As The Falcon Flies By

Chapter 12 – Covering Up Our Ignorance

Hi! This one went fast. I'm done with my exams, so that may be the reason. :)

As of the last chapter: 25 000 words. Woohoo!

Hope you enjoy this chapter.

Uo・ェ・oU


"Sir? Excuse-me, please. Sir, could you help us?" When the clerk on the other side of the security glass didn't respond, she coughed loudly, hoping to get his attention. "Excuse-me, sir?" It was a lot colder than she had expected it to be, and this was no time to be standing at a bank locket, waiting for that yawning kid to wake up enough to help her.

Is that brat ignoring me? Or is everybody deaf here?!

When rapping on the glass didn't warrant even the measliest of glances, she stepped up her game.

Using the smallest amount of chakra she could, she tipped over his mug, making his forgotten coffee spill all over the desk.

With a smug look she watched him scramble for a tissue to soak up the liquid that was slowly creeping its way towards his computer.

She felt Shikamaru's disapproving stare from behind her, but she just looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. He was ignoring me. She mouthed, making Shikamaru groan and roll his eyes at the same time, resulting in quite the comical effect.

"Slow morning, huh?" She said, leaning against the booth, an arm on the windowsill.

Finally, the boy looked up, still looking like a deer in headlights. Sakura saw a crooked name tag dangling from his shirt pocket, stating that his name was 'Ben'.

"Yeah." He gasped, "I don't even know how this could happen! I was just-"

"Hmm, well it's all alright. No need to worry, coffee mugs do tend to fall over in late august. There's nothing you can do about it."

Before his face could, somehow, turn even more perplexed, she changed the subject.

"Anyway, ...Ben, we need to withdraw some money. We're tourists, you see."

"Oh, my name isn't Ben, it must have gotten mixed up-"

"Oh, well, such a shame. Ben suits you!"

"T-thank-you, but-"

"Now, about the money, Ben, we don't have much time, you see, so it would be great if you could give us our receipt. It should be under my name, Satsujin."

"Ah! You're Sayomi? Sayomi Satsujin?" He said, his hand desperately pulling out tissues and trying to soak up it all up before it reached his keyboard.

She smiled sweetly. "I am. Here's my identity card."

"Oh, good. Just a moment please." He took the card from the tray and put it on his keyboard, then checked the status of the coffee. When he saw it wouldn't have any dire effects in the near future, he gave all his attention to Sakura.

He seemed to have gathered his wits and was riffling through alphabetically ordered receipts, looking for hers. "They told me you'd come one of these days, miss. That was a few days ago, though."

"We were held up a little."

"Well, it's no problem, miss. I just need to check your information.

He sat back down on his wonky chair -another item Sakura had considered tempering with- and started cross-referencing her ID with the data on his computer, all the while trying to ignore the patch of wet, coffee soaked wood.

"Everything seems to check out. I just need your signature, here… And here… Thank you very much." She slid the papers back towards him so he could stamp the document with the seal of the city.

"There, that should be it." He said, sliding the receipt back towards her. "Because it's such a large amount of money in one go, it does require an additional stamp from the City Hall."

Sakura sweat-dropped and she could here Shikamaru sigh again behind her.

Ugh, City Hall. I bet they're even less awake over there than Ben is.

"Is that right?"

"Yes, it's just down the road. Well, not exactly, I mean you still have to take the underground or something, but technically it's down the road."

Sakura opened up her shoulder bag and tucked away her ID and the receipt. "We'll just go and do that, won't we? Have a nice day, further."

She stepped away from the booth, beaming a smile towards him.

"Y-you too, miss!" He shouted after her.

When the pretty girl left, he sat back down, furrowing his brows. His perplexity grew again as he saw the mug. He put it back upright and stared at it a moment longer. He could have sworn he hadn't touched it. Strange.

Before he could resume his nap, he heard a dripping sound from under his table.

Puzzled, he crouched down and had a look. The coffee had ran through a crack in the table and was forming a nice big puddle on the ground, dangerously close to some electrical wires.

For the second time that day, he was left scrambling for a tissue.

Xx

They had set up camp just outside of town, on a patch of grass a farmer was kind enough to let them use. Occasionally, they had been woken up by a lone cow walking obliviously through their campsite at night, as this was a cattle pasture, but most of the time it was just really silent.

When they arrived, Shikamaru walked straight up to the tent and unceremoniously dropped down on the blankets.

"Don't sleep for too long, Shikamaru, we still need to do lots today."

"No, no." His muffled response just amused her even more.

With a casual hand-sign, she released her henge, turning her from brown back to the familiar pink.

She sat down next to Kiba, who, for some reason, was whittling away at a piece of wood.

"What are you making?"

Kiba stilled his movements to blow away some woodchips and sawdust, planted his kunai into the ground and presented her with the final product.

"A stake." He said, motioning his attack and placing the sharp point over her heart.

"Boop." He said, and grinned. "Now you turn to dust. Poof!"

"I know I'm pretty pale, but not vampire-pale, right?"

"Sure."

"Besides, wouldn't I have already burnt up because of the sun?"

He pursed his lips, leaning back onto his elbows. "I don't know, it's pretty cloudy today."

"Hmm, I could very easily be a vampire."

He laughed. "I'll just have to feed you some garlic then."

"Now you've told me your plan!" Sakura said, smiling and pulling out a blade of grass here and there.

"And aren't silver bullets more effective anyway? I mean, at least you don't have to get into biting distance."

He shook his head and crossed his legs. "Oh, Sakura."

"What?"

"Silver bullets are for werewolves. You'd be a terrible vampire slayer."

She sputtered, "Excuse me? I'd be a great one."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, really."

"Then how'd you kill them? Throw heavy literature at them?"

"Haha." She said drily. "No, I'd lure them in with my lovely type-O blood. That means you can donate to everybody, so vampires will like it too, right?"

"Ha! It just means your cheap, honey! Take that from a type-AB. It's the most difficult for transfusions. I'm practically a delicacy, and you're an all-you-can-eat buffet at a cheap Chinese restaurant."

"Excuse me!? Don't make me shove that stake down-"

"Enough with the talking, please." Shikamaru's exasperated face appeared in the tent opening. He blinked against the light a few times, then settled his annoyed gaze on them.

"Don't be a grump, Shika, it's way too early for that." Kiba said, without looking up from his stake with which he was cleaning his nails with.

"You know, Kiba, Shikamaru's looking pretty pale himself, y'know?"

"Ugh."

The boy next to her looked up. "Now that you said it, yeah! You got something to tell us, Shikamaru?"

He narrowed his eyes and waved the sharp piece of wood at his teammate.

"Got seduced by some hot vampire chick, huh?"

"Bothersome…" he mumbled, "I'm going back to sleep." And with those words, the lazy genius zipped the tent closed.

"We'll just throw a cross at him later, see if it burns his skin." Kiba said, winking.

"Or we pour some holy water over him!" She added.

Kiba nodded sagely. "Yes, young grasshopper, you are learning fast. Soon I will let you craft your very own stakes. Blunt ones of course, can't have a mere apprentice-vampire-slayer handle the big guns yet."

"You are very wise, sensei."

"Oh for crying out loud!" A muffled voice came from the tent, as if he was shouting in a pillow.

They both sniggered.

"He sure is grouchy." Kiba said, remembering to keep his voice low, "Did something happen in town?"

"Meh," she said, shrugging, "we had to get a stamp for the money, you know? And the bank clerk was to busy wiping the drool of his cheek to even notice us."

Kiba snorted.

"Then we had go get another stamp at the City Hall. You know what a nightmare that can be."

"Hmm, that's why long missions can be annoying. The paperwork's such a bother sometimes."

She pulled his kunai out of the ground and started toying with it.

"I hope Neji and Genma come back soon. I've had enough of waiting and travel."

"Yeah," he nodded, "they'd better have found a good hotel, if we're going to stay here for a few weeks."

"Meh," she shrugged, "I just want to take a shower. Besides, we probably aren't going to see much of the hotel, besides sleeping there."

"I guess you're right. What is this mission anyway? We weren't really briefed extensively, I have to say. I mean, I know that you're going undercover somewhere and that we're the back up, but…"

"What exactly?"

"Yeah."

"Well, it all depends on what is necessary at the moment. You three will have to be a bit adaptable, in that way. I might need one of you to keep an eye on me, should something go wrong. One of you could keep an eye on the subject. We might need you, for example, to track a target."

"So it's just basic shinobi skills in a different environment?"

"Yup. Same old, same old, except you're going to have to blend in more for this to work."

"So no Akamaru?"

"Sometimes, maybe, for large scale tracking. But he's a bit too recognisable to take to a bar three times a week."

"You know, I might have a jutsu to shrink him down to a normal-sized dog."

"That could work."

They sat in comfortable silence. Kiba was still lying propped up with his elbows, pondering something. She lazily twirled the kunai around her finger, happy with this moment of silence in the fresh morning air.

It's weird how everything seems to become sharper and more defined the colder it gets. She studied the farmhouse down the road and the cows, laying lazily in their morning slumber. From where they were sitting, you could see for miles around. The green hills were solely interrupted by the fences with barbed wire.

"So what will you and Genma be doing?"

Sakura blinked, wondering whether she has misheard. "What…?"

"On the mission. What are you and Genma going to do?"

"Oh."

She shook her head, annoyed with herself.

"There's this bar downtown. That will be the key location of our mission. It's the headquarters of a mob boss. Our mission's to make sure he isn't a threat to Konoha."

Kiba frowned. "Why would he be? He's just a civilian."

"Don't underestimate them. It's not because he hasn't trained his chakra that he can't kill us. Crime can be as deadly as a kunai, if used wisely."

"Nice. You should put that in your autobiography."

She laughed and punched his shoulder. "Don't mock me. And I'm not going to write a book about myself."

"You could write one about me. The Adventures of Kiba and Akamaru, Volume 1-"

"Oh, so it's a series? I don't know if I can commit to such a project."

"Well, we'll just have to see about that, eh?"

He cleared his throat and continued. "As I was saying, The Adventures of Kiba and Akamaru, Volume 1: The Search for The Cursed Mask."

"The Cursed Mask?"

"Yeah, they're always looking for a cursed something in those books, aren't they?"

"Mm, what about: The Adventures of Kiba and Akamaru: The Last of The Golden Temples."

"Oh, good one. I can already see the girls lining up for signatures."

"Oh, yeah, me too." Sakura said drily.

"Then after our success in book format, we give the filmrights to some production company and we're set for life."

Sakura grinned. "You'd love to be on the big screen, wouldn't you? Trouble is, I can't write. You'd even be better off with Jiraiya."

Kiba snorted. "Then our story would be a lot different, no?"

"Kakashi would probably enjoy it a lot more, too."

He grinned. "I don't think I'm ready to read that kind of literature about myself."

"Oh! Please don't call Icha Icha literature!"

Behind her, she heard the tent zipper being opened slowly. Shikamaru stepped out in defeat. "I just wanted a nap. One. Nap." He mumbled to himself.

Kiba looked at something behind her. "Well, you can soon do that in a bed, hopefully."

Sakura looked over her shoulder, and sure enough, two familiar figures walked on the dirt road towards their camp.

Sakura got up and stretched, popping her back, then helped up Kiba.

They started breaking up the camp and by the time Genma and Neji arrived, they were already more than half way done.

Before they could even say something, Kiba interrupted.

"You know, Neji, you might be the palest person I know."

"Excuse me?" The Hyuga didn't look very amused.

Kiba looked at Sakura. "I'll get the holy water…"

She nodded in understanding. "I'll get the crucifix."

The confused looks on Neji and Genma's face were enough to make them burst into laughter.

"What…?" Genma furrowed his eyebrows at the laughing pair.

"Oh, please, don't ask." Shikamaru shook his head in exasperation.

"Did you guys find a hotel?" Kiba was packing up the tent with ease, while Neji and Shikamaru checked that they hadn't lefy behind any chakra-traces.

"Yeah, we did." Genma nodded and looked at Sakura. "It's the one we had decided on."

"Great, then we're almost set, no?"

"There are still a few things we need to get, but I wrote down some addresses, remember?"

She nodded. "We'll try to get as much as we can today. I think that would be best. Then the others can scout out the city."

"Yeah, ok." She didn't think he was still trying to be purposely cold towards her, but he was clearly uncomfortable with the prospect of spending a whole afternoon alone with her.

Kiba whistled loudly and from somewhere behind the farmhouse, Akamaru came running, looking overjoyed. He's probably had a great morning, running around the farm. Sakura thought fondly.

With swift movements, she reapplied the henge and shouldered her backpack. "Ready?"

Genma shouldered his own backpack and started walking to the road. "Yeah, let's go."


Uo・ェ・oU

I hope you liked it. If you have any comments, feedback, a love letter, criticism, etc... I'm all ears! ;)

Also, I'm currently looking for a beta, but I'm having a little trouble finding any. There are just too many to sort through! If you have any advice on that, please PM me or leave a comment below.

Sayōnara :D