Ink's Notes:

Hello everyone! I think it's about time we get another chapter up. I'm going to go ahead and warn you now, there are a few original characters that are going to start appearing. Mostly as enemies, but I know some people aren't terribly fond of OCs, so I figured I would just warn you all from now. Anyway, on with the story!

Chapter Four

Three days.

That was how long Kakashi said it would take them to reach the village they would be protecting.

Three days of putting up with Naruto's hyperactivity, Kakashi constantly reading that book of his, and Sai's blunt and rude comments.

Three days of putting up with these idiots.

Someone kill me now, Sakura mentally groaned as Naruto began boasting to Sai and Kakashi about some new technique he'd apparently started developing. She blinked when she felt something pat her head, and looked to the bird on her shoulder. He was patting her head with his wing in a comforting manner, and the look on his face said that he knew exactly what she was thinking. Sakura sighed and wondered if he really did, before smiling a thank-you at him.

Kakashi looked up at the darkening sky. "All right, guys, let's set up camp here," he said, lifting his hand to bring the group to a stop. Before long, the group had set up a camp, and they were sitting around a fire. About midway through setup, Marco had flown off somewhere, and Sakura was starting to worry about him.

"Yoi!" he called from the bushes behind them. Sakura turned to the sound, then got up to check on the bird, before letting out a yelp and tumbling backwards onto her butt at the scene she saw behind the bushes.

"Sakura-Chan!" Naruto called, getting up and running to her side. "What's wrong?" Sakura could do nothing but sputter and point to the bushes where Marco was, and Naruto, confused, went to investigate. He stood there in silence for a moment, before turning to look at the rest of his team, blatant shock written all over his face.

"I don't think I want to pick a fight with Marco anymore," he whimpered.

At his words, Kakashi and Sai got up and moved over to where Naruto was standing. They looked into the area behind the bushes that the bird in question was, and saw him sitting on top of a large boar that appeared to have been clawed, pecked and beaten to death, then dragged from some point in the forest around them to its current location if the drag marks and trail of blood on the ground were any indication.

"Yoi," Kakashi could swear that Marco was grinning as he wiped his talons on the boar. He moved over to pick it up, and Marco fluttered off and landed on Sakura's shoulder just as she regained her senses. He seemed rather proud of himself.

"…Marco, did you kill that boar?" Sakura asked, still having trouble believing what she was seeing. The bird nodded in confirmation as Kakashi brought it over to the fire and produced a kunai. Sakura turned to him. "Kakashi, what are you doing?"

"Your bird is rather smart," Kakashi explained. "He killed it in such a way that we would be able to eat it, so I'm getting it ready for us to do just that.

Sakura felt her jaw drop as she turned to her bird again. The bird flew off of her shoulder and landed by Kakashi, watching him carefully. Marco knows how to hunt? she thought in awe, staring at him. Marco seemed to notice her watching him, as he turned and lifted a wing to wave at her. She cautiously waved back as Naruto and Sai sat down next to each other, across from Kakashi. Sai took out a sketchbook and began sketching Marco, while Naruto grumbled something or other about not liking the bird.

Sakura rubbed her temples as she sat down on the opposite side of the boar from Kakashi. What kind of a bird knew how to hunt boars? Her thoughts drifted to her earlier suspicions that Marco had once been human, and she found herself wondering if maybe he'd been a shinobi before becoming a bird. But if he were a shinobi, what kind of person had been able to cast a jutsu on him to turn him into a bird? She was getting a headache from thinking about it, and pushed the thoughts aside for now. It wouldn't do her much good to think about it right now- she had to focus on the mission.

The group ate in relative silence, before setting up some wards and turning in for the night. They had another two days of travel ahead of them, so they'd need to get some rest.

Sakura was woken up the next morning by Naruto, who was yelling about something. She muttered, grumbled, rubbed her eyes and sat up, rubbing her head and opened her eyes, squinting as she scanned the area to see what he was yelling about.

And then her jaw metaphorically hit the floor, as did Sai's and Kakashi's, who'd also been woken up by the loudmouthed ninja.

There, before them and just after the now broken wards, was a man, beaten bloody and unconscious, hands pinned to his back by Marco, who was sitting there looking rather smug. The man in question had messy, brown hair and was dressed in mostly dark colors, and had some sort of forehead protector, but Sakura couldn't see the symbol on account of his face being in the dirt.

Sakura heard Sai rummaging through his things, and looked over just as he produced his bingo book. It wasn't long before he stopped on a certain page and asked Naruto to turn the man's head so he could see his face. A grumbling Naruto complied, and Sai's neutral expression contorted into a frown.

"This man is a B-Ranked missing-nin," Sai said, and all three of his companions stared at him in disbelief, before turning to Marco, who was looking decidedly smugger than before. Indeed, on the unconscious ninja's forehead protector, the symbol for Iwa had been crossed out by a slash mark.

"Marco," Sakura began, her voice shaking. "Did you take out this ninja?"

"Yoi," Marco nodded, and she could swear he was smiling. At this point, Kakashi, Naruto and Sai had begun restraining him properly, and before long he was tied up by three different kinds of rope, with extra care to keeping his hands in a position that he couldn't cast jutsu in. Sakura healed his injuries, but not fully – they wanted him awake, not able to fight back.

At that point, the man began to stir. Naruto turned to look at Sai. "Say, Sai. What does the bingo book say about him?"

Sai looked down at the book in his hand. "His name is Tama Jari. He's originally from Iwagakure. Apparently, he specializes in earth jutsu," he read off, and Sakura looked to Marco, who had settled onto her shoulder again. How had he managed to subdue the missing-nin? She supposed she'd get her answers from the man himself.

The missing-nin, Tama, had woken up at this point. He was alert, taking in his surroundings to determine his current location.

"Excuse me," Sakura cut into his thoughts, and he slowly turned to look at her. "We'd like to ask you a few questions. If you… could… cooperate…" she slowly stopped talking as she saw his previously hardened and alert expression melt into one of pure fear.

"I-I'll cooperate! Just- just keep that- that monster away from me!" he yelped, attempting to scoot backwards, away from Sakura.

"Hey! How dare you call Sakura-Chan a monster!" Naruto yelled, moving to punch the missing-nin.

"Not- not her!" Tama snapped at Naruto, who halted his assault as his expression changed from one of rage to bewilderment. "The bird! That- That thing is a monster!"

One punch to the head courtesy of Sakura later, the group was questioning him, with Marco watching from a distance up in a tree so the ninja would calm down.

Sakura was first up to ask a question. "Why did you try to attack us?"

"My group heard that some ninja from Konoha were on their way over to protect the village," Tama explained. He felt a chill run down his spine, and turned to where Marco was perched. The bird was glaring at him, and he quickly continued his explanation. "The village you guys are going to- my group is antagonizing it for resources- they don't have much in the way of defenses, so we thought-" He sputtered uselessly for a few moments before Kakashi cleared his throat.

"Tell us about your group," he ordered. Tama glanced at Marco, who was still glaring at him, and nodded as he swallowed his spit in a gulp.

"We don't tell each other our names for this exact reason-" he used his head to motion to his restraints- "But we have an idea of the kinds of jutsu the others can use. There's five of us, myself included, each who specializes in a different element of chakra," Tama quickly explained.

"So we can rule out running into any other users of earth jutsu," Naruto nodded contemplatively. Sakura nodded in agreement.

"The idea was to be balanced enough to take out any opponent we came across," Tama explained. "If we ran into someone specializing in water jutsu, I would step up to take care of him or her, and so on." Another glance at the glaring bird. "We were planning on building our strength, maybe increasing our numbers, until we were strong enough to take on a hidden village, most likely a small one."

"Why would you want to take on a hidden village?" Naruto asked, crossing his arms with a frown.

"It would have been a sort of suicide run," Tama admitted, looking at the ground. "We didn't have a place to go. If we succeeded in taking over, we'd have a new home and a place to stay. If not, we'd likely be killed in combat and could rest in peace."

Sakura and Naruto somehow felt sorry for this missing-nin. Sai, with his neutral expression, and Kakashi, with his mask, were hard to get a reading off of, but Sakura somehow felt like they could also understand.

"So… you just wanted a home?" Sakura asked, and he responded with a nod. "Then… why did you leave your villages in the first place?"

Tama shook his head. "We each had different reasons, I suppose. Myself, I didn't agree with the way Iwa ran things. Our leader left to pursue a missing-nin who killed his family, and was so blinded by his quest for revenge that he wouldn't hesitate to kill anyone in his path. Before he knew it, he was a missing-nin himself."

Sakura winced, and out of the corner of her eye she saw that Marco somehow looked unbelievably pissed off. She wondered why, only for her thoughts to be derailed as she came to the sudden realization that they now had a problem.

"Guys," she spoke up, drawing all five gazes to her. "What do we do with him?"

And so ends our fourth chapter! I hope you enjoy it. I'm actually kind of liking writing for this Tama dude. Poor guy is terrified of Marco, I kinda feel bad for him. Well, see you next time!

-Ink