Chapter III: Rescue


~Time elapses slowly, into the universe...


"Yup, this is definitely the address," thought Shikamaru as he shivered due to the cool breezes.

Cautiously, he looked around his intended destination. It was pretty run down and seemed dangerously close to being in disrepair. The small white picket fence that surrounded the desolate property seemed to be rusty and damaged. Cigarette butts and empty beer bottles were strewn carelessly around the front porch. Weeds covered the untended front yard. Only a lone black tabby cat walked across the lawn, impervious to Shikamaru's presence.

Sighing, Shikamaru gave orders to his long time team. He whispered into the hidden communication device that was meticulously stitched into his standard green ninja vest, "This isn't a drug bust. Maximum force won't be necessary. Hold your ground and serve as backup, I'm going in. Roger that?"

"Heard you loud and clear. But why interfere? Doesn't seem to be any trouble..." replied his fellow teammate and trusted friend. "We should just report back to the Hokage..."

"I second that," continued his sole quivering female teammate. "It's really cold out here, let's go back. Since we already know that there is nothing here, why waste more time?"

"Just do it," absentmindedly answered back Shikamaru as he kept walking towards the front door of the bleak house. "I just have a bad feeling..."

He quietly opened the door, making sure to avoid the squeaky noises coming from the worn out floorboards and the non-greased hinges. As he entered the strangely vacant home, he started to hear muffled screams. A shrill cry cut through the air. He could hear something make contact with human flesh and more stifled screams. The sharp smell of blood contaminated the air.

"Stop it!" yelled out an unknown female voice. "Please, don't hurt her. She's...she's just a kid! She's our child...please...PLEASE...don't hurt her!

Her sobs mixed with her pleads. A woman seemed awfully desperate. But regardless of the situation, the possibility of an ambush was still high. Shikamaru decided to keep his chakra covered and kept walking silently towards the location of the awful noises, albeit much more quickly.

"Upstairs, that was the source," rapidly detected Shikamaru, while mentally calculating the risks of barging in unassisted.

He knew had to get there as soon as possible. The situation inside already seemed dire, and based on what the unidentified woman just shrieked, things were just getting worse. It seemed like there were more than two people involved and one of them was definitely a child.

"Please, please, please...," kept begging the unidentified woman, slightly hysterical now. "Don't do this honey, don't do it! Look at her...look at Suzume...LOOK AT HER! She is just sleeping..."

"Shut up," slurred a man, who judging by his voice was obviously drunk. "That...that thing ain't no child of mine! Fucking bitch, you've been lying to me all this time! Oh well...it don't matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore...when you're both dead!"

The man followed up that statement with a gurgled laugh. A punch and a kick quickly followed. The sound of impact was drowned out by the victim's screams of agony. The situation was clearly escalating. Shikamaru raced up the stairs recklessly, abandoning all thoughts of personal safety. He was trying to determine the exact location of the conflict.

"Shit,"
thought Shikamaru sulkily, as his brain rapidly processed what he had heard. "This has to be a domestic violence issue. This case has physical and emotional abuse written all over it. Crap, I have to get to their room."

"Ino, Chouji," ordered Shikamaru hastily, as he continued searching. "Get in here quickly. We have a code green to deal with."

"Domestic violence?" asked both his teammates simultaneously. "We're coming in."

Shikamaru immediately felt their chakras as they entered the residence.

Being teammates since their Genin days, Shikamaru could easily distinguish between Ino's rather sharp, electric chakra to Chouji's considerably softer, engulfing chakra. Ino's soft, subtle footsteps contrasted greatly with Chouji's rather loud but sturdy ones. But all that quickly pushed to the back of his mind once he heard a gut wrenching scream.

"Fuck," thought Shikamaru as he forced chakra into his fingertips. A simple touch was all that was needed to remove the doors from their hinges. "Almost there, hang on a little bit longer."

But the more practical part of his brain was nagging him. He couldn't help but think of the worst case scenario.

When it came to domestic violence cases, it was usually the aggressor, not the victim that survived. Racing through the hallway, Shikamaru hurriedly blasted the final door open with a bit more force than necessary. It contained a small, second hand, child sized bed. Standing above the bed was a severely intoxicated young man holding a broken and bloody bottle.

"Yay...hic...more visitors," drawled the black haired man through his hiccups; his dull grey eyes somewhat drooping. "Is this thing yours? It ain't mine...hic...I tell ya. Hey, what are you...hic...doing to me?"

Without bothering to offer a proper answer, Shikamaru immediately put the man under a simple binding jutsu. The tall man's hands were instantly pulled backwards and locked together at the wrists. He held onto the liquor bottle with all his might. The black haired man was heavier than he looked and though he didn't resist, it took a while for Shikamaru to move the 6 foot 1 man onto his side.

This was the required position in which intoxicated people were laid; placing them on their backs could cause them to suffocate on their own vomit. After safely prying the broken liquor bottle away, Shikamaru turned to focus on the other adult occupant in the room.

There was a young woman who was nearly unconscious. As she lay on the ground, her soft grey hair fell across her dazed hazel eyes. She was a petite woman, no bigger than 5 foot 2. There was a huge gaping wound on the left side of her abdomen and blood was seeping out. She tried to cover her wound with her calloused hands. Her breathing was irregular and she seemed to be struggling with the pain. Her disrupted breaths were painful to listen to.

"Help...my Suzume," whispered the lady through laboured breaths, clutching her wound tightly. "Please, help...her."

"Don't worry about it," responded Shikamaru, as calmly as he could, while he tied his Konoha headband around the wound as a temporary measure to stop the bleeding. "She is going to be alright, both of you are going to be alright. I got a teammate who is coming up, she's a medic. She'll get you fixed up in no time. Suzume's your daughter, right?"

"Yes...Suzume...my daughter," gasped the woman, desperately hanging onto what was left of her life. "She...okay?"

"Yup ma'am," answered back Shikamaru as he started performing basic first aid. "She's alright; you don't have to worry about her. She is in good hands..."

"Good," interrupted the content mother, trying valiantly to resist the wave fatigue that was washing over her. "At least...I...saved...one...of...them."

Her voice started to fade as her blood pressure started to decline. Her breathing became more and more irregular. The wound which Shikamaru had previously covered up with his headband was not closing. The unconscious woman was very quickly losing plenty of blood. It seemed like she had been stabbed by the drunken man with the end of his broken liquor bottle. Glass pieces glittered dully against the rush of bright red blood.

"Shit," swore Shikamaru under his breath, as he tried to revive her; quickly starting to perform CPR. He intertwined his hands and pushed firmly against her heart, trying to get blood circulating again. "Ino, get up here now. The mother is losing blood and she's unconscious. She is not responding to CPR. This is a B-level emergency. Ino you have to get up here NOW."

No sooner had the words left his mouth, Ino appeared at the doorway.

Thoroughly breathless and wearing a concerned expression on her face, she hurriedly pulled on her standard medic ninja gloves. She drew healing chakra to her hands immediately, which gave of a light green glow. She kneeled over the woman and gently placed her glowing hands over the heavily bleeding wound. The wide open hole seemed to shrink a little bit. It wasn't however, enough to stop the heavy bleeding.

"Keep trying to pump her heart," instructed Ino as she focused on the task in front of her. "Her pulse is falling. We have to get blood moving through her. Otherwise she'll go into a coma, or worse. We have to get her awake and conscious again."

"Ino," asked Shikamaru, steadily following his medic teammate's instructions. "How does the situation look? Do you think she is going to make it?"

"Honestly Shikamaru," responded Ino sadly while trying in vain to seal the wound yet again. "I don't think so. I really don`t think so. She...she lost too much blood. And this wound; the pieces of glass are making it impossible to close of the wound properly. And then there is the internal bleeding to worry about. We need to get her to the ER but I don't think she even has enough chakra. The chances of her surviving are very low to say the least."

"But why didn't she protect herself?" questioned Shikamaru as he ceased the CPR manoeuvre. The case didn`t make any sense. "She could obviously draw chakra and look at her hands. The calluses; she was a ninja."

"It's not that she didn't protect herself," tensely replied Ino, preparing for a risky final procedure. "I don't think she could have. Hang on a second."

She gently placed a faintly glowing hand upon the dying woman's stomach.

"I was right," confirmed Ino, stopping the extra chakra flow to her hand to look back up at Shikamaru. "She couldn't use her chakra to defend herself."

"But doesn't that usually happen during old age or if you have a terminal illness?" pondered Chouji out loud, when he knocked out the plastered young man and put chakra laced cuffs on him.

"Or during pregnancy," evenly stated Shikamaru, looking back at Ino, hoping that she would prove him wrong.

"Bingo," retorted Ino bitterly, wiping away the excess blood from her hands. "Bastard over there didn't realize that. Dumbass ended up killing them both. He hit the fetus dead on. One hit kill. All this happened because of that idiot. I bet he has no regrets at all."

"I heard her," spoke up Shikamaru, staring sombrely at the corpse on the floor.

"You can't blame yourself for what you didn't know. Besides, think of all the dangers involved. For all we know, this could have been a bloody trap," assured Chouji when he gave the lazy ninja a hard pat on the back. "You were only doing what any responsible team leader would have done. But at least you saved the kid. That was what the mother would have wanted."

"Yeah, that was what she wanted," mumbled Shikamaru, walking over to the old bed. "With her dying breath, she asked me if I had saved her child. Suzume, that's the name of her kid. Did you guys run into any kid?"

"Nope," "No..." replied his partners somewhat slowly as they realized the importance of his question. "Shit."

"That's right. Now split up and search," responded Shikamaru, crouching into a more familiar position. "Now, where would a kid hide?"

A room with a corpse usually wasn't Shikamaru's preferred place to think. But with the current situation being bad as it was, he wasn't afforded any luxuries. Shikamaru came out of his thinking position and walked over to the bed. It was a small, well used bed. Light yellow sheets covered the bed and pillows. A soft pink blanket covered the bed with a small handmade teddy bear occupying the top left hand corner.

Shikamaru picked up the teddy bear. It was made of a cheap brown material and lost stuffing in places. Stained cotton was bursting through the seams. The buttons used to make the eyes were hanging by threads. Shikamaru carefully observed the room. The light pink room seemed to give of an eerie glow. A retching sound interrupted Shikamaru's train of thought.

It was the murderer, throwing up the contents of his stomach. Barely conscious, he was still causing problems. A brown, liquidly substance covered the floor beneath him. A horrid stench was not far behind. Wrinkling his brow, Shikamaru fought back the urge to abandon the young man. Plugging his nose, Shikamaru cautiously made his way towards the aggressor, making sure to avoid the disgusting puddle on the ground.

"He did it again, didn't he?" asked a tiny girl with a knowing face. "He's always like that. He's always causing big messes...don't worry about it, I'll clean it up mister."

"Thanks," drawled out Shikamaru as watched the little girl quickly go about her business.

She looked ordinary, very unnoticeable. Her light brown hair and identically coloured eyes didn't offer much help either. Dressed in a tattered brown shirt and light pink shorts in spite of the weather, she quickly got to work cleaning. There was an odd air to this girl, who seemed no more than 6 years old at most. It was almost as if her very presence was a mystery.

But it wasn't her appearance that unsettled Shikamaru, it was her eyes. Both of the little girl's eyes had a glazed sheen.

"You know that's..." began asking Shikamaru before he stopped himself and looked backwards.

"I cast a genjutsu on her," admitted Ino from the doorway, her voice audibly quieter. "Thought I'd save her the misery and the prolonged trauma."

"That isn't our choice to make. You know that Ino," lightly reprimanded Shikamaru, straying far from Ino's volatile temper. "Think about all the procedures and psychiatrist appointments they have to make for this kid. She already looks bad enough as it is..."

"But she'll be off worse if I didn't," defended Ino, trying to justify her actions; clearly upset. "You know full well about Konoha's orphanages and foster homes. Half the kids, who go in after cases like this they...they never turn out the same."

"But then she'll never know what kind off a scumbag her father was," argued back Shikamaru who kept an eye on the little girl to make sure she wasn't accidentally eavesdropping. "Besides, she's bound to know the truth someday and then what? It's not like she is going to live a normal life anyway."

"What do you mean by that?" retorted Ino angrily, her eyes blazing, before Chouji smoothly interfered.

"What he means is," calmly answered Chouji as he pointed his thumb towards the puking young man. "That guy isn't a normal villager. He is the youngest son of a head council member. Hiroto Akinari...does the name sound familiar?"

"Of course," replied Ino immediately as she put forward more information. "He frequently donates to the hospital and helps run the annual fundraisers. His daughter Kimiyo is in my squadron; not very talented but a hard worker."

"She has a younger brother," said Chouji, looking down at the young man who had finally ceased vomiting. "Taishou Akinari, does that name sound familiar?"

"No...," said Ino confusedly, willing her teammates to explain further. "He was never mentioned..."

"Of course he wouldn't be," yawned Shikamaru, leaning lightly against the creaky doorframe. "He's too much of a, quote unquote, disgrace to mention in public. Akinari wouldn't want the family honour to go down the drain for a worthless son now, would he?"

"But, we can still file charges, can't we?" questioned Ino worriedly glancing over at the little girl who was busily cleaning.

"No, we can't..." crossly replied Shikamaru, as he closed his eyes. "Ino listen to me. I caught a guy on an arson case; two homeless people died and another one was suffering from third degree burns. All they did wrong was being at the wrong place at the wrong time. But even after all that, the murderer was out the next day because he had connections to Akinari. As long Akinari senior is involved, we can't do shit. Akinari let a scumbag get away that time, and I caught him red handed. What makes you think he is going to let his only son rot in prison?"

"That girl has just lost her mother," answered Ino accusingly, her voice wobbling but her gaze held steady. "A mother who was probably the only family she has ever known. And if you think I will stand by and watch while that drunken asshole gets off easy because he's a spoiled brat, then you are sadly mistaken!"

"Here we go again. Why can't I ever have simple, solo missions?" thought Shikamaru, while he grumbled in disapproval before turning to confront Ino. "But what are you going to do Ino, go to court? His loaded dad will just hire an expensive lawyer. Go to Tsunade? The head council will interfere and turn this into a huge bureaucratic mess. Tell all the villagers? They really don't give a shit. Tell all the ninja corps? They don't give a shit as long as they get paid. Besides who in their right mind would choose the words of trained killers over the local do-gooder on the Council?

"What?" A single word was all Ino managed to choke out, as she sadly stared at her teammate.

"What he means is," clarified Chouji looking between both his friends. "When do we start?"

"You guys are more trouble then you're worth," lightly griped Shikamaru, watching both Chouji and the more jubilant Ino. "But if we lose this case, I'll be the first one saying I told you so. Now, let's get the kid and the drunken one out of here. We have a lot of work to do."

Ino gave him a small but genuine smile as she started walking towards the little girl. Gently putting a hand on the little girl's shoulder, she looked back at Shikamaru expectantly.

"Suzume...her name is Suzume," called back Shikamaru trying to exit the room.

Ino gave him a thumb up in return. She then leant down and whispered into Suzume's ear, which caused the tiny child to jump up in joy. Leaving the plastic bag with vomit in the corner, the little girl washed her hands thoroughly before excitedly running back to Ino. After a small inspection, a pleased Ino bent down and picked up the little girl. Carrying her out of the disturbing room, Ino hoped for the best.

"You just wait, Suzume," thought a determined Ino walking away with the quiet kid in her arms. "You will get the justice you deserve."

Later, when he was finally allowed to exit the house, Shikamaru completed the standard procedures and stood waiting. Looking at the grey clouds above, he thought to himself grimly. Challenging a council member would not serve well.

"What the hell have I gotten myself into? Such troublesome friends..."


...It's definitely not a pleasure, nor is it a curse~