Chapter 10: One More

He says, "What," so I can fall and hurt and learn but you don't need to change a thing, that's how it is.

Two white masked ANBU with tiger and panda masks found her at the building a few hours later.

"Took you long enough," she heard Saito grumble as he led them in into the break room.

The tiger masked one was in front of her in an instant checking her over for injuries. "Are you alright, Yamada-san?" A female voice asked her, hands running over her arms to verify that she was uninjured.

"I hit back hard when fell," Hanako replied, "Maybe bruised, but am fine." Her heart had stopped beating as hard and she had calmed down significantly, but she was still a little rattled.

"Let's go," the other ANBU said, twisting his hands into shapes. The tiger masked woman did the same, and there was a twisting and jerking feeling along with a rush of air. Grey smoke billowed around them and even though it was dark, Hanako recognized their new surroundings as being the roof of a building right next to where her office was. The panda masked ANBU gave Hanako a moment to let her nausea pass before he slung her onto his back piggy-pack style and the two ANBU launched off the rooftop. Wind rushed by and Hanako found herself hiding her face behind the ANBUs shoulder so that the wind wouldn't dry her eyes so much. From the windbreak of his shoulder, she watched the city bound by. Every time they jumped off again it was surprisingly smooth and not jarring. The sensation of rising and falling with such smoothness reminded her of one time when she went on a date with a guy who took her on a flight in his two seater plane, the feeling of weightlessness and bobbing up and down as the wind buffeted the plane was rather similar to this.

As they jumped across rooftops the civilian realized that they were heading for the city center, the Fire Shadow Monuments and administration buildings. When they finally stopped, and the panda mask let her down, they were on the balcony of one of the sleek black and grey buildings close to the Fire Shadow Tower. The balcony door opened, and it was indicated for Hanako to go first. Heart rate increasing again, she cautiously walked in. Hanako instantly recognized the interior of the building as the place where she was first welcomed to Hidden Leaves. The air still smelled the same – the metallic tang of blood, sweat, bodily fluids, and that stale smell of desperation. It brought back memories of that time to the forefront.

Time froze.

She couldn't breathe. "No," she managed, and tried to turn back to find Tiger and Panda still blocking her way. Her mind flashed back to being bound in a chair in the dark while blows rained down on her. Blood rushing in her ears, she could barely hear anything over the dull steady roar of panic. She tried to duck past Tiger, but the woman easily caught her by the shoulder.

"No, please, no," Hanako heard screamed and faintly registered that it was herself speaking. She scrabbled and scratched at the arm holding her, catching her nails on the arm guards the agent was wearing. Tiger lifted her by the shoulder and then slammed her down onto the ground in a takedown so that the blonde was on her stomach with her arm behind her back and couldn't move very much. In response Hanako kicked her legs and screamed 'no' repeatedly, trying to buck Tiger off her to no avail. She struggled despite the pain in her shoulder until everything went dark.

"Fuck," Tiger cursed once the screaming civilian was unconscious, grabbing her hand which now had deep red scratches across her exposed fingers as well as her upper arm. "Little fucking cat," she spat out.

"Didn't expect her to panic like that," Panda remarked dryly, picking up the now limp blonde and putting her over his shoulders in a fireman's carry.

"I don't fucking know why; little bitch just freaked the fuck out."

They transported the civilian into an empty dorm room where Panda deposited her on a cot and they closed the door behind them. "Might want to disinfect those," Panda said dryly, gesturing to the deep angry red marks, one or two of which were beaded with blood. "You could get cat scratch fever."

"Fucking ha," Tiger snarled back, locking the door. "C'mon, let's go tell the captain we found her."

Several floors down, the two reported in. ANBU headquarters weren't a 'headquarters,' per se. They were a series of facilities spread out across the village. This building though, happened to house part of the Torture & Interrogation facilities along with the Village Security team. Every ANBU facility had a small barracks for those who couldn't spare the time to go home or stay at the real barracks. This particular building housed the Village Security arm of ANBU. The KMPD policed the village, while Village Security looked after the village border and looked for intruders who passed through the border barrier without authorization.

Their captain wasn't happy to see them, not by a long shot.

"How long, again, did it take you to find a single civilian?" He questioned in a deadly tone. The Captain was a short Uchiha, barrel chested with thick arms, and the long black hair so typical of the prolific fighters of his clan.

"Just under two hours," Tiger said, ashamed of their response time.

"A single, untrained civilian," he repeated. "When Operative Toad reported an incident, it shouldn't have taken you more than fifteen minutes to find the asset," The Captain hissed. "Should we place a tracking seal and paint her orange, so you idiots can find her before an academy student can?"

Operative Toad had been on guard for the little civilian when Yamanaka Inotashi had attacked. Yamanaka had gone to Yamada House to recover after a mission. What he hadn't told anyone about was the gut wound that he'd refused to go to the hospital for. By the time the civilian had returned home at the end of the day, it had started to fester, and he was in a delirious fever. Toad had saved the civilian and engaged Yamanaka to try to subdue him and told the woman to run for safety. By the time he had the Yamanaka under control, Yamada was gone. Several agents on general standby had been dispatched to help search for her. The last place they looked turned out to be the first place they should have searched.

The Captain spent a few more minutes dressing down the two operatives for their tracking incompetence before something caught his attention.

"Tiger, what is that?" The Uchiha demanded, eyes narrowed at the claw marks on Tiger's shoulder.

Tiger's mouth tightened in anger behind her mask at Panda's poorly concealed shakes of his shoulders. "Nothing, sir," she replied. "Scratch from a tree."

Captain Uchiha didn't look like he believed her. An internal war raged behind his eyes before he shook his head in disappointment and ordered them both to take remedial tracker training before he dismissed them. Once the pair were gone, he rubbed at the bridge of his nose. Yamanaka Inotashi was in the hospital, where he should have gone in the first place with a stab wound like that. It'd be a month at least now, before he was ready for light duty again, whereas if he'd just gone in the first place it would have been a week, tops. Toad had gotten stabbed in the fight, so there was that, and Yamada House was wrecked. Yamanaka's feverish state hadn't stopped him from using jutsu in a closed space, and now the house was wrecked to the point where they'd probably have to move the asset to a different safehouse. What a mess.

Hanako woke with a jolt. The room around her was dark. Some light filtered in through a high window casting shadows as it filtered through a tree. She was on a bed, no, a cot. The blanket underneath her was rough cotton. Her neck hurt as if she'd been sleeping on it awkwardly.

The civilian blinked a few times, trying to adjust her eyes to the light and see better. She identified a desk, chair, and footlocker. The air had the same stale metallic quality as the interrogation room and cell she originally enjoyed in Hidden Leaves, but the air in the room wasn't quite the same. Dust, stale air, and stress tinged the air here. Sweat and blood was still a pervasive smell, but the undertones were different.

Her feet touched the floor with a scraping sound, her shoes were still on. She shivered against the cold air. It only took a few moments to locate the light switch by the door, which was locked, although the deadbolt was on the inside this time around. She left the lock alone and focused on the room which was now bathed in light. The desk and footlocker were empty, it looked like a college dorm room but with a furnished bed. The blonde tried the window next, putting the chair directly underneath it to boost herself up. It slid open smoothly.

Outside the night was still dark; the weather was starting to mist lightly, and she felt a cold breeze on her face. It was at least four stories to the ground with no balconies in sight. That option of escape gone, she closed the window.

Hanako stood for a few moments trying to decide what to do. Her mind was racing as to where she might be and if she was in trouble for anything. She started going through all the work she had recently been doing, seeing if anything stood out.

Nothing.

But then again, she wasn't 'locked in,' per se. Maybe there was a reason the ANBU brought her here that wasn't bad.

She breathed deeply, in and out, several times to try and get a hold on her nerves. The length of the room was crossed in just four strides to attempt to leave. Just as she was reaching for the deadbolt there was a knock.

Hanako jumped away, "Shit," she swore with a hand on her chest. She breathed in and out again to try and calm herself, while there was another knock at the door. Gingerly, she reached out and flipped the deadbolt open and opened the door. Bear stood in the doorway, intimidating in his black and grey uniform.

"You alright?" He asked in his solid steady voice.

"What happened? Why am I here?" Hanako's voice wavered and almost cracked.

Bear stepped forward and pushed his mask up onto the top of his head. "Little One," he said, and his arms on her shoulders. "It's okay, you didn't do anything." He said, meeting her gaze intently with his pale periwinkle-white eyes.

Hanako breathed deeply still trying to keep it together. "I don't like this place," she told him honestly. The blonde drank in the solid strength and stability Bear seemed to emit from his very core, trying to absorb some of that energy for herself.

"I know little one, I know," Bear replied before he stepped away. "Come, we'll get you debriefed and out of here. This isn't a good place for you." He slipped his mask down back over his face again.

Bear led Hanako down several staircases to another floor that had a confusing layout as to the twists and turns to get around. She followed until he led her into an open room which had several people in it doing paperwork and sorting through what was probably reports. In the center of the room was a short black-haired man with his hair tightly braided and pulled back into a long ponytail. It was some of the longest hair she'd seen on a male so far.

Hanako numbly listened as the Captain, a member of the Uchiha clan she noted from the red and white ping-pong paddle shaped fan crest he bore, explained what had happened. She wasn't in trouble, after all. Apparently, the interior of her house was wrecked. The Yamanaka whom she had left to recover from a mission had an infection that he hadn't told anyone about. He had been unconscious when she arrived home and was in survival mode when she unlocked the door, which is why he had tried to kill her before Agent Toad had intervened. The agent in question, a man in a sad-faced toad mask, was present in the corner of the room. It was nearing 5 AM, and if she wanted, Toad could take her back to her home, or she could remain at ANBU until the house was repaired.

Hanako didn't take long to decide. The smell of the headquarters, even now, was bothering her. It smelled too similar to the interrogation rooms she had stayed in during her first days in Hidden Leaves. Even though she was trying to control it and force herself to relax, she couldn't. Her heart still pounded constantly, and she felt like she was lightheaded constantly. She told the Uchiha as didn't take olpng to decide. HanakHanak

Twenty minutes later found Hanako at her front door. At least that was intact. Toad seemed apologetic; he was partly responsible for the destruction.

Glass and porcelain littered the floor. The dining room table was in pieces, as were the chairs, coffee table, and the couch had deep gouges in it. Half of the cabinets were shattered, which was the source of the glass and porcelain shards, and plaster dust covered half the room from the hole in the wall where the blonde could only assume a man was thrown bodily through the sheetrock. The hole, luckily for her, was only into the guest bedroom. The guest bedroom exterior door was shattered as well. But unluckily for her, the damage was not limited to the living room and guest bedroom. her bedroom exterior door was also shattered, and an assortment of knives and needles were stuck deep into her wall and bed; she could only assume that they were what had shattered the door. Several large holes and gouges were torn into the gardens, scars across all the work she had done the previous year, earth uneven and roots of grass and plants alike exposed to the elements.

Hanako stared at the damage in the early morning light. Toad shifted uncomfortably next to her.

"I mean," he had been talking the entire time she had inspected the damage, "We can fix this, it won't take too long. A genin team here and there and this can all be back to tip-top shape." The civilian had been blocking him out for most of the time. His talking was mostly nervous and hadn't really added anything useful, mostly telling her what had been destroyed when in his fight with the Yamanaka. He was walking with a limp. Hanako hadn't missed the bandages around his chest and way he wasn't moving his left arm. If Captain Uchiha Whatever-his-name-was had decided that Toad was fit for duty, Hanako wasn't about to argue.

A yellow and blue pattern caught Hanako's eye, and she knelt to press the two shards back together. A coffee cup that had been painted with bright yellow and blue flowers, one of her favorites. In the background, Toad kept blathering on about how to fix the wall. He only stopped when Hanako loudly declared her intention to sleep somehow. Toad insisted that her bed wasn't safe, he'd have to find all the 'senbon' needles and pull them out, so she had settled for the ruined couch temporarily. The blanket stash had been untouched, so Hanako pulled one around her and sat there for a while, staring at the ruins of her home until she fell asleep in the morning light.

A month later, and it was April. The previous devastation had been cleaned out. The exterior doors had been fixed, though a blanket still covered the hole in the wall separating the living room from the guest bedroom. A few crews of handymen had been hired out of Hanako's own pocket for repairs to the house; the ninja hadn't been moving fast enough for her satisfaction. Ultimately, she decided to replace all of the kitchen cabinets, not just those destroyed, but the result was quite enough for her liking. The kitchen received a long overdue upgrade. Captain Uchiha, whom Hanako now knew better as he was involved in the invoicing and documentation process, promised Hanako that she would be reimbursed – eventually. She didn't get the sense that she should be expecting that reimbursement any time soon and chalked it up be part of the debt she owed the world. There had to be a reason that she was sent to this hell.

Her mattress, well, it had to be thrown out. Toad, much to his chagrin, wasn't able to pull out all the needles without destroying the mattress itself. Honestly, Hanako was sure the loss of the mattress was what hit her the hardest. It wasn't the most comfortable mattress she had ever slept on, but it was hers. Every night for six hours she lay on it, and it had become familiar to her. She wasn't sure exactly how to explain it, but she still felt its loss. Her sheets and blankets which had been on it at the time also had to be discarded. Maybe that was what she felt a loss of more. She wasn't quite sure. Hanako felt herself slowly retreating back into the shell she had once been.

Ultimately, the entire experience had taught her a valuable lesson: when shinobi fought, they often weren't the ones to pay the price for the damage they wrought. The Yamanaka – Hanako refused to think of him by his first name now – came by to apologize, he didn't seem all that caring or sincere. Even the other usual jounin who came by seemed quite casual about the destruction and didn't seem to realize the extent of how much it pained Hanako.