One

虎穴に入らずんば虎子を得ず

"nothing ventured, nothing gained"


"Shut the door," came the sound of a rough voice, startling Hinata. She moved hurriedly to do so, fingers slipping into the round catch and tugging. The door slid shut.

"I am Naruto Uzumaki. Do you know where you are?" His words were gentle, lending a pleasant contrast to his voice. Hinata took a closer look at the man Sakura had called 'Boss'. He was tall, almost intimidatingly so, and the loose kimono he wore showed his well-developed torso. A strip of black fabric on his forehead kept the his shaggy blond hair from falling onto his tanned face, and a pair of almost-impossibly blue eyes looked back at her. Noblewoman or no, Hinata was having a hard time keeping her blush at bay.

"N-no," she started, and immediately berated herself for fumbling with her words. What am I, twelve?

Before she could elaborate, however, the door slid open and a man came thundering in. Hinata didn't recognize him at first, but the sound of his voice as he uttered a quick, "Sorry for being late, Boss," rang bells in her mind. It was the man who had saved her the previous night!

Hinata carefully studied the new man's appearance as the two held a conversation of whispered words. Inuzuka-san, as she knew from Sakura, was almost as tall as Uzumaki-san. As he talked, she saw that his expressions slightly contorted a pair of fang-shaped tattoos on his cheeks, of all places. His hair was a no-nonsense brown, and from what she could tell, his eyes were deep black.

She observed that he wore a loose black haori. That jogged her memory from the previous night.

"It's a Black Coat!"

"Shit! What are you waiting for, lets move, no girl is worth getting clobbered by those animals!"

So clearly, she had stumbled into the bowels of some sort of gang, or organisation. One that sent fear into the hearts of the Old Oto inhabitants, but had members compassionate enough to rescue a damsel in distress.

All her life, Hinata had been dismissed as a damsel in distress. Her father had done it, so had her sister, and you didn't need to be a genius to see the looks of contempt her bodyguards used to show her.

Her thoughts were interrupted, as the two men turned to face her. "Sakura-chan didn't say what your name was," said the blond.

"I am Hinata...Yuuhi,"she said, her mind throwing in the last name of her former governess. "I-I don't know anything! All I know is that I woke up last night in the back-room of a tea-house, and when I tried to escape those men chased after me!" Throwing in a bit of the truth with my lie, she thought, will make it even stronger. "I don't know why I was there, I don't know anything, Uzumaki-san!" A bit of genuine fear had escaped the mental wall she had built, wetting her pale eyes and making her dainty hands shiver.

"Calm down, Yuuhi-san. We won't hurt you. You can stay here until my men get to the bottom of it. This has been happening a lot recently, the village girls disappearing left and right. But an outsider has never been taken yet," he said, his jaw clenched. "You aren't hurt, right?" he asked more gently.

She shook her head, fearing that her voice would tremble if she spoke. She never wanted to hear herself stutter again.

"Kiba, escort her to her room. She's too high-strung right now for us to get any information from her."

"Roger that, Boss."


Word in the House was that Kiba had rescued a fair maiden from the slimy hands of her would-be captors. It had been a long time since the group had a new face among them, and the conversation they all had that evening was largely concerning this 'Hinata'.

"I heard that she is even more beautiful than Tsunade-hime," said a woman in a flowing violet kimono with long, lustrous blonde hair that flowed free of restraints.

"She is a very good looking girl. A bit quiet, though, maybe," replied Sakura, all traces of her Ame accent gone. "Anyways, Ino, while you were fishing out the finest gossip in the House, did you find time to gather the information about those rats?"

The woman, Ino, replied,"I went to the usual places, and the men there weren't very helpful, but a guy at the tea house run by Kin Tsuchi, I forget the name, he had a lot to say. If his masters knew how loose his tongue gets with a little sake, they wouldn't be very pleased with him."

"And?" prompted a sickly-looking young man in a black yukata.

"Well, the deal is that apparently they are recruiting women for some sort of agreement with Kiri's daimyou. The girls are rounded up from tea-houses, drugged, and taken to the harbor," said Ino.

"Hn. That corresponds with most of our information. Any names?" asked a tall man with black hair.

"Nothing concrete yet."

"Okay. Now here's this week's roster. Sakura, you scour Ame for information on Tuesday and Thursday. Make use of all your oiran friends. They'll be sure to know something," said Naruto, his posture and tone radiating authority.

"Got it," replied Sakura.

"Ino, you hit up North's tea-houses on Monday and South's on Wednesday," he said, turning to the blonde.

"Roger that, boss."

"Tenten, you do East and West, Saturday and Sunday, you're a regular face in those parts," said Naruto, addressing a tall woman whose brown hair was pinned up in two buns.

"Okay," she said, not looking up from the sword she was sharpening.

"That's it for today, ladies. Sai, Sasuke, come with me, there's some news that Kiba's brought back," said Naruto, motioning to the pale, sick-looking man, and the dark haired one. They both followed him out of the common room, the door sliding shut with a resounding thud.

"Hey, how come I get the weekend shift!"


A/N- All of you who reviewed, I'm very grateful!

Also, this won't be in any way an actual historical story, I'm just trying to weave in parts of Japan's actual culture and history into an alternate universe.

Please review!