The Sword in the Stone

Chapter 4

Two Weeks After the Kage Summit

Three weeks and eight D-rank missions after she'd played with her sister for the first time in too long, Tamako's team was finally assigned another, more exciting sort of mission. Unlike the last, it wasn't a C-rank.

Takeshi whistled when he read the mission detail. "That's a lot of money," he mouthed quietly as he passed the scroll off to Hideaki, who scrutinized it with squinted eyes. The taciturn boy raised his eyebrows in surprise, before handing the scroll to Tamako. It took her longer than she'd admit to make sure she was counting the number of zero's correctly.

"What's the deal, sensei?" Takeshi asked as Tamako had passed the scroll back to Yui, who silently folded it up and placed it in a hidden pocket. "I mean, I get it's a B-rank, but that's real pricey."

Yui sighed. "You need to work on your reading comprehension, Takeshi," she said as she closed the pocket. "This mission is directly from the Daimyo…" she tapped his lip. "Or at least his court. Eh, it's just semantics. Point is, important people with fancy hats want this job done, and they're willing to pay out the ass for it."

Takeshi snickered, but Tamako and Hideaki remained quizzical. It seemed too good to be true.

"The Daimyo's court paying well is sensible," Hideaki spoke up. "However, I do not understand why this mission is being presented to us in the first place."

Tamako nodded, formless thoughts stirred into explicit terms and questions by Hideaki's words. "Yeah: a B-rank mission is a bit… much for a team of genin, isn't it sensei? We only graduated a couple months ago."

"You're an exceptional team," Yui said flatly, and then, with a small grin, "and I'm an exceptional teacher. This mission wouldn't be handed over to any team of genin. But you're both right. It is very unusual for something of this nature to be given to a team with as little experience as ours: especially a recon. However, this recommendation was handed down by the Tsuchikage himself."

"Whoa." Takeshi didn't bother to hide his surprise. Tamako did, but poorly. "The Tsuchikage?"

"Yup," Yui said, challenging him with direct eye contact. "This mission is being passed around to several genin teams the Jonin council's deemed appropriate, and you guys were lucky enough to be on the list. So..." She grinned a wild, true grin. "You guys gonna take the opportunity, or let some other team walk away with it?"

Tamako had looked to her teammates, and they to her and each other. They all shared the same silent conversation, which went something along the lines of–

'That's a lot of money.'

'Could be dangerous.'

'Isn't that the point?'

Less than ten seconds later, they found themselves nodding at each other. In unison, they presented a united front to their teacher, who read them with equally wordless efficiency. Time had bought them confidence after their last C-rank: Tamako was ready to get back in the field and serve the village in a tangible way, and her teammates felt the same way.

"Good to hear I'm not training any punks," Yui chuckled, flipping them an almost-but-not-quite-sarcastic sign of respect. "I'll tell the desk jockeys: you guys get ready. It'll be tough going." She winked. "And bring a lot of water. It's gonna be hot."

"I'm going to turn into a walnut," Takeshi stated in an extremely matter-of-fact manner, and Tamako arched her eyebrows at him. "I'm gonna sweat myself down into a little shriveled piece of crap and you're going to have to carry me back in your pocket."

They'd been walking for hours in a sea of trackless dunes, a vast desert of sand and stone that extended as far as the eye could see. Tamako had never been this far south: her father had told her a little about the relentless heat that gripped most of the Land of Wind, but she'd never really appreciated exactly what it meant. The impossibly bright sun high above constantly bore down on her with tangible dry weight, pushing her down into the sand and boiling the back of her neck and shoulders. With nothing much to look at other than more desert or her own team, there wasn't much to distract Tamako from the brutal heat. Her teammates weren't doing any better, but none of them were complaining out loud.

Until now at least.

"Get a grip, Takeshi," Tamako grunted back. When they'd first reached the desert after a day and some of travel, every step had been a struggle, but now simply walking wasn't much of a challenge. Yui had taught them all an invaluable exercise that kept their sandals from sinking into the hot sand, allowing them to glide across the dunes without effort.

Well, most of the time. Takeshi was having a little trouble keeping the chakra dispersal balanced, which occasionally became obvious when he slipped, overcompensated, and blew a half-meter deep hole in the sand under his feet, falling in up to his knees. It had only happened twice so far, but both times Tamako's teammate had gone red with embarrassment and quite unusually almost cursed his way out of the encroaching sand.

"I've got plenty of grip," Takeshi muttered, trudging on.

"Drink some more water," Hideaki offered. Of all of them (besides their sensei, of course) he had taken the most naturally to the chakra-enhanced movement. Tamako couldn't bring herself to be jealous of him. It would have been a wasted effort anyway: the stout genin was too well-mannered to stay mad at. "Water always helps."

"Man, who says that?" Takeshi shot back, even as he unscrewed the cap of his canteen. "'Water always helps?'"

"Am I wrong?" Hideaki asked.

"Wouldn't help me if I were drowning," Takeshi grumbled, taking a swig.

"Well, you're not drowning," Tamako helpfully pointed out, and Hideaki smiled at her. "Actually, it's pretty much the opposite of that."

"Dehydration." Yui appeared like a ghost out of the desert: she'd been alternating between following them at a distance and scouting ahead, though truly there didn't seem to be much out here in the wastes of Wind Country. "Deadlier than any knife."

"Ooh, that's a good one, sensei," Takeshi said, some of his humor restored by the water. "Did you come up with that?"

"Nah." Their sensei shook her head, and Tamako wondered how she wasn't sweating. Even Tamako, who had thought herself pretty excellent at regulating her body temperature with chakra, couldn't prevent a thin sheen of sweat from forming on the back of her neck and in several places beneath her cloths. Their sensei really was something else. "I stole that from a squad leader I had back in the Third War, and he probably stole it from some other guy with too much time on their hands. But it's true: a lack of supplies, especially water, can be just as deadly as a weapon, and harder to avoid. Keep that in mind."

They glided in silence for a couple minutes after that, the only sound the occasional howling of the desert wind. Eventually, Tamako spoke up again.

"How close are we now, sensei?"

"Still pretty far off," Yui said, squinting at the horizon. "I'm guessing about another fifty kilometers before we hit the actionable perimeter."

"Actionable Perimeter" was one of those terms Tamako understood the need for, but not one she appreciated. As her classes had taught her, it was where it was practical and possible for shinobi patrols and sensor jutsu to establish an effective perimeter around a defensive position. In the case of the Hidden Villages, their actual borders were rarely an "actionable perimeter," due to the chakra costs of a sensor jutsu extending that far, or the practicality of border patrols covering such a wide area.

Sunagakure was a smaller Village, especially after the losses they'd taken against Konoha three years ago, so their perimeter would probably be closer to the Village proper. Probably. Tamako was uncomfortably aware that she didn't have enough field experience to make assumptions like that. It was dangerous. But she trusted her teacher, and as long as Yui moved forward confidently, she would as well.

"Sensei," Hideaki spoke up, his foot slipping backwards on the sand for a microsecond before he corrected and regained his balance. "You served in the Third War, you said."

Yui glanced back at him. "Yeah?" Tamako was a little surprised: no one on the team had ever asked about their sensei's past, though it was clear she was more than an ordinary jōnin.

"Did you ever encounter any ninja from Sunagakure?" Hideaki asked, the rest of team listening intently as they stalked across the endless dunes. "Could you tell us anything about them?"

"Hmm." Yui scratched her cheek, wiping away a single drop of sweat that had somehow formed. "Well, not really. I mostly fought ninja from Konoha during the war. But once or twice, they probably had ninja from Suna with them: they were allied during the war, of course."

"Then why did they attack Konoha three years ago?" Takeshi asked, and Yui shook her head.

"Thing's change, alliances shift. It's inevitable. Despite that attack, nowadays, Konoha and Suna are closer than ever. But hey, one thing at a time, right?" she said, and Takeshi nodded. "So, I didn't fight any Suna-nin personally, not that I knew, but I can still tell you a little about them." She gestured around at the desert. "As you can probably tell, there's not a lot out here. Because of that, Suna's population is naturally a bit lower than the other villages, and so is their ninja corp. It's not so dramatic they're at a disadvantage in war-time, but teams of Sand-nin tend to operate in smaller platoons. They make up for that with a variety of techniques." She glanced at them cannily. "I wonder if any of you could tell me about any of them?"

"Uhh…" Tamako glanced around: neither of teammates seemed willing to answer, and for good reason. She didn't know what to say either. "Not really, sensei."

"Well hey, I guess that's lucky for you three," Yui said with a mean grin. "You haven't had to worry about them." Her smile faded. "The most famous of them is certainly their puppetry techniques, though there are others: magnetism, wind-manipulation, and somewhat widespread sealing proficiency, which often goes hand-in-hand with the puppets."

"Puppets?" Hideaki almost sounded excited. The sand crunched under their feet as the team hit a rough patch of dirt and stone.

"Yeah. It might sound crazy, but Suna has a whole puppetry corp." Yui shrugged. "I've never seen them in action, but I've heard they're quite impressive. Apparently they control life-sized puppets from a distance with strings of chakra, in all shapes and sizes, all of which are filled with nasty weapons: poison, blades, saws, that kinda stuff. It splits the attention of anyone who has to go up against them, and it's a great force-multiplier."

"Wow." Takeshi didn't sound very excited, but his smile said otherwise. "That's badass."

"Well, it's certainly useful," Yui acknowledged. "But there's no need to worry about that. The only way we'll even see Suna shinobi on this mission is if things go really wrong."

"And if they do?" Hideaki asked.

Yui smiled. "Then we run away, as fast as we can. We're in their territory, but that doesn't mean they'll attack us on sight. That's bad politics. More likely, they'll try to scare us off, and then off us if we don't take the hint. At that point, it'll practically be our fault."

"What's the point of reconnaissance if we run off at the first sign of trouble?" Takeshi seemed to be a little less irritable. That was good: it had been making Tamako uncomfortable.

"Well, that's precisely the point Takeshi," Yui said, clearly enjoying herself just a little too much. She fell behind her genin a little as they all trudged forward, her voice coming from over their shoulder. "That's why this mission is only a B-rank. We want to see how close we can get before we're chased away."

"We're testing their borders?" Hideaki asked rhetorically, glancing back for a moment. "Is this kind of mission normal?"

"No." Tamako imagined Yui shaking her head. "This is actually thanks to something recent. The Tsuchikage-"

There was a rustle, the endless wind turning over some sand, and Tamako's sensei suddenly went silent.

Tamako blinked, looking back over her shoulder.

Yui Tono was gone.

"Uh, Sensei?" she asked. Takeshi frowned and looked back as well. Slowly, both he and Tamako slowed to a stop. After a moment, Hideaki realized they had and stopped himself.

"Tamako?" Takeshi asked. "Where'd…?"

Tamako turned, scanning the horizon in every direction. There were several rolling dunes: Yui could theoretically be hiding behind one of them, but-

"She's gone," Hideaki suddenly said.

"Yeah, we noticed," Takeshi said, some irritation showing. Hideaki frowned at him.

"She stopped speaking mid-sentence," he said, sounding far too calm. Tamako was slowly coming to what she imagined was a similar conclusion. "Unless she's simply trying to scare us, there are only two conclusions. It is possible she sensed a threat and moved to deal with it."

"Or she was attacked," Tamako cut in, feeling her breathing speed up. Accompanied by a warm liquid sensation, steel spread across her vital areas: shielding her vital organs, her neck, skull, arteries, critical joints. The Seishingane's activation was half instinct and half conscious direction, and Tamako felt an odd sense of gratitude towards her freak genes.

"Yes, that is precisely what I was going to say," Hideaki finished. "And attacked in such a manner that she-"

Tamako was looking right at Hideaki when it happened. She was making eye contact with him, with Takeshi in her peripheral vision.

And yet before Tamako's eyes, her teammate vanished into the sand. It was as if the desert had vanished out from under his feet and he'd dropped away at impossible, comical speeds. Hideaki's face stretched in surprise, and then suddenly it was as if he'd never existed.

Tamako stared, drenched in cold sweat, but Takeshi acted.

"Hideaki!" Tamako's last teammate sprinted over to where Hideaki had vanished, dropping to his knees and digging into the sand. The desert and wind laughed at his efforts. As quickly as Takeshi dug, even with his superhuman speed and strength, the sand rushed back in and filled the hole. Before long, Takeshi was buried up to his forearms, with no progress made.

"Takeshi, stop!" Tamako took a step forward, her head swimming. From the heat? Panic? She didn't understand what was happening. Just twenty seconds ago her sensei had been explaining the recon to them. Twenty seconds, and now she and Hideaki had both disappeared without a trace, and Takeshi-

"Tamakohelp!"

Takeshi's panicked call blended two words into one. Tamako's feet carried her forward before she entirely understood what she was seeing. Takeshi's arms, which had already been buried in the sand up to the elbows, were sinking deeper. The teen wasn't doing it on purpose, clearly struggling as something unseen pulled him down.

"Get me out!" he called again, kicking his feet. He looked back at Tamako, his eyes wide. One of her steel-shod hands settled on his shoulder, pulling back. Finally Tamako could feel the pressure that was dragging her teammate deeper into the dune. It was incredible: she could hardly believe Tamako had been resisting it so effectively.

"It's the sand, Tamako!" he screamed, inexorably drawn away from her. Tamako bared her teeth in desperation, pulling harder, but she could do nothing to stop the desert from devouring her teammate. As Takeshi looked back at her, something in his eyes changed. His face went white.

"Let go!" Takeshi he suddenly shouted. Tamako screamed back, half-incoherent, as steel raced across the rest of her skin, fortifying her muscles and strengthening her grip. She dug her feet into the sand, becoming an unbendable pillar.

"No!"

Takeshi's shirt ripped, leaving Tamako holding nothing but black cloth. She reached out again, but too slowly, far too slowly. Just beneath her hand, Takeshi sunk beneath the sand with unstoppable speed, shouting all the way.

"The sand, Tamako! Run!"

And then, just like Yui and Hideaki, he was gone. Tamako was left staring at the vague imprint in the sand that had once been her comrade, before that faded as well. She reared up, frantically glancing in every direction.

Desert. Nothing but desert all around.

She was alone in the Land of Wind, and alone in a desert that had just literally eaten her team.

Tamako thought about taking a step backwards, but realized it was pointless. There was desert in every direction. Sand in every direction. Where was she supposed to run? She couldn't leave the Land of Wind before whatever had caught her team caught her as well.

But she couldn't conceive of giving up either, of lying down and waiting to die.

So instead, she stood stock still. Tamako reached deep inside herself and banished her trembling heart. Swords didn't have hearts. She forgot her sweat, her blood, her breath, and everything else. All that existed was the desert and the steel that now covered every inch of her skin.

Tamako waited. After what seemed like years, frozen on that endless plain of sand and wind, she finally heard something.

"I expected that you would run."

Tamako spun around. There was someone standing behind her: a man, no, a teen, just a couple years older than herself. She took in tertiary details, the world slipping past in slow motion, the wind stilled by her sped-up perception. Flat teal eyes, red hair. Arms crossed. Some sort of tattoo on his forehead. Red bodysuit, almost like Yui's. A huge tan gourd secured to his back.

And, perhaps strangest, no hitai-ate.

Tamako took that in during the bubble of frozen time, and then without hesitation she charged.

She made it two steps, kicking up a massive amount of sand, before the teen raised his right index finger.

The desert leapt up, fingers of sand seizing her legs and bringing her to a crashing halt. Tamako overcompensated, rocking back as she kept her balance, and without pausing to consider how much worse her situation had suddenly become plucked a kunai from her hip and hurled it at the teen's face.

A wisp of sand flicked the kunai away, sending it spinning into the distance. The teen took a step towards her. "Please don't-"

Tamako concentrated, pumping chakra into her legs, desperate to break the chains of sand pinning her. The thickness of the steel sheathing her thighs and below tripled: tiny spikes emerged, pushing back at the sand. She lunged forward, one leg half breaking through the sand.

The teen cocked an eyebrow. "-resist," he finished. He extended one hand towards Tamako as she struggled to finish freeing her right leg. She broke about a centimeter more through the sand, feeling the less enhanced muscles in her upper leg straining.

The redhead made a fist.

Faster than Tamako could react, she was sucked down into the desert. Legs, hip, torso: everything was swallowed up by the sand before she could do anything more than yelp. A heartbeat later, and she was buried up to her neck.

Then, the motion stopped. Tamako sucked in a breath, on the verge of hyperventilating. Sand pressed in on her from every side, exerting soft pressure. She couldn't move a muscle. There was no way she could mount even a token resistance.

"Hmm." The redhead kept approaching her. Fruitlessly, Tamako tried to rock her body back and forth, to loosen the grip of the sand. She thrashed her head, desperate to escape. She couldn't breath.

She accomplished nothing. Three seconds later, as her vision began to darken, the teen squatted down a meter or so in front of her. The pressure of the sand withdrew, just enough for Tamako to breath easily once more.

"That's an impressive jutsu," he said, his deep voice filled with what sounded like genuine admiration. Tamako stared at him without comprehension for a moment, before she realized her entire head was still covered in steel.

There probably wasn't any point in it, but she didn't let the material recede. She needed all the protection she could get.

"I had no idea the Land of Earth had such a jutsu in its possession. Though…" he looked her in the eye, and out of some sense of childish fear Tamako refused to blink. "You are quite young. Perhaps a Kekkei Genkai."

Tamako didn't think she'd given any sign, but she saw a flash of satisfaction in the teen's flat eyes nonetheless. "Interesting." He eased down, helped by small tendrils of sand, and sat in a cross-legged stance. "What's your name?"

Tamako silently stared at him, considering how she could escape. It was obvious this shinobi (and he must have been, despite the lack of hitai-ate) could control the sand in some way: she was pinned now, but was there any way of disrupting his control?

She was surprised at how clearly she was thinking despite her terror. It seemed like a hopeless situation, and yet she was trying to wiggle out of it.

"You're scared. I understand," the teen said. Her eyes darted: involuntary surprise. He noticed. "My name is Gaara. Please, I would like to know yours."

Was there any harm in it? This was a recon, and"Gaara" was clearly a Sunagakure patrol. He was a ninja who used sand as a weapon: what other village could he be a member of, out here? Maybe, if she opened up, Tamako could somehow get some information out of him.

Like if her team was still alive or not.

"Tamako Shirogane," she said. "Are my friends still alive?"

He regarded her placidly. "They are." She had no idea if he was lying. "They will continue to be, so long as you are honest with me."

Tamako stiffened. The soft threat was clear.

She had to get out. Or do as he asked. Could she escape? She had a couple explosive tags in her hip pocket. Could she trigger one of them by extending the Seishingane? She wasn't sure. But if she did, the sand would be blown away. Her steel skin would probably ensure she'd survive the blast. Gaara was close enough that the blast would hit him too, and he didn't have the same protection. She'd have a moment to charge him.

Would it be enough?

"How old are you, Tamako Shirogane?" Gaara asked, and Tamako was yanked out of her head.

"Thirteen."

"Interesting." Gaara rocked on his heels a little, the only overt sign of animation he'd made since stopping in front of her.

"My age?" Tamako asked, trying to sound cold and instead sounding unsure.

"In a way," Gaara softly agreed. "When I was your age, I encountered a remarkable shinobi with a Kekkei Genkai much like yours." He examined her face. "Though, instead of metal, he covered himself in his own bones."

Tamako's face twisted in surprise, drawn into the redhead's sonorous voice despite her mind screaming at her not to let her guard down. "Really? That's…"

"Grotesque, indeed. You're fortunate in comparison to him. He used his own skeleton as a weapon and a shield." Gaara smiled humorlessly. "It was a difficult battle. If not for some luck, he might have ended me."

"Why are you telling me this?" Why was he telling her this?

"It's an amusing coincidence. Despite his impenetrable bones, I was still able to crush him alive." Another humorless smile. "Is yours the only team out here?"

"Uh." Tamako was transfixed by visions of herself bursting like a grape, squeezed from all sides by Gaara's sand. Of the same happening to the rest of her team. "Yes."

That was why he had been telling her. The redhead had seen right through her. He'd seen what she'd been planning. She knew it, as sure as the color of the sky. She'd just been told, in a roundabout way, what would happen to her if she tried something stupid.

"Good. You are from Iwagakure."

Tamako didn't hesitate: her situation was clearer than ever. The thought of the exploding tag in her pocket quietly slipped away.

"Yes."

"A recon team to ascertain the perimeter of Sunagakure." Gaara looked up and away, towards the horizon. "With genin." He looked back. "Did the Tsuchikage recommend your team for this mission?"

"He recommended several teams of genin," Tamako said, thinking of her friends trapped down in the cold, dark sand beneath her. Hideaki must have been panicking: he hated small spaces. "We were the ones that accepted."

"Hmm." Gaara looked past her eyes. "That was foolish of you." He frowned. "Onoki believes I am soft."

Tamako shook, not fully understanding what he was saying. Gaara was talking as though he knew the Tsuchikage personally, calling him by his first name. Perhaps it was just another aspect of his commanding tone: Gaara spoke with polite, clear authority. Maybe he was just the kind of ninja who dared to say the first name of foreign Kage.

But that didn't explain why Onoki would be thinking of him in particular when he sent a recon team.

A quiet realization bubbled up in Tamako's mind, but her throat was too constricted to voice it.

"Well, he's half right, at least," Gaara admitted. "You've been very cooperative. I'm not especially inclined to kill you."

Gaara stood up, and made a small gesture with his right hand. Gradually, Tamako rose out of the ground, slowly coming free of the sand. Simultaneously, three mounds in the sand became clear. With eerie grace, Tamako's team was vomited up by the desert.

They weren't moving.

"Do not worry. They're merely unconscious," Gaara said. "I allowed them to breath after they passed out." He gestured at Yui, who lay on her back, breathing shallowly. Her hair was full of sand. As he did, Tamako's feet finally came free. "Go to your sensei. Slowly."

Tamako did, her feet crunching on the sand. She was too distracted to focus on gliding over it.

"Wake her up," Gaara commanded. Tamako bent over, placing her hand on Yui's shoulder.

"Sensei, wake up," she practically begged, sending a jolt of chakra through her teacher's system. Yui's eyes flew open and she exploded to her feet, nearly knocking Tamako over. She spun around, her eyes taking in the situation in an instant.

"Oh my," she said, somehow sounding unruffled despite being unarmed and covered in sand. "The Kazekage. Excellent."

Tamako blinked. She couldn't have heard that correctly. That would be ridiculous.

"Ah, you recognize me," Gaara said, and Tamako stared from her sensei to the Suna-nin. No, the Kazekage.

'Oh no.'

"You're very distinctive. As are your abilities. Though…" Yui glanced at her other students, still unconscious. "I had no idea they were so versatile."

"You are a recon team, are you not." Gaara crossed his arms. "It seems you've performed some critical reconnaissance." He glanced at Tamako. "You have a very interesting student. She has quite the Kekkei Genkai."

"Yes, well…" Yui faltered. "Thank you for not killing her, Lord Kazekage."

Gaara nodded. Tamako felt light-headed. "Listen to me carefully, shinobi of Stone." He enunciated every word, as though he were building a wall out of carefully placed syllables. "This will be the last intrusion my village will tolerate. The next ninja of your village that steps foot in the desert will die."

"Are you threatening our village, Kazekage?" Yui asked softly. "You must understand the consequences of that." Gaara nodded.

"Please don't mistake me for impulsive, or petty," Gaara said, his voice resonating with a genuine appeal. Tamako was still trying to wrap her head around the fact she had talked to the Kage of another Village face to face, so his politeness only disconcerted her more. "The Nations are entering a time of insecurity, and I cannot afford any risk to my Village; to my family. So, the laws of this desert will be simple. If you belong here, you will not be harmed."

Tamako shivered, transfixed by the absolute certainty in the voice of a teenager only a few years older than her, a shinobi who commanded one of the Five Villages. Yui glanced at her, but in much the same way as Tamako, she couldn't look away from Gaara for long. Pillars of sand rose, far in the distance, rearing high into the sky. Tamako took a step back.

"Return to the Tsuchikage, and give him those words. Tell him that Gaara of the Desert will suffer no trespass."

Then, without any further ceremony, the Godaime Kazekage collapsed into sand, and the distant pillars with him. The desert was silent once more but for the soft whistling of the endless wind.

"Bunshin. Hmm," Yui said, after a couple seconds had passed. "Tamako, you're alright?"

"I…" Tamako looked to her, and then to herself. "Yeah. I'm alright."

"Good." Yui looked back to where the Kage had been. "He was a bit melodramatic, don't you think?"

Tamako took a deep breath, trying to slow her racing heart. Her teeth hurt. It felt like her heartbeat was shaking them apart. "He was very polite with me, actually. Soft-spoken. I think that was for you, sensei."

"Oh?" Yui asked. "That's interesting. You'll have to debrief me once we're out of here." She turned towards Hideaki, and Tamako understood the cue: she moved towards Takeshi instead.

"He's really just going to let us leave?" she asked, and Yui laughed.

"Yeah. He needs someone to deliver his ultimatum." She bent down over Hideaki, preparing to wake him. "You're a lucky girl, Tamako. Not many genin can say they met a foreign Kage, even one that was just a clone."

"I don't feel very lucky," Tamako mumbled, her head pounding. She tasted vomit on her tongue. Yui laughed once more.

"Maybe not. Now," she said, touching her hand to Hideaki's forehead. "Let's get the hell out of here."