We Built This Come Death: Of Remnants

by Plug

When Shikamaru, Hinata & the Sand Trio are sent on a mission to an unfamiliar country, inexplicable facets of the mission itself alongside tensions within the group cause things to spiral quickly out of control.

4. The Pariah Climb

Of Remnants
—four—
'The Pariah Climb'

"Everything I fear is in this failing,
Nothing of what I am is in this end."
-- "My Negation," Dark Tranquillity

Three days after leaving Konoha, Hinata stood at the edge of a wooden pier in a small village along the perimeter of Earth Country. Water, air and light swam beneath the boards, glistening with a serrated sheen below. Her bare feet supported her poised form, stance lithe and fortified, her body bent at the joints to allow fluid adaptation to her whims. Hands spread flat held in front of her, giving defensive ordnance to her small frame. A paper origami made of iron body-hammers. Shallow, colorless eyes forked pronounced veins under the surface of her skin, Byakugan activated to supplement her martial stance.

And nothing moved.

Violet ribbons smeared across the sky. Sunlight began to slowly surface across the Western horizon, pushing over the mountains like a drowning solar pyre-fly surfacing to gasp light-waves. Red and blue intermingled, atmospheric energies shifting underneath the burning clouds. A faint mist lingered through the still air, casting a wetly thin veil over the small dock overlapping the river. Dark water moved in soft waves, filling Hinata's ears with the sound of fishing boats tapping against the piers that restrained them gently. Muddy sand covered the opposite bank in darkness.

Hinata's eyes narrowed. Sweat traced a cool line down the back of her neck.

Attack.

And everything moved.

Motion swept Hinata into a controlled flurry; cognitive information swarmed her thoughts of devastation, feeding into a carnal machinery bred on repetition. Her hands began to piston forward in a strange and elegant frenzy, feet shifting across the smooth boards to guide her movements with a powerful balance. As her plunging strikes fired forward, her mind drifted to a levitating ground: a state of nothingness, empty rooms without purpose or passion. Severing herself from the swell of emotive tendencies the human mind perpetuated she could move without hesitation or restraint, one of the very first lessons of taijutsu. Though it was a flawed sphere, imperfect as she was an intrinsically emotive person: thus, in the swirling oblivion of those void-chambers, she began to visualize her target.

The toughened skin at the bottom of her feet slid across wood with a thin scrape. Hinata executed a twirl, sweeping down to her knees in a low attack. All the while the omnidirectional monochrome world sweltered around her like a frigid marble courtyard of rain.

She could see them. All of them.

A secondary circulatory system overlapping a human body, pulsing blue with innate energies. Her mind focused intensely upon her imagined opponent's chakra system, eyes drugged into the acropolis of vision zeroing on the miniature flares that represented the vital points. Her gentle hands began to smash across the glow-points of the astral human map, chakra signals terminated like disintegrating suns. Her hands did not destroy a man so much as turn him off—powering down molecular machinery, alleviating the pressure of substantiation; a hollowed human hanger-bay carved free of its sleeping weaponry.

As Hinata's inertia began to foam into a sea-wave of adrenaline, speed hastening as if rushed to a vitriolic flashpoint, her imaginary target began to do the opposite. As his chakra flow began to unravel, surging within the confines of a sealed system, his body began to change. Hinata knew this because she had seen the effects many times before. Chakra that was once crystalline cerulean, an oasis flowing through human splendor began to rot and throb like disease conduits, ethereal sewage flourishing in a putrid network of ruin. Silver tracery weaving organic warrens through spiritual flesh, pulsing across her sky-eyes that had been pried open like steel-bath portals. . .

Then her right hand cudgeled forward, crushing the nonexistent solar plexus in a mortal blow. Invisible ribs cracked. Fictitious lungs collapsed.

Her Father's voice punctured her vacuum like a spinning asteroid:

To see within nothing is to visualize everything.

The silver world faded as Hinata deactivated her Byakugan, vision once again restricted to the colorful abstraction immediately in front of her. She maintained her stance with her right hand extended for a long moment, breathing heavily. Further trails of sweat ran from her dark hair down underneath her hooded jacket, some soaking into the soft fabric of her forehead protector around her neck. Hinata stood like that for over a minute simply allowing her breathing to stabilize, rejuvenating via the scent of the early morning wafting into her senses. Eventually she allowed her body to relax, hands falling to her sides.

After a moment, she looked up into the misty sky where encroaching sunlight was erasing the stars.

How was that, Naruto-kun?

It was absurd, Hinata knew, to imagine herself being observed by Naruto as if he had transcended physical form into some supernatural guardian force. But there was comfort derived from that very audacity: her memories of her admiration for him gave her life momentum, every action drawn back into the arms of stored-time to be measured against what he might consider to be impressive. He watched her from inside her mind's embrace, her memory of him inked into the canvas of her thoughts like primal and ancient cave paintings. A shifting chameleon guide that warped to the colors of her every moment.

Movement from down the river caught Hinata's senses. Moving amid the shades of falling dawn was a small fishing boat pushing away from one of the other piers at the quaint docking yard. Three young men were shouting at each other in the quiet stillness, their voices drifting over to Hinata with a muffled echo. She watched with a guarded curiosity as they unwound the rope keeping the boat nestled against the dock, pushing the floating vehicle onto the smooth stretch of glassy water separating the two banks.

As the fishermen began to make their journey further upstream, Hinata acknowledged the flush of dissolving adrenaline still shooting underneath her skin in red waves. Wiping her forehead she sat down at the edge of the pier, her bare feet hanging over the side, toes dipping into the cool water. She winced briefly at the sudden chill-blast across her skin, her soft breathing filling her ears.

A cluster of glows infiltrated the sky. The surface of the sun split the clouds.

. . . Beautiful.

Hinata was so entranced by the sight of the rising sun she didn't even detect the movement behind her.

"So was that the infamous Gentle Fist? Pretty impressive."

Hinata's head spun around with a gasp. "Oh! Temari-san. . . how long have you. . ."

Temari stood there before Hinata along the pier, hands on her hips, refracted sunrise smothering her form in colorful shadows as if she were draped in the petals of a bleeding flower. She looked rather sleepy. "What, been watching? Dunno. Five minutes?" She moved over beside Hinata and sat down. After some rummaging she pulled her sandals off and lay them beside her, hissing slightly as she put her feet in the river-water. "I woke up and noticed you'd already left the room so I went looking in case you'd wandered off and gotten in trouble or something. Guess that was a waste of time. Kind of a reflex habit traveling with my brothers."

Hinata was rather embarrassed; for Temari's concern and for not even noticing she had been there. "Sorry to trouble you."

Temari shook her head. "It's not. Seriously though, that was very elegant. Your form is very fluid. More so than when I saw you fight at the preliminaries."

A slight bow of her head masked Hinata's nervous blush. "Th-Thank you."

"I guess it must've been tough to fight your relative like that, though," Temari commented off-handedly. Her feet began to trace circles in the cool water. "That kind of sucked."

It took Hinata a few moments to process a response to that understatement. Fighting Neji had easily ranked as one of the most terrible moments of her life, saved from the ultimatum by Naruto's positive influence. She bit her lip momentarily, looking away to the clouds. "It. . . I didn't. . . it was okay. It was a challenge, but. . ."

Temari obviously caught on that it was a sensitive topic for Hinata, so she rerouted the discussion. "So your techniques close off the chakra valves, right? That's kind of cool. I hear that when your chakra is dismantled like that it's almost the equivalent of being suffocated. That's really deadly." Temari's eyes fell to her legs, skin rising with goose-bumps from the cold water. "I guess when I think of things that way I can kind of understand why he picked you."

Hinata looked at her. "What do you mean? Shikamaru-kun?"

"Yeah," Temari confirmed. Hinata was slightly surprised to see that Temari appeared rather conflicted, as she wouldn't meet Hinata's gaze. They had only known each other for a very short amount of time, but anxiety was an almost entirely contrary thing for Hinata to associate with the female Sand-nin. Eventually, still looking down at the water, Temari spoke again. "You know, the other day when I said that. I guess I was out of line."

Connective memory wires merged in Hinata's thoughts, the sadness of overhearing a stranger's disapproval over her inclusion momentarily reviving. Hinata watched the calm ripples of the water surface. ". . . No, it's. . . it's okay. You had the right to say that. I understand."

Temari shrugged. "Even still. I do kinda feel bad about it. It was pretty lame of me to say that like you wouldn't have been able to overhear. Kankuro was right. I did patronize you."

Hinata took a breath. "But what you said. . . it makes sense. I. . . can see why you made that objection." An old habit that Hinata loathed took control, her index fingers pressing together in her lap. "I was surprised too. . . there are so many better shinobi than. . . I don't know why he decided on me."

"What, really?" Temari turned to Hinata inquisitively. "He didn't say?"

"Well. . . he did, but. . ."

Temari looked away at the sunrise, this time with the ghost of a smile. "It's pretty obvious, actually. After being on the road for a few days. He was pretty smart to pick you."

Hinata had assumed that Shikamaru had only taken her along because Shino and Kiba weren't available at the time and Neji was still recuperating. Her observations of the Siblings of the Sand indicated they had monumental offensive capabilities, but not a particular emphasis on stealth and perception. When she thought of the situation like that, it made perfect sense. Her own sense of inadequacy disallowed her to believe the rest of Shikamaru's explanation, as she thought he was simply trying to be nice. To challenge that perception was to warp reality with psychological tremors, truth clad in self-deceiving screens.

Hinata eventually spoke in a small voice. "Why is that?"

"Because of Kankuro and Gaara," Temari replied. After a sudden twitch of her leg in the water, kicking a fresh spray of droplets across the rippling black, Temari elicited a sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh. "Alright, and me, too. Let's face it. Things could have gone south really fast with a bad combination here. But you're a mediator, you know? You don't look for conflict, you sort of. . . I don't know, find a way to avoid conflict. You're a pacifying element. Seriously. I shudder to think what this mission would be like if he'd picked someone like Kankuro who'd be vocal about everything. We would've fallen to pieces on the first day."

"I see. I never. . . thought of it like that," Hinata admitted. A sense of ease and comfort enveloped her. "I don't think of myself that way."

"Well, whatever. Too late to fuss over it now anyways. We're already out here so might as well live with what we've got."

Hinata nodded. "Yes," she agreed. After a calm series of minutes, light-ink seeping through the sky as the sun made itself completely known, Hinata returned her thoughts to her body. Her adrenaline had completely subsided and she was feeling abnormally confident in herself. Temari's thoughts had bolstered her self-esteem as she considered that, just maybe, Shikamaru hadn't been trying to be nice. That, just maybe, he had been telling the truth.

For one briefly wonderful moment, Hinata felt necessary.

Her mind was eager to renew its training under this strengthened fortitude. "Um, is there anything that you needed me for?"

Temari caught on. "No, not really. Sorry for interrupting your routine. I'll let you get back to your workout." She stood, her damp feet pooling water across the dry pier. She looked down at Hinata, her eyes alight with a new idea. "Hey, meet back up with me in an hour and we'll go for breakfast or something. Kankuro'll be asleep for a few more hours, probably. Want to do that?"

Hinata stood, smiling. "Okay. I'd like that."

"See you in an hour then, Hinata-chan."

Temari pulled her sandals back on before waving, then making her way slowly back into the awakening village. In a short amount of time the pier would be bustling with fishermen like the three previous who embarked on their daily routines. Hinata took a long moment to close her eyes and breathe in the mist, purity rushing through her system. Then her eyelids opened, Byakugan reactivated as she dropped into her fighting stance, her self-training beginning anew.

x x x x x

A thin cloud cover lingered across the riverside village much like condensed water on a window. Fractured gray spilled through, colorless light giving a dampened luminance to the bustling village. Shoeless men ran through the streets with wooden carts, fish piled into the boxed cages. Vessels guided by hand carrying barrels of rice, saké, crushed fish innards, seaweed, butter and other assorted foodstuff weaved a twisted maze of movement across the cobblestone streets. Women gathered around various shops and ogled at various wares or simply chatted.

Shikamaru hated every second of it.

It was a forced pleasantry. Rigid activity bred ambition, and like all societies a routine was established. While in a lot of ways Shikamaru envied the idea of living in a village where the most pressing matters were carving a natural path of survival in the hunter/gatherer sense, the effects created a pattern. People would talk to one another because they had nothing better to do. Not because they wanted to. Shikamaru watched the clouds for the clouds.

Beside him, as the two of them mingled with the locals by walking casually through the market, Gaara embodied disconnection. His face gave no indication of leaning to one emotion or another. After spending the last three days with him, Shikamaru was coming to learn that was simply how Gaara was with everything.

After skillfully twisting to avoid a young boy careening his cart of rice-wine towards his leg, Shikamaru frowned. "This is getting us nowhere. Sometimes I have to wonder if the people in these hick fringe villages are willingly ignorant."

"They have no real need to be observant," Gaara replied. His sterile gaze drank the village with an empty thirst. "They're separate from the conflicts of the Hidden Villages, so there's no point for them to be involved."

Shikamaru scratched the top of his head as the two of them stopped walking, taking a moment to look back over the street they'd traversed. "It's not like I can't understand their blind-eye mentality, but you'd think that if a small crew of people like us wandered through your little fishing hovel, you'd sit up and take notice." After a full morning of talking to every shopkeeper the two of them had come across with no information regarding any kind of shinobi activity in the last few weeks, Shikamaru was slightly fed up. "Silence makes everything difficult."

"They might have been threatened."

"Probably," Shikamaru agreed. "Why else would they be tight-lipped about fingering travelers?" Shikamaru had come to discover that while Gaara didn't make for a great conversationalist, he found wandering around with him was rather enjoyable: Gaara did almost nothing to annoy Shikamaru ever, and the two of them thought strategically along similar wavelengths quite often. It made coordination a simplistic endeavor. "The more I stay in a place like this, the more I start to think that evolution is a blindfolded process. All these people. . . Jeez. Seems kind of unfair they were fortunate enough to have these lives."

Gaara watched as a young girl ran off, chasing a boy of about the same age who had stolen her doll. A henge hid his gourd from plain sight, transforming it into a small backpack. Even without it Gaara's appearance was anomalous, so it became routine to conceal its existence when in villages not accustomed to ninja presence. ". . . All that's left now are the people at the sluice gate. Unless you want to interrogate every establishment all over again."

Shikamaru scoffed. The idea of speaking to more surly fishermen that had fewer teeth than fingers wasn't particularly appealing. "Screw that. Might as well leave the rest of the footwork up to our benefactor. I'd rather just head out after lunch and keep moving." He paused in thought for a moment. "Let's go buy some fish."

"For?"

"Eating? Might as well make the best of a bad situation," he decided, eyes roaming over the street to calculate the quickest way to navigate themselves to the fish market. "I don't want to walk away from wandering around this hole all morning with nothing."

"Fine," Gaara said, following Shikamaru as they walked further into the late-morning human chaos.

x x x x x

Kankuro was fully aware of the bizarre and hostile atmosphere his very appearance suggested. When outside of comfortable and familiar company, he deigned it necessary—rules had been outlined for himself as a means of survival, and one rule he had learned very quickly was that there were very few people in the world he could willingly trust. Dark clothing and fractal war-paint were merely means to that end. All the times he would feel angry, lost, helpless, deceived or homesick he could disguise himself behind the shifting violet mask his fingers slashed across his face every morning. Trust was a weakness.

There were only two people in the world to which he allowed himself that frailty.

However, paranoia wasn't the sole typifying parameter of a shinobi. Utilizing discretion over one's emotions to control the visceral state of those around you was one such factor that often encouraged trust, even were it to be fake. Wearing the clothing of a fraudulent existence was a necessity sometimes, as kindness and congeniality were often far more deadly than poison if used correctly.

Under that motif alone did Kankuro sit at the bar of a sushi restaurant, his hood pooled around his neck and his face completely bare of any marking. His short brown hair was a mess of tangled ends as he never saw a reason to style them, given that he seldom had them exposed. His face was rather sharp and handsome underneath everything, particularly when he was smiling as if he meant it.

And he really did.

He chewed thoughtfully, poking the fleshy pink of the salmon before him with lacquered chopsticks. "Hey, Old Man, this is incredible."

Behind the bar an elderly gentleman smiled. "Why thank you very much, kind sir. It's awfully nice of you to humor me like that."

Kankuro tilted his head back as he emptied his small saucer of warm saké down his throat, his skin buzzing from the alcohol. Around the two of them villagers sat and chatted amongst each other, but the old man paid them no mind. His staff tended to their needs as he focused his attention on Kankuro exclusively. Kankuro let out a breath of content. "No, I'm dead serious. This is. . . well, I'm not a food expert, so. . ." He scratched behind his ear with his thumb's fingernail. "It's really good. Believe me. This is the best fish I've had in months. No lie."

This wasn't Kankuro's first visit to that particular restaurant. Months ago, just after Gaara had begun to change, Kankuro got into a fight with Temari. Like all of their fights it began as collision of egos but it eventually devolved into a physical match where Temari had soundly beaten Kankuro. Never having been a particularly good loser, Kankuro had left in a bruised and enraged stupor, cursing his sister to damnation. He wound up wandering around strange and quiet places where he could be separated from all things Temari and Gaara, cutting a lateral path through Wind and into Fire, then north through Earth. A scroll of puppetry jutsu kept him company and gave his three-week flight some meaning and purpose so it wasn't simply squandered time.

He had stayed in many small villages in his aimless pilgrimage, the one they were visiting at the moment being one of them. He had been surprised when the old man had remembered him from before. Kankuro wasn't usually a very memorable person, in spite of his rather external personality. Where Gaara and Temari often stirred fear, awe or respect in others, Kankuro generally inspired indifference. It was an uncomfortable fact.

The old man scratched his unshaven chin. "I'm glad you think so! Would you like a refill of your saké?"

Kankuro chuckled at the thought of what Temari would say if she knew he had been drinking. "You know, I'm still only fifteen. . ."

"Bah, I won't tell if you won't," the old man said with a wink.

Kankuro grinned. "Well now, how could I say no to that?" He held out his cup as the owner tilted the tiny porcelain bottle slightly, the shimmering translucent liquid pooling in his saucer. Filaments of steam twirled in between. "Much appreciated. I guess it's kind of sad that I've already built up quite a resistance to this and I still have another year before I'm even actually of age. Guess that says something about the company I keep, huh?"

A knowing look passed over the man's features. He remembered Kankuro well simply because the old man had been so much like him when he was younger. "Do I need to worry about you, Kankuro? What are you doing with yourself?"

Kankuro shrugged. "Just running around the wilderness with a bunch of weirdoes. My big Sis has been throwing alcohol back since she was fourteen so I was kind of forced into it. She's like a full-time job sometimes, y'know?" His chopsticks captured a stringy chunk of salmon, lifting the meat and then letting it rest gently against his tongue. He let out a pleasurable sigh through his nose as he chewed. "Mmm. . . really, this is great. I wish I'd get the chance to come here again soon. Road travel sucks in some ways."

"That's too bad," the old man said honestly. He placed his hand against his chin in contemplation. "I have a daughter named Yoshino about your age I'd love to introduce you to. She's a ninja like you, you know. I've been kind of hoping she'd at least set her roots in somewhere. . . comes and goes all the time. Being of that life yourself, I figure you'd be able to understand her. You know what I mean?"

"Oh really?" Kankuro chuckled lightly, then swallowing. "Hmm, if she cooks anything like you, I might just have to swing by town on my way back."

A genuine laugh shook the old man. "That'd be great! She's got kind of a rough attitude, but I like you well enough. She probably would too."

"You know. . . Ever since my Sis turned sixteen, people have been trying like crazy to set her up. She's of lineage and all. . . we all are, the three of us, so. . . yeah. Really bugs her. Like, really bugs her. All these candidates and marriage meetings and stuff drives her crazy." He paused as he really thought about all the interesting discussions that had arisen from those meetings. An almost mischievous glint shifted across his eyes. "It's hilarious. A few months ago she came storming into my room screaming about how being an adult at sixteen is trash, why can't it be like out West where it's eighteen, blah blah blah. . . and how if she saw one more suitor she'd wind up snapping and murdering the whole town."

"Sounds like my own Sister. Likes to do things are her own pace, eh?"

Kankuro nodded. "You said it. She makes no sense half of the time. She'll do something that she thinks is wrong just to avoid siding with me. You know what I mean?" As the old man nodded in perfect understanding, Kankuro finished off the rest of his lunch and downed his saké in one tilt. After wiping his mouth with the back of his hand he said, "Hey, thanks for all this. It was great. Best meal I've had in a long time."

"Absolutely," the old man said with conviction, giving Kankuro a respectful glance. "I was serious about coming back, you know. When you get some time, stop on by. I'll try to flag down my nomad of a daughter for you."

"Heh, sounds great." Kankuro stood, movement causing his hair to rustle slightly. It was an odd sensation since he spent so much time with it covered. He dusted his hands off and was about to turn when he decided to employ his strategy. He wasn't very skilled at blending in so he was a bit tenuous whether or not it would come to fruition, but he wasn't about to be accused of being the only team member not doing any work. He spoke casually. "Oh yeah, I forgot. I was wondering if I could ask you something."

"Of course, ask away."

Kankuro's imagination quickly salvaged a makeshift story to weave from the odds and ends cluttering his mind. "Our group is trying to hook up with another group but the runner unit got cut-off back in Fire Country, so we're trying to catch up to them ourselves. We think they came through here, but we're not sure. Did you see any other shinobi around lately? They probably wouldn't have been wearing their forehead protectors so it's cool if you missed them or whatever."

The old man stood back slightly as he gave the inquiry some thought. "Hmm. . . well, we don't get a lot of shinobi activity here. A lot of the villagers' children who were interested like Yoshino in becoming ninja would move out to Hidden Stone instead of commuting. I was never a nin myself, so I'm not sure really what to look for."

Oh well. I tried. This part isn't exactly my forte.

"Ah," he replied, shrugging. He offered the man a friendly smile. "Well, no worries anyways."

As Kankuro began to turn, the old man's face brightened. "Oh, wait! That's not true. I think I did see a few pass through here sometime yesterday."

"No kidding," Kankuro said, eyebrows raised. He hadn't actually been expecting success. "Are you sure they were shinobi?"

"Pretty sure. . . most traffic we get through here is commercial," the old man explained, eyes narrowing in deep thought. He stood there for a moment, impervious to the throng of customers and staff shifting around him. "You know, carriages full of food and timber and whatnot? The other day when I sent Huan to buy some fresh trout from the market I found he'd slept in and was running late. So I had to go do it myself, right? While I was outside I saw a small bunch of guys who looked the part of a shinobi. I didn't speak to them myself since they didn't look like they were after trouble or anything."

Sweet, Kankuro thought. Who would have imagined? Let's see you scoff this off, Temari.

"That's great," Kankuro said, though his voice was calm it carried a genuine honesty. "What did they look like? We don't have any profiles to run off of right now since our runner was the only one who'd met with them in person."

A call from the backroom caused the old man to turn, pulling the deep blue flaps hanging over the door back and yell into the kitchen. After a brief exchange of shouts between employees the old man returned his attention to Kankuro as if nothing had happened. "Hmm. . . they wore dark blue ninja suits, the four of them. Black gloves, straw hats. . . hmm. I recognized their weapon pouches which was how I figured they were ninja. They seemed harmless enough so I didn't really remember much about it until you mentioned them. Thought they were just in town visiting their parents or something."

Kankuro hid his disappointment at the finite nature of the information well. "Ah, so you wouldn't know where they would've headed out to."

"Sorry. Best I can give you. Though now that I think on it, they did seem kind of strange."

"How's that?"

The old man scratched a gray-white eyebrow. "I'm not sure. I didn't get a good look at them because they didn't look like they were out for blood and I was in a rush, but. . . I don't know. Maybe they were just drunk." He shrugged, broad shoulders rolling the ragged fabric of his apron. "It was pretty early in the morning. They might have been stumbling home from the watering hole, you know? That's about all I've got on them. Sorry Kankuro."

Kankuro shook his head. "It's fine, that's great. At least we'll have something of an idea of what to look for now. Beats running completely blind." Not being the type to bow, Kankuro offered a smile that wasn't fake instead. "Thanks again, Old Man. I owe you one."

"On your tab!" A grizzled grin stretched across wrinkling features. "Come back soon, okay?"

Kankuro nodded. "I'll see what I can do."

Deciding to then grace his employees with his undivided attention, the friendly old codger turned and made his way into the kitchen, the sound of his shouting voice soon spilling into the din of conversation. Kankuro stood next to the stool where he'd sat, scratching his head for a moment in thought. Eventually he came to the conclusion that the information was too vague to really piece together any kind of substantial plan from, and left the establishment. Groggy sunlight met him with a strangled glow as he stepped outside. The market before him was a scattered microcosm of movement, discordant noises surrounding a human blur.

Small towns are weird, Kankuro decided. Especially riverside villages. It's like an ant colony during the day. How could anyone get any peace and quiet?

Giving the notion of wandering around by himself some more a once over in his thoughts, Kankuro decided to just make his way back to the Inn the group was staying at. They were going to reconvene and head upstream in a few hours already anyways, and he doubted there would be any new information that he could shake out of any of the villagers. Unless the mysterious ambushers suddenly decided to get sloppy, the likelihood of their whereabouts being discovered by simple fishing folk was slim to nil.

Dissolving into a crowd when he wasn't carrying Karasu and Kuroari or wearing his jagged face-paint was a simple task. Kankuro's hands found his pockets and he made his way slowly down the street, keeping to himself. If he'd truly been in a hurry he could've leapt across the rooftops, but he was actually enjoying the solitude while it lasted. The more time spent away from Temari and Shikamaru the better. Temari had always been something of a tourniquet of blades to Kankuro: she made him angrier than anyone else he knew on almost a routine basis, but at the same time she was the sole person that kept him afloat in a flood of loneliness. With Gaara being a sociopathic tyrant, Temari was really all Kankuro had in their earlier years.

In the case of Shikamaru. . .

Kankuro frowned. He didn't like their lazy, apathetic leader. He doubted he ever would. He had made an effort to restrain his discontent for the sake of mission stability, but it wasn't easy. Almost everything the young Chuunin said rubbed Kankuro raw. He was a lot like Temari that way—only without the benefit of past solace.

A sudden flash of yellow caught Kankuro's attention as he ducked under a hanging awning canvassing a storefront. He peered across the crowded street, recognized the movement, then sighed.

Well now. Speak of the devil.

Waiting for a moment to watch the street as various carts scissored in both directions, Kankuro found himself weaving through the mass. His movements were skilled and precise, although coated with a kind of guarded lethargy. He was in no hurry, but contact was inevitable. After ducking under a large canoe that two men were carrying over their heads, Kankuro stood in front of an open fish market. Villagers crowded around the various displays, shouts from the bowels of the store muffled by thin wooden walls as trays of fresh fish were coming in packaged streams through the rear entrance.

Standing before him with their backs to him were Temari and Hinata. The girls were scrutinizing a display of gutted fish as they lay deceased upon a bed of crushed ice, rolled underneath like soft crystal marbles. Hinata was talking softly while pointing at various features of the spliced aquatics, and Temari was nodding while listening to Hinata seriously. It still kind of unnerved Kankuro how quickly those two had gotten along. Not that he really had anything against Hinata personally, but they seemed to become fast friends. Temari didn't make friends quickly. Ever.

"Hey," Kankuro forced himself to say. He walked up behind them. "Good to see you guys are working hard at flushing the targets out. Planning a pincer attack on the fish-cart?"

When the two of them turned to face him, Kankuro had to slay the groan that pushed against his throat when Hinata looked at him in open shock. It was an irritatingly reserved look, much like a cat would greet its owner as they walked in the door covered in mud with a tilt of its head. Hinata's eyes unnerved Kankuro. Icy spheres devoid of pupils, they made her pale face look like the features of a living doll—one he did not have control over, that moved and spoke with a ghostly animation of its own accord. A fragile possession of dead features.

Hinata moved to speak, but stopped herself. She caught her stare, looking away in embarrassment.

Kankuro sighed. "What is it?"

Hinata swallowed, eyes darting to catch glimpses of his face before retreating. "Y-Your. . . your face. It's. . ."

Temari couldn't help but laugh. "Don't feel too bad, Kankuro. She's just shocked you're really that hideous underneath all that paint. Can you blame her?"

His teeth ground together, fingers bunching in his pockets. "Shut the hell up. At least I have the sense to mask myself, unlike you. Some camouflage artist you are."

"I don't need camouflage," Temari told him, her voice dripping with condescendence, "because I don't play with dolls."

Kankuro's eye twitched.

Hinata tried to diffuse the situation. "It's not. . . you aren't. . ."

After she trailed off, Kankuro looked at her pointedly. "What?"

"You look. . . fine," she said shyly. "You aren't hideous."

He should have felt flattered, but in reality he didn't. He really didn't care what he looked like, or what she thought of how he looked. He gave an indifferent shrug. "Well, thanks, but I don't need your assurance. I don't believe anything she tells me anyways. Everything that comes out of her mouth is a lie or an exaggeration."

"You prick," Temari intervened, giving him a flippant look as if baiting him for a verbal joust. "And just when I had been telling Hinata-chan all these nice things about you, too. Way to blow your chances at me ever doing that again."

"Psh, that's a lie and you know it. You weren't telling her anything nice about me."

"Well. . . alright, so I wasn't," she admitted. Her eyes widened as she shrugged, demeanor unblemished by his observation. "But I could have been! And if I were, you would have blown it!"

Hinata moved out of the way so an elderly lady could examine the fish with a polite smile. She turned back to the siblings, speaking in soft tones that only they would hear. "We were just considering buying some fish for the road. Since it will be a few more days before we're in a riverside town again and it would. . . be nice to have fish that was really fresh."

Temari nodded. "Yeah, how about that, huh? Hinata-chan is quite the cook, apparently." She poked Kankuro in the chest with her index finger. "So don't act like we weren't thinking in the interests of the team, buddy. You'll be thanking us when we're eating something wholesome and delicious instead of pinecones and berries."

Kankuro sighed, rubbing at his eyes. "Well, fine." He began to look around them at the crowd. "Any word from Gaara and Captain Apathy about anything? I haven't seen them all morning."

"Nope. They took off to ask around before me and Hinata-chan got back from breakfast."

Briefly, Kankuro wondered whether or not their search had yielded any results. In a way, he hoped that they wound up with nothing, a sinister gleam shining in his thoughts as he imagined telling Shikamaru how he'd managed to pull together some information by a total fluke while their leader had come up with nothing. But then again, Kankuro had to begrudgingly admit that both Shikamaru and Gaara working together made for a pretty good network of investigation: Shikamaru had a way of talking that was very casual and laidback, while Gaara could cut a ruthless atmosphere if necessary.

Hinata brushed a strand of her sunken blue hair over her right ear. "Some of the people have spoken to them. . . they recognized us as their traveling companions."

Temari nodded, her arms crossed. "It's not a big village, so they're bound to turn up sooner rather than later."

"At any rate," Kankuro began, trying to avoid breaking the next cart that almost crashed into his ankles, "I managed to get a bit of info on the guys who might have attacked the carriage."

Temari's eyebrow lifted. "Might have?"

"Don't know yet," Kankuro admitted. It was a difficult task to reconstruct what happened via interrogation given that they only had so many questions they could ask. "Apparently just yesterday there were a few shinobi moving through town. Four of them. They could have simply been people from Hidden Stone visiting or just here to shop, so I can't say if they were the guys we're looking for. Their basic description made them sound like a unit of some kind, so who knows. Better than nothing."

Hinata looked up at him. "Which way did they go?"

Kankuro shrugged. "Beats me."

"Meaning that your info is as good as useless," Temari observed.

"Hey! I just said I got a description of them, didn't I? That's more than you've turned up."

Temari rolled her eyes, a gesture that really bothered Kankuro. She had developed a fondness for driving him into the ground. Even if it was mostly teasing it was still really annoying. "A description of a few random ninjas is hardly decent information, you oaf. We'd just be wasting time following that lead. Come on, let's try to hook up with Gaara and Shikamaru-kun and see what they know."

And with that, Temari stepped back onto the street and began to make her way towards the Inn. Hinata and Kankuro followed—Hinata fell into a silent step beside the older girl, while Kankuro lingered in the rear muttering to himself under his breath.

"Ungrateful bitch. . ."

Temari's head turned slightly to look at him over her shoulder. "What was that?"

A young boy of about ten years rolled his cart over Kankuro's sandaled foot. Sleeping giants arose inside of him and it took the strength of legions for him not to turn around and stab a kunai between the boy's eyes. Instead he simply smoldered in human embers, serpents shifting in the depths of his stomach with a molten slither. He tilted his head back to look into the sunlit mist. He sighed.

"You're hearing things."

x x x x x

Along the northern ridge of Earth Country was a crescent of low altitude mountains that embraced the thin but long river running all the way down into Fire Country. On the opposing side of the mountain range was a highway that ran a jagged line through the interior of the nation, before stopping at a national bridge that connected Earth with the smaller commonwealth of Fang. Along the mountains was a dense forest of ridgewood trees, ancient and tall things that possessed trunks over twenty-five feet in diameter.

Where the highway met with the edge of this mountain forest was an Inn. It was a roadside affair consisting of several establishments that were far too few in number for the location to be considered a town or village. Aside from the Inn there were a few stores and a restaurant, mostly existing for the purpose of serving the needs of travelers as they delayed their journey for a night to rest. It was here that the group was to rendezvous for the first time with Kurama Nagare.

A gentle stream ran through the mountains and came about a few hundred meters behind the Inn itself, sparkling in the sun between the trees like a trail of water jewels. Kurama sat by himself at the edge of the stream on a wooden stump, surrounded by the sounds of birds chirping and grass bending to the sigh of the wind, fishing. It was a contrasting sight: a well dressed albeit young politician sitting quietly alone in the shift of sun-baked green, fishing pole in hand and straw sunhat atop his head. His bare feet shuffled in the soft grass, skirting the edge of the stream. Wet pebbles winked like washed stone irises.

"Well isn't this just sickeningly quaint. For all of the burdens you carry, looking at you now is kind of deceiving."

Kurama didn't bother turning to face the voice. He heard the quiet movement in the grass as the man from three nights previous walked towards him, eventually stopping to stand beside him. The older man's face was pointing towards the stream, although with the forehead protector covering empty sockets he couldn't see the same vision in a conventional sense. His stance was casual, light glinting off the silver of his scarred Stone Village protector. His deep green business suit made him fade into the forest slightly.

"Have to pass the time in some fashion, don't we?" Kurama said as the taller man's shadow cast over him slightly. "And given all the complications surrounding my daily routine, I've grown a rather genuine fondness for simplistic things. Nothing deceiving about honesty, Jean-san."

Jean snorted. "Touché. Catch anything?"

"Afraid not. Skill is something I lack."

Jean's hands slid into his pockets. "You know, a few towns over in Grass Country, there's a little group of traveling performers. Two teenage sisters and their younger brother. Though you'd never know it looking at them, given that he's this hulking beast who doesn't look anything like fifteen. I caught their act yesterday."

Kurama gave an ironic smile, eyes not leaving the point where his lure disappeared into the water. "Now that is quaint."

"Isn't it? The three of them, they're sitting on a bloodline they probably don't even know about. Since they travel the roads away from the Hidden Villages, their knife throwing and tarot reading and fire breathing is still considered a remarkable thing." Jean shook his head, neck muscles rolling back and forth. "People know these things should be ordinary but still get blown away when they see them up close and personal. I kind of feel sorry for those kids."

"If they aren't shinobi and they're wandering around unwittingly utilizing a bloodline they aren't even aware of, I can imagine," Kurama agreed. He tilted the fishing pole to the side, pulling gently on the lure. "They're going to attract all the wrong kind of attention."

"You said it. The one girl just aims and fires her knives off without even thinking. I bet she's incapable of missing. The other can tell people everything they've done for the last week, right down to the minutia. The boy. . . he flies through a Katon Jutsu without seals, Nagare-kun. He just breathes in and exhales plumes of flame. And he smiles and thanks everyone for clapping." Jean trailed off, scratching his blond hair for a moment in thought. "Makes me wish I still could, you know. See. Really see. They don't have any idea because their parents are dead and they've wandered around together with what they learn from themselves. Kids like that. . . they really remind me of when we were younger."

Kurama gave a slight tug on the line. "It's not like you to get nostalgic, Jean-san. You're slipping."

"Says the man who sits here fishing for nothing."

An eyebrow lifted. "Touché yourself."

Conversation trailed off as both of them suddenly found the past rising up in their thoughts, steam from melted memories fogging their minds. Their eclectic allegiances made them bizarre figures often the target of mistrust. Their atypical names were often a source of controversy: Kurama being an Eastern name while he lived in a Western country, whereas Jean was a Western name and he grew up in an Eastern country. Autumn leaves and electric snow flashed through Kurama's mind like the strobe of a dead universe, his hands suddenly tightening on his lure. He bit down on his lip hard to bury the slowly reviving memory.

A bird flew overhead, shadows twirling down upon them. Jean got to the point. "Konoha and Suna have attached a secondary unit that's currently tailing the primary. They aren't messing around with this. You know Copy-Nin Hatake Kakashi?"

Kurama frowned. "I'm familiar with the name. I suppose I should be flattered, even if I can't take any of the credit."

Jean's head titled down to face Kurama, a blank robotic mask devoid of emotion. "They're going to come down on you hard, Nagare-kun. Like a guillotine. And you can't count on Alexei to fortify your flanks. He'll drop you the second you stop being useful to him. Probably as soon as Ulema is assassinated he'll offer you up as the scapegoat."

"I know. I know that already."

". . . And. . . you're not making any counterstrategies because. . ."

Kurama shrugged, passing the concern off as if it were nothing. "Because Minister Alexei is a complete fool who has no idea whom he's dealing with. I do. I know full well what his benefactors are capable of and if he thinks they're offering him any legitimate loyalty then he is an insane, senile simpleton who frankly deserves what they're ultimately going to do to him." He began to operate the rotary spindle, retracting the lure from its watery nest. "I'm not stepping in between that. I want to stay as far away from them as possible."

"That. . . might be impossible, you know," Jean said slowly. Although his voice lacked concern, there was still a faint undercurrent. "They've really sunk their claws into things. You're the one who thought that the ambush was a message sent to you that they were aware of your opposition to their presence."

"I never said I thought that was the case. I simply made the assumption that it is a distinct possibility," Kurama explained, pulling the rod back towards him. His fingers delicately removed a small collective of snagged moss off of his glistening hook, before gently casting it back into the stream. "Don't forget his brother is from Konoha. Whatever twisted and sick schemes he has, I wouldn't put immediate family relations beyond his agenda. Minister Alexei can come up with all the elaborate ideas and labyrinthine schemes he wants, but it won't change the fact once his people figure a way to open the gate he'll wind up floating down a gutter in several pieces somewhere."

"I find it kind of peculiar that you'd take no effort to countermand those schemes. You realize what happens if they succeed."

"I have no loyalty to Mountain Country. At all." Kurama shifted slightly on the stump, fabric of his pants scraping against severed wood. "You should know that."

Jean scratched the back of his neck. ". . . I guess. What will you do next, then? If everything you have falls to pieces?"

"I don't know. Fish?"

Jean sighed at Kurama's irreverence, knowing that he was probably the only person to which Kurama would allow himself that open honesty. "It's going to take me a little while to get back inside. Things are devolving pretty quickly."

"That's fine," Kurama said, looking up at Jean for the first time since he arrived. "I appreciate your perseverance. I owe you."

"And how. One of these days I'll have to think of how to collect from you." Jean turned, his mouth curling in something of a devious grin. "You know, if this was ten years ago, I would've asked if you'd be mad if you'd mind if I eloped with Hitomi-chan."

Kurama faltered, staring hard at Jean's face. Shadows from his sunhat darkened his eyes. "You're joking, of course."

"Nope. Honest."

"The two of you. . ." Kurama had a very rare look of absolute shock on his face, the fishing pole slipping from his grip and falling into his lap. After a moment his face hardened to an angry glare. "Well. . . why didn't either of you ever say anything? I can't believe you!"

Jean gave a weak chuckle. "You didn't know because it was a completely shallow, loveless tryst. It was a physical relationship built out of convenience and necessity. Not a lot of chances to make something meaningful when you're on the run from basically everyone, you know."

Kurama shook his head, forcing himself to look away in disgust. "God damn you. That's my Sister you're talking about. I should slit your throat, you backstabbing lunatic."

Jean sighed. "Don't get so high-strung. I was mostly kidding."

"Mostly."

After scratching the back of his head in an annoyed gesture, Jean's hands returned to his pockets. "If it makes you feel any better, keeping it from you was her idea. I just went along with it because, like most things, she was probably right."

Having settled down from the surprise, Kurama merely returned his attention to his futile attempts to fish. "Tch. So why are you telling me now of all times?"

"Because it was ten years ago, Nagare-kun. We were seventeen. And I didn't think you'd get so uptight about knowing."

Kurama sighed. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair twice before placing it back over his head again. He glimpsed above into the distant blue skies. "I'm not, really. I'm just. . . surprised, is all. It makes a lot of sense in retrospect. All that being said, let's drop the subject and never bring it up again."

Jean's brow flattened in a frown. "Look, I told you in good humor. An err in judgement, alright? She wouldn't get bent out of shape for you, you know. It was fun. We both enjoyed it."

"She was all I had, Jean-san," Kurama said quietly. He swallowed as the unwanted memories began to return, invading armies of a slain past advancing to storm the fortress of his solitude. He took a slow, heavy breath. "That was it. You came and went, but she was static. Everyone and everything was out to kill us back then. So forgive me if sometimes ten years ago feels like ten seconds ago. Okay? If you can't understand that I won't hold it against you, but at the very least I'd appreciate if you'd respect that."

Nodding, Jean respected Kurama's words and didn't comment again. After a moment of silence that would have been awkward between two people who had not known each other as long as they had, Jean turned to face away from the stream. ". . . Yeah. I should probably start to move." His hand came down and he patted Kurama's shoulder twice. He smiled. "Enjoy yourself."

There was a shifting in the air, grass twisting in a spiral wind, and then Kurama was alone again.

He caught nothing else as he sat by himself for another hour in the sun and the grass and the wind.

x x x x x

Mid-afternoon sun was strangled by a heavy fog. The further the group made their way north down the twisting river, the more the atmospheric blemish thickened; by the time they'd been rowing for just over two hours they could scarcely see the banks on either side of them. Sandy crags from the mountains alongside the gigantic ridgewood trees ran parallel to the small boat, their monolithic forms casting shadows drowned in gray. Soft waves lapped at the thin armor of the vessel, an aqueous caress that reached out of the swollen air like dreamy fingers.

Rotating in shifts, Temari was at the rear of the boat with the long curved oar, eyes concentrating on the limited sight granted to her to steer them correctly. Directly in front of her sat Hinata and Shikamaru, the former holding her hand over the side and letting the cool water run across her fingers. Gaara and Kankuro sat at the front of the small boat, though the distance between them all was minimal given the boat's size.

Hinata's head was drooped over her right shoulder, and she spoke quietly without looking away from the water that parted around her hand. "How far upstream are we going? I remember seeing a map of Earth Country once. . . there isn't another town for a few hundred kilometers."

Shikamaru nodded. "Right. It'll take us another two days to reach the next village, and that's where we're going to be hooking up with the intel-unit. There's actually a Highway-Inn about fifty clicks north of here that we should be able to reach by nightfall." He paused as a yawn interrupted him, shaking off the lethargy then by crossing his arms over his vest. "Have to meet with good old Secretary Kurama there. Taking the river like this was the fastest way since it cuts right through the mountains instead of going around."

"I see," Hinata replied. She lifted her hand out of the water, staring at its glistening shape. "Thanks."

"So. . ." Temari started conversationally, arms strained slightly from the continuous motion. "I've been meaning to ask. You two have been kind of tight-lipped about it ever since you got back. Anything on the advance party or the convoy?"

"No," Gaara answered. He was gazing off into the mist, black-rimmed eyes staring into the smoky abyss. "Nothing."

Kankuro looked over to his brother, sitting with his back facing north. "At all?"

Shikamaru shrugged. "Like he said. There are only so many questions we can ask, you know? It's not like we can just walk up to some whine-o on the street and say, 'Hey, we have no idea what's going on, can you direct us to the people who we're supposed to be after? Oh, and while you're at it, tell us what they look like?' As if. Blind groping is a bother."

"Maybe you're just doing a crappy job of it," Kankuro suggested.

Shikamaru frowned, looking across the boat. "I'm sure that's the case."

"No, he's got a point," Temari inserted, maintaining a balance between speech and repetition. "Kankuro managed to get some information. Right?"

A specter of surprise haunted Gaara's face. "Oh?"

Kankuro nodded smugly. "Damn straight."

"Mind you, it was totally inconclusive and practically illegitimate information that wouldn't really direct us in the right direction without some kind of cosmic luck," Temari continued helpfully. Her sunny voice and demeanor slashed ice-blades across the boat at Kankuro. "But hey, he gets points for trying, right?"

"Now that sounds a bit more accurate," Shikamaru said.

Kankuro's fingers tightened at his sides. "Oh piss off. At least it's something. That's more than any of you came up with."

Temari looked at him pointedly as if he were a complete fool, her arms still leaning into a smooth glide. "It's a vague description of some random ninjas who may or may not be anyone even related to our situation. There was no one to cross-reference and solidify the claim, no secondary witness, and absolutely no connection to who they even were. Or where they were from. Or where they were going." She shook her head, golden hair shifting underneath the silver world. "Something? How is that anything?"

Kankuro shrugged impassively, looking out over the boat at the water as if he had nothing better to do. "A small little town that has absolutely no routine ninja contact happens to come across a group of people that are all coordinated to some degree, meaning that they were a unit of some kind. Speaking in terms of trajectory, who happens to be just ahead of us." He turned back to look across the vessel at Temari as she stood, blueprints of his human connectivity lain bare before them all. "Maybe that's not a picture of them attacking the carriage or of their secret hideout, but come on! It has to count for something."

Water moved. A silence lingered for a few moments. Shikamaru took a breath in thought. "I don't know. . . that is pretty inconclusive."

Kankuro snorted. "Figures you'd think that."

". . . Perhaps it's not very reliable," Gaara said.

A gravelly noise scraped at Kankuro's throat. "Come on now—"

"But it could still hold some value," Gaara continued, interceding Kankuro's objections. He turned his head to look at Shikamaru and Temari. "I think it would be foolish to dismiss it outright simply because it doesn't tailor to our situation exactly how we want it to."

Temari shrugged. "I guess so."

". . . Alright," Shikamaru conceded. He knew well enough to observe someone pointing out his bias to realize when he was being unreasonable. Unlike some squad leaders, Shikamaru preferred running a group setting that encouraged communication and opinion from everyone on the team instead of blind adherence. "We'll go over the details of what you've got tonight once we get off the road, so to speak. I'm not holding my breath, but I guess it would be a bit hasty to reject it outright."

"See?" Kankuro said, head tilting back to look into ash-sky. "Logic always sides with me."

"Now you're completely full of it," Temari snorted. She purposefully pulled back on the oar causing the boat to halt in its momentum for a moment with a sudden watery surge, grinning as Kankuro's head snapped back and banged against the bow. "Whoops. Sorry about that."

Kankuro glared at her, his right hand rubbing the back of his head. "Whatever. You're in no position to criticize since you didn't even ask around to start with."

Temari rolled her eyes. "It's just like you to gloat."

Instead of growing upset, Kankuro just shrugged. "Being stuck with you for so damn long, I guess you could say I learned from the Master."

All too familiar sounds of sibling altercation flooded their disconnected haven as both Temari and Kankuro began to verbally snipe at each other. Both Gaara and Shikamaru had quickly grown accustomed to that aspect of their relationship and had learned expediently to simply tune the two of them out when necessary. There were times when someone would need to intervene, but it was an intrinsic facet of the siblings core: sometimes real damage could result from hastily interfering with an argument that bore no real weight to begin with.

Hinata was not quite as adept. Anger and hate were poisonous devilry that gouged deeply behind her ribs. She was simply a very sensitive person; carved from glass and sculpted into silk by her own devices. The closer she became to others the more their scything emotions sundered and tore at the brittle fabric encompassing her frame. Exoskeletal diamonds that shattered from rage and despair. So it was taking her much longer to adapt to Temari and Kankuro than it had Shikamaru. She usually remained quietly internal and protected when they grew upset. She sighed to herself, trying to convince herself it was okay they treated each other so poorly. That it was okay that she didn't understand and that they probably didn't want her to.

A swirling movement in the smoky shadows caught Hinata's distracted attention. A flicker in the breathing fog.

She frowned. What is that. . .?

The silhouette pulsed. Movement across the water stitched into the spidery air, and then it was gone.

Hinata's hands withdrew from the water, coming together in front of her chest in a cold embrace. She whispered to herself. "Byakugan. . ."

Petals enveloped her mind. The universe throbbed silver as vision exploded across her perception, everything reconnected to the negative and inverted dimension. Ultimate sight disoriented her senses for a slight moment as it always did, her mind frantically trying to adapt to the information that punctured its stability with insatiable continuity. Then she began to glide. Her thoughts guided what she wanted to see as if traveling along an astral freeway at incomprehensible speeds. Her mind leapt across the river as if she'd stepped out of her skin, a higher plane transferring the world to her in leaps and bounds.

And she saw him.

Behind the boat, along the shore. A straw hat covering his head, swords and weapon pouch at his belt. A blue ninja uniform, no forehead protector, black gloves with silver lining. Exactly as Kankuro had told her and Temari they would look like when the three of them were waiting for Shikamaru and Gaara. A disgusting swirl of plagued chakra bled from his body. Hinata had never seen anything like that before. It was as if his spiritual essence was leaking, ribbons trailing off his skin in a crystal river.

His killing intent bludgeoned her mind.

Hinata recoiled visibly, a tortured intake of breath escaping between her teeth in a quiet hiss.

Shikamaru frowned. "Hinata?" With her head tilted slightly he instantly recognized the veins lancing underneath her skin. He raised his hand. "Quiet," he demanded. Kankuro and Temari went silent as all eyes fell on Hinata. "Hinata, what is it?"

". . . On the riverside. . . to our west," she replied, her voice barely above a murmur. "About. . . eighty meters behind us. We're being followed."

Tension began to float in Shikamaru's chest. "How many?"

Hinata's hands tightened briefly. ". . . Just one. No. . . there's another. No, two more. Two others further off the bank in the forest. They're trailing thirty meters to the west of the closest person."

Temari turned to look behind them, seeing nothing but mist. "Description?"

Hinata paused, looking back at Kankuro through her infinite eyes. ". . . They look. . . look exactly like Kankuro-san said earlier."

Annoyance skewered through Shikamaru as he realized that Kankuro had already shared the details of his information with the others and thought it fit to keep him in the dark. The feeling subsided when he realized Kankuro had become as alert and serious as everyone else, displaying the discretion that the exact moment wasn't the best time to be gloating over such a thing. Shikamaru took a slow breath. "I'll be damned."

Gaara's arms uncrossed like pythons sliding down a tree to attack. "Action?"

Shikamaru rallied quickly to formulate a plan. He looked at Temari. "Keep moving forward." His hands fell to his weapons pouch as he turned his attention to the others, slipping inside to touch the cold steel of his projectile weaponry. "Keep the chatter up so they'll still think we don't know they're here. Let's assess whether or not they're hostile before doing anything—"

"Here they come!" Hinata interrupted, hands falling from her chest, tightening into fists. "They're going to—"

A faint whistle could be heard as black metal sliced through nebulous silver.

Shikamaru's eyes widened. "Down!"

Hinata and Shikamaru moved at the same time to avoid the flying shurikens, diving into the depths of the boat. Temari was faster. Relinquishing her grasp on the oar she swung herself into a full stance with tremendous speed, her hands already working her fan open. The spinning blades pierced the gloom with a murderous whisper. Temari spun her battle-fan open like a floodgate; black shudders parting as layered white and violet spilled open in a jagged crescent. The throwing stars deflected off of her fan as it spread wide with metal chinks, falling harmlessly into the dark water with hollow splashes.

Shikamaru looked up at Temari with something resembling respect. "Nice," he said simply. He looked down. "Hinata?"

Her eyes were wild and intensely focused. "Just the one on the shore!" She frowned, concentrating on seeing hundreds of feet away behind her. "The others have spread out. . . I think they're trying to flank us!"

Shikamaru stood. "Not happening." He noticed a red flash to his left as Gaara and Kankuro were already beginning to move. A metal twirl pressurized the air around them as Temari whipped the fan around, parting the mist between the boat and the shore. Shikamaru took that as their rallying point. "Everyone off the boat! Now!"

Hinata's head twisted. "He's here!"

A miniature shockwave pressed the boat further through the surface of the water as five sets of feet blasted chakra into its girth. A human blur vanished into the clouds as they scattered, a glinting trail of shuriken and kunai hammering into the wood of the vacant boat with thick shrieks. They had no training together and it was then that they realized the true shortcoming of their arrangement—they had no fluidity amid their union, no mechanism of immediate response through which to marshal chaos into order. Both Shikamaru and Hinata realized this in the cold wet air. Their lack of understanding was a liability.

Were the Sand-nins not siblings.

Temari's eyes raked across the shifting mud along the shore, piercing through mist and fog with a calculated sense of purpose. The silhouette of movement had been brief, but it had been there: a split second emergence had been more than enough for her to lock onto. Her fan folded back under her arms as she crashed into the mud, smearing underneath her sandals in a wet and filthy slide.

She turned and shouted into her blind surroundings. "Gaara, get his feet!"

Over two-dozen feet from where Temari landed Gaara came down. A smooth chakra plateau stretched across his feet as they touched upon the surface of the water, keeping him afloat as if the undulating river was pulverized concrete. His feet shifted to give him a wide stance, his knees bending, eyes radiating emptiness like death voids. His hands came together as he compacted raw energy into his being. A honing of terrible power fluctuated around him, beastly forces lurking like enraged hydras. Silent weapons armed themselves.

The world exploded.

There was a sound like a cannon being fired as Gaara unleashed the channeled energy, granules of sand erupting from his gourd and the riverbed beneath him into a concentrated beam of shattered particles. He had seen the ninja in the mist when Temari had parted the air briefly, a shadow wraith leaking a wretched killer instinct without check. All of reality seemed to warp and convolute into a focalized singularity as Gaara guided his streaming million-minions towards the ninja on the shore. The arm of sand reached treacherously at the hidden ninja, and then three things happened all at once.

As the ninja realized Gaara's violence was imminent he attempted to leap aside only to have Karasu descend upon him like a frenzied vulture, blades for talons, shredding at his skin and tissue with death-fingers. The looming face of an insanely-inanimate wooden killer peered into his eyes with an unvoiced scream, its finger-blades carving two deep red furrows down his back. At the same time Gaara's burning sand immolated his legs, twisted around them in a skin-stripping tornado of movement before crushing bones with force akin to a mountainside avalanche.

Karasu's grasp along with the sand's destruction left him prone for the third and final offensive: a trio of kunai thrown by Temari that struck with horrific accuracy. Iron daggers nestled themselves agonizingly in his shoulder joints and navel, a stream of ichor spraying from the spliced sinews. A tormented scream escaped the fallen ninja, contorted to a wet gurgle as blood sweltered and bubbled in his throat.

Gaara's sand receded. Karasu released its bladed grip. The ninja's body slumped to the mud in an organic ruin.

A few moments later the five of them reconvened around the fallen ninja. His mouth was opened in a silent gasp as he struggled to breathe, dilated pupils rotating randomly as his eye pivoted in a terrified dance within its socket. Filaments of blood stained his clothing and the blackened mud and stones beneath him, trailing towards the river in liquid red arms. His legs were flattened as if they were empty, bones crushed and shattered to irreparable destruction. It had taken all of five seconds for the siblings of the sand to destroy him.

Shikamaru took the gruesome image in stride. "Well that was fun," he muttered, his guard still fortified in case the other ninjas chose to attack. "Hinata—the others?"

Hinata frowned as her vision combed through the surrounding forest with a ravenous speed. "They're. . . they're running away. One to the southwest, the other. . . the other heading north. Their movement is frantic."

Temari took a step over the ninja at their feet. "This one here should be able to talk," her voice icy and enclosed within scorn. Her foot shot out as she kicked him in the ribs, eliciting a pitiful cry from his swollen throat. She looked over at Shikamaru. "The others?"

Shikamaru processed all of the information he possessed and drew up a relative strategy. If the other ninjas possessed similar capabilities as the one at their feet, then they weren't much of a threat. However it would be a mistake to simply assume they had no capabilities that offered danger or harm to the eclectic group. But there was no option to delay a pursuit as they had no idea what the ninjas were after: it was entirely possible they'd return with reinforcements which was unacceptable.

At the same time he was struck with the sheer coincidental energy of convenience. Given that he wasn't privy to the exact details of Kankuro's information he couldn't verify his suspicions, but the interspersed amalgam of time and place wasn't lost on him. Kankuro's description of the ninjas was vague, his specifics non-existent. He knew that much from the argument Temari and Kankuro just had. Shikamaru frowned. How convenient that they'd be attacked by those very people mere hours later.

Battlements encircled the storm of his thoughts. Shikamaru didn't believe in coincidence.

". . . Take them out," he ordered after a momentary pause. He kept his eyes on the broken and twitching body at his feet. Red stained his sandals. "I don't want them stalking us again. Temari, Hinata—follow the one heading north. Gaara, Kankuro—after the one to the southwest. I'll stay here and get what I can out of this bastard. Go now."

Without question or delay the group dispersed, vanishing into the fog as sand and mud sprayed from their retreat. Shikamaru knelt down next to the ninja, looking at his pallid face as tears streamed from his bloodshot eyes. Blood wept. Shikamaru sighed, recalling all of his interrogation training, wondering where to begin.