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Chapter 12: Misdirection


"Welcome home, father." Tsunami greeted her father as he entered the house around noon. She was surprised to see the large group of people that accompanied him. She was also a little worried as to how she was to feed them all. The Land of Waves was naturally poor, and what with Gatou's mercenaries in town, and the blockade on trade… well, she would do the best she could. "My name is Tsunami. Thank you for keeping my father safe," She said, surprised to see how young so many of them were. And the blonde… the back of his shirt said Yondaime Hokage. Surely he wasn't really…?

"Thank you for your hospitality," The young man with his black hair in a ponytail bowed. "Satsuki, you don't you take these and go help Tsunami-san in the kitchen?" He handed the black-haired girl, obviously his younger sister, two scrolls. She nodded and slipped off her sandals, taking the scrolls and coming to join Tsunami. Tsunami looked at her in surprise. Were those recipes?

"Please don't stand on ceremony on our account," The blonde haired man added cheerfully. "We can get settled without too much trouble, and if needed, we can always camp out in the forest."

"I-I'll make tea." Tsunami said, flustered, inviting inside. "Please, come in." Frantically, she was calculating them all. Her father had returned with nine extra mouths to feed… she tried not to burst into tears.

Sasuke followed Tsunami to the kitchen, and began pulling out bundles of dried meat and fish, jars of rice, and various fruits and vegetables from the storage scrolls. "Niisan is always prepared," He told the surprised woman. "And we heard Wave was in a bad economic situation."

Tsunami wiped her eyes. "Thank you," She whispered, putting the kettle on to boil.

Sasuke smiled, and began to wash the rice without another word. Tsunami was even more surprised when the blonde man also came in to help. Between the three of them, there was soon a hearty meal on the table, certainly a better one than their family had eaten in the last several weeks. Even Inari came down from his room, tempted by the enticing aroma. Of course, when he looked at the ninja and said they were all going to die, the atmosphere got noticeably worse.


Kiba looked like he was going to yell and leap out of his seat, but Neji, who was sitting next to him, forestalled him by grabbing his arm while Sasuke, who was sitting on his other side, hastily stuffed a meatball into his mouth. Lee asked him why he thought they were going to die.

"Because there's no way you can win against Gatou," Inari said bluntly.

"Tell us about this Gatou, then," Lee said, his eyes shining as he contemplated this new challenge. Inari seemed more interested in stuffing his face than talking, but between obscene amounts of noisy chewing, the Genin learned what the others presumably already knew – that Gatou had pretty much taken over Wave.

"This is terrible!" Lee declared, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Gai-sensei, we must complete this mission, and free these poor people from Gatou's tyranny in the name of youth!"

"But of course, Lee!" Gai's voice boomed across the table, as he laid down his chopsticks and rose, moving to his student's side.

"Gai-sensei!"

"Lee!"

The two embraced as an improbable sunset flamed in the background.


Neji, who was used to this, had covered his eyes. Tenten had closed her eyes. Sasuke prayed he would never see it again. Kiba was gaping with his jaw open. Shino wondered how they had managed that sunset – was it a specialized genjutsu? Minato was chuckling. Itachi studiously ignored it, having caught Inari's bowl of rice when the boy had dropped it. Tsunami was laughing softly while Tazuna was frozen in horror.

When lunch had concluded, Minato laid out their plan of action. Itachi and Sasuke would provide reconnaissance in the afternoon, noting the locations of Gatou, Gatou's thugs, and more importantly, their weapons caches and food stores, if possible. They would be a pair of sisters, looking for employment. No disguise techniques were to be used, but he trusted that wouldn't be a problem, he added, giving Itachi a significant look. Tsunami gasped, before offering them her bedroom so they could change. Itachi just bowed his head, before motioning for Satsuki to follow him upstairs.

"Niisan…" Sasuke felt bad that his joke had put Itachi in this situation, but when Itachi pulled out another storage scroll, and procured an impressive array of cosmetics and accessories, followed by women's garments in a variety of colors and styles, he was forced to reevaluate the situation.

"Let us just say that this is not the first time I have had to dress as a woman for a mission, Satsuki." Itachi stated. "Anbu have to perform a variety of unwholesome duties to protect the village. Compared to that; dressing as a woman is nothing."

His brother had a point. Nonetheless, getting a glimpse of Itachi putting on falsies and a lacy white bra was something he never, ever wanted to see again. Sasuke reluctantly swapped his sports bra for a push-up, and decided on a black miniskirt and dark red tube top and black platform heels. How he was ever going to fight in this getup he wasn't completely sure, but their mission was reconnaissance.

Sasuke and Itachi perfected each other's makeup, and then they were good to go. There was a bit of wolf-whistling from Kiba when they emerged, but other than that, everyone wished them luck. Minato gave them a bit of last minute advice, before sending them off.


Even though he was tarted up, Sasuke pretended to be the shy one and let his naturally more sophisticated and worldly older sister do the talking. Luck was with them, as Itachi's ability to sense chakra had naturally led them to two of the best swordsmen in the town. Watching Itachi flirt was a very odd sensation, and one Sasuke didn't care to dwell on too carefully at the present moment. Personally, Zouri and Waraji had just received the news that Tazuna had safely returned to his home and Zabuza and Kisame had apparently disappeared into thin air, and had no desire to return to Gatou just yet. Maybe presenting him with an attractive new attendant would soften the blow a little – after they sampled the goods, of course.

Sasuke really, really hoped Itachi wasn't going to have sex with either of them. Then, when Zouri gestured at him, he realized that they were suggesting a foursome. He looked at Itachi. Itachi nodded, and Sasuke reluctantly followed them into one of the inn's rooms. Before the two men knew what was going on, Itachi's eyes shifted into the Mangekyo Sharingan, and there were several loud thumps.

"Satsuki, help me rearrange them." Itachi said, after half an hour had passed.

"What did you do?" Sasuke asked, curious and a little disgusted by the semen staining the men's private parts but glad none of it was actually on him or his brother.

"I used a mind-reading jutsu developed by the Yamanaka Clan, and then a pleasure dream genjutsu." Itachi said quietly. "They will think they had intercourse with us and remember nothing of what occurred before."

Sasuke still looked a little ill, but he nodded.

Zouri and Waraji would still be out for a few hours, so they emptied their pockets of all the money they had on them, which was a large amount, and silently left without being seen by the others in the inn.

Gatou was not pleased when Zouri and Waraji returned with the information about Tazuna and his missing hired help, and even more displeased when he learned they had spent the entire afternoon with a pair of apparently very talented sisters. But, Zouri and Waraji assured him, the sisters were no doubt somewhere close by on the island and they would find them for him as soon as possible.


So Gatou was holed up in what used to be the governor's mansion on the island with a few hundred mercenaries. There were worse odds, Minato acknowledged, but storming it would completely destroy their element of surprise. He laid out the plan. Itachi and Sasuke would stay with Tsunami and Inari and guard them, while the rest of the group would help guard Tazuna (and work on the bridge). No doubt Gatou would either bring his mercenaries to the bridge to attack it directly or hire someone else to do it for it. In any case, they would be seeing more action soon. Minato had put away his coat and dyed his hair brown, and put in brown colored contacts, just to blend in a bit.

Three days passed with nothing of note happening. The bridge was almost completed. On the fourth day, Itachi was helping Tsunami with the laundry while Sasuke watched Inari when Zouri and Waraji showed up, accompanied by an unpleasant looking man with green hair wearing a gray mantle and gray pants.

"Well, how lucky," Waraji said. "We found Gatou's entertainment and our hostage at the same place."

Tsunami's eyes widened, looking between Itachi, Sasuke, and the samurai. Inari, being a coward, fled blindly into the woods, and Sasuke followed him. Raiga shook his head, making a tsk-tsk sound. "Zouri, Waraji, you take care of the older girl and the woman." He said. "I'll hunt down the little brats."


Raiga nonchalantly strolled into the forest. "Ranmaru, where are they?" He asked. Of course, he had no illusions that the black-haired girl was a genin kunoichi. Five of them were working on the bridge so unless Zabuza and Kisame had managed to kill one she was the last one on the team. Not that he expected her to be much trouble – she was obviously skilled in seduction but little else.

"She told the boy to stay quiet and she'd put an illusion over them so they could hide," Ranmaru replied in his quiet voice. "She put two – one visual and one sound-based."

"Oh, so she's a genjutsu specialist." Raiga chuckled. "This will be easy."


Sasuke wasn't completely certain his two genjutsu would fool the missing-nin, but he thought he had a decent shot at it. As far as he knew, the man did not have either the Sharingan or the Byakugan to see through it, and sound-based genjutsu were notoriously hard to break. He kept humming softly, hoping that no one would look too closely at the bush he and Inari were currently disguised at. At least Inari was obeying instructions and being quiet. Thus, Sasuke was unpleasantly surprised when the man stopped, looked right at them, and then charged. He did have enough presence of mind to keep a firm hold on Inari and jump straight up, out of the way. How the hell had the man seen and heard them?

"Look, girl," Raiga stated. "Why don't you follow your older sister's example and be reasonable about this? Just hand over the kid, and I'll take you back to Gatou."

Sasuke's response was to summon one of Itachi's crows, which immediately reverse summoned itself and Inari back to its realm.

"Okay," Raiga sighed. "You just chose to do this the hard way. Your sister's a lot prettier, anyway. I'm sure Gatou prefers women with more experience, so he won't mind if I bring you in too beat up…"


While Sasuke wasn't anywhere near as good a chakra sensor as Itachi was, he had activated his Rinnegan and Mangekyo Sharingan after his twin genjutsu had been broken, and he would have been blind not to notice the attempt the lump on Raiga's back was making to disrupt his dojutsu. Now, unless Raiga was pulling a Kabuto and had another person or two implanted inside of him, that meant he was carrying someone with him. Someone, who apparently had an unknown dojutsu kekkei genkai. So, Sasuke reasoned, the first thing to do was to get that someone away from Raiga and deprive him of that advantage.

"She wants to take me away from you," Ranmaru whispered to Raiga.

Raiga scoffed. If that little kunoichi thought she could manage to do that, she had another thing coming. The summoning jutsu had been unexpected, but from what Ranmaru had said, it wasn't her summon anyway, she was just borrowing it.

One minute, Ranmaru was on his back. The second minute, some unseen force had ripped the two of them apart. Raiga, being ex-Anbu, landed easily, although a good distance away from where he was supposed to be. Ranmaru was nowhere to be seen.


Sasuke made sure the King of Hell had the child properly secured, not that he was going to interrogate him. He just wanted him out of the way for the battle. He narrowly missed being skewered on the now-enraged missing-nin's twin swords, crackling with lightning chakra.

"What did you do to him?" Raiga roared, lashing out at the kunoichi. He had underestimated the bitch! He couldn't sense Ranmaru anywhere. If she had killed him, he was going to make her suffer!

Now I know why Pein used separate bodies for each of the Six Paths, Sasuke thought, glad that all the training with Itachi in the Garden of Paradise at least made him very, very good at dodging. As long as he had the Naraka Path active, he couldn't use any of the other abilities of the Mangekyo Sharingan or the Rinnegan.

Raiga laughed as he caught the girl by the ankle and slammed her into the ground, before sitting on top of her thighs. Her hands made signs as she weakly blew a pathetic stream of fire, but he sprayed water from his mouth, drenching her. Her right hand came up, holding a senbon needle, which he knocked aside. He was reaching down to unzip his trousers and staring at her breasts. A little young, but beggars couldn't be choosers. That was how he completely missed the chidori sharp spear in her left hand until it impaled him through the face.

Sasuke squirmed out from underneath the man's body and cut off his head, just to make sure he was really dead. He dug a storage scroll out of his yukata, sealed everything up inside, summoned another crow to take the crippled boy to their realm with Inari for the time being, and hastily began making his way back to Tazuna's house where he could get a change of clothes and pick up his equipment before making it to the bridge to meet up with Minato and give his report.


End Chapter

Started 2/28/16

Completed 2/29/16

Ranmaru does have some pretty good eye abilities, some similar to the Rinnegan, Byakugan and Sharingan. That said, I don't think he'd be able to break out of the King of Hell.