Author's Notes: Well, now. I wrote me another story. Hopefully, this one won't die like Jyuuken did, but we'll see. This is set, say, three years after the events of Season I, with the exception of Kimimaro never getting mixed up with Orochimaru. Hourai and random ANBU guy, I made up.

Disclaimer: I do not own the series Naruto, the manga, the characters, the official merchandise, or poorly-made bootleg merchandise. So don't come crying to me when you find out that plushie isn't the genuine article, pal…
What was I talking about?

It had been a straightforward mission. "Had" being the operative word. Investigate the suspicious movement of Kirigakure shinobi believed to be operating around Oto no Kuni and Kaminari no Kuni, ascertain whether or not they are trying to incite conflict between Kaminari no Kuni and Hi no Kuni and return to Konohagakure with the information. Ino, along with a Konohagakure ANBU member and an envoy from Kumogakure, had headed out nearly a month ago.

That was where it had all started going wrong.

Ino burst through the dense bushes, adrenaline making her ignore the scratching, rain-laden branches that assailed her. On a hunch, she ducked as she passed a tree. Kunai, darts and shuriken zipped over her head, shredding leaves and thudding into wood. The contingent of Kirigakure shinobi had been haunting them for almost a week now, forcing them deeper and deeper inside Kaminari territory and battering them with frequent ghosting assaults.

She had never really gotten a chance to learn about her teammates. The ANBU guy had never talked much- and never would again. They had caught him by surprise the day before. She had seen him briefly, impaled halfway up a tree by his own sword with his mask in pieces on the ground. Somehow, he had managed to say something before he died, though she had been too far away to hear. She didn't think she'd ever be able to forget that face, bloodied and contorted in pain and effort even as the life drained from behind it. She had run. She had no choice.

After that, the attacks had changed. With only two targets to deal with now, the attacks were becoming more focussed and persistent. They were confident. Ino wasn't. It was a nightmare situation to be in.

Eventually, the Kirigakure assault did fade away, as it always did, and Ino had a chance to catch her breath. She huddled in the hollow of a tree, trying to keep out of the rain and keep her back to something. She could only be attacked from a few directions here. She hadn't noticed that she was shaking violently until then. That wasn't good, the cold was getting to her. She crossed her arms and tried to rub some warmth into her biceps, to little effect.

'Yamanaka-san!' a voice hissed from some distance to her right. Her hand went for her kunai pouch instinctively, before she realised that it was the voice of Kamana Hourai, the Kumogakure envoy. He had been sent by the Raikage as a show of goodwill, and an indication that he was aware of outside influence near his borders. Ino didn't like him much. He wasn't especially unlikeable, but she just hadn't taken to him.

'Are you alright, Yamanaka?' he asked, rushing over when she made her presence known. She must have looked as bad as she felt, since he was clearly concerned. But she couldn't just sit here, they had to keep moving.

'I'm fine,' she assured him, which apparently did not convince him in the slightest. She rose unsteadily and fought off a wave of dizziness. She was getting a fever now. 'We have to reach the village.'

'It's fine, Yamanaka,' he said carefully 'you've done enough.' It took her a moment to realise that he hadn't said the second part in a particularly friendly way. And, suddenly, she knew what the ANBU guy had said. She wasn't much good at lip-reading, but she knew.

"Don't trust him!"

Her eyes widened as the implications of this dawned on her, and Hourai took this as his queue. 'I'm sorry.' The knife sunk into her shoulder before she knew what was happening. Ino let out a scream, which was interrupted as she was thrown to the ground hard.

'But I can't let you complete your mission. This country must change.' He punctuated the end of his sentence by wrenching the knife out of Ino's shoulder. 'You've suffered enough already,' he tapped the knife on her cheek, staining it with blood. 'But I'll have to ask you to suffer a little longer. I don't think I can bring myself to kill a woman, so just bear it for a while. Until you bleed out.'

His business concluded, he leapt onto a tree branch, took one last, agonised glance at Ino, and vanished into the wind and the rain.

Swirling consciousness assailed Ino, supplying her with pain, the sensation of moving and staying still at the same time, and cold numbness. Her vision swam for a moment, giving her the urge to vomit. She tried raising her head, on a whim. Some of her long hair was stuck underneath her, and pulled uncomfortably at the back of her head, but she managed to lift it despite this. She managed to keep it aloft for all of three juddering seconds before strength fled her and her head flopped to the ground lamely.

Fighting off the wave of nausea this caused and trying to ignore the raindrops falling into her eyes, she passed out again. Maybe for the last time.

To her surprise, she did regain consciousness again. To her much greater surprise, she was not alone. A pale, lithe man, shrouded in a long brown cloak and screened from the rain by a large umbrella stood over her. The spill from the umbrella was cascading onto her hair, further mixing it with the mud she lay on.

The man stared at her. The only visible part of his face- his eyes- were icy green, with red underlines and seemed to regard her with the same level of compassion as one might regard a rodent, or fruit platter. It was the most wholly unsettling look she had ever seen. But that might have just been the delirium talking.

The figure took a wet step around her, trying to see her from another angle. Trying to decide whether she was worth bothering with. Oddly enough, she didn't trust him to make the right choice on the matter of her life, and decided to try and convince him.

'…Uh…a…' her throat didn't seem to work very well. Her rasping did seem to catch the man's attention, however. He leant down and studied her more closely. His expression did not change. She tried her best to smile, but only managed a weak hint of joy. One of the man's eyebrows raised in a carefully measured fraction of bemusement. He straightened up and took another step around her.

Ino was becoming terrified that he was fast approaching the decision to leave her there. She had to do something. She couldn't just die out here like this. She had to at least report the situation to Kumogakure, if not Konoha. She had to see her friends and family again.

As if to confirm her fears, the silent man turned to leave. Moving her arm with willpower alone, she reached out and clutched the hem of the man's cloak. He paused mid-step as the mantle was tugged away from the left side of his face and glanced down at her. She was out again, probably from the shock of moving her right arm. Her fingers still mingled with the fabric of his cloak.

Moving laboriously, as though fighting against his better judgement, he cast his umbrella aside and lifted the woman carefully off the ground. This was not something he was accustomed to doing, so he had some trouble figuring out how to support her head and stop her arms flailing backwards, but he managed it.

She was deathly pale, so cold she had stopped shivering, and lighter than she should have been, by any reckoning. Watery mud glued much of her hair into a lank mess, and there were dark shadows under her teal eyes which had gazed imploringly at him minutes before. And he realised that she was crying.

Trying to shelter her from the rain as best he could with his cloak, he made his way through the forest which had been his home for the last six years.