Deceiver
alea iacta est
Tenten saw him – or thought she did – three weeks later. This time she was not out alone, Ino and Kiba forming the rest of the three-man team. They had been sent on a fairly simple patrol mission for a particularly dangerous area of Fire Country's borders – the area near Sound. Kiba was there as a heavy-combat specialist and a tracker; Ino for her expertise in interrogation in case they found a captive. Tenten, who was not as good as either of them in their specialties but was proficient in all of them – combat both melee and long-range, interrogation, tracking, as well as in dead-reckoning navigation, seal-casting, tactics and strategy, which neither of the others was really trained for – was in command.

They had bedded down for the night. Ino was foraging for food; Kiba was building a fire. Tenten went off to a small spring-fed pond to get water for the pot and for drink. After she filled the water containers, she took the chance to wash a little. She knelt and splashed her face with the pond-water, shivering a little at the coldness. As she gazed idly down at her reflection in the rippling water, she thought she spied a flash of dark color – darker than the surrounding, sunset-lit forest – go by. Frowning, she stared with more concentration into the stilling water.

There! Was that…was that a shape in the trees? She peered closer, not turning her head to alert whatever it was. The shape began to resolve into human lines, something recognizable…

"Tenten!" Tenten cursed silently as Kiba's voice ripped through the forest silence. "I mean, um, captain! Where are yoo-oou?"

Someone flitted away from the small clearing – she could hear the rustle of the leaves, like a slight breeze passing through. Tenten frowned in thought.

Then she lifted her voice and began to sing.

Kiba burst into the clearing to see his commanding officer kneeling beside a pond, scooping water into one of the containers (she had emptied it out) as she sang a strange, unfamiliar melody.

Her song faded away as she rose to her feet, swinging the water containers over her shoulder. "Here, Inuzuka," she said, tossing one at him. "Make yourself useful."

"O-okay, captain," Kiba said, obediently shouldering his new burden. As the two of them made their way back to the campsite, Kiba mustered up enough courage to ask his normally pragmatic companion – Konoha's resident Ice Queen - about her strangely uncharacteristic singing. "Ano, captain? What was that song you were singing earlier?"

"Oh," Tenten said carelessly. "Nothing much. It's just an old kids' song."

"I…I didn't recognize the words."

"You wouldn't. It's not in Japanese."

"Oh…"

Tenten glanced at him, then softened enough to elaborate: "It's in Yong, the language of the eastern empire. My parents came from there."

"Oh," Kiba said again, this time in a more understanding tone.

Tenten tried not to laugh to herself. Yes, it was in Yong; and yes, the melody was from an old children's song, one they sang to keep the beat in their simple games. And yes, the lyrics did change from region to region.

But the lyrics had never before consisted of detailed coordinates of exactly where a Konoha patrol would be going during their mission, hastily transposed into Yong military parlance. "Horse fifty-seven to Rooster thirty-three, north, sweep-pattern standard, checkpoints Five, Nine and Tweeee-eelve," did not really appeal to playful children, after all.

Tenten smiled secretly, a hidden curve of her lips. It felt good to return a favor.

In the trees, a dark figure chuckled to himself. Luckily he knew how to decipher Yong coordinates - they used the avatars of their Zodiac for classification instead of an alphabet, for example. How useful his time in the East was proving.

Inscribing the precise coordinates to his eidetic memory, he leaped off into the night, red eyes flaring against the darkness.

TBC.

Next chapter: Deeper.
Tenten and Sasuke entangle themselves further.