Spirit of the Night

Sakura had memorized and relayed everything about the missions to Ar'Keno, and Naruto had been let off house arrest, but wasn't being assigned any missions. Both had been bouncing every theory off of each other, not wanting to contact Ar'Keno unless they had solid proof. A few times, he had shown up in Naruto's home, and they had discussed all possibilities. They had found one connection between the missions, they each were either delivering a prized item, or had gotten a hold of a rare item that would bring money to a rich man in the Wave Country. They had yet to find who was giving the information away, or why the Sound wanted to bankrupt this noble. Sakura was working on finding the leak, but had found that he was not actually sending missions, or stealing information, but worked on processing the missions, and gave them to the Hokage. Sakura didn't work there much, so couldn't research many of the people there. Ar'Keno had gone in multiple times in a disguise, but hadn't found the leak. It had been two months since the plan had been conceived. They had gotten far, considering they were only able to have one person do the research.

Sakura was getting frustrated, no matter where she looked, she couldn't find the mole. She knew that the mole processed the mission request, and classified the mission, but she didn't know where he was. It annoyed her to no end. Only through Naruto's encouragement had she been able to continue. She felt that if she didn't find this mole soon, she would rip her hair out. When she went home from the hospital that day, she felt like stopping at Naruto's house. When she did, she found Naruto and Ar'Keno engaged in a conversation, then Ar'Keno burst out, "That's must be it!" When Sakura heard this, she almost ran over to them.

"What happened, did you figure out who the mole is?" Naruto beamed at her, obviously extremely pleased with himself.

"Yea, I did," he said, "It's the guy who guards the door when Tsunade is giving out the mission. He hands the documents to her, but not the envelope, because he already read it. He listens at the door when she is talking in case he missed any details. After the mission has been given, he is dismissed, and he runs off, to meet with a Sound guy." Sakura stared at Naruto, amazed he had come up with that by himself. She shook her head, thinking than hanging out with Ar'Keno was making the blond smarter. Getting back to the business at hand, she asked them, "Do you know who he is?" Ar'Keno shook his head, expression unreadable. Sakura sat on a couch, disappointed. Ar'Keno cleared his throat, then clarified.

"We don't know exactly who it is, but we do know that he isn't a Sound ninja." Sakura looked up puzzled. Ar'Keno continued, "He is selling the information to Orochimaru. Basically a ninja that left his village, looking for a means to live." Sakura nodded in understanding

"What's the next step of plan?" Naruto asked.

"We need to get you two a mission, the same time a mission for that rich man is taking place. One that can take a while, so probably a recon mission." Naruto nodded, while Sakura sat back trying to think of how she could manipulate Tsunade to do that. She thought that if she got Tsunade drunk, she could influence her to plan that mission. She voiced her plan, and the two boys agreed.

The next day, Sakura looked at upcoming missions to find one that would probably be attacked. Once she did, Sakura planted a bottle of sake in Tsunade's office that she would find after she was done for the day. Sakura waited outside until she heard a couple loud gulps, followed by a hiccup. She waited a few minutes, then walked in. She explained that a recon mission needed to be completed, and that she and Naruto wanted to go. Tsunade, in the short state of happiness that would precede the sleep, and then the hangover, agreed to everything. As Sakura left the room, she crowed with elation, glad that she broke her uselessness streak.

She left the Hokage tower, heading to Naruto's apartment. When she got there, no one was home. She figured that Naruto was probably off training, so she ran off to the training grounds. At one of the more secluded spots, she found Naruto sparring Ar'Keno, and for the first time she realized why he was a missing ninja. His form was unique, he moved fluidly, and dodged everything. He had no wasted movements and used Naruto's own momentum to throw him off. Naruto ended with his face in the dirt multiple times, just because he threw a punch. She watched them spar for a while, and walked into the clearing at a break in the fight.

"Hey, guys," she called, "I got us on the recon mission." Naruto let out a tired cheer, while Ar'Keno nodded, satisfied. Naruto started to run over to Sakura, but his legs collapsed before he got two steps. Sakura rushed to him, while Ar'Keno rolled his eyes.

"He just overworked himself, toss him in the stream, he'll be fine." To prove this point, Sakura leaned down, grabbed Naruto by his collar, and tossed him into a nearby stream. As Naruto resurfaced, he fountained water, and got knocked back in as Ar'Keno, who had received the same treatment, barreled into him. They both came to the surface to see Sakura chuckling over them. Ar'Keno climbed out, while Naruto was trying to wrestle Sakura into the water.

"Naruto, give it a rest," he called, "we need details on the mission." Naruto stopped pushing and shoving against the immobile girl, and walked over to Ar'Keno, mimicking his move of removing his wet sweatshirt and undershirt. As the two demon containers lay back in the sun, trying to dry off, they listened to the details of their upcoming mission. Officially, the mission was only for Naruto and Sakura, but with Ar'Keno's help, they would be able to get it done much faster, and get on to their unofficial mission. They would leave in a week, and had an entire month to be done. Ar'Keno had been showing Naruto how to better access and channel Kyuubi's chakra. Naruto was taught how to control his regeneration, how to stop it, or how to speed it up. Sakura spent her time studying on common Sound techniques, and how to neutralize them. Ar'Keno himself was learning new jutsu's, common ones that every ninja knew: replacement, body flicker, clone; basic jutsu's. Because he left Cloud before he went to school, he only new a select few jutsu's.

The week passed quickly, not enough time to prepare for their plan. Naruto and Sakura met up at the gate, and headed off towards the Wave country. Once they were out of sight of the village, Ar'Keno swooped in, transformed into an owl. The three shot off towards the Wave country, eager to be done with this mission, and move onto their true objective. As they neared the border, they stopped, and got their papers in order. The Mist Village wasn't aware of a recon mission into their midst, and Konoha wanted to keep it that way. Naruto and Sakura each had fake passports, along with aliases and cover stories. Ar'Keno would sneak in that night, flying in his owl form, instead of taking a boat. He had no papers, he technically didn't exist, and he couldn't get a fake passport. They went over what they would do, then split up. Naruto and Sakura would pretend to not know each other. They had given Ar'Keno their forehead protectors so they wouldn't be recognized. They got in Wave successfully, and met up at the agreed coordinates. Then, they finished the recon mission as fast as they could. That took a few days, and started searching for the other mission, an escort of a merchant selling goods belonging to the noble. The boys questioned Sakura on the mission contents, about where the merchant was going, and they started for the market the man was going to. Once there, they followed the trail the merchant would haven taken to get there before they met the merchant, and his guards. This took another five days.

"Guys, I hear someone up ahead, ill check them out. Maybe we finally found them." Ar'Keno transformed, and soared off to investigate. A few minutes passed before the other two were startled by his return.

"We found them, it's a Konoha team guarding a merchant. Lets go up to them, and say Tsunade sent reinforcements." With that, Ar'Keno jumped off the branch he was perched on, and ran off.

"Wait, who is guarding him?" Sakura called after him. Ar'Keno yelled back, "How should I know, I've never met them before." Sakura and Naruto chased after him, asking more questions. They broke into the road, just as the team was coming down it. Three voices called out their greetings.

"Naruto, what are you doing here?"

"Hmm"

"N-Naruto-kun"

Naruto winced, "Why them?"

Yea, I know it's short. I just needed to shut it off here. I'm on a roll right now, you want to expect chapters coming pretty fast. I just have nothing better to do. Please review!

-Prauge