotten me when I was three."

Shikamaru's eyes are wide, glazed. He reaches for the senbon, fingers fumbling, and Kiba doesn't let himself falter, doesn't let himself hesitate even though Shikamaru looks scared, just for an instant.

He probably thinks it's a poisoned senbon. Kiba breathes through the knowledge that it could have been and doesn't allow himself to regret.

"You did a crap job searching me," he tells Shikamaru bluntly. "Two weapons that you managed to miss, and you let me pick the terrain for our match. I guess you really are just an almost-dead-last, no matter how smart you are, huh? You and Naruto fucking deserve each other."

Shikamaru's eyes flutter, fall closed for a long moment, slide open with an effort. "Traitor," he hisses, and it's enough to make Kiba laugh.

"Yeah," he says without hesitation. "You bet I am."

The glare Shikamaru sends him would probably be more impressive if he didn't slump to the ground halfway through, muscles going limp.

"Thirty-five seconds, huh?" Kiba asks him. "That's fucking slow. I guess I need to adjust the formula."

There's a snort, and Kiba glances up to see Deidara emerging from the mist, Kiba's weapons pouch in hand. "Did the puppy find some trouble, un?" he asks, and his eyes flicker down to Shikamaru, narrowing faintly.

"It's dealt with," Kiba says cockily, and straightens. That sedative will make Shikamaru's vitals drop to the point that he looks like he's dead, at least for a few hours, so Deidara will probably assume it's poison too. "We leaving?"

"Those bastards already grabbed Kabuto and bolted, un," Deidara says in disgust, and grabs Kiba's wrist, pulling his sleeve back enough to see the burns across the skin there, already blistering. "Shit," he huffs. "He broke out the fucking torture? You were only out here for an hour, un!"

"It wasn't Shikamaru, it was me," Kiba huffs, pulling his hand away and trying not to wince. "The bastard tied me up. I had to get out of the ropes somehow."

For a moment, Deidara just stares at him. Then, with a sound of furious disgust, he grabs Kiba by the collar and jerks him around, dragging him back towards the road. "Your head's full of shit, puppy!" he snaps. "You and fucking Kurotsuchi, what the hell is wrong with you? That's not how you fucking get out of ropes."

"It worked, didn't it?" Kiba says mulishly, and plants his heels. "Hey, stop it! I'm not leaving without my knives."

Deidara scoffs, but he lets go and crosses his arms, watching as Kiba darts back to Shikamaru's still form and turns him halfway over, accidentally-on-purpose tugging the senbon out so that it doesn't puncture something vital. Genma's knives are stuck in Shikamaru's belt, wrapped in bandages, and Kiba tugs them loose of their wrappings and slides them back into their sheathes, letting out a breath of relief. Genma had told him, when he passed them on, that they were Kiba's even if that meant they didn't make it back to the village, but—

Like the leaf on the hitai-ate Kiba hasn't abandoned yet, even with the scratch through it, Genma's blades are a symbol of just who authorized Kiba's mission, even if no one else knows, and Kiba's going to keep them no matter what.

"Any more of those Konoha crapsacks going to crawl out of the woodwork, un?" Deidara asks, and though he looks impatient and annoyed he's scanning the trees around them warily.

"I don't think so," Kiba says, shrugs and makes it nonchalant even though he feels anything but. "Shikamaru must have gotten away from the blast somehow, but even if the others made it, I'm pretty sure none of them are about to follow us and pick a fight."

Deidara huffs. "More trouble than it's worth to track them down, un," he mutters, and gives Kiba a dark look. "Get a move on, puppy, unless you're looking for a tree to mark!"

Kiba rolls his eyes at the other boy. "Your face is going to get stuck like that," he says, unimpressed, but takes three quick steps to catch up, letting the mist shatter around them with a whirl. "Why are you down here, anyway? You draw the short straw and have to come get me or something?"

"Obviously," Deidara snaps, looking away, and prods Kiba forward a little faster with a finger stabbed between his shoulder blades. "And we're going to fucking go over how to hide shit so you've always got a weapon on you, un. Even if it doesn't look like a weapon."

"I know how to—"

"Shut up and keep walking, un! Looking at you fucking face pisses me off!"

Kiba pulls a face at him, but quickens his step, and he doesn't allow himself to look back at the clearing where Shikamaru is lying. It won't do any good, regardless. But he's alive, and Kiba didn't get dragged back to Konoha in a sack, so he's counting it as a win.

Maybe, by the time a few months have passed, he'll feel brave enough to ask Kakuzu if any of the others from the team survived. Right now, though, knowing that Shikamaru did is enough to keep Kiba moving. Not a stroke of good luck he'd expected, but—enough. More than enough.

---

Karin half-expects the shinobi in the Administration Building to take one look at her and drag her back outside the gates. She hurries practically on Genma's heels, trying not to meet anyone's eyes, and tries to calculate the best path out if someone does question her presence here. Being brought along was a surprise to begin with, and not an overly pleasant one, but—at least this way she'll get to meet to the Hokage, convince her in person that Karin will be a valuable addition to Konoha regardless of her past. Kages and leaders like that sort of thing, and Karin is willing to make any promises she has to be allowed to stay here.

"Steady," Genma says with good humor, glancing back at her as they start up the stairs. His look is a warning, though; no one else beyond Tsunade knows about Kiba, he'd told her once Hana was out of earshot. Only the Hokage herself, Genma as Kiba's handler, and now Karin—it's enough to double Karin's nerves, but she'll just have to prove herself. Prove that she can keep a secret, even one this important.

Stubborn, set, she nods determinedly, and pushes her glasses up to look around as they approach the top floor of the building. The stairway itself in narrow, probably a defensive measure, but it opens out into a wide entrance area, a secretary's desk off to one side. There's a woman behind it, halfway through gathering a teetering stack of papers into her arms, and Genma immediately makes for her.

"Need some help, Shizune?" he asks easily, and the woman turns and smiles, unsurprised at the sight of him. She's definitely a kunoichi; Karin catches a flash of metal under her overly long sleeves, and her chakra is a precise, ready thing.

"Genma," she says thankfully. "Yes, if you don't mind. Tsunade requested all of T&I's recent reports from the northeast. Can you take these?"

"Sure." Genma scoops the stack right out of her arms, then tips his head at the door. "Karin, mind getting that?"

Karin hurries to pull it open, ignoring the instant hush that falls on the other side as the door swings wide. There are eyes on her, several pairs, but she tips her chin up and keeps her shoulders squared, sliding out of Genma's way as he passes. Shizune is right behind him, and she gives Karin a smile in thanks. Karin can't help but smile back, and lets the door fall shut behind them, catching up with Genma as he approaches the desk.

The woman sitting behind it, small and blonde and beautiful, watches her with appraising eyes for a long moment, then lifts her gaze to Genma and raises a brow. "A stray?" she asks dryly. "Or did I assign you a genin team without noticing?"

Genma grimaces. "Don't even joke about that, Hokage-sama," he says. "Karin's one of mine. She's trustworthy."

Tsunade's eyes narrow faintly, and Karin has to swallow before she can meet that gaze, but she does. She knows a secret, and she's going to keep it whether or not they let her be a Konoha nin. She has family here, even if she hasn't met them yet. They don't have any right to chase her out.

(If she tells herself that enough times, maybe she'll even come to believe it.)

The corner of Tsunade's mouth tips up, just faintly. "All right," she allows, and takes the papers Shizune hands her, nodding at the corner of her desk. "Set those there, thank you."

With her attention elsewhere, Karin takes the moment to slide back towards the wall, finding an unoccupied space and sinking into it like she can vanish into the shadows. The man on the other side of the room, standing with his arms crossed, gives her a glance, but he doesn't say anything, just turns back to the Hokage. The other woman with him, wild-haired and sporting the same clan markings as Kiba and Hana, stares at Karin for a moment longer, making Karin swallow hard, but before she can say anything Genma steps between them and says, "I can confirm Ibiki's reports."

Tsunade raises a brow, and the second man, burly and wearing a bandana, makes an interested sound. "Independently?" he asks.

Genma gives him a crooked smile and hooks a thumb at Karin. "She was in Oto. One of mine. Akatsuki hit and she bolted, turned up on my doorstep early this morning. If you're looking for corroboration, Karin's got it."

The first man, with the ponytail and the scarred face, gives Karin an appraising glance. "You'd trust her?" he asks, and Karin can't meet his eyes for more than an instant; the calculation in them makes a shiver skitter down her spine.

"Yeah," Genma says, quiet but steady, and Karin closes her eyes, breathes through it. She'd come to Konoha expecting interrogation, but—not trust. And maybe a small part of her is thinking about the way she could use that, or all the openings it leaves, but—

Kiba told her she'd be safe here. Orochimaru had told her the same thing, but his safe was needles and laboratories and peeling her open to figure out her abilities, and Kiba's isn't. Genma had been willing to let her stay in his house, to avoid this meeting, to collapse into bed and sleep without worrying about tests or drugs or what she would have to do to survive.

In light of that trust, Genma's and Kiba's alike, Karin can trust them in return.

"I only saw one of the Akatsuki members," she says, and meets Tsunade's gaze, since she's the least intimidating of the group. She's a medic, and some part of Karin still thinks of her mother when she hears the word, thinks of gentle hands and careful chakra. "But they were there to destroy the base."

Tsunade taps her fingers against the desk, frowning, and casts a glance at the crow sitting on the windowsill beside her. It croaks, resettling its feathers, and Tsunade's mouth thins faintly. "That does match Aoba's report," she allows. "Ibiki?"

The big man shrugs, hands in the pockets of his coat, and both his face and his chakra are unreadable, perfectly placid. "Aoba had pretty much all the information the department was able to find," he says, and casts Genma a cool look. "Alternative information sources aside."

Genma's grin is lazy, and largely a taunt. "You didn't ask."

Ibiki's eyes narrow, but before he can retort Tsunade waves a hand. "The Guard Platoon's commander has as much right to spies as anyone," she says, "and more than some. Tsume?"

The woman with the clan markings growls, low and dark under her breath. "She still smells like Kiba," she says, and Karin tries her best not to flinch under that stare as it's turned on her. "That's the Akatsuki member you ran into, kid?"

Karin nods, trying to meet her eyes. "He had those markings," she says, touching her own cheeks where Kiba's tattoos were. "But one had a scar through it. And he used two knives." Genma's detail, told to Hana, but Karin heard it so she might as well use it. And—she saw those knives, for an instant, even if she hadn't paid attention. "One was black, and one was white."

The scarred man casts a veiled look at Genma, who doesn't react, and then tips his head. "If you're willing to take that as proof, Hokage-sama, I'll get things started. Hana and the others should be waiting downstairs."

"Thank you, Shikaku." Tsunade rises to her feet, stepping around the desk. "Make sure they know speed is the priority. And if Hana needs to find a replacement for this mission—"

Tsume makes a rough, derisive sound. "Hana will do her duty no matter what you tell her," she says. "And to think she won't is an insult, Tsunade-sama."

Tsunade's smile is small and grim. "I know precisely what it's like to face a family member who's abandoned everything important," she says. "Mine wasn't blood, but—it was bad enough."

Orochimaru, Karin thinks, and it jolts something deep inside of her, makes her drop her eyes immediately, trying to even out her breathing. She knows the stories about the Sannin, but she'd completely forgotten that at one point, Orochimaru and Tsunade were on the same team. At one point, Orochimaru was a Konoha nin, too.

It seems so easy to see why he'd left, when Karin can compare him to all the other people she's met here. Genma, and Tenten, and Kiba too—they're nothing at all like Orochimaru. Not even close.

Tsume laughs, but it's not amused, is rough and almost angry. "No offense, Tsunade-sama," she says, "but Orochimaru wasn't clan. Hana will manage, and if she can't, I'll take her place." She turns on her heel, stalking out of the office, and Shikaku sighs and mutters something under his breath, then bows to the Hokage and follows quickly, pulling the door closed behind him.

"I'll get back to T&I," Ibiki says after a moment of silence. "I don't like that we didn't have any clue about Akatsuki's movements before this morning, and having them pull that stunt in the middle of the village—"

Tsunade rubs a hand over her eyes. "Any leads?" she asks.

Ibiki shakes his head, mouth tipping down in frustration. "It could have been some kind of clone," he says. "No one's reporting any suspicious activity. But Kurenai and Kakashi are down in the market right now, since they have the most experience with the woman. Anko took Team 7 out to train in the Forest of Death, so that they'll be out of the line of fire if Konan is still in the village, but there's been no one matching her description so far."

"Thank you, Ibiki," Tsunade murmurs, then tips her head at Shizune. "Shizune, could you collect what reports T&I has so far on the incident?"

"Of course." Shizune offers Ibiki a smile, setting her reports down, and Ibiki tips his head in return. He gets the door for her, then follows her out.

"Raidō, you're off shift. Genma's taking over early," Tsunade says, and there's a sudden flicker of chakra right above Karin's head, unexpected enough to make her jump. A masked man drops down to the office floor, bows to the Hokage, and vanishes in a rush of leaves, and Karin has to swallow hard as she realizes she didn't even notice him.

"Cleaning house, Tsunade-sama?" Genma jokes, but he raises a hand, and nine points to light start to shine all around the office. The cool wash of a barrier rising draws Karin's attention upward, and she watches it close over their heads, smooth and impenetrable, shimmering faintly.

"I assumed you wanted to talk," Tsunade retorts, folding her arms under her breasts. She looks Karin over again, then smiles faintly, and asks, "Kiba?"

"He sent me," Karin says immediately, because Genma already warned her that Tsunade knows. "He heard that I was an Uzumaki, and he said there was someone else in Konoha who was, too, and that if I came I could try to stay here—"

The lines in Tsunade's face soften, and just for a moment she looks younger, brighter. "That sounds like Kiba," she says softly, and crosses the room. Stops, right in front of Karin, and holds out her hands with a smile. "Welcome to Konoha, Karin. My grandmother was an Uzumaki, too."

Oh, Karin thinks, and swallows, sliding her hands into Tsunade's. "Thank you," she whispers, and Tsunade doesn't hesitate to pull her in, looping an arm around her shoulders. She's warm, her chakra as vivid as a star, and she has the same gentle power that Karin remembers in her mother's chakra. Karin's eyes burn, but she hugs Tsunade back.

"Kiba saved me," she says, because she wants Tsunade to know, and Tsunade laughs, soft and sweet and full of something bright.

"He's good at saving his friends, isn't he?" she asks, and Karin makes a sound of fierce agreement, glad beyond words that someone else can see it, too.

---

Waking up is probably the biggest surprise of Shikamaru's life.

It doesn't come without some suffering; there's an awful, empty ache in his head, like the aftermath of a migraine times a thousand, and a burning point of fire that radiates out from his shoulder blade across most of his back. A matching bruise-bright pain is spread out through his chest, probably in the shape of Kiba's shoulder, and Shikamaru groans, rolls over onto his side, and wishes for several moments that Kiba had been kind enough to actually kill him before he really realizes that Kiba didn't.

When the thought hits, Shikamaru pauses. He frowns, goes to scrunch his brow and hisses in pain, and cracks one eye open. The pulse of afternoon sunlight is enough to make him trap a whine between his teeth, but he doesn't let himself close his eyes again, just focuses as best he can.

He's alive. That's…astonishing.

The last few moments of Kiba leaning over him are seared into his brain, that smug grin, the hard eyes. Nice trick with the shirt, Kiba had said, and Shikamaru had thought you would have fallen for it a year ago with something like grim resignations sinking into the pit of his stomach.

It was easy for Kiba. Shikamaru's good at tactics, good at planning, good at strategizing. And yet Kiba beat him with about as much effort as Asuma would have put into it, or maybe even his father. Two minutes of planning, a single senbon, and Shikamaru would have died if it were poisoned.

It's the difference, Shikamaru thinks, feeling cold, between a genin and a jounin. Or maybe it's the difference between a new chuunin and an S-rank missing-nin.

But Kiba didn't kill him. He didn't, and even if it was just chance, even if one of the only weapons Shikamaru missed just happened to be a sedative-laced senbon instead of something deadlier—even then. After Shikamaru was out Kiba could have cut his throat without effort. The knives are gone, Shikamaru can already feel that. So was it just cockiness on Kiba's part, a mistake in thinking that the senbon was poisoned? Or was there something else there?

With a groan, Shikamaru levers himself over, rolls onto his back, and grits his teeth against the vivid, pulsing pain that's spreading through his back muscles. Kiba kept lying, every time Shikamaru tried to get an answer out of him. Shikamaru recognizes the tells; they were classmates, after all, and he saw Kiba lie about homework, or skipping class, or a dozen other tiny things. He did the same here, had all the same tells—too much cockiness, too quick an answer, false bravado that didn't reach his eyes. Shikamaru saw the lies, he knows he did.

And then, in that last moment, Kiba's eyes were cold. His expression was perfectly dismissive, but—

His mouth. Even as he taunted Shikamaru, even as he mocked him, the set of his mouth was something soft. Relief, maybe. Definitely not hatred, and maybe Shikamaru is fixating, but he's sure of what he saw.

The pieces of the puzzle are sorting themselves out. Shikamaru's starting to see a pattern in them, a hidden picture underneath the first. Underneath the underneath, his father says, and Shikamaru almost has it.

The fact that he's still breathing is the biggest piece of all.

"Shikamaru!"

It's a cry, sharp with relief, and Shikamaru has half a second to process before there's a face above him, long purple hair falling down around him. Yūgao leans over him, hands quick across his chest, and Shikamaru groans and waves her away.

"Kiba," he says roughly, in explanation. "I think it was just a sedative."

Yūgao lets out a breath of relief, fingers closing tightly around his bicep for a moment. "Over here," she calls, pitching her voice to carry, and then looks around the clearing, clearly taking in the signs of a fight. "You faced Kiba? Alone?"

"Don't worry, I learned my lesson," Shikamaru says, a little dryly, and carefully sits up, pressing a hand to his temple.

"I fucking hope so," Aoba says, and Shikamaru glances up as he stalks out of the trees, looking harried. Shikamaru winces, braced for yelling even if he knows he deserves it. "You left camp while we were asleep, you confronted the enemy without even considering backup, you could have gotten yourself killed and told them exactly where to find the rest of us, too—"

"What?" Shikamaru protests. "I wouldn't have—"

"Inuzuka is a tracker," Aoba says, tightly furious. "I don't care that he used to be your classmate, he's an S-rank enemy of Konoha, with flee on sight orders. What the hell were you thinking?"

Nausea sours in Shikamaru's stomach, and he leans forward, pressing his hands over his face. He hadn't thought of that. He hadn't even considered it. He'd been so sure, even with their earlier encounter, that he could beat Kiba, drag him off and get some answers, and the idea that he could get beaten into the ground by Inuzuka Kiba had been completely, utterly ridiculous, right up until it happened.

With a gusty sigh, Aoba sinks down on his heels, dropping a hand on top of Shikamaru's head. "Damn it, kid," he says, and the relief in his voice makes Shikamaru's stomach twist with guilt. "You're thinking three steps ahead, but you need to start thinking six steps ahead. And not just about yourself. We're a team. If you can't plan for your teammates, if you're not accounting for them, you're pretty damn worthless no matter what level of shinobi you are."

Shikamaru opens his mouth to defend himself, then realizes he has no explanation to make it all right. Slowly, he closes it again, and Aoba shakes his head like he knows what Shikamaru was going to say.

"This isn't just about you," he says, frustrated. "It's great you're smart, Shikamaru. And I know you can work with Ino and Chōji. But this is not just about you. You're one piece of machinery in the middle of something a hell of a lot bigger. Every time you take a step, you have to see how if effects everyone else on your team. That's being smart." Reaching out, he raps his knuckles against Shikamaru's skull, making him wince, and shoves back to his feet. "I can do it and I'm only half Nara. Yūgao can do it—that's why she's ANBU. All the best shinobi manage it, no matter their intelligence level. And you need to figure it out, or you really will end up on gate duty for the rest of your life."

Shikamaru swallows. He looks from Yūgao, remembering her fight with Itachi, and then at Aoba, thinking of the last-minute barrier that saved half their team from the explosion. Thinks, again, of Kiba burning the ropes right off his wrists and tearing free, something he wouldn't have been able to do before. And—if he'd gone back to get Yūgao or Aoba, or both, left Kiba to his training for long enough to make the trip to the island and back, they probably could have captured Kiba and kept him.

He'd been so certain that he could manage by himself, used to even Asuma struggling to keep up in shogi, used to Ino and Chōji following along with his plans and never arguing. And he'd just—missed the mark. Failed, completely and utterly.

Gods, his mom is probably going to see this mission report. Shikamaru can't even imagine how much she's going to yell. But worse than that, there's every chance it will make her go quiet, grim. She only does that when she's actually angry, deep and biting. Or, even worse, when she's disappointed, and—

Shikamaru can't stand it when she's disappointed in him. Not about things that matter.

"Genius is worth a lot," Yūgao says, not quite gentle, but her touch is careful as she tips him forward to check his back. "And Konoha has always valued it highly. But smart can mean a lot of things. You just have to stretch your definition of it a little if you want to grow as a shinobi."

I just want to be a chuunin for the rest of my life, Shikamaru almost says, but the words die on his tongue. Kiba beat him in three moves, went from captured pawn to gold general with barely any effort, and Shikamaru still can't quite believe it. Can't quite understand it, and that lack of knowledge irks him, slides under his skin and itches.

Twice as bad is the realization that he could have gotten his whole team slaughtered if Kiba had put just a bit more effort into things.

"I'm sorry," he says, and getting the words out hurts like a knife in his throat.

Aoba sighs, shakes his head. "Yeah," he says wryly. "That's good. I'm not going to accept your apology until I put you through at least a month of the worst D-ranks I can find, though."

Shikamaru grimaces, but doesn't even try to argue.

Yūgao makes a soft sound of amusement, rocking back on her heels. "It looks like a variation on a sedative I've seen before," she says. "Headache, muscle pain, blurry vision?" When Shikamaru nods, she smiles crookedly at him. "You'll be all right in a day or two. It's meant for immobilizing targets for capture or easy dispatch. An ANBU squad I've worked with uses something similar."

Genma was ANBU. The thought is instinctive, instant, and Shikamaru has to bite his tongue to keep from voicing it. Genma was ANBU, though he's the commander of the Hokage Guard Platoon now. And if it's one of his personal poisons, it makes sense that his old ANBU squad would keep using it, maybe asking him to supply it. But—shinobi don't just write down their poisons outright; they put them in code that only clan members have a cipher to, keep them secret and safe.

No matter how far Kiba's come, Shikamaru knows that he was never very good at ciphers and decryption in the Academy—he didn't see patterns the way some students did, and that's a hard skill to train. Especially in less than a year. So if he's using Genma's poison, odds are he didn't get it from any recipe books he stole. He wouldn't have been able to decode them, for one, and for two Shikamaru is absolutely certain that Genma isn't the type to leave clan secrets sitting out in the open. An argument can be made for the knives, since those kinds of heirlooms are sometimes displayed instead of kept locked away, but not books full of poisons. Not in a shinobi clan.

So Kiba got the poison in some way that wasn't a book, wasn't just theft, because he's managed to alter it. But it's Genma's poison, Genma's clan secrets, and Genma and Kiba have been in contact, with Kiba at the very least writing letters—long, dense letters, brought by a civilian courier—to Genma in Konoha, and signing them with codewords that mean something to the two of them. The first note said windflower, which according to Ino is another name for anemones, and Genma as a gardener must have known that. Must have recognized the meaning, because he was eager to take the message, disappeared with it immediately. The message from Kiba, who killed Danzō, who joined Akatsuki even though he and Naruto were always friends.

With a groan, Shikamaru tips forward, burying his face in his hands. His head is throbbing like someone's beating a gong within it, and if he never has to have another thought as long as he lives he'll die happy.

With a sympathetic sound that almost covers her amusement, Yūgao clasps his shoulder and rises to her feet. "Come on," she says. "Anko and Neji are waiting back at camp."

Shikamaru pulls a face, but staggers to his feet regardless.

---

Itachi wonders what it will prove, if Kiba has actually left.

It will prove something, he's sure of that. Kiba is only like Shisui up until the moment he could have followed orders and didn't, and that sends everything about him spinning into uncertainty.

Pein and Konan likely won't take any more kindly to the betrayal than Danzō did, and they're more dangerous in the short term, more powerful. Itachi is sure they will have no trouble finding Kiba no matter where he goes, hunting him down and removing the stain of betrayal. Konan in particular; she always looks to Kiba first, beyond even looking at Pein, and while she still follows Pein on all of his missions, upon their return she seeks out Kiba immediately. Kiba deserting will make her—

Itachi stumbles over the thought, not quite able to finish it. He's not sure what it will make her. Angry, maybe? Sad? Resigned?

He thinks, just for a moment, of his parents on their knees, his mother's you always were so terribly kind and the way those words burned, sharp and unpleasant right to the core of him. He'd cried, hot tears on his face, but he's never been able to understand why.

Kindness, he thinks, and closes his eyes. Kindness was Shisui, that bright smile, the way he hauled Itachi up on his back after a long day of training. Kindness was Izumi, yelling at the boys who loomed over him. Two different kindnesses, and Itachi can't find either of them inside himself.

"Aren't you going to take a fucking turn with this damned deadweight?" Hidan huffs, shifting Kabuto's limp form to his other shoulder. "Another fucking mile of this and I'm going to start dragging him by his fucking ankle."

Itachi glances over, blinks. "He'll get dirty," he points out, though he doesn't volunteer to take Kabuto, either. That much prolonged strain will certainly have him coughing up blood before they make it to the border.

Hidan snarls, hauling Kabuto down a little and wrapping an arm around his thighs, until he's sprawled over Hidan's bare shoulder like Sasuke as a baby, when their mother used to burp him. Itachi stares at the picture for a long moment, not sure why it's unsettling, and then turns away, putting a little extra distance between himself and Hidan.

"Hey, you fucker—" Hidan snaps, rounding on him.

There's a crow in the sky. Itachi ignores Hidan, who's only tangentially a threat, and tracks its course over the road, watching it drop towards an island in the middle of a small lake. There are more crows in the branches, and Itachi sweeps his gaze over them, checking for chakra, but can't spot any.

There shouldn't be crows here. Not in this number. He didn't see them on their way in, and he always looks for crows; they were Shisui's summons, after all.

"Hey!" Hidan says, right in his ear, and Itachi turns his head and raises a brow at him. it makes Hidan snicker, and he tries to elbow Itachi. Wary of any impact on his lungs, Itachi sidesteps it, which just serves to make Hidan laugh. He bounces Kabuto on his shoulder, then asks, "You think the puppy bolted?"

Itachi turns his eyes forward, studies the curve of the road ahead of them. He'll never forget it, now, and sometimes he wonders what will happen if someday he has too many things to recall in perfect detail; will some of them fade, regardless of being seen by the Sharingan? Or will there be a hundred million images in his head, fighting for their place, each one exactly what it was when he looked at it the first time?

Closing his eyes, Itachi lets the Sharingan fade, then opens them again to a world gone muted and blurred, the edges of everything softened into indistinctness. "He has no reason to stay with Akatsuki," he says. "He already betrayed his village. Why would the organization be any different?"

Hidan scoffs. "Yeah, well, all of us betrayed our fucking villages," he says, and his voice is almost smug. "'S not like that's a new thing. And Akatsuki's got Konan, right? The puppy's attached to her fucking apron strings or something."

Itachi doesn't look at him, doesn't answer. All of us betrayed our villages, he thinks, and the words I simply followed my orders are on his tongue. It's not tempting to say them, but—Itachi can feel them there, one sentence that sets him apart from all the other members of their group. He followed orders, Madara's and Danzō's alike, and that was his duty. A threat to the village was eliminated, and Itachi left Sasuke alive, planted a seed in him that still hasn't come to fruition but will someday.

He thinks of it, of Sasuke coming to kill him. Sasuke will need the Mangekyō before he can, and therefore will have to kill someone he loves. It is…inconvenient that he appears closest to the Kyuubi's jinchuuriki, but the Kyuubi will reform eventually, perhaps even be easier to subdue when it does. Madara won't object, if that happens to be the case. And if Sasuke grows closer to any of his other teammates, killing them will be simple enough. Given Kakashi's past, he'll freeze if Sasuke attacks him with the intent to kill, and the girl is weak, in the throes of a crush. She would be an easy target.

Just for an instant, Itachi sees Izumi, collapsing in front of him, her Sharingan fading back to black. There should be a response, some kind of reaction, but he feels…dull, in the face of the memory. He gave her a dream, shaped it to what he thought she wanted, and killed her as carefully as he could, because she had been…something. Kind, though not like Shisui. Confusing, more than anything, and maybe that's why walking away from her body, the body of her mother, was such a relief.

He killed so many that night. Men, and women, and children in their cribs. It's odd that Izumi's death is the most vivid to him, even with the clarity of the Sharingan. He remembers her small, desperate exhale, the way her body slumped, even though there were hundreds of other deaths that followed.

"If Kiba deserted, he will be killed," Itachi says, deliberate, and thinks he's like Shisui but feels nothing beyond a faint, lingering twinge deep down in his chest. It could be emotional, but there's an equal chance it could be the start of a cough, and Itachi can't tell and doesn't care to.

Hidan laughs, loud enough to make Itachi shift away. "Fuck yeah!" he says gleefully. "That'll be a fun fight! I wonder if his poison's as wimpy as he is, or if it's got some bite."

"He killed Danzō," Itachi says, before he can quite help himself. And—it's a discordant note, prickling at his nerves. Shisui couldn't kill Danzō, but Kiba managed it. Kiba managed it at the age of twelve, where Shisui was almost nineteen and failed. Kiba's poisons were strong enough to kill an old war hero, one of the most dangerous men in Konoha's history. He's a threat, he's always been a threat, and having him close makes Itachi wary.

"Huh?" Hidan asks, and Itachi can't quite make out his features, but he thinks Hidan is squinting at him. "Konan said that too. Some strong bastard?"

"A subordinate of the Nidaime Hokage," Itachi says, though the words don't quite fit right in his mouth, don't mean anything in the face of what Danzō actually was. "And a war hero, who was one of the Hokage's councilors."

"Huh," Hidan says again, though this time it sounds something closer to thoughtful. "No wonder the assholes were up in arms about it. I figured the guy he killed was hot shit, but that's almost Headman level hot shit. Good for him." Then he laughs, and it's raucous again, full of sharp edges. "Hey hey hey, we should start a club if he does come back! The whole 'we fucked up a village's leadership' shit."

Itachi doesn't look at him, because he won't be able to see his face without the Sharingan anyway. And maybe, slightly, because he can't imagine receiving an order from a village leader and then turning around and murdering them. It makes something feel hollow in his chest, and he doesn't like it.

Apparently unaware or uncaring of Itachi's silence, Hidan tips his head back, checking the sky, and scoffs. "Fuck the rain. If that hits while we're walking, I'm drowning this shitty bastard in a mud puddle."

"Sasori will object," Itachi reminds him, but Hidan ignores him, resettles Kabuto again, and huffs loudly.

"This time we're springing for a boat on the coast, and I don't fucking care what hissy fit Kakuzu's going to pitch," he warns. "I'm not going back through Yu."

A boat will be far less strain than walking, so Itachi inclines his head, allowing the suggestion. If Deidara hasn't caught up by then, and if Kiba is no longer with them, it will make that method of travel cheap enough, and if any of the boat's crew seem like they're going to reveal Akatsuki's destination, it will be easy enough to kill them.

"What, so you wait for us to leave to pick the easy route home, un?" a voice complains, and Itachi stills. He can hear Deidara's steps, shinobi-light and careful across the stones of the road like all Iwa shinobi are, but under that sound—

He turns, letting the Sharingan spin back to life, and the world comes into instant, unnerving focus. Itachi's first clear sight is Kiba, still missing his cloak, with his jacket stripped off to leave him in a fishnet shirt with half-sleeves. Below the sleeves, stark and red, burns climb up his forearms. They're already blistering, red and raw, and Itachi blinks, studying them for a moment before he lifts his gaze to Kiba's face.

"Survivor from Konoha," Kiba says carelessly. "Fucking Naras, I swear. There's no good way to beat their damn shadows."

Shikaku's son, Itachi thinks. He was the Nara they fought in the forest, and he must have been the survivor. Aoba doesn't know the clan jutsus. "But you did," he says, can't quite make it a question. Maybe Deidara helped. Maybe—

Kiba scoffs. "Of fucking course. Hit him with a slow-acting poison, though, since that's all I had on me. It'll kill him as long as he doesn't find a medic somewhere."

"Didn't even bother to finish the job?" Hidan taunts. "Fucking sloppy, puppy. What would your mother say?"

Kiba rolls his eyes. "It's a nasty death," he retorts. "If I mixed it with anything else, he'd just die outright. Like hell I was going to go out of my way to make his death a little nicer."

Hidan laughs, swinging around to dump Kabuto on the ground in front of Kiba and Deidara. "Your turn to carry the shithead," he says gleefully. "Besides, if any more of 'em made it, I want dibs!"

Deidara makes a disgruntled sound, but starts pulling clay from his weapons pouch. "Fuck you, un," he snaps. "I'm not carrying his heavy ass."

Itachi takes a precise step back, ready to leap aside if Deidara lunges, but instead of lobbing the bomb at Hidan's head, he shapes it into a large bird, then jerks his head at Kiba. "Come on, un. Since Hidan's a useless piece of shit, you get to help."

Kiba makes a face, but he grabs one of Kabuto's arms and helps haul him onto the bird's back. "How about making one of those for us?" he asks.

Deidara snorts. "I'm not wasting that much chakra on you assholes," he says derisively. "We're heading for the nearest port, right? You can fucking walk."

"Yeah, yeah." Kiba tosses his scorched jacket on top of Kabuto, then steps back, watching the bird take flight. "That storm's about to hit. We walking through it?"

"No," Itachi says, because exertion and rain, when he only has a limited supply of his pills and no way to restock, isn't a good idea. "We'll find cover."

"We'll make cover, un," Deidara snaps, irritated. "Iwa nin at least know how to build a fucking shelter, unlike you Konoha shitheads."

"A shelter will help," Itachi agrees. "Thank you, Deidara."

Deidara stares at him for a long, stunned moment, mouth gaping, then snaps it shut with a wordless sound of complete fury and stalks away, kicking viciously at the ground. Slightly startled, Itachi blinks after him, then casts a sideways glance at Kiba, who gives him a pained look and then pinches his nose shut.

"Fuck both of you," he says, and stalks ahead, though he keeps a careful distance from Deidara.

Hidan is cackling, laughing so hard he can't even speak. Itachi stares at him for several seconds before realizing he isn't going to get any sort of answer there, then decides it's one of those things he's never readily going to understand. You wouldn't want to anyway, Shisui used to tell him, and Itachi rather suspects that in this, like in so many other things, Shisui was entirely correct.

---

One of Aoba's crows flutters down onto his shoulder several hours after dark, cawing a warning, and then promptly shakes the rain off its feathers and takes off again. Shikamaru halfway expects Aoba to splutter and duck away from the spray of water, but he hardly seems to feel it, bolting to his feet with a sound of quick relief. Shikamaru almost startles, but he follows Aoba up, then gags as the pounding in his head redoubles.

Neji catches him, grabbing his elbow as he wavers. He's not looking at Shikamaru, but at the line of trees hiding them from the shore of the lake, and he says, "Five of them. One is a Hyuuga, from the Branch House."

As far as Shikamaru is aware, there aren't any Hyuuga missing-nin, at least from the Branch; the Caged Bird Seal means they're controlled or killed long before they actually manage to leave the village. He lets out a breath of relief, unable to help sagging a little, and rubs a hand over the back of his neck with a grimace. The crows reported the Akatsuki team leaving this morning, but there's every chance they could double back, try to look for survivors—Shikamaru's fault, since he's the one who showed Kiba he was still alive to begin with.

Being on D-ranks as punishment is usually something Shikamaru would protest, but at least in this case, he's well aware that he deserves it. Deserves worse, probably; he took a risk, and the only reason it didn't turn out badly for his entire team was sheer luck.

"I'll go," Anko murmurs, and slips past Aoba before he has to ask, low to the ground and moving with an almost startling boneless grace as she slides though the undergrowth. It makes Shikamaru's skin prickle, the instinctive, animal recognition of snake part of his lizard brain more than any trained reaction, and he has to take a breath to steady himself. Neji shoots him a narrow, sidelong glance, Byakugan activated, but then immediately looks away again, focusing on the treeline.

"One is an Inuzuka," he tells Aoba, soft enough not to be overheard. "With three ninken."

"Hana," Aoba says on a relieved sigh, and rubs a hand over his messy hair. Despite the recognition, though, he waits until one of his crows sweeps back to circle him, then return to Anko, before he starts moving.

"The Hokage must have been willing to take your report on faith," Yūgao says, though her hand is close to her sword as she takes the lead, pushing through the trees and out onto the shore.

"Or she had some other source of corroboration," Aoba says, grimly amused. He raises a hand, waving at the group of shinobi approaching across the lake, and the man in the lead is—

Asuma, Shikamaru thinks, and the relief is heady enough to make his head spin. He has to swallow hard, and even then he probably doesn't keep his expression as steady as he means to. Asuma gives him a careful look as he steps past, but the first one he nods to is Aoba.

"Yamashiro," he offers, faintly amused but still wary. "You look like you've had better days."

Aoba laughs. "I feel like I've had better days," he agrees, and offers his hand. Asuma clasps wrists with him, then frowns, and says, "Hana, broken arm."

"Fractured," Aoba says with wounded dignity. "It's just fractured now, Yūgao fixed most of it."

"I told you I'm not a medic," Yūgao informs him. "And I was saving strength for Neji and Shikamaru, too. Let Hana fix your arm, sir."

"See? Sense." Asuma turns, casting another look over Shikamaru, then at Anko as she bounds over to them. He smiles at her, and she grins back, showing teeth. "All right, Mitarashi?"

"I didn't get to kick my old teacher's teeth in, and that's a shame," Anko says cheerfully. "But I got to fight an immortal asshole, and that part was fun!"

"Immortal, huh?" Asuma raises one brow in mild interest, then glances behind him. "Hana?"

But the girl doesn't move. She's still standing on the water, eyes trained on the curve of the shore, and her face is tipped up like she's scenting the air. Her mouth is a flat line, but there's a look in her eyes—

One of her ninken makes a low, mournful sound, then whines, and shoves his head into her hand. Immediately, Hana startles, turning sharply, and swallows. "Who needs me?" she asks, rough as gravel in her throat.

"Pretty much everyone," Yūgao says dryly, and when Anko opens her mouth to protest, Yūgao very deliberately lays a hand over it. "Everyone," she repeats firmly.

Hana snorts, though even Shikamaru, who doesn't know her as anything beyond Kiba's vaguely intimidating older sister, can tell that it's forced. "I can do everyone," she agrees, and tips her head. "Haimaru and Haimaru, scout. Haimaru, you're with me."

Two of the identical dogs split off at once, running across the water like shinobi, while the third, carrying a pack full of medical supplies, follows close at Hana's heels. Shikamaru gives them a look, but if any of the three object to being named the exact same thing, he can't tell. It's also slightly less bewildering than it probably should be; Shikamaru's brain writes it off as an Inuzuka thing and leaves it at that.

But—that's part of the problem, isn't it? Shikamaru's so used to the Inuzuka just being a weird clan with a lot of dogs that he forgets they're some of the most dangerous shinobi in Konoha, that they're a clan of their own with traditions and abilities that go a long way beyond keeping deer in one of Konoha's forests. Kiba made S-rank, earned that title in just a few months, and he's not even the clan's heir.

"Hey," Asuma says quietly, gruffly, and Shikamaru twitches and looks up. Asuma is watching him, frowning faintly around his cigarette, and when he sees Shikamaru looking back, he raises a brow. "All right?"

Shikamaru pulls a face, though he doesn't entirely mean it. "Aoba said he's going to put me on the worst D-ranks he can find for a month."

"A month at least," Aoba corrects, and then hisses sharply. "Ow ow ow, Hana, that arm was already set!"

"Badly," Hana says with a roll of her eyes, and waves a hand at Yūgao. "No offense, Uzuki."

"None taken," Yūgao says dryly, sinking down to sit on a rock.

Asuma snorts softly. "That bad, huh?" he asks Shikamaru. "You blow the mission?"

"Almost," Shikamaru admits, and the words are painful, hard to get out. more than almost blowing the mission, he could have gotten his team killed.

Asuma studies him for a long moment, then tips his head. "You're not making excuses," he says, with faint surprise. "That's a pretty good start."

"To be fair," Yūgao says with a wry smile, "the mission went to hell well beforehand."

With a quiet hum, Asuma looks her over, then says, "Akatsuki got you." It's not a question.

"Like a virgin who wandered into a brothel," Aoba says, grimly cheerful. "And payed the highest price for the cheapest girl." He flexes his fingers as Hana pulls away, then nods his thanks. "Hyuuga next. And yeah, we weren't their targets but they decided to have a little fun in their downtime. I know the Hokage said squads not led by a tokujō or jounin are the ones who should flee on sight, but I'm thinking she should revise that a bit. I'm good, and Yūgao and Anko are some of the best, but we needed at least one full jounin, and preferably two."

"And they were playing around," Anko huffs. "That immortal bastard was fucking with us. I don't know what he was aiming for, but I know I didn't want him to get it. He kept laughing like Orochimaru used to when he was really off his rocker."

Aoba makes a face, but nods. His eyes linger on Neji as Hana drags him down to sit in front of her, and he sighs, running a hand over his hair again. "We were maybe holding our own until Inuzuka showed up," he says quietly."

Shikamaru twists his fingers together, letting his eyes slip to half-closed. Easy, like this, to pick out all the little details he'd caught and filed away during their fight, all the hints he hadn't devoted himself to paying attention to. "They trust him," he offers, and the weight of Hana's gaze on him is a sharp and predatory thing, like standing in front of a bristling guard dog. "And they acted….friendly."

The word sits wrong in his mouth, tastes sour and unpleasant, but he pushes past it. Focuses, instead, and thinks of the way Kiba leaned over him, the hard eyes. the hard eyes that didn't mean what he thought they did, because Shikamaru woke up. He wasn't poisoned. He wasn't dead.

Kiba didn't kill him, even though he easily could have.

"Hana—" Yūgao starts, frowning in concern.

Before she can finish, Hana shakes her head, drops her gaze to where her green-glowing hand is pressed to Neji's chest. "Save it," she says gruffly. "It's not like I can't smell him all over the road, and all around the inn, too. They must have been staying there."

A hand settles on Shikamaru's shoulder, and Asuma nudges him lightly. "You all right, Shikamaru?" he asks again, and Shikamaru closes his eyes with a grimace, rubbing a hand over his face.

"I have a concussion," he admits, because Asuma of all people will get just how much Shikamaru hates not being able to think clearly. It's one thing if he chooses not to; it's another entirely if he can't.

Asuma nods. "You faced Kiba?" he asks.

"Alone, without backup," Shikamaru mutters, and he can feel Asuma's judgmental stare. "Ugh, I know."

Asuma snorts, then tugs lightly at his ponytail. "You'd better. Teamwork drills when we get home—and not just with Chōji and Ino. Fuu and Torune have been hanging around often enough, they should make themselves useful."

Just about the last thing Shikamaru wants is to be tossed into drills with Ino's mildly insane cousin and Shino's definitely insane cousin, fresh off their Root brainwashing and already better at teamwork than most shinobi, but—

He remembers Kiba dropping into the fight, the effortless way he slid into the battle. Inuzuka are good at that, from working with their ninken—they see openings most shinobi don't, and fill the gaps. He's heard his father talk about it more than once. Kiba's shifted that, turned it to working with the other Akatsuki members, and even if Shikamaru was able to get a drop on him alone, in that first moment, there's no denying he shifted the fight when their teams clashed.

"You hate me," he accuses Asuma, who hums and very pointedly doesn't answer.

"Come on," he says instead, and prods Shikamaru back towards the camp. "Get your camp packed up. It's going to be a fast run back to Konoha, and then there's a room in T&I with your name on it."

Shikamaru blanches. "T&I?" he protests. "But—"

"Standard procedure," Asuma says without pity. "A Yamanaka will check you for any trace of a lingering genjutsu, just to be sure. Uchiha Itachi is S-rank for a reason, and it's not just because he killed almost five hundred people in a night. There's a high possibility he'll infiltrate Konoha again to get at Sasuke."

Facing Kiba alone and being found unconscious in the grass probably won't help his case where the no brainwashing or trigger words is concerned, Shikamaru reflects grudgingly. At the very least he's had Ino in his head often enough that the idea of a Yamanaka rooting through his skull is practically commonplace at this point.

"What's the possibility of Kiba infiltrating?" he asks, watching Asuma's face out of the corner of his eye.

And, exactly when he expects it, Asuma looks away, mouth tightening. He takes a long drag from his cigarette, then says, "Low. He already killed the person he wanted to."

Because without the rumors, there's no reason for Kiba to have targeted Danzō. There's nothing. The Inuzuka and Shimura never cross paths; Kiba and Danzō definitely didn't cross paths in the normal course of things. Shikamaru had thought it was so random, the death, and now—

Well. The rumors take on a lot more weight when they're the reasonable explanation, don't they?

That something else is still there, the last piece of the puzzle, but Shikamaru's head hurts too much to focus on it, and he closes his eyes, rubs his forehead, and mutters, "Troublesome."

Asuma laughs at him. It's entirely unappreciated.

---

"—going to scar, of course. Keeping the burns covered with salve will help, but I'm not a miracle worker."

The sharp voice makes Konan raise a brow, because Sasori outside of Hiruko is a rarity in and of itself. Sasori lowering himself to provide medical treatment is even rarer. She pauses at the intersection of hallways, glancing left, towards the infrequently used medical bay, and—

"I know that. 'S not like it matters, they're just scars."

Kiba. Kiba who's been hurt, though if he made it back he clearly managed to overcome it. Konan can't imagine any of his teammates came to his rescue, after all. Konan stands there for a long moment, debating, but—she's bathed three times, applied perfume so heavily it made Kisame wheeze, then bathed again, and if that's not enough to cover Tsume's scent, she doesn't know what would be. Tipping her chin up, she keeps moving, turning left and pushing the door the rest of the way open.

Instantly, Kiba sneezes explosively, then claps a hand over his nose with a squeak. Sneezes again, almost hard enough that he falls off the bed, and Konan hides a smile.

"Sorry," she says. "One of my perfume bottles broke, and I had to mop it up."

"It's okay," Kiba says, shaking his head. He sniffles, then rubs his nose. "I'll get used to it in a sec."

Konan hums, but her eyes are on the burns curling up Kiba's arms, wide and dark. Sasori is wrapping them, quick, clinical movements, and Konan feels a flicker in her chest, just a momentary pause. "All right?" she asks.

Kiba makes a face. "Yeah, the ropes gave pretty quickly. I'll be fine."

Ropes. And Kiba must have burned through them to get out. it's precisely the sort of thing Yahiko would have done, if he'd been unfortunate enough to have a fire affinity instead of a water one. Konan doesn't let herself pause, doesn't close her eyes or react beyond a light hum. "That's no generally how people get out of ropes," she says mildly.

From where he's leaning against the wall, Deidara makes a sound of victory, stabbing an accusing finger at Kiba. "See, un? Konan agrees with me, too! That's not how you fucking escape being tied up—"

"It worked, didn't it?" Kiba huffs, annoyed. "And it's fine, I didn't have a kunai or anything so it's not like I had a lot of options."

Deidara rolls his eyes. "You're an idiot, un," he says, then grabs something out of his pocket, stalks across the room, and shoves it into Kiba's hand. "Fucking wear them. I'll show you the activation sign when you can move your fingers again, un."

Kiba blinks at him, then at what he's holding, and Konan leans over to see more clearly. There's a pair of earrings lying across Kiba's palm, shaped from pale clay and formed into bell-shaped flowers hanging downward.

"Deadly nightshade?" Kiba asks, bemused, and tries to raise his other arm to poke at them only to have Sasori snatch it back down with a sound of irritation. Wincing, he gives Sasori a sheepish smile, and gets a narrow stare in return, though Sasori doesn't say anything.

"You like poisons, don't you?" Deidara asks waspishly. "I'm not a poison expert, un. This is the most poisonous flower I know. And they'll fucking explode, un. Without setting you on fire. That's the important part."

"Thanks, Deidara." Kiba grins, and he sounds delighted. Konan can't fight a faint smile of her own, and she reaches out, brushing his shaggy hair away from his ears.

"We'll have to pierce your ears," she says. "I've done it before, if you want me to help."

"Sure." Kiba smooths a thumb over the curve of the flower, then looks up with a smaller, deeper smile. "This is awesome, Deidara. Thank you."

Deidara grunts, tossing his head to flip his long hair over one shoulder. "I hate the smell of burned skin," he says pointedly, even as he heads for the door. "Don't fucking go for fire again, not if I have to be around you, un."

Sasori hums, all lazy agreement. "Burns are easily infected," he agrees. "Try another method. One that won't make as much work for me."

"I get it already, I get it," Kiba complains, but he closes his fingers tightly over the earrings, and when he grins at Konan, it's entirely undimmed. Konan hadn't quite been worried, not after they faced his old team and former teacher on their mission together—it would be hard for anyone else from Konoha to affect him as much as that did, after all—but it's good to see that even after the fighting, he's still relatively steady. "So how'd your job go?"

Konan hums. "Taki must be keeping the Nanabi on the move," she says. "By the time we got there, the jinchuuriki was gone, and we couldn't find where she and her team went." Nagato hadn't been pleased with the detour to Konoha, either, or with Konan revealing their presence in the market, but that hardly bothers Konan. Nagato has always been a worrier before all else. She showed the very edge of their hand, but it will put Konoha on the defense, send them running scared.

After what she heard about Kiba's treatment in the village, after so much talk of Danzō and his reputation despite the fact that Kiba's entire existence was the collateral, she can't bring herself to even begin to care.

"We'll get her," Kiba says, carelessly confident, and Konan smiles. She tugs gently on a lock of hair, then steps back.

"We will," she agrees, and looks him over, cataloguing a handful of scrapes. "How was your mission?"

This time, Kiba's grin as teeth. "Kicked the asses of a whole Konoha team, ran Orochimaru off, and grabbed Kabuto. I think we did okay."

Sasori hums, checking the bandages one last time. "He has been quite cooperative so far," he says smugly. "Perhaps he's even worth fielding again, instead of simply turning into a puppet."

Konan is slightly more skeptical; Kabuto has proved already that his loyalty lies with Orochimaru, and she isn't inclined to trust that Sasori's techniques will be able to sway him any more this time than they could before. Sasori is the spymaster, though, and she isn't about to butt in on his work. Not until there's an actual danger to the organization.

"Nagato wants us to move operations back to Ame for a few months," she says. "Kumo has started sending patrols in this direction again, with sensors in every squad. Konoha has been more active near the Kusa border, too. And Jiraiya has been poking around in Frost. They're too close for comfort, so we need to throw them off for a while."

"Moving?" Sasori looks displeased. "That will take a vast amount of preparation. I would greatly prefer to stay here."

"I don't think it's up for debate," Konan says dryly. "You're welcome to speak to Nagato about it, though."

"I believe I will," Sasori says darkly, then turns on his heel and stalks out. Konan doesn't expect he'll have much luck in adjusting Nagato's opinion on anything; after all, Nagato is right. It will be nice to be back in Ame, as well. Sometimes, if Konan lets herself believe, seeing Yahiko's face against the familiar backdrop of the village almost makes her feel like none of the tragedies in their lives happened. Like, for one brief instant, she's still in love, and Yahiko is Yahiko, not Nagato with an old corpse that moves to his will.

It never lasts, but sometimes just the moment is enough.

"Guess I should pack my rain gear," Kiba says, flexing one hand. His eyes are on the pull of the bandages, but Konan keeps hers on him, letting her gaze linger on the scar that skews his clan marking. She has Tsume's to compare to now, to stand in reference, and it makes it seem…harsher. Kiba's last tie to his clan is permanently twisted, destroyed in his fight with Danzō. The irony is bitter on her tongue.

"Ame is a beautiful village," she says, and means it, for all the darkness that's lingered there. Ame is theirs now, hers and Nagato's and Yahiko's. "It's very different from Konoha."

"I can't wait to see it." Kiba casts her a grin, toothy but sincere, and Konan smiles back.

She thinks your mother still loves you, your mother is so angry for you. Do you know that? But she's not about to say it, not about to reveal how she knows, so she traps the words on her tongue and leans forward. Instead of speaking, she kisses Kiba's forehead, then pulls away and heads out the door. There's a startled sound behind her, but she doesn't stop, doesn't look back.

Deidara is waiting for her at the intersection of the hallways, leaning back against the wall with one foot tapping the stone, and he glares at her as she approaches.

A little surprised, Konan raises a brow, coming to a halt. "Yes?" she asks coolly.

Deidara scowls at her. "Spilled your perfume?" he demands, and it's sharp as a knife. "Yeah fucking right, un." Taking two long steps forward, he jabs a finger at her chest, though she notices with amusement that he doesn't quite dare to touch her. "You're hiding something from Kiba."

It's always easy to forget that Deidara is very, very smart, his mannerisms aside. Konan looks him over, one careful sweep to judge what he's going to do next, and decides there's no immediate threat, regardless of her answer.

"I don't know what you mean," she says, and Deidara bristles like an offended cat.

"Yeah?" he hisses. "You covered up something you didn't want his nose to catch. Like fuck you'd normally break a perfume bottle. You can act however the hell you want around him, un, but I can see what the fuck you're doing."

Well. This is certainly not what Konan expected, and she smiles, thin and ever so faintly a challenge. "Whatever you think you see, Deidara, you're mistaken. And even more than that, why do you care?"

Just for a moment, Deidara's face twists. It looks like a laugh, bitter and sharp, or maybe a snarl, but it's buried a moment later. Deidara pulls back, jaw set, and says, "What's one more betrayal, un. You're just like fucking Konoha." Then he turns, stalking down the hallway with a flare of his robe, and Konan closes her eyes. She laughs, just a little, and reaches up to touch the paper rose in her hair.

For so long, Akatsuki has been something different. Pairs who work well together, a conglomeration of lost souls betrayed by the world around them, but—

It's never been like what it was under Yahiko. He had a vision, even more than Nagato, and he had the charisma to pull people into the space around him like comets around a star. This second Akatsuki is a pale shadow, because beyond herself and Nagato, there are no solid ties.

It looks like that's changing, though. Even if it's just with Deidara and Kiba, it's a difference. They aren't partners, but they're close. They're friends.

Nothing now is like it was before, and Konan knows it will never go back to the way it was. But as far as changes go, this is a good one, and…unexpected. All the better for it, though.

Pulling Kiba into Akatsuki was a risk. He was twelve, even younger than Itachi when he joined, but just for this, Konan thinks it's worth it. Like seeing Yahiko in profile, set against the glow of Ame's lights, and being back in a hundred lost moments again. This is a glimpse of what used to be, and maybe it won't ever come again, maybe it will turn into something entirely different, but for now, it's good. It's sweet, like a taste of honey after months of bitter salt, and she lets it melt over her tongue, fill her chest with warmth.

This is good, and it won't last, but she has it now. And that's enough.

---

"Ugh," Shikamaru says expressively, through the groggy, hangover-heavy throb in his head.

Asuma, with one hand on his shoulder to prod him forward, snorts quietly. "Just a debrief with the Hokage and then you can sleep," he says dryly. "Though you might not want to do it at home, once your mother hears about what happened."

"Ugh," Shikamaru repeats, and tries not to stumble as he picks his way up the stairs. All the others are well ahead of them, since Asuma seems to have taken it as his personal duty to chivvy Shikamaru on a little faster. Shikamaru resents this, mostly because if he were along he could lie down on the stairs and take a nap.

Asuma makes an unsympathetic noise, because he's the worst, and nudges Shikamaru up the last step. There's a startled sound, and then hurried footsteps, and a girl's voice asks, "You're with the other team?"

Not a familiar voice, even though it's young enough that Shikamaru probably should know it. He glances up, peeling his eyes open just in time to see a girl with long red hair pull the door of the Hokage's office open.

"Yeah, thanks," Asuma says, and prods Shikamaru in the back one more time. Shikamaru gives him a dark look, but plods forward, casting a sideways look at the girl as he passes. She's not familiar, even though she looks like she's only a year or so older. If she'd been in the Academy, even a year or two above, Shikamaru would know her face, but he doesn't. There also aren't exactly a lot of people with that shade of hair in Konoha.

Whoever she is, she slips into the office after them, ducking forward to set a new ink bottle on Tsunade's desk before she retreats towards a much more familiar figure slouched along one wall.

"Thank you, Karin," Tsunade says, faintly distracted as she shuffles through their stacks of reports. "Aoba—"

"Right here, Hokage-sama." Aoba leans over the desk, rolling a scroll out from under the pile. Tsunade gives him a quick smile of thanks, then takes the scroll Asuma hands her and unrolls both of them, laying them across her desk side by side.

Shikamaru can't quite look away from Karin, though. She's retreated across the room to stand next to a much more familiar figure, slouched against the wall. Genma gives her a smile as she settles right next to him, and she twists her hands together but smiles back.

"T&I didn't find anything?" she asks, and from his place beside her desk, Shikamaru's father shakes his head.

"No signs of mental manipulation or subconscious tampering beyond Anko and Yūgao's experiences with genjutsu," he reports, and Shikamaru meets his father's eyes, takes the nod as acceptance and lets himself relax slightly. Shikaku caught the highlights of the mission, and if he's not blindly furious, that's a good sign.

Tsunade frowns. "I don't like that there was even that much," she says. "Aoba, I'll be taking your recommendation and upgrading the flee on sight orders to any squad without at least one jounin."

Aoba lets out a breath of relief. "Thank you, Hokage-sama," he says.

Her smile is tired. "It's in the village's best interests," she says, and then waves a hand. "Asuma, you and Aoba stay to report. Everyone else, thank you. Get some rest."

A dismissal has never sounded so sweet. Shikamaru just barely strangles a happy groan, turning on his heel. A hand settles on his shoulder, and he leans into his father's touch for a moment, letting the rest of the squad file past him. Yūgao and Anko are leaning on each other, too, and Neji looks like he'd be doing the same if he weren't too haughty for such things. He does nod to Shikamaru as he passes, though, and that's a huge improvement over before. Shikamaru isn't sure if it's down to making a huge mistake, or just surviving a fight together, and he's too tired to consider it right now. He just nods back, and waits for Hana's ninken to follow her down the stairs before he starts down as well.

Shikaku keeps pace with him, steps silent on the wood, and Shikamaru glances at him once before he looks over his shoulder at the office, even though it's out of sight.

"Who was the girl?" he asks. "I don't remember her from the Academy."

Shikaku raises a brow, nudging him across the bustle of the Administration Building and out towards the street. "Karin? You wouldn't. She's a former Kusa nin, though the Hokage is going to make her a Konoha nin."

That's rare enough to make Shikamaru blink, and not just from the glare of the sun above them. "She is?" he asks, frowning, because defectors aren't rare, but they usually become missing-nin rather than heading for another village.

His father makes a noise of agreement. "Genma is vouching for her," he says. "Apparently she was one of his spies in Oto."

It feels like to takes forever for the words to travel from Shikamaru's ears to his brain. He stops dead, even as the sounds shape themselves into meaning, even as bewilderment shatters like a pane of glass dropped from a great height.

"Spy," he repeats, and the word comes out half-strangled.

Shikaku stops as well, and turns to face him, frowning faintly. "The Guard Platoon's commander generally has a few spies they keep quiet, even to the other department heads," he says, sounding bemused. "It cuts down on the chances for treachery, or someone inside the village tampering with evidence."

Shikamaru feels like he just got headbutted again. The whole world is spinning, and he's drowning, not water but implications rising up to smother him. Genma has spies. He had a spy in Oto, right under Orochimaru's nose. Genma gets letters from Kiba, in code, delivered by a civilian messenger, and Kiba didn't kill him despite having every opportunity. Kiba, who was one of Naruto's friends, who loved Naruto, betrayed him and joined an organization that wants to capture all of the jinchuuriki. Kiba, who killed Danzō, even though there's no reason for them to be connected except for the evidence a handful of rumors and Danzō's death provides. Because really, what better way to become a missing-nin than to kill a village elder, a war hero, the former Hokage's best friend?

Genma has spies, and Kiba is one of them. Inuzuka Kiba, the loudmouth braggart from the Academy, is a spy in Akatsuki, and Shikamaru breathes through the burning realization that sends him reeling and says, "I need to sit down."

His father is staring at him, eyes faintly narrowed. "Shikamaru?" he asks.

Shikamaru opens his mouth to tell him, so speak the words, and then remembers Kiba's face hanging over him in the forest. Slowly, carefully, he closes it again, and shakes his head. "I'm going to sleep right here," he says instead.

Shikaku flicks a glance at the grassy hill on their right, the tree with its swing at the top, and smiles faintly. "It wouldn't be the first time," he says, and clasps Shikamaru's shoulder. "Everything hitting at once?"

Mutely, Shikamaru nods, because it is. Just…not the way his father probably means.

With a hum, Shikaku takes a step back. "Your mother likes that bakery that's down the street," he says. "I'll pick up a few cakes before we head home."

Shikamaru appreciates the time to get himself together. He nods, taking two steps forward and then collapsing into the grass, leaning forward and burying his face in his hands. There's a pause, then a light tug on his ponytail and retreating steps as his father leaves. Shikamaru can't even bring himself to look up; all he can see is Kiba's face, but this time, instead of the utter coldness of his eyes, Shikamaru can't drag his thoughts away from just—Kiba. Kiba giving up the village, his clan, his ninken in order to spy on Akatsuki. Was he forced? Was he picked for the mission and not given an opportunity to say no? Did he volunteer? Did he want this?

Shikamaru can't imagine any person in their year being a less likely spy, unless it was Naruto himself. And yet—he bought it. In their fights, both times, he believed that Kiba could kill him and walk away without ever looking back.

He breathes, keeps it carefully steady. Looks at the whole picture in his head, or at least what he knows of it, and just—takes it in. Tries to accept it, even though the whole thing should feel like utter nonsense. The logic works, though. The path to the answer is clear.

Then a pair of shinobi sandals come to a stop in front of Shikamaru, the hem of a long coat swinging above them. Shikamaru blinks slowly, trying to register the significance of that through the buzzing blankness filling his head, and belatedly lifts his head.

Shino stares back at him, expression perfectly composed, and just for an instant Shikamaru hates him for it. Kiba, their friend, Shino's teammate, is out there undercover with some of the most dangerous missing-nin in the world, and Shino can look like that? It's not fair.

Then he takes another breath, swallows, and asks, "What?"

One dark brow lifts, barely visible behind Shino's glasses. "You faced Kiba," he says. "On your mission."

It would be stupid to deny it. It's not even a question, and however Shino knows that, he likely has multiple ways of confirming it, too. He's an Aburame; they're always thorough.

But the words do manage to remind Shikamaru of the moment in the Hokage's office, after Teams 7 and 8 returned from facing Kiba and Konan. Shino had looked at him, hesitated, wanted to speak to him, and then kept going. Shino's expression now is like it was then, so Shikamaru drags his thoughts back under control and sits up a little straighter. "Yeah?" he drawls. "Didn't you face him, too?"

There's a long, silent pause, and then Shino inclines his head. He takes a precise step to the side, turns, and sinks down to sit on the grass next to Shikamaru.

"I did," he says. "Besides Naruto, who was injured immediately, and Hinata, who was hesitant to strike, we are the only two from our class who have fought him."

Shikamaru realizes with a faint start that he can't predict where this conversation is going. Shino's never exactly been an open book, but even since Kiba left he's gotten even quieter, more brooding. Tipping his head, Shikamaru looks at him, but between the high collar and the sunglasses, there aren't a lot of tells to pick out. "We are," he confirms, keeps it lazy even though he doesn't feel that way. "What about it?"

Another pause, even longer this time. Then Shino pushes his hood back, running a hand over his hair, and says, "Next time there is word of his movements, I wish to find him. Why, you ask? Because he hesitated, just briefly, in confronting me, and you were able to hold him, if only for a short time. I believe that, together, we will be able to contain and capture him, and bring him back to Konoha. Where he belongs."

Oh, Shikamaru thinks, heart sinking. That's…logical. It's smart, even, which is standard for Shino. Shikamaru wasn't the only genius in their class, even if Shino was generally overlooked. And—if Shikamaru didn't know what he does, if he hadn't realized, he'd say yes immediately. Bringing Kiba back—even knowing Kiba is a spy, it's tempting. He shouldn't be there, having to betray the village even as he serves it. he shouldn't be in that much danger. He shouldn't have to be the one to do this.

But he is. Kiba is a spy in the middle of Akatsuki, and regardless of Shikamaru's feelings regarding the matter, there's no way he can let someone, even Shino, put that at risk.

"There's every chance they'll just execute him," he says, watching Shino's face. And there is a faint flicker, but it's quickly replaced with stubbornness.

"I won't allow it," Shino says. "The Aburame won't allow it. I've already spoken with my father, and he will support me. Why, you ask? The Inuzuka and the Aburame have been allies for centuries, and Tsume will doubtless fight to keep Kiba from being executed."

The Hyuuga joining in would probably make it a sure thing, but given Hinata's relationship with her family, and the fact that she probably won't be able to take a stand against her father to the point of changing his mind, there's little chance of that happening. Shikamaru can see what Shino is doing here, though: he's going after the next best alternative, getting Shikamaru on board. If Shikamaru can convince his father, the Akimichi and Yamanaka will follow the Nara, and between the Akimichi and the Aburame that's two of the remaining three noble clans setting their power against the council.

It might even work to save Kiba, but Shikamaru still can't let it happen.

"You want me to hunt Kiba down with you, drag him back to Konoha, and make sure no one executes him," he clarifies, and when Shino tips his head in confirmation, he groans. "I don't know if you noticed, but he kicked my ass right afterwards."

"And mine," Shino says, perfectly dry. "Next time we'll both be more prepared."

Next time, Shikamaru will know the truth. And—he can tell Kiba that he knows. He can tell him that not everyone in Konoha needs his act, the pretended hate, the vitriol. And maybe that's not much, but—it's something, right?

If he can get him alone, or make Kiba realize without blowing his cover, if he can keep Shino from succeeding and keep Kiba's secret intact, that's worth even more.

"All right," he says, and meets Shino's covered eyes, steady and just as stubborn. "I'll help you find Kiba."

Shino inclines his head, then holds out his hand. Shikamaru clasps his wrist, thinking I won't let anyone put Kiba in danger, even you, and Shino means something different that ends in the same place, so it's enough to make a bargain on.

"Thank you," Shino says, and Shikamaru nods in return, then very deliberately looks away.

Kiba is a spy, he tells himself again. Kiba is a spy in Akatsuki, passing information back so they can keep Naruto safe.

In light of that, absolutely nothing will ever be the same.