Disclaimer: NARUTO and its characters were created and are owned by Masashi Kishimoto. Original characters and plot are the property of the author. No copyright infringement intended.

Title: UNDER THESE SCARS

Pairings: ShikaNeji/NejiShika, Kakashi/Genma, Ino/Kiba

Rating: M / R (language, themes, violence etc.)

Genre: Drama/Angst/General

Summary: Fate's changed the game but it's not over between the players. With Kusagakure's mission as the final round, Neji's agenda is finding his freedom. Shikamaru's agenda is forgetting his fear. But when an old and unfinished game threatens to pull Shikamaru back into the shadows of his past, Neji must make an impossible choice; his own destiny or Shikamaru's darkness. NejiShika, ShikaNeji [SEQUEL to Break to Breathe]

Timeline: Shippuden. Neji and Shikamaru aged 17-18 (post-Hidan and Kakuzu arc and pre-Invasion of Pain arc) One week after the events in REQUIEM.


UNDER THESE SCARS

by Okami Rayne

Chapter Twelve

Ibiki stood in the centre of the matchbox-sized medical room, marvelling at how such a small space could occupy such a large disaster. Six uniformed T&I Chūnin lay sprawled on the floor…out cold, sleeping like god-damned babies. As for the gurney? Empty. No sign of Kakashi – who should've been the only person in this room catching Z's and counting sheep.

That's what happens when you cage a wolf…

And when you're short-staffed and shit out of luck. Ibiki shook his head. How many more dents was fate going to kick into the hide of his miserable day?

"Buddha's bloody balls," Ibiki breathed, backing out of the room.

The three Chūnin waiting at his heels backpedalled to avoid collision, exchanging nervous glances. Rookies. So many god-damned rookies in this building. Ibiki needed rookies like he needed a kick in the balls – though he felt he'd already taken two blows beneath the belt; the first, learning about Naoki from Inoichi; the second, getting his hands on Shikamaru's file.

Get to the Council, his mind urged again. Go now.

Adrenalin pumped, cortisol levels rocketed and Ibiki held his breath for a five count. He never acted on impulse. Impatience was intolerable. It paved the way for mistakes.

Such as this one.

Kakashi. God. He should've handled the copy-nin himself instead of leaving it in the bungling hands of the new T&I recruits. Another loose cannon. Another backfire waiting to happen. That intolerable sense of urgency came again, grinding hard against the gears in his system.

This screw up is beyond recovery…

Or perhaps not. If they caught Kakashi in time, there might be some way to avoid the worst case scenarios rolling around in Ibiki's mind.

At least we still have Genma.

Ibiki heard the rookies shuffling behind him, awaiting orders, awaiting instructions and wasting time. Ibiki quarter-turned towards them, his voice dangerously soft. "Instead of standing there with your dicks in your hands, how about you join the search effort to subdue and detain Hatake Kaka—?"

A series of short sharp barks exploded down one of the corridors.

Turning his head, Ibiki caught a flash of grey-white fur vanishing down one of the opposite hallways, a silver bullet with a group of Chūnin in hot pursuit.

Kakashi's ninken?

Alarms began blaring.

Fire sprinklers activated, misting the corridors in a fine shower as emergency lights winked on, flashing in wild scarlet pulses; the fire alarm system in full effect. People began filing out of rooms, plugging up the corridors, slowing down the search effort.

Ah, Kakashi. You clever sonofabitch.

No fire, just hot air and smoke. A diversion. A distraction. Another dent in the burning ass of Ibiki's really bad day. But the universe wasn't done screwing with him yet. The second he clocked the direction Kakashi's dog had come from, panic lit up his system.

East Wing of the building…

Ibiki's eyes flared wide.

Genma.

Oh fuck.

Cursing, Ibiki launched into a run, mowing down anyone foolish enough not to move aside. "SHUT THIS PLACE DOWN!" he yelled, raising his voice above the ear-splitting sirens. "AND TERMINATE THAT GOD DAMNED ALARM SYSTEM!"

Glaring over his shoulder, water dribbling down the fierce angles of his face, he stabbed a finger at the three rookies. "You three, with me, NOW!"

He didn't wait to watch them follow. Shouldering aside T&I personnel, staff, medics, and more god-damned rookies, he burned up the seconds at a dead run, veering down hallways like a black cannon ball, moving against the grain, avoiding fire stairwells where confused T&I employees congregated.

He only has one exit…

Ibiki made a beeline for it, pausing just long enough to throw open the door to Genma's room. Empty bed. As predicted. Ibiki was already moving by the time the T&I rookies caught up, water sluicing down his trench-coat and seeding the air with a silver spray as he rounded another corner, skidding on slick concrete to an abrupt halt.

"KAKASHI!"

Up ahead, heading for the security door at the other end of the corridor, Kakashi froze.

Ibiki squinted through the fine spray of the sprinklers, watched the water bounce off Kakashi's hair and shoulders in a halo mist. The copy-nin gazed back at him, eyes narrowed, Sharingan orb glowing redder than the emergency light winking above his silver head. He was canting heavily to the side, leaning into the wall for support. No sign of Genma.

The alarms cut out.

The sprinklers shut off.

But the red lights kept on flashing.

And Kakashi kept on staring, his chest heaving, body leaning more and more into the wall.

"Kakashi," Ibiki called again, his voice echoing loud and low in the acute silence. He held his hand back and out to halt the rookies from turning the corner. "You need medical attention."

Kakashi's brows went up drily. "You don't say."

Ibiki snorted and they exchanged a grim look of amusement. Ah, morbid humour. Something Kakashi shared with Genma. They must've been having one hell of a laugh trying to get out of this shithole of a situation…and Ibiki wouldn't have wished it on either of them.

And this is why you don't get personal with colleagues.

He'd have felt bad. But that required emotion and empathy – and he was fresh out of both. Had been for years...and yet…that ulcer of feeling still blistered away in his gut.

Kakashi's silver brows went higher. "I'll just bleed out on the floor, shall I?"

Ibiki contrived to look apologetic and advanced a few paces, spreading his hands in a gesture of peace that went unmarked and unreturned by the copy-nin. "Kakashi. Nothing I say can make you understand."

Kakashi lifted his chin a little, a tired acknowledgment. "I know," he panted. "And I don't much care."

"You care," Ibiki said, his boots squelching on the wet concrete. "Too much. Even in ANBU you never fully dodged that kunai. Neither did Genma. It's cost him. And it's going to cost you if you don't hand him over to me."

Humming, Kakashi's lashes fluttered weakly and he slid a little further down the wall until one knee hit the wet concrete, a hand slapping out to brace himself. "I should've guessed there'd be no bargaining with you, Ibiki."

"Not this time."

"No," the copy-nin agreed softly. "Not this time."

Ibiki stiffened, his booted foot freezing mid-step. Something in Kakashi's voice alerted him to the danger seconds before the hair-raising static. His eyes went from the wet floor to the lightning sparking at Kakashi's fingertips. Well shit.

Ibiki huffed an incredulous laugh. "Motherfuc—"

"RAITON!"

Ibiki lunged sideways – it wasn't planned and it wasn't pretty, but it saved him a nasty electrocution. He felt the violent CRACK of the electricity licking at his wet boots and the shock of the static powered his dive as if he'd been physically launched. He crashed sideways through a closet door and smashed into a pile of janitorial junk.

Brooms snapped and boxes exploded.

The world went black and burst with stars.

Ibiki didn't stay down.

Rocking forwards, he gripped the doorjamb and hauled himself to his feet, yanking his body from the mess. He caught himself on the balls of his feet in the doorway and jerked his head around the corner, the breath going out of him in a slow steaming hiss.

The security door hung open.

Kakashi was gone…and Genma with him.


Someone was digging around in his head. Or maybe just outside it…wanting entrance…wanting answers. Persistent too. And aggressive. Pulling at the two by fours boarding up all the broken windows in Genma's mind. Questions wedged like crowbars, yanking, wrenching, pulling up all the nails he hammered down on the memories, on the past.

"Tell me what happened to him. To you. Show me what happened. What did he ask you to do, Genma?"

Inoichi. Wasn't bad enough that the Yamanaka was in his head, now he wanted to wrench open the trapdoor leading to Genma's heart?

No.

Genma began feeling along the walls, searching for cracks and breaks. He was leaking memories, leaking secrets…needed to plug the gap opening up in his head. The past was shouldering down the backdoor, eager for the skeletons rattling in all the closets. He couldn't let them out. Couldn't let them in. Couldn't let—

"Let go, Genma. Let go. Let yourself leave."

Kakashi. How the hell was Kakashi in his head? Was this a trick? He pressed his weight against the door, felt it buckle and jump as the past fought for entry – or maybe for an exit? It was all turned inside out…inside out…like so much trash…like so much time…but he couldn't give it away…throw it away…he'd worked too hard to keep these secrets, these promises.

He couldn't leave. Couldn't let go.

"No," he hissed. "No."

Not a chance. He needed to board the door…began ripping up the floorboards, using them to barricade the threshold, keep out the past. Senbons were his nails, fists were his hammers. The blunt punch of his knuckles rammed into steel. Splinters, torn flesh, chipped bone – BANG, BANG, BANG – and the door burst inwards, so sudden, so fast, Genma couldn't get his hands around the past's throat before it took him by the heart, slammed him down straight through the floor, straight through the trapdoor, straight into—

"No problem in paradise, brother, no problem at all."

Genma stiffened at the seedy purr. His eyes went to the crooked yellow teeth lodged in blackened gums. That bootlicker's grin. He remembered that smile, if nothing else. That sickly stretch of cracked lips over cracked enamel.

No problem in paradise…

Paradise. Tanzaku Quarters. A hell by another name. It was known only as Paradise to those who kept their wings and knew how to fly high on one drug or another. Genma had all but ripped those wings off his back…but apparently there were still some feathers of his former life floating in the wind.

Shit.

Yeah, Yamori knew him alright. And Genma imagined if he dug around long enough in that old burned-out corner of his mind, he'd find this bastard's face buried in the ashes. A loose end from a lost past. A piece of trash that'd escaped the conflagration Genma had set in motion years ago.

Hn. The one that got away…

Time to sweep up the mess. Only, he couldn't do it with Shikamaru around.

Without glancing at the Nara kid, Genma whipped the tickets out of Yamori's fingers and turned his head a little. "Shikamaru. I'll be right behind you."

He didn't need to frame it as an order; Shikamaru was smart enough to catch on. The shadow-nin hesitated only a moment before going on ahead into Tekisha Seizon, tail proverbially tucked. Good. One act of insubordination was about as much as Genma was willing to tolerate. He didn't need Junior Nara Genius asking more questions about his past…or bearing witness to any trace evidence of it.

Yamori's smile curved a little deeper. "Private party, brother?"

Genma said nothing, ears trained on the soft scuff of Shikamaru's receding steps. Five. Four. Three. Two. On—

Yamori moved. So damned quick that he almost got the drop on Genma.

Almost.

Jerking his head back, Genma caught the glint of the switchblade a half-second before he caught Yamori's hand in a wrist lock, twisting the captured hand counter-clockwise until the joint was one twitch away from a break.

The blade clattered to the ground.

Snarling, Genma kicked it aside and rammed Yamori face first into the unyielding brick, hearing the satisfying crunch of cartilage as the bony nose caved beneath the impact. To the weasel's credit, Yamori made no sound. No scream. No grunt. Not even a gurgle.

Genma's eyes narrowed at that, but he spared no seconds wondering over it. "You obviously don't remember me all that well, brother," he murmured, yanking Yamori's arm up behind his back, just shy of dislocation. "Otherwise you'd know better than to come at me with anything sharp and pointy."

Yamori turned his head against the brick, spat a glob of foamy blood and gave a high nasally laugh. "You gonna torch me like you did Paradise? All fire and brimstone and baked in the head. Nah, man. The shit you did? That takes a special kinda crazy."

"Shut up," Genma growled, the memories of that time flashing behind his eyes in hot bursts of fire and smoke. He could hear the shrill keening of his own laughter, his own madness, pounding in his head.

"I remember that night, brother," Yamori cackled. "All hell's angel with that devil's smile? Bet you jack off at night thinkin' about that."

Genma grit his teeth, sucked a breath through his nose. He could snap this guy's neck; a clean break. No one would miss a back alley peddler. No one would care. Question was where to bury the body? One of the reasons he'd chosen to blow up the old drug joint years ago wasn't just because he was crazy, but because the idea of cremation had seemed fitting for a hell house. Ashes and dust. Nothing left to burn. Nothing left to bury.

I should've burned it all…the whole damned quarter…

Crazy thoughts. Dangerous thoughts.

Yamori hacked up another glob of spit. "That was fuckin' psycho man. I knew you was sick. I knew you was sick before you were flyin'."

"Shut the fuck up," Genma snarled, grinding Yamori's face into the brick, yanking his arm so high it would've rung a scream out of anyone with pain receptors.

The little weasel just laughed. "C'mon man," he taunted, straining his neck, trying to glance over his shoulder and catch Genma's gaze out the corner of his eye. "Ain't you gonna light me up? Strike a match on my ass and watch me burn? Did you watch it that night? Yeah. I'll bet you watched it."

Genma swallowed hard. Watched it? He'd wanted it. He'd wanted to go up in flame and smoke. He'd orchestrated his own suicide, his own blaze of glory end. Only Kakashi hadn't let him. Kakashi had pulled him out. Genma still dreamed about it sometimes…wondered what the hell kind of madness he had living in his mind, to be able to befriend the underworld and set it on fire.

"You watched it good, didn't you?" Yamori laughed. "Gets ya all hot and bothered thinking about it, yeah?"

"One more word," Genma warned, tightening his grip on Yamori's arm.

"Yeah, I'll bet you loved every second of it you crazy whacked-out sonofabitch."

Genma snapped and so did Yamori's arm. Only it didn't quite happen the way the Shiranui expected it to. One violent yank and the arm broke off in his grip. Literally. Broke off. In his hands. Came away from Yamori's body like a snapped prosthetic.

The fuck!?

Shocked, Genma jerked back, dropped the detached arm and watched it crinkle up like a dried prune, the skin puckering and shrinking, flaking scale-like…lizard-like. His brain stalled out trying to make sense of it even as his eyes swept up and took in the vision of Yamori gripping the stump at his shoulder. A plasma clot had already gelled over the wound, epidermal skin cells scabbing over in slick glittering scales. Recovering. Regenerating.

Orochimaru…

The thought was immediate. Hardwired into the mind of any Konoha shinobi unfortunate enough to have seen that psychotic Senin in the midst of a reptilian transformation.

Genma froze, his breath catching hard.

Images of the Sandaime came crashing back to him, knocking down walls he'd built up around the sorrow, around the regret. The Invasion of Konoha, the fight on the rooftops. The Jōnin's failure. ANBU's failure. No, his failure. He was Goei Shotai. He should've been protecting the Sandaime. Instead he'd been stuck in the damned Chūnin arena protecting Sasuke…only to lose the kid again to the Sound Four.

Wait a second.

His head came up sharply on the memory. The Sound Four.

Curse seal.

He'd have searched for one on Yamori's body but his eyes were glued to that ugly stump. The damned thing had begun to grow; restoring tissue, muscle and bone in a wet scaly mass, fleshing out the beginnings of a new limb, moving at a regenerative speed which could only be exacerbated by chakra.

Shit.

He must've said it out loud because Yamori laughed, the rough nasally chuckle sounding more reptilian-croak. "You obviously don' remember me all that well neither, brother." A black tongue feathered out across his cracked teeth in a hissing slither. "I got me some sweet swag from the new bossman."

Bossman? Yeah, he probably should've followed that thread, but there was no time.

Fuck this.

Genma fell back another step, reached for his senbons.

Yamori rushed him so fast the scrawny lizard body seemed to blur before his eyes. Cursing, Genma swung a fist-full of needles and raked air. Damn, but this guy was fast. Too fast. Inhumanly fast. Genma might've had a shot if he'd had more room to move, but the alley was cramped, the walls hemming him in and preventing ninjutsu aerial strikes.

But not taijutsu.

Grunting, he spun, kicked off the brick and brought his knee up, catching Yamori in the chin – a nice loud crack. Too bad the hit only served to snap the bastard into a lithe backflip – a move made all the more disturbing for the fact that Yamori landed on the opposite wall like a crouching lizard, hands and feet sticking to the brick as if he had Velcro on his fingertips and the balls of his feet. The weird psoriasis on his skin had broken out into a series of scales, his limbs winding and twisting with freakish agility.

Genma didn't stop to gawk.

He was way past what the fuck and well into just kill it territory. He drew more senbons and he let those shiny babies fly, snapping out shots in rapid-fire. Yamori streaked along the walls on all fours, speeding off like a black iguana as sparks danced off the brick, the needles scouring deep grooves.

Slippery, sneaky, sonofabitch!

Yamori looked back over his bony shoulder and laughed, black tongue flicking out. "Yo! Gives new meanin' to shootin' the shit don't it?"

Genma's lip kicked up in a smirk, chakra bristling at his knuckles.

He was done screwing around.

Yamori must've sensed it because he stopped laughing pretty fast and high-tailed it vertically towards the rooftops. Genma gave chase, chakra shooting to his feet, launching him skyward as he kicked off the bricks, gaining ground on the slithering figure. He was two shots away from nailing Yamori's ass to the wall when the bastard vanished over the rooftop.

"Shit," Genma growled, vaulting the lip of the roof without breaking stride.

Talk about a run down.

Yamori led him on a crazy zigzagging chase deeper and deeper into skid row; darting down crumbling back alleys and seedy venues, cutting corners lined with squalid bars and raunchy taverns, drawing Genma ever-deeper into the clutches of a ghetto as dank and dirty as the old slum-based drug-joint back at Tanzaku Quarters. This was the underbelly of society, a public squalor where the sunlight barely penetrated the boarded rooftops and towering shanties, plunging the world into thick soupy shadow.

Not good.

Not one bit. Instinct told him to pull back, give up the chase and get the hell out of this potential death trap. If it had been any other mission he would have. He'd have cut his losses and retreated.

But this wasn't a mission he could abort…

Or an enemy he could let slip…

This was a vendetta against his own personal demon and his unassailable need to destroy it. So long as Yamori lived and breathed, so did Genma's past. This lizard freak was a bridge to a time and place that he needed to burn and needed to bury. There was no way in hell he could walk away and let this go, let this live. It needed to disappear. It needed to die. He'd come too far and gained too much to risk any loose ends dragging him back or dragging him under.

Never again.

Giving up the rooftops, Yamori dropped down an alleyway and shot into a narrow passage, vanishing into the shadows with a rattling chuckle. The sound echoed back up the walls in mocking invitation, everything amplified in the acoustics, ringing out with the same childish undertones of 'catch me if you can'.

Genma wasn't looking to catch.

He was looking to kill.

Dropping into a crouch at the edge of the rooftop, he listened out for further sound, a senbon flicking back and forth in his mouth. The scuttling of feet sounded out, faint but detectable, along with the tinny roll of a trash can, the lid quivering like a cymbal clash.

Hn. Subtle.

Keeping the chakra channelled in his feet, he peered down into the alleyway, half expecting to see the word TRAP graffitied onto the cinderblock walls.

Not the first time I've done something reckless…

Pretty crazy, how easily that recklessness came back to him now. Just being in a place like this seemed to resurrect those old dangerous impulses.

Which is why I'm gonna cut this guy's head off…

And hope to hell he didn't grow another one. Scales. Regeneration. Chakra augmentation. This was A to S-Rank territory – his favourite kind, back in the day when pleasure was a toss-up between food, fight and fuck.

Quit reminiscing.

Shaking his head, Genma sucked on the slim metal poised between his lips, considering options, reflecting on past methods and weapons of war. If Yamori could regenerate body parts then fire and smoke suddenly didn't seem like such a bad idea. Sure, it was a disturbing throwback to Tanzaku, but given the situation, death by fire had a kind of poetic ring to it.

Too much talk, Shiranui. No words but action.

Time to move. Shaking off the shadow of that former time, he dropped down into the darkness of the alley below, landing in a feline crouch, bronze eyes narrowed and scanning. Warm stale air moved through the passageway, a terminal sigh seeping from a world that stank of rot and ruin.

Do this fast.

Slotting the senbons between his knuckles, Genma hugged the wall and advanced, his body angled carefully, his steps silent and precise. He could hear an odd creaking sound, like a door swinging on its hinges. The smell of trash and piss carried, tainted by the grassy stink of some toxic weed, some roll-and-smoke drug.

Memory Lane…

It led him deeper…

Stepping over a toppled trash can, his eyes followed the scattered path of windblown cartons and packets, a trail that spilled out into the area beyond – a dilapidated yard.

Keeping close to the wall, Genma flashed a look around the corner, imprinting details.

The area was large and empty, a kid's playground turned junkyard. A high chain-link fence surrounded the small recreation area, its tight diamond-weave mesh washed in grim streaks of light slanting down through the rooftops overhead. A children's swingset stood crooked and without its seats, just lengths of rusty chain like ropes in a gallows. Dead-centre, a vacant merry-go-round spun in pointless circles, as if propelled by ghosts, its joints creaking loudly. An overturned slide found company with a snapped seesaw and three broken spring-riders.

And there, hanging upside down from the bars of an oxidised jungle gym, was Yamori, his lizard-face split in a slimy grin full of chipped teeth. "Come on out into the ass-end of nowhere, brother. And take a good look, cause you ain't leavin'."

The threat wasn't hollow. Genma heard the slithering of another two bodies moving overhead along the alleyway wall, boxing him in, aiming to flush him out into the playground.

Not enough room to move.

Not enough time to retreat.

Nothing to do but commit to the killer inside and hope for the best. Crazy thinking? Undoubtedly. But at least he had the advantage of a clear head. Something he'd never had back in the drug-using days.

Play this right and the past gets put to rest…right here, right now.

Rather than wait for the back-alley ambush, Genma stepped out into the yard, his gaze tracking over the surroundings. "A kid's playground? Now this is some hard-won turf."

"Shut it, bitch," a voice snarled from back in the alleyway. "Or I'm gonna skullfuck your ass."

Brows raised, Genma glanced over his shoulder. "Does your gangster playground come with a school? Sounds like you could use a lesson in human anatomy."

Hoots and barks of laughter echoed round the yard, some sounding distinctly animal. Genma clocked five figures moving around the periphery of the chain-link fencing, hugging the shadows, keeping him in the dark. The guy he'd offended loped out of the alleyway, all lanky limbed and swaying like an ape, spinning a jagged blade over his knuckles.

Genma glanced at the weapon. "Shiny."

"And sharp," Yamori laughed, his grin splitting wider. "Like all the toys in the School of Hard Knocks, man. My boy, Kozaru, graduated first class."

Kozaru spun the blade again, sucked his buckteeth and danced a couple of nimble steps to Genma's right. The agility of the movement was as surprising as the long macaque-like tail that curled up from his spine and swung like a livewire, balancing out his simian steps. His face had the dense Neanderthal-looking cast of a monkey and his long-limbed arms and legs were covered in a thick downy fur.

Genma's jaw ticked hard.

Ah, shit.

Lizard Face and Monkey Man. What was next? Dog Boy and Cat Woman? Wasn't much of a stretch to assume he was currently surrounded by several other freaks off their leashes. Never mind a playpen, he felt like he'd just walked into a zoo.

Get information.

Genma held his position, his gaze coming back to rest on Yamori. "Quite the freak show you've got going on down here. Looks like you're dealing in more than drugs nowadays."

Yamori spread his hands, the nails curving into stout yellow-grey claws. "What can I say, man? I'm just bringing home the extra crispy bacon for my boys and girls."

A soft scuff from behind.

Genma turned slowly, saw two bulky figures blocking his exit down the alleyway. More shapes and shadows tightened the noose around the quad, moving like they'd rehearsed this. Each member of the Freak Show was evenly spaced and moving in direct coordination, each with distinct differences in posture and gait.

Eight…nine…ten…not liking these odds.

Or the package they came wrapped up in. Genma caught flashes of the moving figures as they passed in and out of the diffuse sunlight streaking down from the overhanging rooftops; colourful spiked hairdos and a few shaved heads; pierced flesh and tattooed limbs; tight leather, baggy pants and shiny accessories, all thick chains and sharp toys.

Real original…

The team cliché might've been a comfort because that's where predictability ended. Thrown into the fashion disaster were the inhuman elements; slippery tongues and unnatural postures; furry limbs and scaly appendages; glowing eyes and razor fangs.

Gutter-punk posse meets horror show monsters.

The kind of tacky on-screen crap that Genma appreciated with a good old jack-o-lantern and a bowl of pumpkin soup. His lip twitched drily at the thought. "Halloween's come early this year."

Snarling, Kozaru made to lunge towards him.

"Hold up, Ko!" Yamori ordered, dropping from his upside-down hang into a crouch. He straightened up and rotated his new arm, flexing the clawed fingers, holding them up for Genma to see. "You shouldn't disrespect what you don't know, brother. Sure it ain't all that pretty, but life's an ugly bitch whore, no?"

"Your mom would know."

The Freak Show had a good old laugh over that, even Yamori seemed to indulge the humour, his grin borderline demonic now. "Cute. You was always a joker, Kaika."

The old call sign raked across his brain like claws across steel, sparks of unease lighting behind his eyes. Wiping the tension from his face, Genma shrugged lazily, stalling for time, trying to gauge how the hell to play this. "You remember my name. That's sweet."

"Hard to forget," Yamori said, lounging against the jungle gym. "You were the bossman's favourite. Ain't nothing Crazy Kaika wouldn't do. Killin' competition, makin' junkies cough up blood insteada all that money they owed. Yeah, you played the part. Played us all, man. Right up until the big bang." He blew a loud breath and clapped his scaly palms together. "Nothin' left in that joint but crispy critters. You blew a big hole in my world, brother. No remorse neither."

Genma bobbed his brows. "Yeah. That's about the size of it. Guess you owe me some revenge."

"Revenge?" Yamori laughed, eyes widening on the word as if genuinely surprised. "Nah, nah, you've got it all wrong, Kaika. I owe you a world of thanks."

That pulled Genma's brain up short. He quirked a brow, nerves going on edge. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah." Yamori laughed, his lizard tongue feathering out across his smiling lips. He lit up a spliff and took a long savoury drag, exhaling through his nose with a satisfied groan before picking up the thread of their conversation. "I owe you big time. You got me outta shit creek on a stream of blood. No more debts, no more turf wars, no more kissin' bossman's ass or kowtowing to them overlords while peddling Dukkha, Rūpa and all that sweet soul-selling shit." Sticking the joint behind his ear, he brushed his scaly palms together in a show of dusting off figurative dirt, wagging his fingers for emphasis. "Clean slate for me and mine. We lost a lot to that fire, but that ain't nothing compared to what we got goin' on here in Kusa."

Amused, Genma made a show of looking around. "Yeah, you're living it up. Rags to riches, right here."

"Yo, fuck you!" Kozaru spat, all jerky-head and flailing arms – a cross between a teenage tantrum and a monkey show of dominance. "You don't know nothin', shithead, we have the world by the balls, The Sovereign's given us everyth—"

"Shut your trap!" Yamori snapped, clouting Kozaru hard enough to rock that monkey head on its scrawny neck. "Freakin' moron."

The Sovereign?

There was no snatching that back.

And they all knew it.

The mood shifted, subtle but absolute. Genma met Yamori's gaze and gave a slim smile. "Guess there's no recovering from that," the Shiranui murmured, already sensing the rest of the Freak Show closing in.

Chuckling, Yamori bobbed his bony shoulders and reached for his spliff, sucking the grassy crud deep into his lungs. He exhaled on a sigh, his lips twisting in phony regret. "Nah, gotta waste you now. Damn shame, Kaika. I would'a liked to show you the ropes. But no one likes a shinobi snitch, you feel me?"

"Yeah." Genma tipped his wrists, felt the cool smooth glide of the senbons slotting between his fingers. "I feel you."

Kozaru must've wanted in on the touchy-feely talk because he jerked forward and back like a monkey on a tight leash. "Yo, Yamori, lemme rip this pretty boy a new one," he pleaded, his lips curling back over his horse-teeth in a grimace of pained restraint. "Lemme trash this shit."

"Give him to me, Yamori!" a woman called, hissing cougar-like. "I'll rip him up real pretty."

"I ain't gonna rip nothin'," said Freak Number Four, his voice a guttural rumble. "I'mma pound him, roll him up and smoke him."

Genma actually smiled at that. Points for creativity. He heard a few more life-threatening suggestions come shooting out of the shadows as the Freak Show began to howl abuse and squabble over death penalties.

Ah, always a joy to be the centre of attention.

"Well ain't you popular?" Yamori chuckled, sucking on the slim paper joint, beady eyes twinkling with amusement. "Line up, line up, people! I think my boy, Kozaru, should get first shot at our little fish in the barrel."

Kozaru practically trembled with delight, the thick fur along his arms raised in a shiver. "Ah man, this is gonna be so go—"

Genma struck like a viper. His chakra-charged senbon took Kozaru straight through the eye and exploded out the back of his skull.

Genma snorted. "Skullfuck that, asshole."

Kozaru dropped.

Everyone froze in a tableau of shock. Four long seconds before they exploded into action, a full three-ring circus of chaos. The first opponent to engage was a woman moving serpentine, slithering across the ground on her belly at a speed both stunning and surreal.

Genma swung.

The senbons clipped her but failed to drill deep, ricocheting off scales.

Genma back-flipped onto the jungle gym, kicked off the warped metal and went into an aerial attack, drawing chakra into his knuckles and raining down steel-tipped death. If he could create enough distance between himself and the Freak Show, he might have a shot at using his Kanashibari jutsu.

That could backfire…

Not like he had much choice. He was outnumbered nine to one.

All this trouble over one piece of trash.

He scanned the yard for Yamori, trying to pick his prime target. Something slammed into him with the force of cannon ball. His flak-jacket absorbed some of the impact, but the blow crushed his attack and stole his air. Rasping, he twisted mid-plummet and drove his knuckles upwards into the stomach of the gorilla-sized bruiser sailing over his head.

The Gorilla Guy let out an inhuman below and kicked downwards with both feet.

Genma crossed his arms and took the hit along his forearms, feeling the bones judder. He crash-landed in a ruined sandpit, spraying dirty grains and broken glass in a fine shower. Rolling with the momentum, he came up on the balls of his feet.

A feline hiss snapped his head up.

Cat Woman drove into him, slamming him back against the sand in a glassy crunch. His head hit the lip of the sandpit and sparks flashed before his eyes. She straddled him in the sleek seductive sway of a lover then bared her fangs, golden eyes slitted and burning with hate.

Then she went for his throat.

Snarling, Genma jammed his left forearm up under her chin, holding off those fine pointy fangs as they snapped inches away from his windpipe. Vampire stuff. And not the erotic fantasy kind. Squirming in his lap, she struggled to lunge forward over his arm, tearing her nails along his flanks, ripping deep gouges into the flak-jacket.

Shit!

If those claws reached any deeper, he'd be skinned alive. Above the thunder of his own heartbeat and the porcelain clack and snap of the woman's jaws, he could hear laughter rippling around the playground; shouts and whoops of encouragement. Apparently Cat Woman's 'Tear the Throat Out Act' was a crowd pleaser.

And then the sounds of the jeering crowd changed.

A sudden cry went up, too high to be a shout – more like a scream.

"KIBAKU HANA!"

An explosion followed, a sudden flash-bang BOOM that washed the world white and set Genma's ears ringing. Blinded, he squeezed his eyes shut, drew chakra into his right hand and swung his palm up. He boxed Cat Woman's ringing ear with a solid chakra-charged slap. The deafening force burst her eardrum. She let out an ultrasonic shriek, reeling back. Genma followed up the hit with a vicious crack of his elbow angled into the underside of her chin, shattering her jaw.

She fell sideways.

Genma rolled out from beneath her and coughed into the crook of his arm, squinting through the smoke that rolled out in thick purple clouds all around the playground.

Poison.

Gulping a breath, Genma backpedalled out of the range of the smoke, hearing the gagging coughs and barks of the retreating gang as they struggled to escape the purple shroud of death.

Kibaku Hana…?

Flower bomb. That was a Konoha explosive. A Yamanaka specialty. Had one of the Chūnin kids followed him?

He didn't have time to puzzle it out.

A cloaked figure burst through the purple swirls, wearing a ghoulish onyrō mask. It looked like a demon out of hell, the crimson-lacquered face dominated by a grotesque leering grin that split the smiling mouth from ear to ear.

Not a member of the Freak Show, but no less a potential enemy.

Fight or figure it out?

Fuck it.

Dancing back, Genma whipped out two senbons and let them fly.

The masked figure brought a short tantō blade to bear and knocked aside the needles with two sharp flicks of his wrist. They skittered off across the ground. Decoy shots. They gave Genma insight into this guy's speed. And yeah, he was fast.

But a little too eager.

The masked man hadn't slowed his run, putting himself within point-blank range. Lethal mistake. Genma smirked, clocked his target's vital points and fired off three chakra-charged shots – and missed.

MISSED?

Genma's eyes flew wide. There was no way to miss at this range. But it wasn't speed that'd saved the masked man, it was intuition. The guy moved as if he'd known exactly what Genma would do; the angle of the shots, the speed of the throw, the nerves that he'd target.

Everything.

Shocked as he was, Genma wasted no time staring slack-jawed. He launched into a taijutsu offensive – to the same damn effect. This guy seemed to intuit his moves and match them with a seamlessness that might've looked aesthetically beautiful to anyone watching but only served to frustrate the ever-living shit out of Genma. No matter the severity or sneakiness of his hits, they were turned aside and parried with an ease and grace which reduced his taijutsu assault into a mock sparring-session; a cut and thrust game between two fighters who knew exactly how the other fought.

Only Genma didn't know this man.

But this man sure knew him – or his moves anyway.

What the hell is this? Some kind of mirroring jutsu?

He didn't sense any elevated chakra levels and while the other guy was showing signs of exertion he wasn't pulling out anything spectacularly flashy or serious. He actually seemed to be taking things in his stride, which made Genma wonder whether he was being humoured by his demon-faced dance partner.

Rage flickered behind his eyes, his pride catching fire.

"Sonofabitch," Genma snarled.

He hadn't lost a one-on-one fight in years. No way in hell he was about to break that winning streak. He'd sooner break this asshole's legs – which was exactly what he aimed for. Sweeping low he cracked his foot towards Mask Man's knee, aiming to snap it backwards like a twig. The guy foot-jammed the kick and swept in – just as Genma hoped.

There!

Flicking a kunai into his palm, the Shiranui drove to meet the attack. Measured in heartbeats, it took half a beat for his hand to move and half a beat for the guy to twist away.

A full beat later and blood seeded the air in a thin spray.

Got you!

The enormity of that small victory swept through Genma like a wave. But it was a short-lived triumph. He heard the rip of fabric but not the squelch of muscle. He'd cut mostly cloth and skin, tearing clean through that cloak to reveal a solid pale bicep, muscles tightly strung, a thin slash of blood riding up the flesh, cutting a neat red streak through a spiral tattoo that—

Genma's heart froze, his entire body rocking to a halt.

ANBU.

The signature tattoo.

His hesitation cost him his blade.

Seizing the distraction, the masked man kicked aside Genma's hand with such force the kunai went spinning from his fingers. He didn't have the chance to retrieve it. Mask Man stepped into his guard and brought the point of the tantō blade against the hollow of Genma's throat, backing him up until his spine hit the chain-link fencing.

Neither man moved for a long complicated second.

In the background, purple smoke drifted away, revealing the Freak Show lying in the dirt, still breathing but out cold – which was probably a small mercy for Cat Woman, who'd have been better off dead with her jaw hanging off her face like that.

Frowning, Genma's eyes went back to the masked figure and he raised his hands in a show of peace, breathing hard. "You're ANBU."

The cloaked head tipped a fraction, the stylised demon mask glinting. "Stay away from here," the man said.

Genma went rigid. Not at the warning in that voice, but at the texture of it. Familiarity struck him like a mallet to the gong, ringing loud and long into the chambers of his mind, echoing around a dark empty place inside him…a place long lost to dust and time. It was a familiar voice, but an impossible one.

Impossible.

Blinking, Genma shook off the feeling and found his voice. "Why?"

The masked face ticked sideways warningly, or maybe the guy was simply studying Genma, because he was a long time in answering. When he spoke again his voice seemed lower, hoarser and barely above a murmur. A distortion trick. "You're interfering."

Genma arched a brow. "Right back at you. I have some unfinished business with one of these bastards."

"That's too bad."

"It will be for you if you get in my way."

Mask Man raised his chin at that. Amused? Annoyed? Anyone's guess. That mask looked plain pissed off. Genma said nothing further, his heart jack-hammering in his chest. The tip of the blade resting at the hollow of this throat scaled a little higher, stroking over his skin. Maybe it was all in his head, or maybe it was all in his tripping heart, but he could've sworn there was something intimate in the cool kiss of the steel along his jaw.

"My mission supersedes your unfinished business," the man said.

"What's your call sign?" Genma challenged, not willing to hedge his bets on an ANBU tattoo that might've been forged; wouldn't be the first time that'd happened.

Mask Man shook his head. "I will answer as I must."

Stiffening, Genma drew his head back in surprise, distaste twisting his mouth. "ROOT, huh? Should've guessed Danzō would have one foot lodged in Kusa's gutter and the other up my ass. I don't negotiate with The Foundation."

"You will on this."

"Oh yeah? Why's that?"

The blade twisted at his throat, emphasising the point, the power and the bigger penis. A warm drop of blood snaked down Genma's skin. Arching a brow, he glanced down at the blade and flashed a razor smile. "My. You're charming."

"You're cocky."

"As the king of spades, my friend."

"Time to fold."

"You must be a few cards short of deck. I never fold in head's up poker."

"You've already shown your hand."

Blinking with phony innocence, Genma's smile stretched wider. "What? With the Freak Show? Nah, I'm saving my ace in the hole for you." He paused here, made a face. "Not a sexual innuendo, by the way."

The ROOT man made a sound. Might've been a laugh…only ROOT didn't laugh. "You want me to call your bluff?"

"Go ahead. You don't strike me as a cardsharp."

"Must be my pokerface."

Genma bit his tongue against a laugh but his eyes twinkled. "You're funny for a ROOT man."

"You're foolish for an ex-ANBU."

The amusement guttered out in Genma's eyes, leaving a cool blankness behind. "Should I be flattered that you seem to know me?"

ROOT Man said nothing.

Genma's gaze sharpened, searched that masked face for invisible cracks. The eyeholes were too dark, too deep, to give any hint of the eyes gazing back out at him. Even so, he felt that unseen stare go through him like a chill wind…a cold knowing he couldn't place…

He squinted in confusion, his voice rough. "Do I know you, operative?"

The gloved fingers wrapped around the hilt of the tantō flexed ever-so-slightly. "No."

No.

No.

NO.

NO MORE!

The memory let go at the same time as Genma's mind.

Abruptly.

And with violence. And with despair. Cast aside, he reeled back a couple of paces into the broken room within his mind; the broken room with all its broken walls and all its broken wheels. He slammed the trap door shut on the Past and heard it rattling beneath the floor boards, searching for cracks, for holes, for weakness. He threw his weight against it, holding it down, holding it in.

"No more," he chanted, he screamed. "No. No. No."


"No."

The weak croak of the word against Kakashi's throat stalled him mid-step along the corridor, causing him to stumble. Pain ripped up his torn thigh and he almost buckled. Gasping, he twisted just in time to protect the precious cargo in his arms, his back smacking up against the wall, jostling Genma's unconscious body.

Don't fall…don't fall…

He rested for a few thundering heartbeats, his breath sloughing out roughly against his mask. It was a trial just to breathe. The blood pounded in his head and even if he hadn't been hosed down by the sprinkles back in T&I he'd still have been soaked; his body was drenched in sweat, muscles jittering in exhaustion, a few shudders away from collapse.

No…focus…focus…

Pain throbbed behind his left eye, relentless and blinding.

God…almost there…just a little further…

He squinted against the ache, a sliver of glowing red iris peeking out from beneath his lashes as he turned his head against the wall, struggling to focus. His vision was tunnelling fast and wandering far, confusing depth and dimension with encroaching darkness. No matter how hard he blinked, the dimly lit hallway seemed to stretch miles ahead, the door at the far end blurring into a fuzzy square.

Come on…come on…

Wincing, he readjusted his grip on Genma's body, his shoulderblades dragging hard against the cracked plaster as he inched sideways down the corridor, his back to the wall for support. His thighs shook with every step, the weight in his arms threatening to pull him down.

Not yet…not yet…

If he dropped Genma now, there was no way he could lift him again.

I'm not letting you go…

That promise struck a dying spark in his system, firing up embers of strength for the last haul, the last effort. Gasping, he stumbled closer, his vision growing darker, his breathing sloughing deeper, until he was staggering blind and breathless into the solid wood of the door, turning his body aside at the last minute to protect Genma from the impact.

Barking sounded…distant…then close…just beyond the door…

Kakashi tried to call out but sagged against the doorjamb, his body beginning to slide. He felt himself go in slow time, sinking down with Genma clutched against his pounding chest. His knees hit the ground just as the door flew open and light filled his failing vision in a blinding square.

A silhouette stepped forward, limned in a halo-glow…the light spilling all about her like wings…

She still looked like an angel...

"Kakashi," Kurenai breathed.

Kakashi smiled into the light…and then he slipped into the black.


The water slipped over Ino's shoulder in a gentle rush, washing away the soap suds. She'd showered earlier, but figured bathing etiquette still applied, especially in a guest onsen. Ensconced inside a small walled-off alcove, she sat beside a round steaming tub with her hair piled atop her head in a golden edifice. Humming softly to herself, she soaped, scrubbed and ladled the water over her skin.

"Cleanliness is next to godliness, Ino."

Her mother's words twittered through her mind, unwanted birdsong in her ear. How many times had she heard that as a child? Frolicking around in the flower fields, picking wildflowers for her mother – daisies, honeysuckle, knotweed, shepherd's purse, buttercups and lady bells – holding them up in a colourful bunch just to be scolded for having dirt beneath her fingernails, grass stains on her dress and mud on her feet.

"Cleanliness is next to godliness, Ino. Now go wash up, petal. I'll set these in a vase."

Ino had found them the next morning. Not in a vase, but in the trash. Withered and wasted, her tiny child heart shrivelling up at the sight of them. She'd never picked wildflowers for her mother again.

You're supposed to be relaxing, not thinking about her.

Or the way they'd parted; angry words and accusations. To think her mother had struck out at her physically. And all over a boy she could barely remember but couldn't fully forget.

Naoki…who were you? Why won't they talk about you?

Why was she even thinking about this now? Hadn't Neji told her twice already that her head needed to be on the mission and the mission alone? There'd be time to confront her parents about Naoki when the mission was over. Besides, with Shikamaru throwing such an insane wobbly both in character and with his chakra she was filled with all the worry she could take…and all of this so soon after losing Asuma sensei…god, right now it felt like her family was falling apart all around her; Asuma, her father, her mother, Shikamaru.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears.

God, stop it. Tomorrow. Worry tomorrow.

Not tonight. Sighing, Ino refocused her attention on the present moment and dabbed a sponge over the raw scab on her forearm. No scrubbing away the scars or the bruises.

Yep. I'm as clean as I'm going to get.

Naked, she folded up her lilac yukata into one of the wooden slots that served as a locker, secured the latch and slipped the key around her wrist.

Ok. No more thinking.

Time to soak and indulge.

Taking up a towel, she draped it over her arm and stepped back out onto the misty path that led to the rotenburo pool area. Her feet whispered on slats of polished wood, pearls of water glittering on her skin like soft golden beads as she followed the trail by natural torchlight, rows of ornate iron-wrought sconces burning low.

The onsen was large, panoramic and in total balance with nature, the various rock pools bleeding into one another in a slow rush of rich milky waters and drifting steam. Gazebo-looking rooftops sheltered some of the pools, their supporting pillars sunk deep into the waters, lanterns hanging from the eaves.

Ino's mouth dropped open a little.

It was enchanting, exotic and unlike anything she'd ever seen in Konoha; even their most luxurious Hot Springs paled in comparison. This was the natural world meets fairy-tale opulence.

Quickening her steps, she approached the nearest pool.

Dropping the towel close to the edge of the pool, she slipped into the warm creamy waters and tipped her head back against the smooth rock, exhaling long and slow. The sky was a rumpled sheet of deep purple hues above her, the vestiges of sunset melting away into dusk. She tried not to focus on the shadows creeping in…or the thoughts that accompanied them.

Tomorrow, Shikamaru. Tomorrow, the mission.

Tonight was hers alone.

A soft sigh eased past her lips, followed by the quiet humming of a song she'd sung since childhood, never knowing where she'd heard it or why it haunted her heart; an old min'yō folksong, the lyrics drifting through her mind then past her lips, her voice carrying into the evening breeze as soft and warm as the mist across the water.

"Tsubomi, sweet girl
Say a little prayer
Tsubomi, sweet girl
With the flowers in your hair.
The deer are far and wandering
All the butterflies are gone
I'm in the middle of this mountain
But I know I don't belong.
Tsubomi, sweet girl,
Find the straight and lonely tree
Tsubomi, sweet girl,
Lay your violets there for me."

Closing her eyes, she sang it like a prayer, letting the lyrics segue into a litany; a song that rose up her throat as if pulled from her soul, her voice catching with emotion she didn't understand and couldn't place.

"Tsubomi, sweet girl," she sang, "lay your violets there for me."

A sad and aching silence followed her song…but the notes remained, hanging soft and poignant on the air, plucking at the tender strings of her heart. She felt tears burning the backs of her eyes and squeezed her lashes against them.

Why does it hurt so much? And Tsubomi…why is that word so familiar to me?

She began to drift with that thought, letting the melancholy take her further away until the sudden slosh of water over rocks jerked her back. Gasping, Ino's eyes flew open, her heart slamming hard against her breastbone. Jolting away from the rocks, she sank down in the water until her chin hit the misty surface, squinting through the steam.

"Who's there?" she demanded, trying to sound indignant, but the knot of tears crowding her throat only served to straggle her words into a rasp. "Come out or I'll—"

"Always with the claws, aren't you?"

The voice came so softly Ino thought she'd imagined it, until she caught the tell-tale ripples of movement and gazed a little deeper into the parting steam. There, floating out from beneath the deep purple-blue shadows of the sloping rooftop, a figure moved to lounge against one of the submerged pillars. Lantern-light streaked his shadowed features like a scratch-art painting; all golden slashes and fine glowing lines. They delineated the edge of a strong jaw, the sleek tendons of a male throat and a clavicle sharp as a blade.

Ino's stomach fluttered to the wild beat of her heart, warmth streaking across her cheeks.

Oh. My. God.

She drew a breath to shout, to scream, but all that came out was a strained rasp, "Kiba."

Shadows fell across his face, obscuring his reaction, but she could feel him watching her – sense the heat of his gaze. She told herself it was nothing more than that eerie Inuzuka eyeshine glittering in the dark.

"I didn't know you could sing like that," he said, his voice rolling somewhere between soft and rough, a texture that caressed Ino's skin as palpably as a touch.

A tingle that had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with desire spiked along her nerves and stirred beneath her skin, pebbling the flesh and fanning the blush along her throat, turning her lily completion to a glowing pink.

This is NOT happening…

Especially not now. This was supposed to be her place, her privacy, her sacred port in an emotional storm. Yet here he was, the incorrigible bastard, turning hot whirlpools in her belly.

Bastard. Bastard to do this to me.

Irrational fury bubbled up, bursting hot and nasty on her tongue. "You PERVERT!" Her screech ricocheted off the rocks, so explosive it shocked the moment into stillness.

Kiba gave that a four count.

And then he laughed.

The smug jerk.

He actually had the gall to be amused at her. Ino glared at him, felt the embarrassment cracking tiny little fissures in her pride, the hot steam of fury hissing out through her nose and between her teeth. Anger was safer than attraction, indignation far more preferable than whatever the hell her hormones were screaming.

"You voyeuristic pig!" she shouted, hugging her arms across her breasts and crossing her legs beneath the water, mortified by her nakedness and acutely aware of the fact that embarrassment should've been her immediate reaction to him. "How long have you been watching me?"

A quiet chuckle and Kiba floated away from the pillar, sending soft golden ripples across the dark smoky water. "I'm thinkin' I should let you sweat over that."

Ino's eyes rounded into two sea-blue discs.

Oh sweet god – had he seen her? Like really? Completely? She felt sick. She might've sunk a little deeper into the pool, waiting for the riptide of shame to pull her under, her mother's voice hanging round her heart like an anchor.

"Svelte and smooth as silk. That's how a lady should be."

Ino didn't consider herself svelte or smooth – she was straight and slim, square shouldered and sharp where she should've been soft. What she didn't work her ass off to maintain she struggled to manufacture or mask. The right side of her face was not perfectly symmetrical to her left and she possessed no real breasts to speak of beneath the padded purple tank and the flattering bras. She knew how to dress herself up, how to work makeup magic and accentuate what her mother considered her 'redeeming assets' but beneath the wrapping and the glitter she felt bland and boyish and – please kill me now.

Kiba stopped drifting through the steam, the ripples stilling all about him. He squinted at her playfully. "Aw, well look at that, you're actually embarrassed."

Ino narrowed her eyes at him. "Aw, well look at that, you're actually observant," she hissed, bringing them back to the whole being observed debacle. "God, you're such a dog."

A quiet chuckle. "You do know that's not exactly an insult to an Inuzuka, right?"

"Oh, that totally excuses your vulgarity. I forgot you were raised by wolves."

Kiba flashed a grin that was ten kinds of wolfish. "You bet." There was nothing charming about that smile; it glowed as hot and carnal as the look in those caramel-gold eyes. A little too warm. A little too wild.

Heat fluttered again in Ino's stomach and she shivered against the feeling, trying to pass it off as disgust, reminding herself that this was Kiba. His attention was not flattering. He'd screw anything with a pulse. She lifted her chin, drawing up snootiness like a shield. "Well, it's not like anyone would actually believe you were raised by women, considering you don't have any respect for them."

Eyebrows climbing, Kiba gave a baffled laugh and splayed a hand across his chest in mock affront, drifting a little closer. "That's a serious assumption. You wanna back it up?"

The only 'backing up' Ino wanted to do in that moment was physical. Watching Kiba drift closer through the steam, her eyes went to the beads of moisture seeding across his golden skin, ribboning slowly down his throat. The soft lap of the water sloshed across the broad plains of his chest, spilling over his shoulders and the muscles of his arms as he spread them in a lazily gesture of invitation, daring her to give him a tongue lashing.

Tongue lashing…

The erotic visual accompanying that thought was shocking. God what was wrong with her? Floating into the steamy depths of temptation.

Temptation? SERIOUSLY? This is Kiba. KIBA. The dirty, crude, vulgar, ill-bred, foul-mouthed scoundrel…

The mere idea of him should've inspired complete repulsion – not attraction! He was the antithesis of what she wanted in a guy; he was a rogue, a rake, a red stain that wouldn't rub out.

He was everything wrong because he could never be right. Not for her anyway.

Or any woman with a BRAIN.

Manufacturing a look of repulsion she banded an arm across her breasts and stretched out her other hand to grip a slim outcrop of rock, hopping along on her tiptoes in a bid to escape his gaze and put a solid obstacle between them.

Kiba watched her with a gleam in his eye, delighting in her retreat. "Little distracted there, Princess?"

"I refuse to answer on grounds of obviousness, you boneheaded Neanderthal," Ino snapped, floating behind the narrow peninsula, preserving some modesty. "Besides, you're totally proving my point. Why don't you doggie paddle to the other side of the pool and leave me alone? Or better yet, why don't you just leave altogether?"

Kiba cocked his head as if considering. "I could do that."

But you won't, you pervert.

Ino gave him a scathing look that'd brought lesser dogs to heel. But not this one. He was so damned overconfident. "Let me guess; you'd sooner float by on your overinflated ego and hope that at some point I might find it charming?"

Kiba gave a slow grin. "Nah, that's way too much work for a Neanderthal. I was gonna crack you over the skull with a dinosaur bone and drag you back to my cave."

Surprised by his repartee, Ino huffed a laugh despite herself.

Kiba caught the slip and grinned wider, laugh lines cutting into his cheeks, drawing her eyes to the tattoo slashes. She'd never considered those sexy up until this second. But then, she'd never considered herself stupid.

Which I totally am for letting that idiot pirate grin work its charm…

Charm? Kiba? In a pig's eye! Attempting to reconstruct her former annoyance, Ino sniffed primly and draped an arm over the narrow lip of rock with a dismissive toss of her head. But despite her best efforts to remain frosty, Kiba's smooth lazy grin melted over her warm and soft as those caramel eyes, inviting her to share the joke rather than take offense.

"A dinosaur bone?" she muttered, trying not to smile. "I'm sure that's a real hit with the ladies."

Kiba made a face at the pun. "You butchered it."

Ino burst into a giggle-snort, surprising them both. Her hand flew to her mouth. Oh god. The Giggle Snort. The kissing cousin of The Fart.

Scrubbing her hands over her glowing face, Ino shrank behind her pathetic little peninsula screen with a groan. "If you make an Ino pig joke," she warned, trying to gloss over the humiliation.

I hate my life…

Stupid as it was, she felt exposed in a way that went beyond skin…and for all their back-and-forth bickering, if Kiba laughed at her now she'd never forgive him. Because he wouldn't be laughing at the Princess she pretended to be, he'd be laughing at the little girl with flowers in her hair and dirt beneath her fingernails.

Kiba didn't laugh.

In fact, he pinned her with a look so difficult to interpret she wondered whether he'd heard something other than the Giggle Snort. His brows were furrowed in a bemused expression, lips slightly parted as if he'd taken a breath to speak but had lost his train of thought. It was like the awkward pause in a play when someone forgot their lines. Ino had no idea what to say and Kiba seemed to be waiting on some kind of stage whisper to prompt him out of his stall, his dark gold-tinged eyes searching her face uncertainly.

They took a breath at the same time, both freezing as if expecting the other to speak.

Neither spoke.

Cringing, Ino crinkled her nose playfully. "Awkward."

That seemed to break the tension.

Kiba huffed a quiet laugh and sloshed back in the water with his head ducked, slicking a hand back through his wet hair in a manner that might've seemed nervous if he hadn't followed it up with a crooked grin. "You know, that's probably the first real sound I've ever heard you make – other than the singing. You should do it more often."

Rolling her eyes, Ino gave him a flat look. "What? Giggle Snort?"

Kiba's smile hooked a little deeper. He lifted his shoulder as if to shrug but winced halfway into it, turning a lazy circle in the water in a lousy attempt to disguise his pain. "That too," he joked.

Ino watched him closely, not sure whether to feel surprised or suspicious. It wasn't the first time he'd caught her out. But it was the first time he'd kinda-sorta complimented her for it. She wasn't sure what to make of that, or him, for that matter…because he wasn't being the grade A asshole she always imagined he'd be if he ever got the chance to use her imperfections against her.

Ugh! I hate when he does this.

It made it so much harder to stick to her negative convictions about him. Convictions she desperately needed in order to acquit herself of her own drunken and embarrassing crimes the night of her birthday. Debauchery in a bottle. And she'd been drunk off her ass, hanging off Kiba's arm like a pole dancer. In an effort to atone for said drunken atrocities she'd decided to hold Kiba accountable for her actions.

Very mature.

What made it worse was the fact that he hadn't used that against her either – well, at least not up until she'd torn into his pride in the labs and he'd bitten her back for it. Ever since then she'd been polishing up a big shiny Bastard Badge for Kiba and now she had nowhere to pin it.

Unless I go all Ice Queen on him again…

For some reason, that irked him worse than her temper. But anger seemed more appropriate.

So get mad at him.

Easy enough to do considering he was still here, floating around on his ego when he should've left her in privacy and given her some peace. She continued to eye him warily for a moment, watching him sink his shoulders down beneath the water and dip his head back, the muscles of his neck pulling as he swallowed, beads of sweat and water trickling down to the hollow of his throat.

Now who's being a pervert?

Frowning, Ino swallowed hard and struggled to tear her eyes away, scouring her fogged-up brain for some kind of distraction. "Is your shoulder still hurting?" she blurted.

Kiba didn't seem to hear her; or he ignored her. He sank a little deeper into the warm depths and continued to drift in an idle circle, unaware of the sea-green eyes swallowing up his every move. Ino bit her lip, searching the hot whirlpool in her stomach for the debris of her wrecked temper. But all she found was the tangled flotsam of the emotions she'd felt when she'd watched him sleeping back in that rat-trap of a ryokan.

Seeing him laid out like that, vulnerable, exposed and without the cocksure attitude…

Don't think like that…

Or feel like that. Given his constant need to maintain the Macho Alpha Mode, Kiba probably wouldn't appreciate sweetness or soppiness. He'd probably gag on it.

Good, that just makes it easier to…

To what? Reject him? Reject what he seemed capable of stirring up inside her? Just what the hell did that say about her? About her taste in men? About her basic common sense – or lack thereof?

This is just hormones…forbidden fruit…

What a lame comparison. Kiba looked more like a prime steak. There was nothing sweet about him. He hadn't ripened with age, he'd toughened – and she was about as likely to gag on him as he was on her.

"Yeah, figures you'd turn your nose up. And hey, let's face it. Given your refined and delicate tastes, I don't think you've got the stomach for somethin' as raw as me."

Ino shivered at the memory of those words, at the memory of the blistering look in Kiba's eyes as he'd said it. That whirlpool in her belly turned another hot circle.

Stop it. If he's ever been right about anything it's that he's the wrong kind for you.

No doubt about it. She liked her men the way she liked her summer desserts; cool, smooth and garden-fresh with a sweet drizzle of blueblood, all served up in a porcelain bowl; Uchiha delicacies, delectable Hyūga dishes and maybe even a warmed-up version of whatever the heck Sai might be if he melted a little around the stiff ANBU edges.

Those are the type of men you want, she reminded herself.

Men with class, sophistication, polished manners and patrician good-looks. That was her blueprint. Honestly, with all that hard-wired into her brain it was a wonder her hormones didn't jump to attention around Neji and Sai the way they did when Kiba was near her…near her now…near her now and naked…

Stop it!

Ino resisted the urge to dunk her head beneath the water.

This is so messed up…

But easily fixed. She could easily, right this second, obliterate this weirdness and push them back into the kindergarten zone of verbal spit-balls and name-calling but suddenly – and oh so stupidly – she found herself wanting to peek past the peeling labels and crooked warning signs she'd slapped onto Kiba back at the academy.

When did I start thinking so badly about him, anyway?

They'd played together as kids on the odd occasion – mostly due to the fact that Shikamaru found discrimination and playground pettiness troublesome. He never left anyone out of their games; not even the ostracised Naruto. During that time, the boys had all grown pretty close. Maybe she'd been jealous of that?

No. I had my own friends.

Yeah right. Girls who'd leapt out of childhood straight into petty social cliques. Moving in coquettish and competitive circles whose sole purpose was to bully girls like Sakura and chase boys like Sasuke. Ino hadn't been immune to Sasuke but her compassionate spirit had far outweighed any desire to belong to a sorority of prima donna bitches. She'd dropped those girls and embraced Sakura, trying to lift the pinkette above her insecurities.

"See? You're cuter this way, Sakura! I'll give you that ribbon. You're cute, so don't be afraid!"

How sad, to think that she'd finally felt safe and happy to have a friend she didn't need to compete with or feel self-conscious around…at least until Sakura had crushed that budding friendship…

"Ino-chan. You like Sasuke-kun, right? Then…we're rivals from now on."

…and betrayed Ino over something as stupid as a boy.

"I won't lose to you anymore, Ino."

Ino flinched at the memory of those words. Words that'd turned her into the very thing her mother had repeatedly warned her she'd always be.

Competition.

Always competition. Taught by every female in her life – family and friends – that she had to fight other girls for the hard-won right to be attractive, accepted and acknowledged. A right that belonged to the prettiest, the skinniest, the smartest and the one who turned the most male heads. Before she'd learned about this 'hard-won right', Ino had excelled in her academics and in her own self-confidence, a headstrong and happy child…until she'd been thrust into the battle, into this ongoing ritual amongst womankind, baffling Asuma into incomprehension the second she'd become more obsessed with her weight than her work, her looks than her lessons.

"Where did my confident loudmouth go?"

If only she'd found the words to explain it to him at the time.

Ugh. Guys have it so easy…

But surely it wasn't meant to be so hard? Was it? Gazing across at Kiba, she wondered whether it was jealously and displaced anger driving her to constantly hiss and spit at him. Or maybe the second she'd hit thirteen she'd simply inherited all her snap-judgements and social prejudices from her mother. While Sayuri, like most parents, had warned Ino away from Naruto for reasons she'd never explained – which, Ino now knew, were down to him being a Jinchūriki – she'd had no such trouble outlining her reasons for Ino to avoid Kiba, branding the dog-nin as a disreputable and uncivilised Inuzuka delinquent.

"You stay away from him, petal. Nothing but trash and trouble, that one."

That one. Inuzuka Kiba. The playground scoundrel who liked to play hooky and look up girl's skirts. Of course, half the teenage rumours about Kiba's reputation as a philandering jerk had been started by Ino herself; ugly seeds she'd scattered out of misplaced spite and gossipy speculation – not that Kiba had done much to uproot or negate said rumours. If anything, he'd done a stellar job of cultivating what she'd sown over the past two years by constantly flirting and flashing around that cocksure confidence of his.

Always so confident…

Always swaggering about with an ease that Ino envied and hated because Kiba actually owned it. He didn't have to playact. He didn't have to pretend. He was self-assured and he didn't give a shit what anyone thought of him.

I wish I knew what that felt like…

To own that confidence and not have to manufacture it. Ino acted like nothing fazed her, but even the smallest rejection, the lightest rebuttal, cut so deep she had to fabricate titanium bitchiness or Ice Queen Hauteur to gloss over the sting…just like her mother.

God, please. I don't want to be like her...

Kiba's voice jerked her from her musings. "Aren't you gonna grace me with some shower singing?"

The playful edge in his voice didn't make the awkwardness of the situation any bless blunt. Heat bloomed warm across Ino's cheeks. "The whole point of shower singing is that you don't have an audience," she mumbled, folding her forearms atop the edge of the rock, letting the water take her weight. "And I'm not going to give you something else to throw back in my face."

"Yeesh." Steadying his feet, Kiba straightened up and flicked the water from his hair in a rough animal shake, carding his fingers back through the sopping strands. "Take a compliment already."

"A compliment?" Ino mocked, a fine golden eyebrow arching up. "Maybe you should work on your delivery, Prince Charming. Telling me that my singing and my Giggle Snort class in the same category isn't a compliment. Besides, what's a 'real sound', anyway? What's that even mean?"

Hovering in the water, Kiba gave her a long considering look, amusement twitching at the corners of his eyes. "You're totally fishing, aren't you?"

Embarrassed at the suggestion, Ino opened her mouth to protest but Kiba swooped in to steal the next line, his voice a low rumble through the steam. "I'm not a sweet-talker but when I say somethin' sounds real, it's a compliment. Take it."

And do what with it? Water the seed of this budding attraction?

Ino gazed at him through her lashes, feeling awkward and unsure but damned if she'd show it. She offered a tiny smile and shrugged. "Well the Giggle Snort isn't exactly a sound. It's a condition that my mom hoped my childhood adenoidectomy had cured."

Kiba's nose wrinkled at the medicalese, but he surprised her by asking, "Your mom had your adenoids out 'cause you Giggle Snorted as a kid? Ain't that a little extreme?"

Scoffing, Ino gave him a brief sideways look that suggested she doubted he knew what adenoids were, only to rein in her immediate snobbishness. If any clan knew about the medical area of ENT it was the Inuzuka. "It wasn't that extreme," Ino said a little hotly, coming immediately to her mother's defence. "And anyway, adenoids are about as useful as an appendix."

"Hey, don't compare your dodgy adenoids to an appendix, okay? At least they didn't blow up and try to kill you."

Ino blinked at his tone, her head drawing up a notch in amazement. "You had a ruptured appendix?" He gave a brief dismissive grunt and Ino's eyes widened. "Kiba, that's awful."

"I know. The hospital food sucked. No beef jerky."

Ino frowned at his glib response, searching his face for a moment. "How old were you?"

Kiba made a noncommittal sound and floated back in the water, drifting until he touched one of the stone benches carved into the rock, bracing an arm along the edge of the pool and sinking just enough to submerge his wounded shoulder. "It wasn't so bad. I had a legit reason to skip class and charm the nurses into giving me lollipops."

"Lollipops?" Ino snorted and shot him a teasing look, "Wow, so you were what? Ten?"

"Five."

The humour went out of Ino as fast as the breath from her lungs. "Oh my god. Your mom must've freaked."

That seemed to stump him. Kiba's gaze drifted to the side and he raised his brows in silent wonder. "Maybe. Don't know. She wasn't there." At Ino's stunned silence he glanced up with a puzzled smile, adding, "Hana came to make sure I didn't pull out my IVs." As if that explained away his mother's absence.

A hot angry feeling fluffed up in Ino's chest. Indignation. "Where was your mother?" she demanded, unable to keep the pique from her voice.

Kiba cocked his head, reflecting. "Tearin' Iruka-sensei a new one for falling for my bad acting skills. Took my ruptured appendix in a petri dish to convince her I wasn't fakin' it." He actually laughed a little.

Ino gaped at him, astounded. "It's not funny, Kiba. You could've died."

"Could'a died today too. Ain't no different."

"Of course it's different," Ino snapped, her eyes softening on him. "You weren't a ninja at five years old. Did she at least come to see you in the hospital?"

Kiba stopped smiling. He shot her a dark look, the muscles in his jaws bunching hard. "I didn't need anybody boo-hooin' over me, Ino. I wasn't that kinda kid."

No. Of course not. He was five years old and tough as beef jerky. Ino didn't believe that for a second and made no effort to disguise it, her brows furrowing softly.

Kiba stiffened at the look then shook off his discomfort with a rough growly laugh, his expression a little too tight to be convincing. "Man, I bet you'd smother your kids if ever you had any."

The joke bounced off. Frowning at him, Ino set her chin atop her forearms and began gently waving her legs beneath the warm waters. "Maybe," she admitted softly. "I know that if I had a little girl…there're a lot of things my parents did with me that I'd want to do differently with her."

"Oh yeah?" Kiba muttered, gazing at her sidelong. "Like what?"

Like everything…

Okay. So maybe that was a massive exaggeration insofar as her dad. She couldn't really fault him as a father. But her mom? God. Ino could've written a manual on the mothering disasters of Yamanaka Sayuri. A hundred lessons on what not to do with the fragile little heart of a child too young and too sensitive to the survive the vicious pruning habits of a mother who cultivated love in the same critical manner that she cultivated flowers.

Children weren't flowers.

They were tender little seeds in need of water and sunshine.

Not shears and clippers.

And as much as Ino's father complimented her on being a beautiful violet flower, she'd only ever felt like a weed in her mother's eyes; a wallflower pretending – always – to be bigger, brighter and far more beautiful than she actually was – which was not at all, when measured against her mother's exacting standards. Nothing her father said could ever convince her otherwise.

"You dreamin' up some kinda essay response to that question?" Kiba asked, interrupting her thoughts.

Ino looked up in annoyance, saw the slow lazy smile canting his lips and instantly forgot why she was angry or what she'd been asked. "Umn…no…" she said lamely, stumbling over her thoughts. "I forgot what I was going to say."

Kiba raised his brows, eyes twinkling as if in possession of a secret. "Right."

Jerk.

Ino scowled but her heart wasn't in it – it was much too busy skipping beats the longer she held the eye contact. Huffing, she laid her cheek against her crossed arms and turned the original question around on him. "If you had kids, what would you do differently?"

The mischief winked out of Kiba's eyes, leaving them dark and empty. "Stick around," he said, his voice gruff.

The immediateness of the answer was as surprising as it was sad. Lifting her head, Ino studied his face, watched the shadows ripple along his throat and jaw as the muscles tightened against some unpleasant memory.

His father…

All Ino knew was that he'd left when Kiba was a kid. What must that've been like for him? Gazing at him now, she saw the anger glittering deep in his dark gold-shot eyes…and glimpsed the barest flicker of vulnerability that lay beneath it.

Her heart tripped a little harder, throbbing heavy in her chest. "I'm sorry, Kiba."

Kiba cut her a sharp look, his nose crinkling in a near-snarl at the sympathy. "The hell for?"

The challenge in his voice matched the hot wary glimmer in his eyes; a wolf with a thorn in its paw, warning her away from getting too close, getting too tender. Unfortunately, his attempt to chase or frighten her away from that sensitive area only made her want to draw closer to him…draw out the thorn…draw out the poison…

Stupid thoughts…

Ino sucked a breath, looking away. What use had he for her compassion? He was just as likely to bite her head off for it. He'd said it himself; he wasn't that kind of guy.

But I don't want to stop being the kind of girl who cares…

Asuma had called her a caregiver, hadn't he? The only care she'd ever given Kiba was when he was unconscious. What would Asuma have thought of that? Probably that it wasn't subtle compassion, it was obvious cowardice.

Coward.

Ino ground her teeth against the word and the shameful feeling it left her with. If only Asuma had known the courage it took to offer up that compassion, fearing it would be swatted aside or used against her…like when she was a silly naïve little girl, handing out wildflowers, ribbons and gifts of friendship only to have them cast away like so much trash.

You're not a little girl anymore…

And she sure as hell wasn't a coward.

Steeling her nerves, she lifted her chin and raised her voice. "Let me see your shoulder."

Blinking, Kiba's head came up as if he'd been jolted from a deep daydream, his eyes tapering with annoyance and that same animal caginess. "The hell for?" he repeated in exactly the same gruff tone.

Ino rolled her eyes, trying to match his annoyance to cover up her nerves. "Why do you think, dumbass? You're obviously still hurting, aren't you? Are you trying to be manly or masochistic? I'll bet you didn't even tell Sakura, did you?"

No snappy comeback. Kiba's scowl dissolved into a grimace and his gaze skipped away across the water as he grumbled something rough and irritated beneath his breath, ducking his head.

He actually looked contrite.

Watching him go all sheepish, Ino tamped down on a smile and tried not to view the flush across his cheeks as endearing or cute.

Kittens are cute.

Kiba probably ate kittens for breakfast.

On that nerve-wracking thought she took a deep breath and slipped down into the water until it lapped her chin, the soft slosh of the ripples drawing Kiba's eye and then his full eyebrow-waggling attention. He whistled.

Ino froze, shoulders hunched as she covering herself beneath the water. "Ew! Turn around!"

Kiba laughed a little and slipped down off his underwater perch, spreading his arms in a smooth stroke to keep himself afloat. He made no move to turn around, flashing that pirate grin. "Not givin' me much incentive, you know?"

Despite the heat flaring inside her, Ino's glare turned arctic. "You already caught your free show earlier," she said frostily, debating the wisdom of retreating. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction, even if her skin was burning five shades of red beneath her cool façade.

Kiba watched her curiously for a moment and smiled again, softer this time. "You can put the claws away. I didn't see anything earlier."

Ino stilled, her brows going up in surprise before she sniffed primly, lifting her chin. "I don't believe you. You'd say anything to get yourself off the hook."

"And yet you still keep me hangin'," the dog-nin drawled, that pretty golden eyeshine flickering in the lantern-light as he turned a languid circle, putting his back to her and spreading his arms in mock revelation of his newfound manners. "Look at that. Want me to close my eyes and count to one hundred too?"

Amused despite herself, Ino poked her tongue against her cheek, staving off a giggle. Laughter would only encourage him and while the humour took the edge off her nerves it wasn't spurring her into action – god, it was distracting enough staring at the taut plains of his back, the way the shadows dipped around his golden shoulderblades into the smooth valley of his spine.

And then she saw the scars and bruises.

Ino gasped softly, tracking her gaze over the purple-blue splashes and the angry red scars. Not the kind of tissue-recovery she'd been expecting. He must've gotten a superficial chakra heal from Sakura just to kill off any infection and knit together the worst of the damage.

Stupid stubborn ass!

Submerging himself in boiling salt-rich water too? What was he thinking! Scarred-over or not, he must've been horribly sore. Marvelling at the stupidity of boys – or maybe just this one – Ino shook her head and glided through the water towards him nervously, the steam ghosting across her face like a hot sultry breath.

Ugh! Don't think sexy thoughts.

She tried to nudge her brain into the cold space of medic mode, keeping her eyes on his bruises and singling out his shoulder, trying to configure the best way to treat him. Fortunately, Kiba didn't seem to notice her stop-start approach. Golden arms waving loosely through the water, he had his head tipped back, a quiet hum rolling around in his throat and out into the night air. The soft growly sound and the slow drag of his arms sent a gust of humidity across the water, swirling the steam into a shiver as dizzying as a heat haze, the scent of soap, salt and sweat mingled with the chalky smell of wet rocks and night flowers.

Ino's stomach tightened and she gulped at the air, a little hiccup of breath.

Kiba stiffened at her nearness, his head threatening to turn.

"Don't you dare," Ino hissed before softening her voice. "Let me heal that shoulder for you. This will only take a minute."

"A minute, huh?" Kiba's head angled slightly but he didn't turn around. "That's a whole sixty seconds off your countdown, you know. You sure you wanna risk it?"

"Depends how bad your math is, bonehead," Ino teased, though she didn't give him a chance to brush her off. Taking a breath, she touched her chakra-charged hands firmly but carefully to his shoulder, her skin raising in a shiver at the coolness that sheeted across her palms, letting her know he needed healing.

It didn't take long to locate the inflamed joint. Ino could sense it energetically, her eyes gazing without focus as she felt gently along the socket. "Ouch," she whispered in sympathy. "Did you dislocate it again during the mission?"

"Yeah but it popped back fine."

"It's obviously not fine, idiot."

"Nice bedside manner, doc."

Ino rolled her eyes and readjusted her grip, wobbling a little on her tiptoes in a bid to keep her balance and maintain some distance. It made it difficult to work, her arms angled awkwardly, elbows out to the sides, but if she floated any closer she'd have her chest plastered against his back. Just the thought was enough to send heat spiking through her breasts, pebbling the nipples into stiff aching points.

She shivered, a gasp catching in the back of her throat.

Kiba turned his head a fraction at the sound.

Blinking fast, Ino expelled the breath in a loud huff, blowing a few sticky strands from her face, trying to mask her slip. God. What a performance. She could scarcely breathe. The humidity felt thick and full between them and the struggle for balance was burning her calves.

Kiba grunted a little, the muscles in his back tightening. "Hn. Goin' for a bit of deep tissue massage there?"

Wincing, Ino gentled her grip, reaching immediately for sass. "Don't blame me if it hurts. It's your own fault for being such an alpha male moron. Besides, if it's shifting around so much it means I'm right on the mark."

"Yeah, well, ain't as bad as your sledgehammer to my pelvis, sweetheart," Kiba grumbled, rolling his shoulder tentatively beneath her touch. "If you'd been any closer to the mark back in that hothouse I'da been neutered for life."

Ino scoffed a laugh, grateful for the humour, the distraction. Her breathing settled. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said sweetly.

"Hn. Must be that selective Yamanaka memory thing," he muttered, the ease going out of his voice, out of his body.

Suddenly, he was on edge. Ino could feel the agitation running through him like a current.

"We about done here?" he growled.

"Are you always this twitchy?" Ino scolded, easing off the flow of chakra; it didn't seem to relax him any. She frowned, searching for further injury, telling herself she was just being thorough; that the need to keep contact with his skin had nothing to do with the inescapable urge to keep touching him. She cleared her throat, mumbling, "You were easier to treat when you were unconscious."

No playful response. Kiba's shoulders stiffened and fell in a controlled breath. The shift of muscle was hypnotic – oddly erotic – and Ino's eyes fastened on the slow roll of shadow and light, watching the hot wet sheen of the water streaking across his skin. An irresistible temptation, the way he moved beneath her hands; a living sculpture animated by her touch. Fascinated, she splayed her palm at the centre of his back, watched the spine tighten, the muscles jump and felt a sudden surge of hot feminine power trill through her veins.

Kiba's voice husked out dangerously low. "You're well past sixty seconds, sweetheart."

A whisper, a warning, a low wolf growl rumbling through Ino's mind, firing off little tremors along her nerve-endings and sending out primitive and provocative signals to parts of her mind, parts of her body, that had no business being seduced by the rough hot sound of his voice or the honey rich lure of his skin.

"We don't even like each other," she whispered aloud, sounding as confused as she felt. "There's nothing that—"

Kiba began to turn.

Ino snatched her hand back, gasping sharply. "Don't."

He did. Moving slow, Kiba's body twisted with a lithe shift of hips and torso, spinning eddies in the water. To keep from staring at the strong contours of his abs Ino flicked her gaze up and found herself captured by the look on his face, half in shadow and half in light.

"Like?" he murmured, his grin hanging a little crooked on his face. "The hell does like have to do with it?"

Arms crossed above her breasts, Ino gripped her upper arms tightly and looked up at him through the steam. A thin veil. A barely-there modesty. She should've drifted back from him, away from him...but she was caught in the snare of those animal eyes, mesmerised by the translucent sliver of iris glowing gold in the lantern light.

"Everything," she said, her voice a wisp of breath. "I'm not that kind of girl."

Kiba's brow arched ever-so-slightly, his lips still tilted in that devilish half-smile that drew her eyes to the fullness of his mouth…to the way it moved, the way it curved a little deeper as he murmured, "What kind of girl is that?"

"The kind that falls for guys like you."

The smile slipped away and the lines of Kiba's expression grew dark and intense. "Good." He took a single slow step towards her, eyes hooded as he gazed down through his lashes. "I'm sure as hell not askin' you to fall for me."

Too close. He was standing too close.

Ino struggled for a breath, her body tipping back for balance she no longer had, fingers tightening around her shoulders. "Don't, Kiba."

"Don't?" Kiba leaned in by degrees, head tilting down until his mouth ghosted so close she could taste his breath. "Don't what?" he murmured, dark wet strands falling in a rakish tumble across his face, his eyes glowing golden-brown.

Ino held his gaze squarely, her voice shivering out, "Don't ask me anything."

He didn't ask. He took. Slanting his mouth against hers in a kiss as savage as it was sexual, a hot lusty growl riding up his throat. Ino gasped, her head going back with the force of the assault, the wildness of the attack, a sharp dark thrill shooting through her. It knocked everything inside her sideways, including the strength required to stand.

Her legs almost gave out.

Kiba snarled a hand in her hair, angled his head and went deeper, thrusting past the barrier of teeth with a bold stroke of his tongue, gliding smooth and wet, tearing up Ino's resistance with teeth and tongue and…

Touch me, touch me…

Terrified, Ino tore her mouth away and slapped him so hard her palm washed red.

The blow turned his head but he swung straight back, anger and arousal burning in his eyes, his expression torn between the beginnings of a snarl and the barest shadow of a scowl, brows furrowed in a dark slash above his glowing eyes.

The look pinned her surely as a grip, taking her by the throat.

Awareness tingled through her, warned her that he looked more than pissed, he looked downright predatory…

Dangerous

Very. He already outweighed her in muscle and mass – but if he flipped into beast mode? She couldn't hope to match that strength, that ferocity. Panic flashed through her, followed by a deep primitive thirst, a need heightened by the hunger in his eyes, in his breaths, in his kiss.

Ino's tongue stroked out across her lips, catching his taste.

Kiba's eyes followed the movement, his nostrils flaring, picking up scents and signals she couldn't disguise. Ino watched him through wide glazed eyes, fear and excitement twisting into thick heavy knots that tugged tighter and tighter with each panting breath.

Kiss me…kiss me…

Kiba's gaze caught on hers and he flashed a wicked smile, fangs glinting. "Ask real nice."

She made to slap him again.

He caught her wrist, yanked her solidly against him. Ino's forearms struck his chest in a wet smack, damp skin catching, her elbows digging against his ribs. He encircled her wrists in a single-handed grip, brought his other arm around the small of her back and held her trapped against the solid contours of his body.

If he'd tried to kiss her, she'd have bit him.

If he'd tried to grope her, she'd have clawed him.

If he'd tried to force anything, she'd have fought everything.

But all he did was hold her close, inches away from the skin-pebbling intimacy of crushing her body completely flush against his, her elbows and forearms lodged like a barrier between them, preventing that perfect fit, that uninhibited touch that would've moulded them together.

Touch me, touch me.

Desire. Denial. They swam in opposite directions inside her, left her dizzy and breathless and sinking in too deep, much too deep. Before she could draw air enough to scream at him, he smoothed his palm up along her bare back in a stroke that was at once rough and gentle; tough callused fingertips gliding up between her shoulderblades, whispering over the healing scars to settle at the baby-fine hair at her nape.

Ino shivered at the touch, a hot current skittering beneath her skin.

Kiba lowered his head, his breath caressing the shell of her ear in a low sultry rumble. "Do it. Ask me anythin'."

The invitation, so cleverly disguised, slipped through the shutters of her mind and past her defences, fluttering paper-soft along her nerve-endings, begging for words, for whispers, for permission penned in thick inky want. Want. She wanted. And he knew. He knew.

Vulnerability hitched in her chest, her words leaving her on a hiccup of breath. "Are you always such a bastard?"

His lips curved against her ear, fingers tightening around her wrists to draw them against his chest. She felt the heavy thud of his heartbeat beneath her fingers. "Warms my beatin' heart to hear you say that," he murmured, stroking his nose against her flaming cheek. "Now ask me somethin' real."

"Do you really want me?"

Kiba stilled, his breath halting at the question, his heartbeat skipping beneath her hands.

Ino's horror was instant.

She felt those knots in her belly pull up into her throat, choking her mercilessly. She hadn't meant to ask that. Hadn't meant to speak at all. But the words had spilled out unbidden from that empty corner of her heart where confidence once lived, the ghosts of all her insecurities rising up inside her.

Why would anyone want a weed?

She'd laid herself open with those words and the hurt was immediate, filling up the horrible gap left by Kiba's silence, his stillness and his utter indifference to her vulnerability.

What did you expect? Sweet reassurance?

How stupid. How childish. How pathetic.

Tears burned the backs of her eyes, stinging and wet.

Bastard.

Damned if she was going to let him see her cry. Grabbing her tattered pride with both hands, Ino yanked her wrists from his slack grip and made to shove him, a choked scream tearing from her throat. "You sonofabitch!"

Golden-brown eyes flared wide. Kiba caught her flailing arms and spun her in a violent whorl of steam and water, scattering droplets in a glitter spray. Thrashing, Ino lost her footing. Before she could slip under the wavelets, Kiba caught her effortlessly and hauled her back against his fever hot skin, panting like he'd swum a mile.

Ino reared in his grip, raked her nails along flesh.

Kiba hissed, but he didn't sound all that pained. "Claws out," he panted, his breathy laugh dissolving into a winded OOMPH! when Ino's elbow rammed into his gut.

Bad move.

He folded on top of her and they both went under in a hot splash before spluttering back to the surface at the same time. Gasping for air, Ino whipped her hair back into his face, heard the satisfying slap against his skin and aimed for a departing kick to his groin that'd rocket her away from him.

Impeded by the water, her kick bounced off his thigh, though it felt like she'd kicked a rock.

Bastard!

Flailing around like a cat in the deep end, she was so damned angry she could barely coordinate a swim-stroke let alone a strategy to drown him. She spun a disoriented circle, swiping the water from her eyes.

Kiba was on her like a shark.

Ino shrieked, rearing back in his arms so violently she nearly came halfway out the water.

Angling for a better grip, he caught her around the middle and banded an arm beneath her heaving breasts, locking her up in an inexorable hold. "You're a goddamned hellcat, you know that? It's gotta be an animal thing. 'Cause it drives me wild, the way you make me want you."

Ino stopped breathing, stopped struggling, her heart slamming into her ribs and hanging on those words – on the way they grated between Kiba's teeth…frustrated, exasperated. Like he didn't want to feel it any more than she did.

She stilled in his arms, the anger seeping out on a long breath.

Sensing the fight go out of her, his grip loosened marginally, his free hand flattening against her stomach beneath the water, drawing her flush against him until she felt the thick hard ridge of his arousal nudging up against the swell of her buttocks and the small of her back.

Ino gasped, her eyes flying wide.

"Ask me again if I want you," he whispered, his breath coming harder against the nape of her neck, stirring the hairs, chasing shivers and setting off sparks. "Ask me."

He'd already answered true...with touch…with taste…she could feel it in the way his fingers teased slow circles around her navel, stirring up that whirlpool of desire. The ripples spread, suffused her skin in a rose flush, nipples budding hard as he brought his left forearm across her breasts to grip her right shoulder, a move that covered her and cornered her all in the same instant, drawing her tighter against him until her head tipped back against his shoulder.

Humming low in his throat, he stroked his lips across her ear, the tip of his tongue tracing the delicate shell. "You know I want you. You want me?"

As if he didn't already know. But then…it was one thing to feel it, another thing to say it. She'd be surrendering so much more with the words. It'd be more than an admission to Kiba; it'd be permission…an opening he wouldn't hesitate to take. And for all the desire twining inside her, Ino knew she'll be pulling out thorns if she let this go any further.

It's already gone too far…

As if sensing her hesitation, Kiba's fingertips stopped ghosting those delicious circles around her navel, his palm gliding to settle at her hip, thumb stroking along the sharp hipbone. "I'll give you whatever you want. All you gotta do is ask."

Shaking her head, Ino clenched her trembling thighs together, drew her bottom lip between her teeth and took a deep shuddering breath, reaching up with one hand to grip his forearm, nails digging in. "I want you…to let me go."

Kiba lips stilled against her neck, his damp breath teasing the skin for a long weighted second. She could feel the steady drum of his heartbeat, the hard hot curve of his arousal and the barest tightening of his fingers around her arm. "You sure about that?"

No. Ino squeezed her eyes shut and nodded jerkily. "Let me go, Kiba."

He did, his arm falling away from her like a broken shackle.

Unable to face him, Ino kept her back turned and brought her arms across her body protectively, the fire in her belly congealing into a thick molten fist. An ache settled deep inside her, left her empty, left her wanting...waiting…

Kiba made no move to pull her back against him.

Disappointment thickened the ache inside her, a torture of her own design. She swallowed thickly and resisted the urge to lean back, feeling the imprint of his body even as he moved away from her, his fingers ghosting down her arm.

Don't make me ask you…please…

She took a ragged breath, the air catching at the feel of his lips on her shoulder; soft, almost sweet, with the barest scrape of fangs. "You change your mind...you know where to find me," was all he said.

And then he left…left her alone with the ache and the want and taste of that last kiss, never knowing it was her first.


First things first…

What a stupid fucking idiom. Yet there it was, riding Ibiki's ass all over the village as he tried to give priority to all the different tasks screaming for attention.

Impossible.

His objectives stood like roadblocks at every turn, a goddamned obstacle course. In the time it'd taken to organise a semi-efficient search party amongst the rookies, Ibiki still felt as if he hadn't cleared a single fucking hurdle.

Damn you, Hatake. Where the hell are you hiding him?

Needle, haystack. Too much ground to cover. Not enough time to lose. And overshadowing all this chaos was one hell of a massive Yamanaka thunderhead.

Inoichi…

Gods' balls, but Inoichi had erupted the second he'd learned that Genma was gone. Ibiki shook his head, still trying to process the surreal quality of Inoichi's explosion. The word apeshit came to mind. The Yamanaka had gone off like a pressure valve set to blow, overturning the gurney, cursing the lineage of every rookie Chūnin in sight and all but tearing the T&I team a new one.

Shit.

Yeah. Shit. With the odds piling up, Ibiki could only hope that the psychoactive drug he'd given Genma was still in effect. It'd buy some time, but time was a tough bitch who took her currency in chunks. For every wasted minute, Ibiki felt the jaws of urgency closing ever-tighter around his windpipe.

I can't delay any longer.

He'd delayed long enough; setting up the search teams whilst trying to contain the blast radius of Inoichi's explosion. Hours lost, time halved. He needed to get to the Council. Shikamaru's file was burning a hole in his trenchcoat, a bomb waiting to be dropped – along with a few hand grenades with the names Tenka, Mushi and Danzō stamped on them.

Can't avoid it.

Shit. Maybe it'd been inevitable, right from the first. Two years was a long time for a bomb to keep ticking. Standing on the open rooftop of the T&I building, Ibiki stared long and hard at the icy-bright pinpoints winking down from the heavens.

He wasn't religious or spiritual...

Else he might've wished on a miracle right about now.

Miracles.

Damn. He was that desperate.

A flicker of movement to the left of the rooftop. "Ibiki-san."

Ibiki turned his head a fraction, watched one of the T&I Jōnin stride across towards him. Not a rookie, thank fuck, but no more in the loop than any of the poor clueless Chūnin running around on Ibiki and Inoichi's orders, chasing a goddamned Konoha idol around the village.

Sharingan-no-Kakashi.

Holy bloody hell, if the Hokage caught wind of this.

Ibiki sighed. "Where are we on containment?"

"Nothing. We're still searching."

"And Inoichi?"

The Jōnin winced. "He's relentless, but he seems calmer. But we're keeping a close eye on him."

Like that counts for shit.

Sighing, Ibiki scrubbed his fingers across his brow, rubbing at the thick vein that slashed down his forehead like a lightning bolt. Nothing more he could do here. To hell with the hurdles. To hell with damage control. He had no choice but to plough right through.

Time to wake up the Council.

Time to drop the bomb.


If walls could talk, then the hallways of the ancient Nogusa repository would've hummed with the words of a hundred stories, a thousand interpretations and the innumerable whispers of angels and demons alike.

As good a place as any for an artist.

Unfortunately for Neji, his imagination was better suited to reality than to the realms of myth and make-believe. His sense of enchantment remained locked behind the iron bars of disillusionment. If there was a key for that cage, he had yet to find it.

But it won't be here.

Walking the narrow walkways choked with dust and time, he passed painted murals, towering statues and rows upon rows of shelves and alcoves. Altars dedicated to myth, monsters and the mysteries in-between. Neji paused, Byakugan eyes deactivating, colour bleeding back into his vision; yellow and amber hues. Flames burned low in ornate iron sconces, guiding him in a circuitous route through the labyrinth until he reached the musty centre.

And there, sat cross-legged on a stone bench, was Sai.

A sketchbook lay open on his lap, an ink-brush poised delicately between his fingers. It was impossible to tell whether he was in the grip of inspiration or waiting for it to strike. The firelight playing across his stone-like features gave no impression of thought or emotion, his face as blank and still as a porcelain mask.

Immediately, Neji envied him that mask.

That armour…

He felt his own iron-cast composure hanging a little too crooked on his face to be convincing. At least in the half-light and shadows, the cracks and dents wouldn't be so easy to detect.

Hn. So you hope.

Neji cleared his throat softly.

Sai glanced up, his lips curving in a bland and practiced smile that held about as much sincerity as his next words. "Neji-san. What a surprise."

In no mood to play games, Neji stated his business without preamble, his deep tones rolling across the stone in a smooth bass rumble. "Plans have changed. I have another mission for you."

No outward sign of alarm or intrigue. Sai simply folded his sketchbook, set it aside and came to attention, dark eyes fixed on Neji. "Shikamaru," he said.

Not a question.

Not a surprise.

Neji nodded once, the firelight burning cold in his ice-white eyes. "Shikamaru," he agreed.


"You still game kid?"

"Yeah. I'm game."

Yeah, three games deep and no closer to winning. Shikamaru scrubbed a palm across his mouth and leaned into his elbow, eyes narrowed on the board.

Aw, damn…

His King was in check. He'd tried for a stalemate to secure a draw but Shin had anticipated his move and sussed his strategy with an ease bordering on omniscience – like Shin had already orchestrated the game from the get-go.

Hell, it's like playing against my dad…

Nothing left to do but concede inevitable defeat. At least he'd lasted longer the last two rounds. Though that didn't take the edge off getting beat three times. His father had at least managed to strike a win against this guy.

Shikamaru smiled a little, shaking his head. "Three's supposed to be the charm."

Reclining back on one palm, Shin smoothed his other hand along the broad blood-red collar of his kimono jacket and glanced up through his lashes, regarding Shikamaru with a touch of amusement. "Hedging your bets on luck, Shika? You don't strike me as being that naïve."

Slouching back on his zabuton cushion, Shikamaru re-examined the board and searched for holes in his strategy. He could've sworn his last technique was watertight. "Doesn't hurt to hope," he joked lamely, trying not to feel microscopic beneath those dark probing eyes.

"Ah, hope," Shin sampled the word with a twist at his lips, like the taste was off. "If you can take that away from your opponent, you've already secured a win."

"So it's a psychological gimmick?"

"Not entirely. Depends on the nature of your opponent." Shin reached for a cup of chilled saké, stroking the rim across his lips. "Hope is difficult to crush because it's hardwired into survival. Ultimately, that's all it comes down to. Survival and supremacy. There's no playing the game by halves if you want to win. And if you don't want to win, you've got no business playing."

Staring at his captured King, Shikamaru tipped his head in consideration. "I never thought about it like that. That seems kind of…" he hesitated, searching for the right words and coming up short. He'd never really given much thought to the emotional hardwiring of his opponents during a game. It'd always been a strictly intellectual exercise for him.

Shin cocked his head, eyes narrowing at the shadow-nin's silence. "You disagree, Shika?"

"No. I'm trying to process."

"You can't intellectualise your instincts."

And there it was – instinct – that intangible quality Shikamaru had never thought relevant or applicable to the Shogi board. It seemed too spontaneous a concept; too unpredictable.

And yet…

He darted a look at Shin, trying to determine whether it was intellect or instinct at play behind the too-still surface of those deep dark eyes. Shin seemed way too smart, way too strategic, to be ruled by instinct.

"You make it sound like you play spontaneously," Shikamaru said at length. "But then how do you…?" he trailed off, shaking his head. "It's like the total opposite to strategy."

"That's the dichotomy of the divine, Shika. Remember I told you that life is duality? That conflict between strategy and spontaneity makes the game all the more intriguing."

"It's not logical."

Smiling faintly, Shin took a sip of his saké. "All the same, it's in our nature."

Nature…?

Intrigued by the concept, Shikamaru turned it over in his mind as he straightened up and reached for the gyokuro tea just to the side of the board, trying to ignore the irritating catch of his turtleneck against his sweat-sore skin. Sitting beneath the grand sweeping eaves of one of Nogusa Yodo's palatial guest mansions, the deep veranda shade did little to halve the humidity. Sunlight gleamed off the polished wooden pillars in gold-white stripes, glittering across the milky waters of the steaming onsen, its rocky edges just visible beyond a trellis of flowering rhododendrons, walls of bright fuchsia colour infused with deep vibrant pink.

Shikamaru squinted against the late morning glare, swallowing the cool jade dew tea, his mind too occupied by Shin's words to appreciate the exquisite quality of the brew. "Nature," he murmured, glancing back at the board. "Sounds troublesome."

A quiet chuckle and Shin set his saké aside. "You've seen kenjutsu masters speak of the sword as an extension of their bodies, yes? There's a no-mind quality to how they approach combat." At Shikamaru's nod, Shin gestured to the board with an elegant sweep of his hand. "It's no different to how I play Shogi."

Bemused, Shikamaru looked askance, his brows tugging together in confusion. "So you play like there's no board?"

Shin's eyes flashed up, lighting with a brief spark of emotion that vanished into black inscrutability once more. "Absolutely, Shika," he murmured, approval purring through the words. "If you'll allow me to take away your definition of the board, I'll show you just how natural it is to become a master."

Again, that heightened sense of awareness seemed to thrum between them, vibrating with the tension of unseen strings; strings that pulled at his body and played across his mind as if he weren't moving entirely of his own volition. Was this what it felt like to act on instinct?

There was no hesitation in Shikamaru's voice when he answered, "Alright."

Shin's lips curved in that slow feline smile, something like pride ghosting across his face. "I should've known you wouldn't disappoint me," he murmured, though his pleasure was cut short by the announcing scuff of feet along the walkway.

"Shin-sama."

Shikamaru glanced up at the reedy voice, his gaze skating over Shin's shoulder.

A frail old man rounded the side of the building, dressed like a servant and kowtowing with an excessiveness that Shikamaru might've found amusing if Shin hadn't look somewhat annoyed at the interruption, a subtle tightness gripping his face.

Shikamaru didn't miss the expression.

But before he could marvel over that faint show of emotion all traces of displeasure rippled away from Shin's feature, leaving behind that eerie stillness and easy charm. "What is it, Hama?" Shin asked softly, reaching for his saké.

Hama pressed his brow to the polished wood. "Tenka is here to see you."

Shin's fingers froze on the rim of his cup, his head drawing up a notch. "Ah." He glanced at Shikamaru almost regretfully. "Will you excuse me for a moment, Shika? I have some business with a client. It won't take long."

At the mention of business and time, Shikamaru's eyes rounded and his gaze swung skyward.

Shit!

Genma was going to kick his ass all over the Chūnin arena. How many hours had he been gone already? Time had slipped by shinobi style, straight under his nose. Talk about being offguard. The only instances he ever lost time were when he was cloud-gazing and sleeping.

Noticing his alarm, Shin's brows pulled together in concern. "You okay?"

Raising his hands in apology, Shikamaru scooted back from the board and began to rise, shaking his head. "Sorry, I totally lost track of time. My senpai's gonna go ballistic."

A dark brow lifted in amusement. "I'm sure he'll forgive you for rubbing shoulders with Kusa dignitaries."

Shikamaru blanched a little and reached for his flak-jacket, managing a nervous smile. "You know when I said ballistic? I wasn't being figurative."

A handsome smile split Shin's features. He rose with the lazy grace of a panther, slotting his hands into the deep pockets of his silk trousers. "Let me finish my meeting and I'll take you back myself. There's no way you'll make it there in time if you walk, Shika."

I was gonna run screaming, actually.

Shikamaru made to protest but Shin cut him off with a stern tilt of his brow and another winning smile. "Trust me. We'll use the portals. You'll be back well before the first Chūnin round begins," he paused, letting that hang before adding, "I promise."

Maybe it was the addendum that did it, because Shin didn't strike Shikamaru as the type to break a promise; seemed like the kind of guy whose honour was his word and all that.

That's a lot to assume.

Or so said the rational part of his brain – the part that was usually operational at all times, even the Stupid O'Clock hours. Weird then, how that part of his mind seemed to have gone AWOL for the short few hours he'd spent in Shin's company.

Honestly, that should've unnerved him, maybe even alerted him.

Instead, he found it refreshing, maybe even liberating, to lose time for a while; to not be constantly on the clock or operating on someone else's watch.

Yeah, like Genma's…

Damn. Whether he made it in time or not, he was still going to get an earful of shit or an ass full of senbons. All the same, he couldn't bring himself to argue. "Alright."

"Alright," Shin agreed before addressing Hama and lowering his voice.

Shikamaru turned aside to avoid eavesdropping, strolling a little further along the veranda. The humidity enveloped him like a cloud – and not the kind that inspired his brain to fog out into daydreams.

Ugh. God damn heat.

He didn't envy the poor genin brats who had to compete in it. Gazing out at the gardens, he leaned against one of the pillars and slouched onto his left foot, letting his flak-jacket fall into the crook of his arm. Way too hot for that extra layer. His ponytail had all but wilted and he was pretty sure the sweat on his body had crystalized into salt along all the crevices, making every movement feel like an exercise in skin exfoliation.

The thought brought back a flash of that scaly guy's skin back outside Tekisha Seizon.

Wonder what Genma's history is with that guy…

The Tokujō might've played it cool, but Shikamaru had sensed the embers of some dark past burning behind those bronze eyes. Whatever the reason for Genma's delay earlier, at least Shikamaru wouldn't be the only one who'd gotten distracted. Heck, his 'shoulder rubbing' with the dignitaries could actually be classified as work, even though Shin didn't seem to have any political agenda in mind…he just liked to play the game.

An odd prickling at Shikamaru's nape alerted him that he was being watched.

Turning his head, he was surprised to find Shin standing there studying him, head cocked to one side in blatant speculation, those dark eyes tracking over his body in a slow drift that ratcheted the temperature a couple of uncomfortable degrees. "You're looking a little flustered, Shika. I take it you're not used to this kind of heat?"

Not one bit, Shikamaru thought, wondering again at the burn beneath his skin and the igneous churning in his gut. Like those dark eyes had opened up a pit in his belly and poured magma into the core, causing his brain to stall and his blood to simmer. Yeah, definitely not used to that – and no surer about what to make of it…or what to do with it.

Ignore it.

Much safer and much smarter than wandering into the dangerous territory that lay just beyond the massive roadblock of denial. As always, Shikamaru chose the path of least resistance – avoidance.

Shifting his weight in a bid to shake off the feeling, he plucked at the cloth sticking to his flat stomach and made a face. "Not gonna lie."

Shin treated him to another smile and nodded decisively. "Ice tea is on the way. You know, you're welcome to use any of our facilities here to freshen up. I'll ask Hama to show you around." As if on cue, the old man rounded the side of the building with a guest in tow.

Shin half-turned, his gaze lingering. "I'll be back soon, Shika."

Shikamaru almost shrugged but managed to recover his manners, dipping into a kind of stilted head-nodding bow that Shin regarded with open amusement, wagging a finger to dismiss the formality. "You really don't need to do that with me," he reminded before taking his leave, moving along the veranda in smooth fluid strides.

Feeling ten kinds of stupid, Shikamaru leaned back into the pillar and let his gaze stray further ahead towards Shin's approaching guest. The old guy had mentioned a name. What was it?

Tenka, his brain supplied.

Instant memory recall never hurt; neither did the habit of filing away information. Levelling his gaze on the approaching figure, the first detail that struck him was the man's long dark cloak and raised hood. Shikamaru arched an eyebrow. It was way too hot for that kind of getup.

Cloak and dagger, much?

Shin didn't seem all that perturbed by his guest's choice of wardrobe and extended his hands in an embracing gesture; relaxed, benevolent, a king in his domain. Tenka made no such gesticulations of familiarity, though he reached up to draw back his hood and reveal his face.

A demon's face.

Shikamaru's expression jumped in surprise.

The guy wore a crimson-lacquered Noh mask. The demonic kind. All gleaming horns, furrowed brow and that grotesque face-splitting grin stretched from ear to ear. Straight ash-blond bangs framed his masked face, a long pale ponytail secured at his nape.

Kneeling, the old man, Hama, pulled aside one of the fusuma panels.

Shin gestured into the reception room with a broad sweep of his arm and went to enter first, talking quietly. Not a word from Tenka, though he turned to follow and reached up to remove his mask, his profile half obscured by his bangs. Shikamaru caught an impression of pale raw-boned features; hollow cheeks, a slender but strong jaw, a straight nose and taut brow. Yamanaka Inoichi came to mind, only softer, less thick around the eyebrows and fuller in the lips.

Tenka paused at the threshold, went rigid.

And then he turned his head and looked directly at Shikamaru.

The shadow-nin froze, pinned in place by a pair of startling violet eyes that cut across the distance and struck with the impact of amethyst blades. Blinking once, they narrowed on him briefly, then widened in alarm.

Shin said something from inside the room.

In an instant, Tenka's pale handsome face wiped clean of all expression, his unusual violet eyes going flat and unreadable as the rest of his face. He dipped his head to Shikamaru as if in acknowledgement, his gaze steady and level as a blade…

A blade…

A blade…

A blade cutting through the memory…cutting through the black…cutting through the shadows…slashing it all into ribbons...shaking loose his fragile grip on the past, on the pieces…

"Use me," hissed the Darkness, urgent, strong. "Do it. We'll stop ANBU-man together this time. You wanted to remember, you wanted to know."

But he was supposed to forget – wasn't he? Those violet eyes. That stag-faced ANBU mask. And Shin…Shin…Shin…

Pain exploded in his head.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Shikamaru staggered sideways in his mind, half in madness and half in memory – trying to hold onto the pieces, onto the past, onto the pictures flashing in staccato bursts.

"Stop fighting me," husked that deep familiar voice, thick with blood, hoarse as a death rattle. "I told you before. You can't keep coming back here, Shikamaru. And neither can I…"

Shikamaru looked up, saw the stag-faced ANBU mask. Saw the violet eyes. Familiar, god, so familiar. And now he had a name. Tenka. "You did this to me," he choked out in confusion. "You took away my memories…fucked up my mind…why? Who the hell are you? Who the hell is Shin?"

No answers from behind that blood-spattered mask, from behind those violet eyes. No answers at all…just a hoarse familiar shout, "KIOKU FŪIN-NO-JUTSU!"

Memory seal technique…

"No, wait," Shikamaru gasped. "Wait, WAIT!"

No waiting. No warning. He felt the familiar sensation of Tenka's gloved hand closing over his head, fingers crabbing around his skull as if to rip out the memories.

He knew what came next.

Metsu.

Erase. Wipe out. This guy meant to amputate his memories, never mind the phantom pains it'd leave behind. Had it always been like this? No choice, no chance, no explanation whatsoever. Just a bitter déjà vu. Remembering and forgetting, overlapping timelines, half-glimpsed games going on inside his head. And he'd always allowed it – hadn't he? Never fought because he'd been so desperate to forget…to forget…to forget

"Let me forget," whispered a small voice inside him. His own voice. Younger, scared and much too small...too small compared to the Darkness. "Please. It's not real. It's over. It's done. Please. Just let me forget."

"I never forget," hissed the Darkness. "And I never will. So choose Shikamaru. Me or the Kid? Who do you think will do a better job at protecting you?"

"Don't do it," the small voice — the Kid? — whispered. "Don't...don't..."

"Do it. Do it," the Darkness urged.

Shikamaru struggled, his mind ripped two ways; torn between the Kid and its fear and the Darkness and its fury. Forget. Remember. Forget. Remember. Over and over and—

"We've come too far," the Darkness uttered. "Too far to forget. I have the answers. All Tenka has are lies!"

Lies...

Shikamaru recoiled at that, but Tenka's grip was solid on his mind, on his memories...no more.

"Yes," hissed the Darkness. "No more."

"I'm sorry, Shikamaru," Tenka rasped, his fingers tightening, trembling. "METS—!"

"No." Shikamaru's hand shot up and his eyes snapped open, irises burning black. "No more," he snarled, clamping his fingers around Tenka's throat and lifting the man clean off the ground with a strength and power he shouldn't have possessed. Not in his mind. Not in his body. "Not this time."

Tenka gripped the wrist of the hand at his throat, violet eyes flaring wide behind the mask as he hung suspended. "Shikamaru!" he choked out. "Don't do this."

"Don't do this!" the Kid echoed, his voice still too small even as he shouted, screamed. "Don't do this!"

But he did.

Shikamaru gripped Tenka's throat in one hand and reached out for the shadows with his other. Black tendrils spilled from his fingers, slithered in a tight noose around Tenka's neck and wove like sutures through the amniotic darkness in Shikamaru's mind, pulling all the torn edges back together, stitching up the wounds left by Tenka's mind-altering jutsu, his memory-erasing blade, his unadulterated lies.

"And I can keep on lying like it doesn't mean a thing," Tenka rasped. "If it saves your life."

Shikamaru went rigid on those words…

His words…

His unspoken words to Neji...

Neji…Neji...

Awareness flashed through him, cold and sudden as the fear screaming DON'T DO THIS – but then came the anger, hot and violent as the darkness in his eyes, screaming NO MORE LIES!

No more. No more.

It drowned out the Kid, the fear, the weakness. The rage - no, the Darkness - was a living thing inside him, symbiotic to all his senses, a host inside his head. It was that cold dark entity which existed just beyond the fear, just beyond the panic…it found him and it filled him, fitted him in a way that was as comfortable as it was familiar. His shadows. His salvation. How the hell had he ever survived without it?

I am my shadows.

"You're not..." Tenka choked out. "You're not."

Glaring up into that masked ANBU face, Shikamaru opened his mouth to speak and the Darkness spoke through him. "I never needed saving," it uttered. "Unlike you."

Tenka snagged a breath to speak.

Too late.

Shikamaru released his throat, but not the shadows.

Tenka dropped like a prisoner from the gallows, the wet crack of his broken neck sounding out into the silence…into the shadows…into the sea of drifting pieces…

Then came the screaming.

The Kid. Shikamaru's own voice…younger…scared…fifteen and freaked out…a broken-down kid crouched and alone in a cold dark corridor with no ANBU protector to lead him back. He stared at Tenka's body, tears burning down his cheeks. "No. No. No. What the hell have you done? What the hell have you done?!"

"What you couldn't," the Darkness said, irritated, older. "Go close your eyes, Kid…we'll take it from here. Right, Shikamaru?"

Shikamaru stared at the body…

Watched it swinging slow and lifeless before his eyes…and smiled.


Gasping, Shikamaru pitched himself awake. A sharp and sudden movement that had him bolting upright on the floor, spine taut, breath held, body utterly still…

But there was no fear…no flashes of panic…no pain exploding in his head…

Nothing.

Silence rang in his ears, loud as a scream.

Smoke filled his nose…stale…strong…the smell of a still-burning cigarette…

Phantoms drifted at the edges of his mind, floating figures, floating faces. Not quite ghosts anymore. Half-real and half-remembered. But for the first time since the nightmares had started, he was awake and he was aware. His heart throbbed against his ribs but his breath was steady, almost too steady. The sweat on his skin was cold to the touch…and so were the wet trails streaking his cheeks.

He sat for a long frozen moment, wide-eyed and staring into darkness.

The Darkness.

He could hear it now, beneath the silence. He could feel its presence, sense its passage through the chambers of his mind. An uninvited guest, an unwanted ghost…

"Troublesome. All this effort to go co-conscious and you're kicking me out? I don't think so."

Shikamaru stiffened as a cold disembodied sense of floating drifted through him, elevated his senses and raised him up like a dark cloud hovering above the jam-packed earth.

"It's what you always want. To just float on by like a cloud."

Blinking slow, Shikamaru gazed both inwards and out, blind yet seeing…totally dissociated from his surroundings…the blue-grey hues of the moonlit room…the pages upon pages of parchment scattered across the floor…covered in handwriting…an illegible scrawl that might've been his…must've been his…words upon words…symbols upon symbols…names upon names…they spilled off the pages and onto the tatami mats…covered the shogi screens…covered the walls…covered the world as he floated above it…

But he was wide awake, sitting on the ground, staring at all the signs.

"Do I have your attention now?"

"You did this," Shikamaru husked, speaking inward, his voice cracking in his throat.

"No shit. I used to leave all this writing on the walls in your head…but ANBU man kept you and the Kid from looking."

Shikamaru frowned. "What kid?"

The Darkness didn't answer, said instead, "Tenka lied. Kept you blind. But we took care of that. Together."

Shikamaru closed his eyes, saw the masked man hanging…swinging…swinging like the door to his subconscious…broken hinges in his head…

But he was wide awake – wasn't he?

"Yeah. Finally. Now open your eyes."

He opened his eyes…saw the dark room waiting…waiting with its writing on the walls and the floors and the papers and…

Yeah, he was awake alright. Just wished to god he wasn't.

The Darkness in his head smiled a slow lazy smile in his mind's eyes, but there was annoyance in the amusement – a thinly veiled anger. "Run screaming and see how far that gets you. You think I can't chase you down? Don't make me. I've got better shit to do. Like clean up the mess you, Genma and ANBU-man left behind."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," Shikamaru answered, aware that the room was empty but his head was full to bursting.

The Darkness loomed over him, larger, stronger.

"I was always stronger. And I'm going to show you exactly what I'm talking about, like I've been showing you all this time. Because it's not over until I say it's over. So go ahead and take a drag on that cigarette…you're gonna need it for the next round."

Shikamaru frowned. "The next round?"

"Of an old game. You wanna win, don't you? 'Cause like it or not, you never stopped playing."

His greatest fear, his darkest shadow dragged into the light.

But the panic didn't come. The fear didn't follow…only that strange sense of floating, all emotions elevated, drifting away out of reach…away with the panic, away with the fear.

Numb. Hollow. Empty.

Shikamaru sucked a breath. He knew this feeling, or more accurately this lack of feeling…he'd experienced it during those two weeks when Asuma had claimed he was like another kid, another person.

"You were. You have been. Always scared. Always running. But the Kid's quiet now. It's just you and me."

There must've been sense buried somewhere in those words. More clues, more hints. But Shikamaru didn't reach to find them. Instead, he reached for the discarded cigarette still smouldering in the white-lacquer tray and brought it shakily to his lips. His breathing wavered and he paused, waiting for the moment to pass, for his fingers to stop shaking.

"Breathe, genius."

One breath, two breaths, three breaths…

The backs of his eyes began to burn, but the shaking stopped, his breathing evened and his heart slowed – felt like it stopped beating altogether. Paralysed, like the panic. Like the pain. Like everything he should've been feeling…

But there was nothing…a total absence, a total detachment.

"It's what you do best. Now take a drag. Take a minute. I can wait."

Staring sightlessly at the messages scrawled around the room, Shikamaru did as instructed. He took a long deep drag in the moonlit darkness, the ember firing hot and red.

The Darkness went quiet for a time, sat back and observed.

Its silence was as disturbing as its speech. Shikamaru's vision blurred on the walls and the writing but he didn't blink, didn't break. He couldn't. Because the second he felt like his world might fly apart the Darkness bound him up, wrapped him tight in shadows and safety and that surreal sense of floating.

"It's troublesome. But I'll never let you break. You know that."

He did know that. Wasn't sure how, or why, or when he'd decided to believe it. Maybe it was right now, in this moment. Or maybe he'd always known it. Know that just beyond the fear…there was something that would always find him…always fix him…

"That's what 'I' do best. Now get up."

Shikamaru blinked slowly, the tension going out of his muscles, out of his mind. He allowed himself two more drags and one more minute. And then, with infinite calm, he crushed out the smoke, got to his feet and headed for the door.


"Let us pray that the past and all its demons never darken our door."

Sarutobi Hiruzen's last words on the Nara incident. Words he'd spoken 21 years ago. The day he'd closed the door on the Shinjū Project matter, leaving the lock in the Council's hands and the keys in the palms of a precious trusted few.

But perhaps those keys, like karma, were destined for more than dusty pockets.

A foolish thought. Neither Mitokado Homura nor Utatane Koharu were particularly religious. At least not in the way that Sarutobi Hiruzen had been; a Buddhist at heart, compassion always weighing on his conscience and staying his hand, compelling him to mercy.

Mercy.

Koharu frowned, her thin lips tightening against the rim of her teacup. Mercy? She wondered at that word, gazing through her lashes at the exquisite Bodhisattva silk-painting hanging on the far wall of the old war room. It'd been commissioned by Hiruzen and created by none other than the late Chiriku. An old Guardian Ninja friend of Sarutobi Asuma's and head monk of the destroyed Fire Temple.

So much destruction…

Where was mercy that day? Where were all the gods? Mercy certainly hadn't spared Chiriku, or Asuma, or Hiruzen. The Sarutobi clan had suffered loss after loss despite their faith in higher powers and holy plans. Even so, Koharu could not find it in her armour-plated heart to remove the painting. Neither could Homura. It was an unspoken matter, untouched as holy ground. And even Shimura Danzō respected it.

Danzō…

Koharu set down her teacup, mindful of the soft clink of the ceramic and her tendency towards heavy-handedness when irritated. She did not wish to disturb Homura from his paperwork. Ah, but the old fox looked up anyway, watching her over the rim of his glasses before returning to his work. He knew better to intrude on her thoughts. If she wished to share them, she would speak.

She poured herself some more tea, biding her time.

She wanted Homura's full attention, after all. They had come here to discuss Danzō. The sly old war hawk had once again missed his morning conference with them. On the surface, there was nothing overly unusual about that, given that Danzō liked to assert his independence and self-assumed authority in these defiant and never-ending little ways.

A surface show, a face-saving display.

Both Koharu and Homura knew better than to believe it. Danzō never operated on the surface. Never put on a show without orchestrating everything from the hidden wings.

What are you up to now, Shimura?

Suspicion was a constant itch between Koharu's shoulderblades where Danzō was concerned, but she'd long learned to tell the difference between her faint inklings and her gut-clenching instincts. She felt it now, that inexplicable knowing…felt it as surely as Hiruzen had felt his faith.

Something was wrong.

Something was at work.

And perhaps deep beneath the surface of her armoured heart, Koharu had always known that when the past came knocking, it wouldn't be darkening their door…it would be breaking it down. Which is why when the door to the war room burst open on its hinges, it came as no surprise.

At least not to Koharu.

Homura looked on the brink of an aneurysm, his eyes bulging with shock and outrage. "What in the name of—?!"

Ibiki stood in the doorway, his huge shoulders heaving, limbs stiff and braced against whatever urgency had caused him to all but kick down the door. Behind him in the hallway, a flutter of raised voices, some angry, some unsure, but all directed at Ibiki's impertinence and imminent arrest.

Jōnin closed in, then stopped.

A flicker of white-blue chakra and three ANBU operatives appeared, tantōs drawn.

"Morino-san," said a masked woman. "You cannot just barge—"

Ibiki snarled over his shoulder, scars glinting, his eyes thrown into shadow beneath the dark ledge of his brow. "You really don't want to fuck with me tonight."

Just that small angry reaction on Ibiki's part would've been enough to get Koharu's attention, if the kicked in door hadn't gotten it already.

"That's enough." Koharu set down her teacup and sat back in her seat, spine going rigid. "Leave us!" she ordered. "All of you."

Hesitation. The ANBU operatives hovered a second longer, waiting for the other Jōnin to back off first before sheathing their tantōs. They didn't get a chance to bow. Ibiki slammed the door in their faces.

Homura's brows climbed impossibly higher. "What do you mean by this intrusion, Ibiki?"

Ibiki wheeled at that, his jaw clamped so tight that muscles bulged and veins popped out across his face as thick and ugly as the scars. He seemed to catch himself on the lip of a dangerous reaction, his nostrils flaring, the breath hissing out of him in a hot steam as he worked to get his adamantine gears back under control.

Frowning, Homura turned in his seat and looked to Koharu for support.

Koharu held up a hand that begged for patience, her small squinting eyes glued to Ibiki. She watched him for a long silent moment, the instincts in her gut burning hot as coals. She'd worked with Ibiki for over 17 years. She'd seen him soldier through some of the most harrowing catastrophes the village had ever faced, both in the open field and off the record. She'd seen him weather all manner of political and personal storms; always calm and ironclad, almost like a machine.

Until now.

Now there was something in his posture, in his face…in those cold black eyes that turned towards them with a flash of emotion that not even his ironclad control could hide or dismantle.

"Tell us everything," Koharu said.

Without a word, Ibiki reached into the inner pocket of his trenchcoat, pulled out a file and slapped it onto the table, the whack of the document causing Homura to stiffen in his seat.

Koharu didn't even flinch.

That is, until Ibiki leaned over and opened the file…and the past and all its demons came screaming off the page.


TBC.

END NOTES:

Onyrō Noh mask - is a mask used in traditional Japanese Noh theatre, representing vengeful spirit/ghost

min'yō - is a genre of traditional Japanese music, often folk songs originally sung unaccompanied

A/N: Dear God! This chapter was originally another 9,000 words longer but I figured any more information might result in giving you guys an aneurysm. So I chopped it down. At least that means Chapter 13 is already a 1/4 way done! Right. LOONG chapter...and deliberately so, given the delayed update. Life has had me by the throat and it's been difficult to find the time and energy to write. Thank you so much dear reviewers for your encouraging feedback and kind words both here and on other forums. It's given me the much-needed boost to keep going these past couple of weeks! I continue to appreciate you more than you know. I hope this fat instalment makes up for the delay and that you've enjoyed it. Your thoughts are always welcome and appreciated. Again, for anyone still floating in the rubber dingy rapids of WTF is going on? Don't worry! I'll be throwing you life buoys left right and centre in the upcoming chapters. It'll all start coming together. Promise. ^_^