DAY 6

Tired of eating their bland rations, Mariko and Itachi had snared a few unfortunate small animals on their hike that day. Now they were cleaning up their mess with full bellies.

Itachi hoped that Mariko was proud of the meal she had cooked. He had already complemented it a number of times while they sat on their mats across from each other. A flicker of a fire was between them.

"Is it normal to feel this unsettled because we weren't attacked today?" she questioned as she stoked the fire with a thick branch.

Itachi eyed the small pieces of bark that fell from it's place and sank down to join the glowing embers below, consumed by the intense heat

"I doubt it, but the night is still young." Itachi muttered. A small smirk played on his lips as he wiped off their greasy eating utensils with semi-clean rag.

Finishing up, he spread another rag on a large rock and lined up the spoons, forks, and knives next to each other to dry. Leaning hard to his left, her rummaged through his bag until he found a couple of bottles.

he smirked as he watched Mariko's mouth flatten. "And how did those make it this far with those still intact?" She grumbled, "My poor blanket looks pitiful." She stuck out her lower lip and played with the frayed edging.

he merely shrugged as he dropped the alcohol into her lap before getting comfortable in his spot once more.

Mariko popped the top off of her drink and inhaled. It probably wasn't anything she would like. She took a hurried sip, probably not wanting to seem like a priss. Although she was probably desperate to deaden her senses like he was.

She grimaced when she swallowed and tried to cough discreetly. "You know, I would have never pegged you as the drinking type."

Itachi took a swig and leaned back on his elbows. "What exactly is a drinking type?"

"Well, not someone who is so...old."

Itachi snorted and played with the label on his bottle. "We're the same age."

"Yeah but you're so mature, suave, and cool." Mariko took another drink. She furrowed her brow and did a bad imitation of his voice. "Alcohol clouds the mind, it's always important to keep a clear head." She clicked her tongue. "That sounds something like you would say."

Itachi tossed his head back and roared in laughter.

Mariko jumped a little at the sound and then grinned. She looked amused at the fact that she made him laugh so hard. As she should be.

He composed himself, pressing a hand to his stomach. "Okay, I do not sound like that."

"Yeah, you kind of do."

"Okay..." he muttered, still smiling into his beverage.

Mariko took another drink, a heftier one. "So...change of subject. What do you actually do?"

Itachi's face scrunched up slightly. He didn't want to talk about that in the slightest. "Are you asking me what my job consists of?"

"No. I know what your job consists of, from word of mouth at least. What is your day to day like? Your home life. Your normal life."

"Well normal is relative... but my life is different every day. I never know where I'll be, who I'll be with, or when I will be back."

Mariko looked at her feet. Looking depressed as she thumbed the bottle cap resting in her palm.

He pretended he didn't notice and went on. "When I actually do have some time at home with days to myself, I usually wake up with a cup of green tea and watch the sunrise.

Mariko leaned up a little and waved her hands slightly. "Wait, wait, wait, you get up that early on your days off?"

"Yes" he did a mock impression of her interpretation of his own voice. "It's a pity to waste the day isn't it?"

She tried to not to smile but couldn't help herself. "I need a lot of sleep, nothing wrong with that... then what do you do?"

He put his half full bottle to the side and reclined on his own side, loosely clasping his hands together. "After I've woken up I do a light or heavy workout; Refresh on some taijutsu patterns and the like. Then depending on my mood, I'll go fishing or tend to my garden."

Mariko sat up all the way and hunched over, huddling deeper within her blanket. "You have a garden?"

"Yeah." He replied, suspicious of her sudden interest. Was she going to tease him?

"Flower or food?"

He grinned at her two categories. "Mostly flowers and ferns...but I do have a couple of vegetable plants as well."

"Huh...I've never tried to grow anything. But I've always wanted to."

He felt a bud off warmth in his chest as he watched her eyes brighten in interest. He was also relieved that she wasn't going to give him a hard time.

"Maybe I could teach you."

This. This right here is why he didn't drink. Loose lips were the most dangerous. Careless words, no matter how true, can lead to trouble.

But the way she was staring at him now, made it really difficult to regret his words.

"Maybe you can..." she mumbled as her middle and pointer finger pushed her bangs aside, sweeping across her forehead in a smooth curve. "Anywhere you like to go for fun?"

He got up and grabbed her bottle from her.

"Hey..."

"I wanted you to relax, not get hammered. " He tossed the two bottles into the forest.

"A place I like to go for fun..." He thought as he laid back and got comfortable once more. It had seemed like a century since he had much time for fun. And as soon as he gets a vacation he spends it trekking up a seemingly never ending mountain with an extremely attractive possessed woman.

He chastised himself silently for even thinking the word 'attractive'.

"Well, there is this really old school small town a few miles from my home. And I do mean old school. Everything there is traditional. They have this one shop owned by this couple that makes the best sweets. Any pastry you can think of and they will make it."

Itachi's voice trailed off as he noticed her staring at him. He felt his cheeks redden and his eyes were suddenly very preoccupied with looking at the tree line.

"What about you? What is a day in your life like?"

She made a disdainful noise from the back of her throat. "Boring, you don't want to hear about that."

Her words sounded slightly slurred. Maybe he should have taken away her drink sooner. Had she had even one ounce of alcohol before? Surely her tolerance wasn't this low.

"Yes I do." He persisted. "Tell me."

She sighed and flopped backwards onto her sleeping bag, spreading out her arms on either side of her head. "Well I get up whenever I feel like it. I eat breakfast, most of the time it's a banana or something. I don't have to work until noon so I usually watch game shows on TV until then...or something." She picked at a cuticle on her thumb.

"Where do you work?"

"I'm a delivery girl for Ichiraku Ramen."

She muttered the sentence like she was ashamed.

"Anyways, I work from twelve to eight every day except Saturdays. When I clock out I grab a bite to eat..."

"And what do you do for fun?"

"I love to read. I'm not picky either. I'll read any genre you throw at me. I've even read first draft research papers from older academy students just for the heck of it. Um...I used to have a cat, Chichi, but one morning I accidentally left my bedroom window open and she ran away."

"Why don't you get another one?"

Mariko shrugged. "I don't know. I just haven't."

"Anything else?" He knew he was prying but he just had to get the truth from her. He wasn't sure why, but every ounce of information she gave him, every peek she revealed about herself, felt like a personal gift to him.

She sat up, looking perplexed. "No, not really."

"No?"

A pink flush crept into her neck and up to her cheeks. "Okay so...I go to a dancing class on Tuesday and Thursday mornings."

He slapped his knees and sat up, crossing his legs. "I knew it! I knew you had some sort of training. What kind of dancing?"

The pink slowly subsided in her face but lingered on her ears. "We do whatever really. We've learned dances from many cultures..."

"Maybe you can show me sometime."

What. Had he lost his mind? Maybe he had a low tolerance for booze. He couldn't get the image of her twisting hips and lithe arms circled around his neck out of his head.

Mariko was silent for a minute. She stared at him with a calm face before standing to her feet.

He prepared for the slap that he knew was coming. And he so deserved it. He was being a shameless flirt.

She crouched on her heels right in front of him. Her face was a few inches away. Itachi took note of the small mole on the top of her right cheekbone as he tried to distract himself from her close proximity. Too close.

"Maybe I can show you right now."

His chest constricted. He started to shake his head. "Mariko, no, I-"

"Shhh!" Her sudden change in her demeanor startled him, but then he heard it. A low hum was coming from a distance.

Leaping to their feet and suddenly very sober, she started slinging stuff into their bags while he stomped out the remaining embers of their fire.

Then they were crouching, slinking across the ground in the dark like a pair of panthers on the hunt for their next meal.

"Shouldn't we be going away from the noise?"

He glared at her and forceful shoved a finger against his lips to make her shut up. If they could get the element of surprise and got rid of whatever this was quickly, the faster they could find a safe place to rest for the night. They couldn't leave anything to chance, if they didn't find them now, the reverse would happen later.

They followed the noise until they came to a pit, about a dozen feet deep.

Inside a small altar of stones was set up. Surrounding this altar were zealots. They were kneeling on the hard ground, their foreheads pressed into the dirt, and their hands over their ears.

Crouching behind a pair of rocks, Itachi began counting.

"How many do you think there are?"

"There are around twenty."

The zealots continued their chanting. It reminded Itachi of buzzing flies. It rang in his ears.

"What are they doing? What should we do?"

"Wait here."

"No, I can help!" She fired back, reaching out and grabbing his jacket sleeve.

"No please just wait here." He shrugged her off.

Flashing on his sharingan, He slid into the pit. The gravel scraped against his back through his shirt. Standing at the bottom and ignoring the painful pounding in his chest, he pulled out his kunai.

Mariko kept her back pressed into the cool stone. Her curiosity almost got the better of her, but even in her buzzed state, she knew better than to watch what was happening below. He was sparing her from the violence. She didn't know why, she had seen plenty in her day.

She was grateful though, and this might be the drinks talking, but she felt woozy and hoped she wouldn't have to see blood for at least an hour or two. (Wouldn't that be a treat?)

She sighed and pressed four fingertips to her throbbing temples. She just wanted to be around the warm campfire again. She knew she should have known better than to expect a nice relaxing evening.

After a few minutes, her curiosity of her when she heard crunching gravel, and she peeked over the edge of the boulder.

He grimaced at her, obviously annoyed that she hadn't waited patiently for him to come back. She didn't care. He was lucky that she had even stayed put in the first place.

"Come on they won't bother us anymore." She was still whispering and she was still nervous, like something could pop out at any minute. She motioned him over.

Itachi didn't move. Suddenly his head was inclined. "Wait..." he said as he brought up his hand.

What was he doing?

He started sifting over corpses.

"Come on we need to go!" Mariko hissed. She clenched and unclenched her jaw impatiently.

"Not yet." He said so quietly that she almost missed it. "I need to look..."

She let out a rough frustrated breath. "For what? Come. On."

Finally standing over the altar, he lifted some of the rocks and pulled out a stone the size of his palm. He tested its weight and turned it over in his hand.

What did he want with a pebble?

"What is that?"

Itachi shook his head still staring at the object resting in his hand. "It's a rune stone."

He leapt up the hill and stood next to her, holding it out so she could look.

It was gray and had many small carvings of a forgotten, ancient language etched in blue. They scattered across its surface in tiny spirals.

"What does it do?" she asked, tilting her head back and forth as she looked.

"Nothing, most likely. A long time ago if you could find all of the stones and put them together they would make a story or a map or something. If I'm remembering correctly."

"Are there any more?"

"No. But maybe we will come across some. if not..." he tossed her the stone. "Hold onto it and give it to the leaf's scholars when you get home. I'm sure they would love to study it.

Mariko shoved it into her pocket, feeling the weight of it against her thigh, the heat from Itachi's palm still radiating from its surface. She blushed slightly. It, for some reason, felt intimate.

"How did you know it was down there?"

Itachi paused and thought hard. He stared at her like he wanted to take the stone back. "It was just a feeling I guess. I felt pulled to it."

"You're crazy."

Shrugging on their bags they set out once again, to find a safe place to rest for the night.

"Itachi you scare me sometimes. You took out all of them like they were nothing." She muttered, breaking the silence.

She said the sentence like a boring dictionary definition. She had mentioned it in offhanded sarcasm, but she thought she saw some color drain from his face. "Good." He muttered. "You should be scared of me."