Note: Reread the ever-helpful Naruto Wiki and noticed a few details about ANBU. Somehow I think the canon stipulation that only the Kage and village elders know who exactly is in ANBU is rather unrealistic and impossible. I personally consider the fact that someone is in ANBU is kept fairly hush-hush, but not entirely under the wraps. It's who wears what mask that is the big secret… which is why the big reveal in the Hokage's office was so disconcerting for them.
Shot 2. The leave-taking.
When he walked into the indigo shadows of the house, the temperature changed sharply from pleasant warmth to uncomfortable stuffiness. Itachi was used to the silence. He stepped onto the engawa and turned his sandals around before padding over the wooden slats. A thin layer of dust kept the floor more slippery than it used to be
(back when more people walked over it)
but he had left it as an additional indicator of unsolicited visitors, having learned that the ANBU who guarded him overlooked details like that. Sasuke had shown no inclination to do any housekeeping, and Itachi couldn't blame him. What was the point of trying to restore the house to its former state? It would only bring back memories and ghosts of people Itachi wasn't sure were entirely dead – though there were worse fates for occupants of interrogation cells.
Not that the ghosts didn't come to haunt, regardless. Sasuke insisted that the house was noisy. At night, he heard murmurs of people talking, sometimes arguments, sometimes quick footsteps down the hallways – that was why he used to flee past his own bedroom and spend the night on a futon in Itachi's room. He hadn't done that since turning ten, but that one and a half tatami space of Itachi's room stayed bare.
He slid back the door of his closet and surveyed its dark recesses. He still had to step onto the lower shelf to reach the back of the shelf above it, where he used to keep his equipment. There were a couple of scrolls, old and dusty with disuse. His hand brushed over small, dry pellets. Mice. They wouldn't have dared in the past.
Itachi stepped down and bit the thumb of his other hand, feeling chakra movethrough his coils for the first time in almost half a decade.
A small, dun-colored cat with tiger markings appeared in a puff of smoke. She licked her lips and looked disoriented for a moment, until she realized that she had an audience. At once, the confusion smoothed away from her face. Purring, she flowed forward to rub her head against Itachi's ankle.
"Haven't seen whisker or tail of you for a while, Itachi! Did you bring me anything?"
It really had been too long. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "Next time, Hina." Hina's purr turned into a low growl, but it was a growl of pleasure as his fingers scratched under her chin.
"I'll hold you to that. Granny is not very pleased with you boys. She was wondering how the clan has been doing."
Itachi's expression didn't change, but the casual remark tightened his throat briefly. "You haven't heard?"
Hina yawned and moved away, twining around his leg. "Didn't I say so? You can tell me while you go fix me something in the kitchen, eh?"
He knew the moment Sasuke returned. Not by the customary sounds, though Itachi had reason to be thankful, in an odd way, for all the practice at observation without chakra or Sharingan he'd had. He recognized the chakra signatures of the ANBU escort. The Hokage appeared to have dispensed with Itachi's own escort, satisfied with placing a seal on his back that would force him into seizures should he displease any of five particular individuals in the village. It was an adaptation of the Caged Bird Seal that the Hyuuga Clan put on its branch members, and perhaps just as permanent.
Hina slinked off to the back gate which Sasuke preferred to use, calling Denka, her fellow ninja cat and sibling, so that they could greet the youngest Uchiha. They had always loved Sasuke for indulging them and paying them special attention instead of just summoning them for their services. Not that Sasuke had been old enough to need a summons back then, or even to draw up a personal contract.
His brother had crouched down to pet the cats, who hadn't let him get farther than two strides from the door. Itachi's eyes swept past him and noticed Sasuke's sandals, arranged crookedly but with their toes pointing to the door. The footwear was a slightly darker blue than usual, and moisture was seeping out from underneath. Sasuke's hair also gleamed damply, though it would take a rainstorm to flatten those irrepressible tufts at the back. He had been training himself to walk on the lake again, a skill that most ninja learned after becoming genin. At twelve years old, Sasuke's chakra reserves were still negligible enough for the village council to allow him access.
"Aniki," he mumbled, straightening. Denka sighed as the hand that had been stroking his sleek-furred back withdrew. "I didn't graduate."
Itachi could have guessed from his sullen expression. He wondered how to break the news of his mission for all of three seconds before deciding to organize it in the format of a report. It was the only courtesy he could give his brother, to give him information concisely and clearly. "I'll be leaving for the border of Fire and Rain Country in a week."
Shock, disbelief, and terror chased each other through Sasuke's face. Huge dark eyes widened to an impossible size. "What?" He sounded as if Itachi had punched him in the gut. "What for?"
"The Hokage is sending me on a classified mission with several others. The mission has no definite end date, but we will be reporting on a weekly basis through a summons."
Denka stopped kneading Sasuke's feet with his paws long enough to nudge Hina in the shoulder. "Less snacking, more running."
"Yeah, boss," said the other cat, a little huffily. They seemed oblivious to Sasuke's rising dismay.
"Why?" His voice cracked. "Why you? What did you do? They won't let me graduate from that f – ing academy and they send you out just like that?" Itachi opened his mouth. "I'm not the one who killed everybody!"
He tore out of the room. Itachi let him go.
"Wise," said Denka. "Let him cool off first. It'll be good for you to get out of Konoha for a bit, anyway." His whiskers drooped and he ducked his head when Itachi finally looked down at him. "Hey, it's none of my doing!" he reminded the Uchiha.
Itachi didn't know if he felt angry or resigned, although he was in such a strange state of mind that the cat's defensiveness almost amused him. Whatever he felt, it assuredly wasn't guilt this time. He knew how that felt well enough to strike it off the list.
"Got any shishamo fish?" Hina asked hopefully.
The balmy temperature should have felt wonderful, but the uniform clung to her back on the night of departure.
Hana was not nervous by nature, especially once she knew the limits within which she could act on her discretion. That was exactly the problem. She had never been a squad leader before, nor sent on a mission that was over a month long.
That aside, everything seemed to be in order. Having said her farewells, she had checked her equipment and packed up mechanically by ten-thirty. At ten forty-five, she was slipping on her uniform, armor, and mask in the ANBU compound. Five minutes to eleven, Hana was surveying the village from a tree near the small western gate. The two shinobi standing guard didn't seem to notice, but then, they weren't supposed to.
At eleven, three infinitesimally small disturbances in the air announced the presence of the rest of the squad. It took another second for Hana to detect the muted chakra signatures; in any case, the slip had been deliberate.
Their sudden materialization startled the chuunin at the gate. Seeing so many ANBU in the same place had to inspire a twist of fear in anyone who wasn't an idiot.
Koga, the appointed leader of the other squad, flicked his hand at the chuunin in a quick gesture of dismissal. Even so, Hana knew they wouldn't be able to help keeping one wary eye on the proceedings, which compromised the security of the gate.
They had nothing to discuss, anyway. Just a quick appraisal and a nod, and Hana and her team left the village first, clearing the walls in one chakra-laced bound.
After three days of near-silent travel – with most communication conveyed in a code of hand gestures – they stopped over at the outpost just before the one at the border with the second squad close on their heels. Although Ame was not yet in view, its perennial storm clouds spread over the horizon like a blot of watered ink on grey silk. Under their shadow, the air felt heavy and oppressive. The chill that blanketed the land did not belong at the beginning of summer.
Mizuki, the chuunin who had shown them the room where they would be staying indefinitely, had smirked unkindly when Hana questioned him about the stack of plastic buckets in the corner.
"You'll see soon enough," was the reply.
The room was large enough for all eight of them to share with minimal compromise of personal space, if they left their egos outside. The floor had looked a little damp earlier, but Hana had wanted to think it was because someone had recently mopped it before their arrival. That might not have been entirely false, but it wasn't quite the hoped-for show of hospitality either. ANBU did not expect to live in luxury. It would have been nice, though, if only for a night. This was where Koga's squad would reside for the duration. Hana didn't envy them. At the same time, she doubted the next outpost would look much better.
A handful of guards were already grumbling about dinner. Their voices drifted up from the mess hall below. "With his cooking, it's more like 'what goes down must come up'…"
Hana lifted her head and drew in a long breath through the holes of her mask. Mildew and rust.
She hoped they would learn to like the rain.
The outpost on the border of Fire and Rain was a lost cause, but if this one had been erected a mere five kilometers southeast of its present location, its occupants could have enjoyed many drier afternoons - the wind current that generated almost all the sandstorms in the desert surrounding Suna also pushed the clouds across the northwestern tip of Fire Country, where the remainder of the storm broke over a plateau. Too bad the contractor had not bothered to consult any ninja who had taken missions in the surrounding area before obtaining the daimyo's seal of approval. The only consolation for any of the miserable laborers who had helped build the outpost was that its future residents would be in a position to appreciate their hardships.
It did not begin with a gentle pitter-patter and build into a torrent that filled all the crevices on the ground within minutes.
It did not begin with a flash of violet-white in the sky and arrive with the deep growl of thunder.
It went more like this: plop plop plop (drip) hsssssssssssssh (and sheets of water slid along the walls and tumbled over the edges) plunk plonk plonk duoonk.
The ceiling was leaking, to exactly no one's surprise.
There were five major leaks in the ceiling: two concentrated near the northern corner of the room, one just in front of the window, and the last, a foot away from one of the only two electrical outlets.
The soft plunking of raindrops into the bucket by Aburame Muta's sandaled foot was punctuated by only the splash of rain into the other four buckets and the occasional dry crinkle of a turning page.
Muta's Bingo Book was dog-eared, written all over with color-coded notes – red for unconfirmed, blue for vouched-for by a trustworthy source, and underlined for near-absolute certainty. He had been writing in it since his first mission outside Konoha, beginning with a small observation that the southwestern coast of Fire Country served a shark fin soup of unparalleled quality. It was accompanied by a brief warning that a major thieves' syndicate led by a rogue Suna nin was based in the same area. (The shinobi in question was a chuunin and had yet to earn a page to himself in the Suna Bingo Book.) Upon the team's arrival at the outpost, Muta had made another annotation.
It was getting to the point where he could have typed up a fairly decent international appendix to the standard copy issued to Konoha's jounin. In another couple of months, any enemy nin who peeked over his shoulder would have considered the heavily defaced volume worth stealing. Friends, neutral acquaintances, or teammates might someday steal it out of sheer boredom.
Hyuuga Tokuma, for instance.
"You read the Bingo Book for fun?"
Muta didn't even look up. "Beats watching you lot pick your teeth with kunai in the mess hall. Don't you know where they've been?"
An extended pause succeeded his rhetorical question, punctuated by: plonk, plonk. Then, "Is it that interesting?"
Muta suppressed a sigh. "Riveting."
Itachi leaned the side of his head against the wall and closed his eyes, trying a trick that his mother had taught him in the past. One shuriken... two shuriken...