Author's Note: More apologies for out-of-character-ness. This is where it should stop for a long time, I can assure you. I'd originally forgotten about Anko and just squeezed her in there. Darn she's fun. Once again, critiquing is more than welcome, but please me nice about it and tell me EXACTLY what you think I did wrong.
Please enjoy.
"This is Konoha?" the boy sounded fairly impressed. "It's huge!" his aunt – really his elder third cousin- cuffed him.
"Don't look around like a hillbilly, Yasutora," she admonished, patting her blonde wig. "What's your name?"
"Gorou," he repeated dutifully. "Gorou Terada, from a non-shinobi village near Kumogakure. But Oba-san-" he got cuffed again.
"What is this 'oba-san'? When did that start? I'm not an old lady, and I'd like you to remember that. While we're here, it's Yorune Terada, okay?"
"How come you got a good name?" Yasutora whined, following "oba-san's" lead and pulling on his broad-brimmed hat. "How come I have to be the Fifth Son?"
"Because you wanted to be called Akihito!" the false Yorune retorted. "That's a lord's name, kid! You can't be incognito with that!"
"And Yorune is better? The Sound of the Night? You're too flashy." Another cuff.
"Just shut it, Yasu. You wanted to come, remember? You beggedto get me to start teaching you how to walk on clouds! You begged me to take you with me! I don't need a guard, Yasu." He muttered something incoherent but probably rude.
Yorune sighed and tied the wide obi around her waist. She wore her usual clothes under. She thought she would go made if she just had the kimono and nothing else. Even in her traveling bag she only carried a short knife and certain cooking implements so as not to arouse suspicion. Yasutora was dressed as a wealthy merchant's son and was posing as her nephew, though he'd always called her "Auntie" before.
"Let's go, Yasu. Stay out of trouble." Yorune hefted her walking stick and assumed the posture of a reasonably well-to-do, gently reared young woman. Yasu just glowered and slouched, muttering grumpily, "Yes, Raikage-sama."
He banged his head down on his desk with a small groan. He hatedpaperwork. Hated, hated, HATED it. Who didn't? The day had gotten warm for late spring and it was damnably stuffy in his office, even with the window open. He groaned again. The Raikage was supposed to be arriving incognito that day. She'd even refused to let him know what she was disguising herself as. There was a sharp rap on the door. Still with his face in his paperwork, he called, "Come in!" the door creaked open but he didn't hear a single footstep.
He looked up quickly, reaching for a kunai as a strange blonde woman strolled into his office, her wooden geta not making a single sound against the floor. "And you are?" No one escorted her. He thought, tensing.
"Naruto-kun, I'm crushed." She cried out dramatically, hands flying to her bosom as if stabbed. But then she got a wicked gleam in her eyes; eyes he only just noticed were yellow cat's eyes. "Or do you prefer 'Hokage-sama' these days?" she asked sweetly.
He stared with his mouth open for a moment. She jerked off her hat and wig, bowing like an actor at the end of a performance. Her hair was jet black underneath the wig and fell past her waist, enhancing her already pale skin. Naruto got to his feet, grimacing as his muscles protested. "Likewise. Are you Kurai or Raikage-sama?"
She shucked her kimono and folded it up neatly, stuffing it into the traveling bag she carried. Underneath she wore a white shirt with black pants and the Torakiba yin-yang symbol on the back. She artfully turned her straw-hat inside out, revealing the white and yellow of the Raikage. The kanji meaning "lightning" was on the front. She placed it on her head then plopped herself into the chair in front of Naruto's desk. "Between us and old friends," she said conspiratorially. "It's Kurai. Frankly, my ears bleed when you say 'Raikage-sama'. When did you ever get so polite?" Naruto shrugged in reply.
"Diplomacy is a must for this job, I tell you."
"Diplomacy?" Kurai sniggered, so much like her younger self. "Did I hear right? Or is that a new Ramen flavor?"
Naruto made a face at her. She returned it.
Then, the air seemed to go straight out of their sails and they heaved identical sighs. Only a Kage could understand another Kage's stress. "So…" Kurai began, propping her elbows up on the Hokage's desk and just barely managing to not knock over a cold cup of coffee. "What's this I hear about my ninjas?" a shadow passed over Naruto's face. He got up and motioned for his guest to do so as well.
"I figured you'd want to talk to them yourself." He said grimly. Kurai blinked.
"What, they're not dead?"
"We don't go around needlessly killing people," he retorted. Kurai grimaced.
"This is Konoha, not Kumo. There's war afoot, back home. The daimyo seems to have insulted another lord. Of course, Kumogakure had nothing to do with it but guess what? I'm up until ten doing paperwork. He wants bodyguards he wants soldiers he wants assassins. He wants the best of the-" here she said something very choice –"Best."
"Ten?" Naruto thought back on the many times he been up until sunrise filling out forms. The Kage's work was nothing but paper. "That's not so bad."
"Ten in the morning." She growled, and only just then did he notice the dark circles under her eyes.
"Hokage-sama, Kurenai said… oh." The jounin in question saw that someone else was in the office.
"Shikamaru! How long's it been?" Kurai said brightly. Shikamaru muttered something about "troublesome" and was starting to close the door before he remembered.
"She's here to see the prisoners?" he asked, his question directed at Naruto. Bones crackled as the Raikage menacingly cracked her knuckles.
"I want all the other jounin to be present," he requested. Naruto never ordered a friend around. He'd found out that trying to phrase his "orders" politely saved him a multitude of bruises. "This is going to be interesting."
"Troublesome, more like." Shikamaru corrected, scratching the back of his neck. "This is going to be a looooong day."
"I kind of feel sorry for them," Kurenai muttered to Kakashi, who chuckled darkly in reply. The ferocity of the Raikage towards her enemies was nearly legendary. She fought not only with strength and skill, but with fury and the intense protectiveness of a tigress over her cubs.
"I'll leave you in charge of questioning. We've gotten all we could out of them without leading to the really… painful methods." Naruto explained, nodding to the jail-keeper. "We thought we should keep them in at least one or three pieces for you to talk to." Kurai responded with bared teeth, keeping in stride with the Hokage as the jounin brought up the rear.
"Oh goodie." Her voice sent chills up the spines of several of the newer jounin.
The cell door slammed open, the male kidnapper shackled to a chair that was in turn bolted to the floor. He took one look at Kurai, saw the Raikage hat, then gulped. The cell was large, so everyone could fit inside. Neji Hyuuga had made a point of being there, not only as a jounin, but as a vengeful father. He had been present for the first attempts at questioning the enemies, but they hadn't gotten very far. The ninja didn't show up in the Bingo Book, so they weren't that important.
Sasuke Uchiha was also there, as chief of the Military Police Force and as the dungeon was underneath the station. He had personally questioned the kidnappers, but was no more successful than anyone else. But, and here he looked sidelong at the Raikage, he remembered fighting the savage kunoichi more than fifteen years ago, during the chuunin exams, and other times when they had sparred. She had been weak at first, leeched as she was by her now deceased twin. But she had grown amazingly in power and was a master of genjutsu and other such arcane arts.
"Oh, I know you," she said, sauntering over to the man tied in the chair. He began to perspire profusely, staring straight ahead. She motioned to the chuunin who would be taking notes. "This is Yamaguchi Shouhei, Chuunin. He actually is from Kumogakure. He had a wife and daughter, but they were killed last year during one of the skirmishes. They'd been visiting family on coast. Official reports say that bandits got them, but I doubt twenty bandits could stand up to even one chuunin. Isn't that right, Shouhei?" he didn't say anything.
Suddenly, she lashed out, clawed hand sinking into his shoulder and surprising a scream out of him. "You're not the only ones that have had near-kidnappings," she went on conversationally to the present jounin as if they were at a pleasant board meeting. There was a murmur of surprise. "One child was Katsuro," she named her son, six years old. "The other was my cousin Kagemaru's youngest child, Izumi. Who was nearly kidnapped here, again?"
"My son, Haruki." Neji's voice was cold and his pale eyes like chips of ice as his stare bored into Shouhei.
"And Suzume, my daughter." Sasuke treated Shouhei to a scorched left ear, making the man yelp.
"There's a pattern," Kakashi said suddenly. They all looked at the experienced jounin. "They're from powerful old families."
"If they wanted powerful old families, they could have gone after some merchant folk," The sadistic Anko drawled.
"Or other shinobi clans, like the Inuzuka," grunted a jounin in the back, maneuvering a toothpick to the opposite side of his mouth.
"It's the ones with blood limits." Realization dawned on them. Neji, Naruto, and Sasuke exchanged grim looks. Their precious children possessed the Byakugan and Sharingan.
"You want our kids for something," Kurai dug her claws in deeper, incisors growing needle-sharp and longer, eyes burning an even more intense amber as the slit pupils held Shouhei's own round ones. He began to feel afraid. The Hokage had scared him, sure, when that feral grin had asked him if he was going to be cooperative or, as the other jounin with him had offered, troublesome. The Uchiha was pretty fearsome, too. He'd heard gruesome things about the Sharingan users, how they could steal your soul or make you relive your worst memories. And the Hyuuga… he'd seen Hyuuga clan members before, when he'd been a genin during his chuunin exam. There was always a Hyuuga in some major event. But the current clan head was particularly cold and his eyes so hateful that they made the rest of his face look like some gruesome mask.
But the Raikage… he'd seen her do her work. He'd known her when she was a weak little strip of rawhide that could be blown away in the next passing breeze. The dramatic change was incredible, and she even had the gall to destroy her own twin… brutality was bred into the Torakiba line along with strength. This was the woman who had trained under the infamous Inazuma Torakiba. This was the woman that had no problem killing people with her bare hands, fancy jutsu aside. He knew just what she was capable of, and he didn't find that comforting.
"What do you want our children for?" she hissed into his face, nose only an inch from his own. He'd gone cross-eyed trying to keep her in view. As far as he was concerned, the greatest danger was the madwoman who was breathing carnage into his mug. He didn't answer. "Tell me!" he suddenly had visions of unspeakable things, horrible things that had already happened and one day would happen all over again.
He cried out as she released him, withdrawing her claws out of his flesh. She nodded to the Hyuuga present, and the Uchiha. They nodded in return. Shouhei felt surges of chakra from both of them but his concentration was focused on his Raikage. "Shouhei, be a dear and tell me why in the world you would ever wish to kidnap Haruki Hyuuga," she purred, voice so sweet that it made his teeth hurt. And that was enough to get him babbling. The woman was certifiably insane by his measure, and more unpredictable than a rabid tiger.
"I don't know!" he exclaimed shrilly. "I really don't, Raikage-sama, please, I don't know!" he began to weep, watched with intense disgust by the shinobi present, including the secretary chuunin. "I… she… they told me that they could bring my wife and daughter back if I helped them! You must believe me, Raikage-sama, I wouldn't harm a child, truly. I only wanted Emiko and Mitsuki back." He cried in earnest, a broken man in a dire situation who only wanted his wife and daughter back.
Kurai turned her back on him and only Naruto saw the tear she wiped from her eye. She wasn't as heartless and cruel as she presented herself. Who would respect a woman that got sentimental or an enemy?
"Who's they, Shouhei?" her voice did not shake but she still did not face him.
"I don't know, Kurai-san!" he forgot all formality in trying to plead with a former colleague. "I just got a note on my bed one day, saying that if I ever wanted to see Emiko and Mitsuki again, I'd do exactly as they say! They didn't tell me what they were going to do with the children, pleas believe me!"
"But you did know." Kakashi's voice was neither kind nor cruel, rather lacking in any sort of expression. "You knew that it couldn't be good, what they were kidnapping children possessing kekkei genkai for. That's why you were about to drop Haruki and run for it when Neji caught you. Whoever you were working for needed the blood of the kekkei genkai, and the easiest way to get it is from the weakest members who have not yet developed their blood limits: children."
"How did your kid get away?" Kurai asked Sasuke curiously. "The two who tried to kidnap Izumi Katsuro were caught after Katsuro got his claws in one." She smirked with pride at the memory. A strange look came over the usually stoic ninja's face, as if he were trying to suppress a similar smirk.
"Acupressure," he answered. "Suzume's been watching Sakura work. I don't know how, but she got a nerve in the scum's arm."
"Sharingan, anyone?" Naruto chuckled. They all joined in for a few brief moments.
The room and atmosphere grew cold once again.
Kurai turned her eyes to the captive man once again. He flinched and began to tremble, his face tear-streaked. "You're not leaving anything out, right, Shouhei?" she asked quietly. He shook his head vigorously.
"I've told you all I know!"
"What is your relation to the woman who tried to kidnap Suzume Uchiha?"
"We were just on the same mission. I don't even know her name."
"Why does she wear our village's headband?" He shrugged.
"Probably so if we got caught, it would not seem so strange."
"He's right. Why would two shinobi from different villages be kidnapping on the same night in the same village?" Kurenai mused aloud. "But why Cloud?" Neji and the two Kages grimaced.
"It was Cloud that tried to kidnap Hinata-sama when we were young." Neji had many sore memories of the incident. It was because of Cloud that his father died.
"It's despicable," Kurai spat. "Kidnapping or harming noncombatants is the lowest of the low. Ever since I became Raikage I've been working my ass off on peace treaties."
"Which mean no more than the paper they're written on," Kakashi put in, scratching his nose under his mask.
"And I can assure you all that these kidnappings had nothingto do with my orders. As you know, my son was nearly taken. And you also know my views on kidnapping as a whole." She glared around the circle of jounin. Some fidgeted nervously; the ones who had suspected her.
"Raikage-sama, what was the village that the shinobi who had tried to take son and Izumi from?" Naruto's voice was deeper, more mature, and more formal in front of the stranger. Kurai stood up straight, steel in her eyes. She spoke just as politely.
"Sunagakure, Hokage-sama." There were mutters of disbelief. "And yet when I questioned them, they didn't even know the name of the yakitori place down there. And Kazekage-sama knew nothing as well."
Kurai nodded curtly to the jail-keeper. "Take this one away and bring in the kunoichi." Shouhei's sigh of relief was nearly audible when no-nonsense shinobi untied him and swept him away. The woman had hawkish features and straight black hair chopped severely to her jaw. She stank of ill-will. "Not mine." The Raikage said immediately.
"We think she's Amegakure. She speaks in that dialect."
"Name's Junko," Sasuke added. "Whoever was on the other end of her radio was calling her that. She went for Suzume.
"Ah, Junko. Did your parents use the kanji for 'pure child'?" Junko remained silent, only sending a hate-laden glance at her questioner. Kurai paced around her captive, trailing her hand along the back of the chair. "I was first in my class with torture and investigation," she hissed into the other woman's ear. "You want to see how I managed to get such top marks?"
"Bite me, bitch." Junko snarled. Kurai blinked, then grinned. The men present took a few steps back. They recognized the look of an angry woman. Hell had no fear from them when a female got mad. Kurenai only glared with her red eyes at Junko and Anko grinned, being the only female jounin present besides the Raikage.
"I may very well do so. You know more than Shouhei did. I know you do. You're higher up than he is in the information line. Oh, and," Junko was struggling to form hand-seals. "Suicide jutsu are blocked." She jerked her head in the direction of the scrolls papering the walls. Junko sneered and threw back her head, mirthless laughter echoing and rebounding against the concrete walls of the cell.
"I'm not telling you anything!" she cackled. Soon, her cackle turned into a choke as her eyes bugged out. Something invisible was constricting her throat.
"Stop her!" Sasuke looked to the heart of the jutsu with his Sharingan but there was no way he could think of a way to counter it before she exhaled her last, a triumphant look still in her blank eyes.
The Raikage made a small noise of anger. "Damn." She peeled back one of Junko's eyelids further, examining the pinprick of a pupil.
"Not a suicide jutsu." Neji stated.
"A killing jutsu, attached to her and probably some sort of listening device as well." Kakashi started going through the woman's pockets.
"It's already been-" Sasuke started to say until Kakashi ripped out the seams of the lining of a hidden pocket and produced a round black button-like thing. "-done."
"Shit! They heard us." Naruto slammed his fist against the wall. The chuunin taking notes scuttled to the other side of the room.
"All we can do now is send out more spies and alert the people." A jounin in the back growled.
"I'm getting all my people not on active duty to cultivate birdies." That was slang for "all my people not sent out on homicidal missions for money to go and scare people into giving up information". "Damn, more paperwork."
"Hokage-sama!" a scarred chuunin skidded to a halt in front of the open cell door and bowed. "The captive Shouhei has just died. It looked like someone had a strangling spell on him or something." The room went dead quiet.
"There goes the torturing," Anko muttered regretfully while the rest just joined.
After the inevitable meeting that ensued, it was starting to get dark. The Raikage looked like she had been steamrolled. The Hokage as if he had been chewed up by some monstrous thing and spit out, judging by how his hair was in a wild state after running his fingers through it so many times in frustration. Finally, about thirty minutes after everyone else had left and the two Kages had basically zoned out, Naruto asked, "Where're you staying?" Kurai blinked out of her stupor before stifling a huge yawn and saying, "The inn by the West Gate. I sent Yasutora to get us a room. He's a silly bastard but he's good for something."
"Yasutora?"
"Kagemaru's eldest kid. He wants to be Raikage someday. He's enough like you to really bug the hell out of me. But, he's family, what can I do? He begged to come with me."
"Where is he now?"
"Oh crap." Was all the other Kage said, getting to her feet with a groan. "I said he could wander around a sight-see like an idiot. Amazingly, he was happy to do so. He's probably gotten into some sort of trouble by now. He's quite talented in that area."
"There's a Torakiba wandering around Konoha?" the idea made him feel faintly ill as he sensed yet another mountain of paperwork in the making.
"Not wandering, persay. Roaming. Torakiba do not wander. We roam."
They chatted and crabbed about paperwork, waved to the secretary the secretary, and proceeded towards the Hokage residence. "…and the Old Lady has corrupted my children."
"You should see my mother if you think that's bad. She bills and coos and teaches Katsuro ikebana. Ikebana, to a boy! He's got his pride, I tell her, and she just tells me it's my fault for not birthing a girl! And then I say-"
"Oba-san! There you are! I've been looking all o-" a dark shape ran at Kurai but she grabbed her "nephew" by the back of his shirt and scowled ferociously at him. Nobody else was on the street, having gone home for dinner.
"You are addressing the Raikage, scut." She told him sternly. "And the Hokage! Show some respect."
"Respect? I don't have to give you respect!" he sputtered indignantly. "What the heck is your problem? You just leave me at the gate and tell me to 'stay out of trouble' like I'm some stupid little kid and-"
"Because you are a stupid little kid and if I've told you once I've told you a thousand times to not call me Oba-"
"You're just bitter because you don't like being called old!"
"BECAUSE I'M NOT!"
"YOU'RE THIRTY! YOU'RE OLD!"
The scuffle that ensued wasn't quite up to par. They looked more like a two touchy felines where the young tom had stepped on the older female's tail. Which, hypothetically, had happened.
Finally, Kurai had gotten her subordinate into a headlock and very smugly proceeded to say, "This is the Hokage. Say hello."
"Hello." Yasutora muttered sullenly. Then he suddenly picked up. "Is it true you made up the Oiroke no Jutsu?" Naruto grinned, looking very much like a fox.
"Heheh, better believe it!"
"Did you make it up as you went along? Or did you have mo- OW!"
"You are corrupting my nephew!" Kurai gasped after giving Yasu a firm shake. "How dare you!"
"You've spent time around Old Man Jiraiya!" Naruto countered. "If the kid's training under you, he doesn't need me to corrupt him."
"Naruto-kun, I was corrupted long before that. Many variations of The Talk with my old sensei, as she thought I 'needed to know'." Her eyes softened at the memory of her old teacher, the now-deceased Inazuma Torakiba, born Umeko Torakiba. "But, that's what you get when most of your family has kids and less than a fifth ever get married."
"Tou-san married!" Yasu piped up.
"That's because your father is an old-fashioned biddy."
"Am I an 'old-fashioned biddy' then, as well?" Naruto demanded, outraged.
"Of course, Hokage-sama," Kurai teased him with her Cheshire cat smile on her face. "Of the highest degree. How is Hinata, anyway?" Yasu's stomach growled, Kurai's joining in a second later. Maybe the day had been a bit too long, as Kurai and Naruto burst out into fits of laughter while Yasu looked at them like they were crazy.
"Come on over for dinner, and you can ask Hinata-chan yourself." Naruto offered. "She has a nice way with sukiyaki."
"What, you're eating things besides ramen?" Kurai pretended to look shocked.
They continued to bicker and insult each other all the way to the Hokage residence, Yasutora following and muttering about "crazy grown-ups".
Okay, the kids are up, next chapter!