Shino looked sick. "Sensei, below the morgue—way below the morgue—there's a series of labs..." He fell silent, choking back his gorge before he could continue. "There are three people being vivisected right now. Each one has been partially flayed, and the surgeons are...it's hard to make out through a kikai's eyes, but they were using some sort of implements on the inside of the skin. And the people are conscious."

Anko sighed. "Looks like he's gotten even worse since I left," she said. She thought about it for a second, then shook her head. "Ignore it. We have enough problems without mixing into that mess."

Shino looked at her in horror. "Ignore it?!" he said. "How can we possibly ignore that?" His voice was rising, becoming less horrified and more angry. "It's a monstrosity! This is what being a ninja is about, is to protect our people from things like this!"

"Stand down, soldier," Anko told him calmly. She glanced at the door to the hall Hinata had disappeared through a few hours earlier, then back to Shino. "Let me just leave a quick note for Hinata and then we'll head outside," she said, pushing herself to her feet. She pulled a notepad and pencil out of a pocket and jotted a quick note, held it out at arm's length and waved it over her head for a moment, then tucked it away and walked calmly out of the hospital. Shino trailed along with her, seething but staying silent.

Once they were outside, Shino automatically pushed out a cloud of his insects, sending them to serve as a warning perimeter. Anko nodded in approval.

"Okay soldier, let's get this dealt with," she said. "State your orders, goals, and tactical analysis."

Shino glared at her; it was an Academy training exercise, and only done in the field when a ninja was emotionally compromised and needed to be brought back to stability. The implied opinion of his self-control was offensive. "Orders: locate safe route through the buffer zone, don't interact with anyone or allow them to know we are from Konoha, and don't cause a diplomatic incident," Shino said grudgingly. "Goals: SERE. Get back to Konoha to report.

"Analysis: Our orders are pretty much out the window," he said. "We've already interacted, we probably can't finish the mapping, and whether or not we've caused a diplomatic incident is up to Orochimaru-sama...although it seems unlikely that he'll want one.

"We can't leave Sound until Naruto-san has healed enough to travel, which won't be soon. We don't know Orochimaru-sama's goals, desires, or plans, so it's hard to prepare. The village is probably against us due to Naruto-san and Hinata-chan's earlier incident, so none of us can afford to be alone outside of a safe zone...which, I might add, this is not."

"Good assessment," Anko said. "The hospital should be safe and we're not going far. I just didn't want to have this discussion right in front of the staff. We'll go back in soon."

Shino nodded. "In the meantime, I left a significant number of my allies in Naruto-san's room. I've ordered them to attack anyone that Hinata-chan attacks."

Anko's eyebrows went up. "Very clever," she said. "Is that a standard Aburame technique or did you think of it yourself?"

Shino shrugged, the anger fading into discomfort. "Myself. We've got one helpless teammate, one pinned down to his location, and the other two members of the team can't be there without causing trouble. It's not a situation that comes up often for the Aburame, so there wasn't a standard policy." He took a deep breath. "And yes, I realize that we can't try to rescue those people. They aren't ours and we don't have the resources. It's just..."

"Horrible," Anko said sympathetically. "Yeah. There's a reason I ran away from sensei as many times as I did."

Shino gave a bitter half-laugh. "He warned me before. 'Every day before breakfast I do three things that the average person from Konoha would regard as monstrous.' I thought it was just hyperbole."

Anko shook her head. "Sensei is very good at deception when he wants to be but he has a disturbing tendency to be uncomfortably honest. The tricky part is figuring out when he's doing which."

Shino nodded. "So I see." His voice was calm again, even flatter and colder than usual. "All right, I have other things to report. Before I do though, how much do you know about kikai insects?"

"Not much," Anko admitted. "I've only worked with your clan a few times; I don't think many of them have a good opinion of me."

"You are correct, they don't," Shino said. He flicked his gaze around and dropped his voice. "As I said back at the camp, they are symbiotic with us. They have a safe haven inside my body and can feed on my chakra. In exchange they aid me with scouting and combat.

"The thing you need to understand is how their senses work," he said. "Kikai bugs can hear poorly, see moderately well, and smell extremely well, but their primary sensory mode is chakra based. Specifically, they are aware of all chakra within about a dozen yards of themselves, down to the minute amounts found in a blade of grass.

"They communicate across short distances by modulating their chakra, which is also how I command them; I can 'speak' a few hundred words that they can understand." He raised a cautionary finger. "I can't process their chakra data at more than a very gross level—it's simply too alien. I can process their sight, sound, and scent impressions, but only when they are physically inside me. All of those senses are very different from human norms, so the data is a bit disjointed and chaotic, and when many of them are reporting on the same things it's hard to separate which are reporting different view of the same object versus different objects. A large part of my family arts are based around better communication with our allies. I'm explaining this is so that's you'll understand the limits of my ability to report."

Anko nodded. "Okay, understood. What did they see?"

"In those labs there are at least twenty rooms that look like a cross between jail cells and recovery wards," he said. "It might be as high as a hundred—they're all virtually identical and I'm having trouble separating the views. Every one of them has a patient and a wheelchair in it and all of the patients that I saw who weren't in the bed were in the wheelchair. I saw no one in those rooms who was standing up. The only normally mobile people I could identify in that part of the labs were the vivisectionists.

"Down the hall from the surgical theatre there is a separate lab containing an absolutely immense chakra battery—I'd estimate it's at least ten feet across. It was only partially full, but even that portion contained more chakra than any ten ninja I've ever met aside from Naruto-san. Unlike most chakra batteries, it's a sphere, not a cube, but the strangest thing was that the chakra inside it wasn't still. It was moving, as though the battery had chakra coils."

Anko frowned. "That shouldn't be possible. The only reason a chakra battery can contain chakra is because the chakra is static." She paused, thinking. "You said it's as though it had coils. Could it have been biological?"

Shino waggled his hand uncertainly. "There were too many smells down there to be sure. It didn't look biological—it was a very large sphere with a ring around the base as a support, it didn't have any limbs."

"Hm," said Anko thoughtfully. "It's interesting, but I'm not sure it's important enough to our situation to spend further effort on, unless you can think of something?"

Shino nodded. "Orochimaru-sama cared a great deal about Naruto-san's life—more than I would have expected under the circumstances. Turn the situation around: Konoha captured a Sound genin, who just killed one of our chunin. What would we do?"

"Kill him," Anko said. "The situations aren't parallel though—Naruto is the jinchuriki of the Nine-Tails, that gives him value far behind his rank. Also, he's a member of our team; as long as he's in the hospital here Orochimaru knows the rest of us aren't going anywhere and aren't going to stir up trouble."

"I think that may be the point, sensei," Shino said. "He's the jinchuriki of the Nine-Tails. That battery in the lab is maybe five percent full; my allies couldn't give me an exact measure on how much chakra that is, but my impression is 'quite a lot.' If anyone could fill it, it would be Naruto-san."

Anko nodded slowly. "Yeah, and that's probably what Hideo was talking about, too." Shino cocked his head and she hurried to explain. "Till'n'fill jobs were what we called it when sensei had us use jutsu for civilian purposes—to plow and irrigate fields, build foundations or walls for buildings, that sort of thing. The civilian population has expanded a lot, but the ninja population has as well, and it's not that hard to irrigate a field—used to be that our biggest problem was not using too much water, so if they've expanded the fields then it just gets easier. If Hideo is talking about having his chakra run down, it's probably because sensei is having them dump it into that battery."

"Which he probably does every day," Shino pointed out. "Meaning that he's exhausting his chakra every day and improving his regeneration rate. And it's almost certainly not just him. It's probably the entire ninja population of Sound, or at least a large fraction of it."

"Um," said Anko uncomfortably. "That will give them a big edge in a fight...it's probably not all of them, though. For one thing, there's logistics issues—they need to funnel people through a small number of doors, and the battery won't be able to absorb chakra faster than its limit, whatever that is. Also, any responsible Kage would ensure that there was always a strong defense force available, so he wouldn't take a chance on exhausting everyone at once. Still, yeah, they're going to have some extremely deep reserves," she said uncomfortably.

"I have a thought on what we might do to balance that out," Shino said.

o-o-o-o

Hinata stayed at Naruto's bedside, her hand wrapped in both of his as he slept, until the doctors chased her out. By the time that happened, Shino and sensei were back inside the hospital and the sun was up. The three of them left together, stopping to buy some takeaway from a vendor before shambling back to their guesthouse and bed.

Orochimaru was waiting for them in their living room.

"We really need to stop meeting like this, sensei," Anko deadpanned. "People are going to start to talk."

"No, they will not," Orochimaru said seriously. "They will not talk because I located every Sound ninja or civilian who was aware that you killed my people. I ensured that they had not passed the information on, and then I killed them. Afterward, I killed another sixty-three more people in order to disguise the connection between the ones who had actually known something."

Team Anko was silent.

"Hinata-san, your temper tantrum cost the lives of two ninja who were only doing their job," the legendary ninja said calmly. "In addition, you put the boy you love in the hospital with very nearly fatal injuries. The boy, I might add, who is the container for the most powerful demon since the Sage walked the earth. I am reasonably certain that if Naruto-san dies, Kurama will be banished, but I have no idea how long he will be banished for—days, weeks, years, I have no idea. It is also possible that the Fox would be turned loose upon Naruto-san's death, in which case the entire village of Sound would most likely be destroyed. That would put almost forty thousand deaths on your conscience."

Hinata's face was as pale as her eyes. "I-I-I'm—"

Orochimaru held up a hand to cut her off. "Don't be sorry, just don't do it." He studied her calmly for a moment. "You are an exceptional young woman, Hinata-san, in many ways. You are also an excellent ninja, as you have just very clearly demonstrated. This was an egregious lapse in judgement on your part, but it was an isolated incident, not a consistent pattern for you. Do not allow it to become a pattern.

"You and your team may be confident in your safety for the rest of your time in Sound," he said. "If you personally would like a safe retreat from the family that is beating you and humiliating you, I will gladly grant you citizenship and an important place in the hierarchy here; I have a number of jobs that you would be excellent at, and that I believe you could take pride in. I am absolutely certain, however, that you will not do something like this again. You may take that statement however you like."

He rolled up to his feet and gave them a shallow bow. "With that, I wish you good day," he said, before turning and walking out the door.

The moment Orochimaru was out the door, Anko turned to her horrified young student. "Hinata, don't let him get to you," she said quickly. "He was messing with your head, you know that, right?"

"Hinata-chan, sensei is correct," Shino said, reaching forward to rest a hand on her arm. "This was not your fault."

"Whose fault was it, then?" Hinata asked faintly. "I was the one who killed that ninja. Naruto-kun only killed the other one to protect me, the way a good teammate should. He wouldn't have been in that position at all if not for me."

Anko blew out a breath and sat down on the floor, leaning back against the futon. She tugged Hinata down beside her; the Hyuuga girl burrowed into her side, shaking in reaction as tears flowed silently down her face. Anko wrapped both arms around her and rocked her silently.

"It's okay, kiddo," she said quietly. "This really isn't your fault. I'm your jonin commander; anything you do is my responsibility. I could have gone after you myself instead of sending Naruto. That was a mistake; I thought you'd react better to reassurance from him than from me, but I still should have gone myself. We're in enemy territory, even though we clearly aren't in danger."

"I would s-say we are in danger, sensei," Hinata said with as much acerbity as can be squeezed past a veil of tears. "Almost a hundred people are dead because two ninja tried to capture us and I killed one."

Shino had knelt down beside them, as close as he could be without actually interfering, and rested a hand very gently on Hinata's leg. "Hinata-chan," he said softly. "This was not your fault. Orochimaru-sama brought us here against our will. I was tactless and made you angry enough to leave. Naruto-san could have stopped when the ninja challenged him, but—"

Hinata uncoiled slightly from Anko's comforting arms and glared at him. "Don't you dare say that this is Naruto-kun's fault!" she snarled.

Shino raised both hands placatingly. "I don't think it is. I'm simply making the point that there are plenty of places that blame could rest—those foreign ninja should have been able to capture Naruto-san instead of trying to kill him. Had they done so, you would not have had to interfere. Remember that you said it was acceptable for Naruto-san to kill that ninja to protect you because he was just doing 'what a good teammate should'? You were doing exactly the same thing—protecting him. Why do you apply different standards to others than you do to yourself?"

She was taken aback at that. "Because I started it," she said finally. "I was the first to kill. I escalated the conflict."

"Nope, you didn't," Anko said, rubbing her back comfortingly. "Those two ninja escalated it, when they decided to kill Naruto. They were already beginning a lethal attack sequence, you just interrupted it."

"But...but...," Hinata said, clearly trying to find a way to make it her fault. Her breath hitched in a faint sob.

"Hinata-chan, this was my fault," Shino said. "I was thoughtlessly hurtful about raising a subject that I should have recognized would be extremely volatile. Furthermore, I did so in the middle of hostile territory, when we all needed to be at our best. I committed a grave sin againt both empathy and good thought; my clan will be extremely angry with me when we return to Konoha, and I apologize most profusely." He bowed all the way to the floor and stayed there.

Hinata stared at him for a moment, then reached out and stroked his hair comfortingly. "Please, Shino-kun, don't do that. As you say, there is plenty of fault to go around." She was clearly relieved when Shino straightened up and smiled at her, grateful for her forgiveness.

"There really isn't," Anko said with a firm headshake. "Something was going to happen to disrupt the team at some point—there was too much stress on a team that was too new. I brought you into the field before you were ready, and I didn't go after Hinata when she left. This is on me. Any blame that doesn't fall on me falls on Orochimaru."

Both of the genin stared at her in surprise. "How does it fall on Orochimaru-sama, sensei?" Hinata asked. "He saved me, got Naruto-kun medical assistance, and contained the information leak. The way he did so is horrific and I am having trouble setting it aside, but when I force myself to look at it coldly I see why he did it—it was the only way the information could be contained and, if it were not contained then Sound-nin would be attempting to kill Naruto-kun in retribution. Even if he'd let us go, some Sound-nin might have come after us on their own. If there was any danger of the Nine-Tails being freed on Naruto-kun's death then the Kage of the village needed to do whatever was necessary to prevent that. It's incredibly cold, but I understand the logic even if I do not condone the method."

Anko shook her head. "Kid, the fact that this happened at all was my fault, but the way it went down was completely on him. He didn't cause it, but he knew something would happen, and he took advantage. Do you think that he just happened to arrive the very instant that you were in danger? No, he must have been watching the whole time. From outside the range of your Byakugan, I might add, which means he knows our capabilities to a very fine degree. If he had wanted you captured, he could have captured you before you knew what was happening.

"Likewise, if he wanted Naruto safe he could have intervened earlier," she said. "Instead, he waited because he saw you coming and knew that you would handle it. He could have intervened again when you were about to be killed, but he didn't; he let Naruto save you. It was only when Naruto was out of the fight that he appeared."

Hinata hesitated, uncertain. "It all happened very quickly...perhaps he just didn't have time to respond?"

"According to your report, he put the Doton: Earth Dome over you between the time that the Sound-nin launched their jutsu and when those jutsu arrived on target," Shino said thoughtfully. "That suggests both excellent reflexes and the ability to perform jutsu extremely quickly."

Anko nodded. "The vast majority of the jutsu he uses in combat, he can do them instantly and without seals or words. He always said that those were crutches, and that any ninja that tried to fight on crutches was a dead ninja. He doesn't need either to do a Doton: Earth Dome."

Hinata sat up the rest of the way, wiping away the last of the tears. "If he doesn't need the words, but he used them...he wanted me to know who was doing the jutsu?"

"That sounds reasonable," Shino said.

"But..." Hinata began, then trailing off. Not even she seemed to know where she was going with that.

"Hinata-chan, Orochimaru-sama told me that he does three monstrous things before breakfast every day," Shino said. "Those are his words, not mine. I thought he was using hyperbole, but he wasn't; in that hospital's morgue there are dead bodies stacked up against the walls because they don't have space to put them. In the labs below-which, I might note, are again out of the range of your Byakugan-there are people being vivisected, as well as a large number of recovering patients, all of whom need wheelchairs. He engineered the circumstances of your battle, and he is the one who committed the murders. You and Naruto-san killed two enemy ninja in self defense. Orochimaru-sama killed almost a hundred of his own people in response, most of them civilians, and all in cold blood. He could have mitigated the risk to his village simply by letting us go and spreading the word among his ninja that killing Naruto-san would release the Nine-Tails."

Anko sat a little straighter, easing her back now that Hinata had snapped out of her misery and no longer needed to be held. The girl still leaned unconsciously against her teacher and Anko kept an arm reassuringly around her shoulders, but Hinata was functional again.

"The part that worries me," their teacher said with a sigh, "is that we were able to figure all of this out pretty easily. Sensei is much more subtle than this; it took me years to spot some of his manipulations, and I'm sure that even now I haven't identified all of them."