episode I

He could hear their low voices arguing but he couldn't make out the words. Yamato lay silently on the ground, staring up at the vast night sky spotted with brilliant stars as far as his eyes could see. He wondered briefly what they were arguing about, but he knew it had something to do with Akatsuki, mainly because he had sensed the tension between them both since their prior fight with two of the Akatsuki members.

He sat up, rubbing his temples. At the rate that they were going, he wasn't going to get much sleep. He glanced over at Sakura who was sleeping peacefully. Yamato rose to his feet slowly and quietly snuck into the woods towards where he assumed was the path they both had taken earlier.

They hadn't gone far, but the nearby rushing river only made it harder to make out what they were saying. Perched on the one of the large rocks by the river, looking both frustrated and concerned, was Hatake Kakashi. Reiko was standing by his side, but she was facing away, towards the river.

'You've been acting funny since our encounter with those two,' Kakashi was saying, his voice low and grave.

'I'm just tired,' she responded curtly.

'You're not usually like this when you're tired. I know you, Reiko. What happened? Did Itachi say something to you?'

'No, it's …nothing like that.' There was a note of finality in her voice.

Kakashi glanced away, and for a moment a silence stretched between them.

Yamato, shrouded in the shadows of the trees, recalled what happened earlier during their encounter with two notorious members of Akatsuki – Hoshigaki Kisame and the infamous Uchiha Itachi. It had taken them a while to realize it, but during their battle, Itachi and Reiko were nowhere to be seen. They had initially suspected that Itachi was fighting with Reiko, but when they found her after the Akatsuki members fled, she did not appear to have just been in a battle. If anything, she just appeared visibly distraught.

'What is this secret about Itachi that you have to keep hidden so protectively?' Kakashi asked finally after a long silence.

'There are no secrets, and I'm not hiding anything.'

Kakashi said patiently, 'I know about you and Itachi before he left Konoha. You two were –'

'There is nothing to that either,' Reiko snapped in a low voice, as if trying to suppress her anger. 'We attended the academy together but I barely knew him. That's all.'

Kakashi exhaled in exasperation. 'Reiko, whatever information you have on Itachi or Akatsuki could be vital to our mission. You know this is a crucial time for us and we could use any leverage we can get.'

'You don't have to tell me twice,' she interjected abruptly. 'If I knew something that I thought could help us, I'd have said something long ago. But nothing about this can or will change a thing.' She started to walk away, when Kakashi reached out and grabbed her arm.

'So you do know something,' he said as a matter-of-factly.

At that moment, even in the darkness and from the distance, Yamato could have sworn that he saw her expression changed, like a dark cloud descending upon her delicate features. 'You will never understand, Kakashi.' Her eyes closed briefly. 'And besides …it's personal.' She walked away and back into the forest where Yamato was hiding himself.

As he watched her head back to where they set up camp, Kakashi suddenly appeared behind him. 'I thought you were sleeping.'

Yamato glanced over at his senior. 'I was. I heard you two arguing. Sorry. I didn't mean to eavesdrop.'

Kakashi sighed. 'No, I'm sorry. I tried to keep it from you but I guess it's all out in the open now.'

Yamato was stared ahead at Reiko, who was pulling herself back into her own sleeping bag next to Sakura. 'You think she knows something?'

'I'm sure of it,' Kakashi said quietly. 'But she's so stubborn.'

'Well, like she said, she would say something if what she knows is actually vital to Konoha. I don't see her as the traitor type. So maybe it really is just something personal that she doesn't wish to tell,' Yamato mused.

'It doesn't make you curious? Itachi is a rogue ninja exiled from Konoha and she's a dedicated Leaf ninja. What could they possibly have in common that she refuses to let anyone know?' Kakashi paused. 'I think it's fair that I'm a little suspicious of her.'

'You need to have a little more faith in her, senpai,' Yamato said.

'I do have faith in her. But it's times like this that I question about her secrecy.'

'Whatever it is, now isn't the time to think about that. We have bigger matters on our hands.' But even as Yamato said those words, he couldn't help his own growing curiosity of Reiko.

Yamato had first met Reiko during the war with Orochimaru in which the Third Hokage lost his life protecting the Konoha Gakure. She was a jounin but because she wasn't wearing the typical jounin uniform, he hadn't been able to tell what rank she was. He knew of her because of Kakashi's close association with her, although he had never met her prior to that time, and like Kakashi, she had also earned a fair reputation being one of the selected few kunoichis with unparalleled combat skills. While her ingenuity was what made her stand out amongst the Konoha shinobis, the other reasons for her reputation were also due to her exquisite looks and extraordinary talent in medical ninjutsu and uncanny ability in manipulating poisons to her own advantage in battles.

During that war, Yamato was still in ANBU, and his squad had been sent to provide backup for her team who had fought against the enormous snakes summoned by Orochimaru. His ANBU squad had arrived just in time as she defeated the humongous snake, but she was fatally wounded. He had been the one to bring her to the Konoha hospital, but because of his ANBU rank, he never revealed who he was.

Now, a couple years later, Tsunade had him unmasked from ANBU and joined forces with them as a regular Konoha ninja in pursuit of Akatsuki.

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