Twelve

The Lab

"What?" Shoko hissed as quietly as possible.

"N-nothing...just" Shikamaru snorted, "You-y-yo

"Shizune wouldn't give up the location of my clothes alright? I would have slapped her around but that's mean." She said the word mockingly. "Kami Shikamaru, you act like you've never seen me in a hospital gown before." Shoko whispered. Irritated as she was, she knew she must look like some crazed escapee from the loony ward, sporting bandages, a white gown and no shoes.

"Alright. Come on. We've got four hours." Asuma said quietly.

"Yeah. Because someone was an hour late!" Shoko slapped Fujiki upside the head. She had to applaud him for keeping silent even as he fell face first into the dirt.

"I told you I didn't want you to go, damnit." Fujiki said, rubbing his nose.

"We should just leave him here." Shoko said, turning away from Fujiki and looking at Asuma.

"I'm not letting you go in there without me."

You're better off going back,drinkin yourself stupid and chasin underage tail. You shut up!" She whispered harshly at the same time he whispered, "I told you if you're going in there I'm coming too, you! Shut up!"

"Shh! Both of you." Asuma said, rubbing his head and wishing he had a cigarette. They fell silent and turned away from each other. "I don't see how you two would have done this by yourselves." All they ever did was fight. Of all the ninja he knew who had the ability to summon, never had he met any with a relationship like the one Shoko and Fujiki had. She never summoned anyone but him, he never dismissed. You would think they were best friends, until you actually had the honor of being in their presence.

"Come on. We still have to get through the forest without scouts noticing us. Shoko, can you feel anyone?"

"Shikamaru...have you forgotten who I am? I can get us there. You're going to have to touch me though. You're not afraid of..." She snickered. "...cooties, are you?"

Shikamaru growled and grabbed her slender wrist. "If you could teleport there then why not just teleport into the ground, straight to the labs?"

"Because the labs are probably riddled with traps in case any ninja ever did find a way in." Asuma told him. "Do you see now? You frustrate him and his brain slows." He said to Shoko, who snorted.

Asuma took her offered hand and Fujiki roughly leaned against her burned leg. "Ow, you little..." She took a deep breath and focused on the area around the second entrance.

"I've never ported more than two other people" She said to them when they appeared in a small clearing beside a cliff. She moved her leg from behind Fujiki before he could straighten and smirked when he fell backwards. "I'm glad we all showed up whole."

"What?" Shikamaru said, a little loudly.

"Heh, just kidding. The worst that could happen would be a miscalculation in sea level." She shrugged, walking ahead of them, closer to the cliff wall.

"You mean...we could have ended up a hundred feet in the air?" Shikamaru asked.

"Or below the ground. The last time that happened, the Nara I had with me didn't panic like that." She said, glancing over and looking Shikamaru up and down. Her face changed to a less serious look at his expression and she laughed softly, "That's a story for another time." She turned back around and became silent as she looked over the stone wall. She reached out as if to touch it but jerked her hand back quickly and wrinkled her nose.

Asuma walked up to her. "Is it a trap? How would they know?"

"It's a seal. Orochimaru set it." She said backing up and looking over the height of the cliff. "I know, because I taught it to him. He must have been using this entrance for a while and sealing it up so that no other shinobi could enter." She said. "Guess he really didn't think I would ever get out."

She made a few hand signs and her fingertips glowed blue. She placed a hand to the rocks in front of her and suddenly a large seal lit up on the cliff's face for a second before disappearing into the rock.

"Tch. That probably caught some attention." She whispered. She made a new set of hand signs, this time it was a long complicated string of them before a door shaped tunnel appeared in the rocks before them. She hurried in and the others followed.

Asuma and Fujiki grabbed a torch each and lit them with fire chakra before following after Shoko who had walked ahead.

"These tunnels were here even before I was born, if you can believe it. I don't know what made them or why but they run for miles and miles. ANBU probably only did a sweep of the small portion under Konoha but if they had the right knowledge..."

"Miles?" Asuma asked, unable to believe that people could dig such an extravagant system.

She turned to him and smiled, "During the Second Great Shinobi War, three specialized group of Konoha nin used these tunnels to travel and infiltrate Sunagakure and Iwagakure."

"They run that far? And Sand and Stone know nothing about them?" Shikamaru asked, amazed.

"Nothing. No one but the twelve shinobi assigned to the tunnels and Hiruzen knew of these. It was one thing he never even told Homura and Koharu."

"And you." Shikamaru added.

"Well, I was one of the twelve shinobi assigned." He saw her flash a grin the darkness. "Iwa." She finished.

"So, how many countries do these tunnels run through?" Asuma asked.

"All five of the major countries except Water. There used to be a system under River, straight to Sand but over time, those collapsed."

"How have they never noticed tunnels under their cities and villages?" Shikamaru wondered aloud.

"Seals." She answered pointing to the ceiling, where every few feet ancient kanji was carved into the stone. "Not even Hyūga eyes can detect these."

Shikamaru was about to ask about the seals and how she knew about the tunnels in the first place but before he could, they reached a metal blockade.

"Hm." Shoko said. "I didn't think about this." Asuma pursed his lips. "It's a good thing I have two strong men with me, isn't it?" She said cheerfully. She touched the surface to see if she could sense any traps on the other side. There were none. If there were traps throughout, she knew now that they would have been set by Orochimaru since he had been through the labs after the sweeps. They wouldn't be standard ANBU traps so she would have to be even more careful.

She stepped back and looked at Asuma. He looked over the door that probably wouldn't have been too hard to open had roots not grown around the corners.

He used his blades to cut through the roots and grabbed the handle and pulled. He pulled again but it didn't budge.

"If I really need to I can teleport us through. Ya know...if you can't handle it."

Asuma growled and pulled the metal door again. If Orochimaru could do it, it couldn't have been that hard. Finally with a loud creak the door flew open. Stale air with a hint of what could only be described as death, filled the tunnel.

Shikamaru tried hard not to gag, which was more than Fujiki could say. He had grabbed the rocks and bent over to dry heave while Asuma furrowed his brows and covered his nose.

"Maybe you three should stay out here while I grab it. There might be things you don't want to see."

"No." All three said at the same time. Shoko sighed and tried to breath through her mouth. She was used to stale air with a side of death from having lived for several years beneath the Interrogation HQ.

She stepped through the door with Asuma right behind her. The torch lighting up the room. Shoko wondered over to the stone wall and put a hand to it sending electricity through the wires. Soon all the lights in the room lit up, dimly, but it was enough. Asuma and Fujiki carefully snuffed the torches.

"I'd light them all up but I don't want to use too much chakra and tip off anyone above us." Shoko said. "The torches were better but, there's alot of flammable things-don'ttouch anything." She warned Shikamaru, who was reaching for a blue colored beaker. "Especially...the colorful things." She felt around with her senses. There were no traps that she could feel so she walked through the room to the next, followed by her three companions and her chakra as the lights from the previous room faded and the lights in the next lit up.

"Where is this scroll?" Asuma asked as he looked eyed a few jars of body parts left on a shelf on the far end of the room. She turned to answer him but noticed something. She vanished so quickly that he could swear he saw her appear beside him before ever seeing her disappear. Her hand shot up, charged with smooth blue chakra rather than the sharp jagged electricity of her lightning, catching a black egg inches from his face. As gently as possible, she placed it on the table in front of him.

"Standard ANBU trap. Hm...I thought I taught you better." She said, making a face at him. Black eggs were common ninja tools; eggshells filled with certain substances to either cause pain or blindness, usually used on civilian criminals or for traps."The scroll is in my wing. This is the training wing. The one most medical students and poison experts from that time used. Uhm...we have to go through the poisons ward and then Orochimaru's old ward before we get to mine." With that she quickened her pace through the rooms until she reached a door. She stared at it for a moment. "If there are traps, this'll be where they are."

"Orochimaru." Fujiki explained.

She reached for the knob and turned it. The door swung open with a light creak and she allowed her chakra in first to light the room. She stood for a moment and looked around, remembering the place as it was fifteen years ago, before she was arrested. When her former apprentice could do no wrong, in her eyes. The place looked ransacked now.

Asuma put a hand on her shoulder. She blinked and shook her head before silently and extremely carefully, moving through the room. She had meant to go straight through to the door at the end. Her door. But something caught her eye. She turned to absently look at the metal that glinted in her peripheral vision then did a double take, putting on the brakes and causing Asuma and Fujiki to crash into her. She started walking to the desk. His desk, remembering a safe to be behind the wall of it. It had only been a small pen that caught her eye but it stirred up the memory of the safe. She wondered if it had been found and if not, what exactly was in it.

"Oh, no you don't." Fujiki said, grabbing her gown and pulling. He was smaller though and she merely pulled him along until Asuma grabbed her arm and stopped her. She looked back at him.

"In and out." He reminded her.

She looked back towards the spot where the safe was. Surely he would have taken along with him anything important. But then, one man's trash is another's treasure. There could be failure jutsu in there that he had given up on. Things she could complete. Maybe something useful. The boy was a genius after all. He always had the ideas and Shoko always knew how to piece them together.

She frowned, "I thought I saw something but...I guess I'm just tired." She walked back to the door of her office and opened it. No traps had gone off and it kind of irked her, knowing she probably could have just teleported like Shikamaru said.

"Home, crappy home." She said, walking in after lighting the place up. Old scrolls lined the walls, most opened and halfhazardly put back. She smirked and huffed a laugh.

Asuma and Shikamaru stopped nosing around and turned to look at her. "He was in here. Probably looking for my immortality jutsu. I wonder why my scrolls weren't burned like all the others."

"I don't know but this place is creeping me out. Let's grab the scroll and go." Fujiki said. He never did like going into the labs.

"Okay, the safe is behind that wall. There's a seal somewhere on the bookshelf." No, it wasn't but she needed a distraction. They absently turned toward the bookshelf she pointed at to search for the seal and she teleported back to the previous room. She summoned electricity to her hand to light up a portion of the room as she quickly walked over to the safe.

The moment she reached the desk, a trap went off. It was a simple one that she probably should have sensed had she not been so focused on the desk.

A small snap sounded and her eyes widened for just a second before she turned and threw her chakra charged hand out at the slight glint of metal heading for her throat. It was a metal wire, designed to cut off her head and when she caught it, the force of the wire pushed her back into the wall beside the desk, creating a loud crash.

Fujiki appeared on the desk and Asuma and Shikamaru ran through the door to see Shoko pinned against the wall and barely holding back a wire from cutting off her head. She blinked away the shock and quickly ducked her head under the wire and let go. The wire cut through the stone behind her and disappeared.

"Heh, curiosity killed the cat." She laughed awkwardly and she held her wounded hand to her chest. Asuma walked swiftly over to her to survey the damaged but she waved him off. "I'm fine."

He frowned at her. "What did I say? In and out. Whats over here that has you risking your head?"

"It looks like Orochimaru didn't completely doubt you getting out." Shikamaru said, looking over the wire. They looked at him. "This was obviously built for you. Unless he was expecting some other bite sized ninja to wander over to his desk. It was designed to take your head off, which would've probably succeed in stopping you from getting any closer to whatever it is you seem to be after."

"Bite sized..." She growled. "There was a safe in this wall. Like my own. I didn't know what he put in it but I saw him use it once."

"Seems like your precious student-teacher relationship wasn't so trusting. Safes and secrets and all." Asuma said.

"Yes well, I told you I doubted him...You sound jealous. Do you miss being my student so much?" She teased. Asuma scoffed and fixed her with an angry look.

"You were her student?" Shikamaru asked. He never knew who trained Asuma. He always just assumed it was the Third, since that was his father.

"Ah." He said and left it at that. He was watching Shoko as she ran a hand along the wall, her eyes narrowed and a smiled that was just a little bit deviant.

Once she found the spot where she was sure the safe was...only a few inches above the cut in the stone from the long wire that had very nearly severed her head, she stepped back and tried a few hand signs. She frowned when nothing happened. She tried another version of the same reversal jutsu. Nothing.

She stepped back up to the wall and banged her fist on the stone covering the safe. She figured it wouldn't have been that easy, especially since he was expecting her to try and get to it. She blew out a frustrated breath before backing up and trying a new reversal.

"What are you doing?" Asuma asked, getting worried now that Fujiki was backing away from her.

She tried another set of signs, before answering. "There's something in there. Something useful."

"Or maybe it's empty and we're wasting time. Stop doing that." He said grabbing her wrist. She fixed him with a look that suddenly reminded him that she was a very dangerous ninja. The look though, disappeared just as quickly as it came and she sighed.

"Let's go." She said, heading back to the other room. Just then she remembered something. She stopped and looked down at her hands. She knew this seal. She had seen him use it before, back when she trusted him. She didn't think anything of it at the time. What were the signs again? So simple.

She spun around and her hands formed three simple signs. The wall disappeared in the shape of a triangle, revealing a safe, large enough to hold maybe 10 scrolls.

"Don't." Fujiki said, knowing that, at this point, she probably couldn't even hear him.

Before Asuma could grab her she appeared at the safe, proving once more that if she didn't want to be caught, she certainly wouldn't be. She reached up and grabbed the door but it didn't turn. Not because there was a lock but because she was frozen in place. She growled in annoyance and flared her chakra through the wires in the walls. The room lit up like they were on the surface of the sun. The shadows disappeared and Shoko had just enough time to open the safe and grab the contents before bulbs began to burst and shadows filled the room once more. She calmed her chakra and sat down beside the wall to look at the three contents of the safe.

Two scrolls and a note. She didn't get to open them though because a very pissed Asuma grabbed her arm and dragged her into the next room, shoving her toward the bookshelf she had said the scroll was behind.

"Get the scroll. We're leaving before you loose anymore of what's left of your mind." He growled at her. She rubbed her arm and looked around.

Shoko turned and looked past him to the corner of the room and the lights dimmed as she sent a fraction of her chakra down into the floor. The ground disappeared and she ran over, opened a small metal door and grabbed a black scroll from it. She went to close the door but stopped when Asuma spoke.

"Wait." He said walking over to her. "Whatelse is in there?"

She raised a brow at him, "Hmm...kinjutsu."

"Forbidden, huh?" Asuma said.

"Oh, I see. You want to satisfy your curiosity but I can't satisfy my own?" Shoko asked.

Asuma looked down at her bounty. "Looks like you did."

"All that's in here in the one scroll and my immortality jutsu. Did you want to see it?" She asked him. "You were my student for a long time. I trust you. If you decide to live forever after looking then just maybe the world may be a better place. There'll always be one extra irritating Sarutobi walking around but all in all..."

"You would show me the jutsu?" Asuma asked. Shoko glanced over at Shikamaru who was leaning against the door.

"Shikamaru come here." He walked over to her. "Do you want to live forever?"

He stared at her, wondering if she was serious but thought about it. "No. I wouldn't want that. Watching my family and friends die, living through fatal wounds. I'd rather live a normal life." He said with a shrug. She smiled at him and looked at Asuma.

"Do youwant to live forever?" Asuma already knew the answer to that.

"No."

"Well then what's the point in looking?" She asked, closing the famous, elusive scroll back into the safe. She knew neither of them would say a word about it's location. She was glad they both knew where it was. If Shoko were to die suddenly, which seemed a good chance now-a-days, then one of them could show it to Naruto. She stood and deliberately faced both shinobi as she did the signs to seal the safe back into the ground. "Come on. I can teleport us back to my house from here."

She stuffed the scrolls and note into her dufflebag and both men grabbed her wrists and she laughed. What was wrong with holding hands? Fujiki moped over to her and she sighed, knowing there would be a lot of ass kissing if she wanted him to talk to her again. He stepped on her bare foot and she bit back gasp. "Little shit!"

The next thing they knew, they were standing in her home. They all froze at the intruding chakra coming from the doorway.

Jiraiya stood, leaning in the door while Kakashi sat at the table, reading his orange book.

Shoko, turned from them and walked to her bookshelf, planning to thoroughly ignore them both for intruding into her home, but halted when Kakashi appeared in front of her, pocketing his famous book and looking down at her. Something flashed in his eye before disappearing and he over-dramatically leaned to the right to eye her duffel bag.

"Where have you been?" He asked, nonchalantly.

"Out. Playing shogi." She said indifferently.

"You don't know howto play shogi." Jiraiya said, straightening from the door frame and smiling at her.

"They taught me." She said gesturing to Asuma and Shikamaru who had a look of complete defeat. They had already given up? Che.

Kakashi looked at her as if there were better excuses. "Did they beat it into you?" He asked, surveying the front of her gown where she had held her cut hand. She must really be a sight right now.

She stared back, giving nothing away. Then she thought of something. She glanced around for Fujiki, who just happened to be nowhere in sight.

"He told, didn't he? I knew something was up when he didn't show up drunk. There's no other reason he would have been late."

"Why are you bloody?" Jiraiya asked, walking up and grabbing the hand with bloody bandages.

"Curiousity." Asuma deadpanned.

"There was a trap, she set it off and would have gotten her head cut off if she weren't so light on her feet." Shikamaru added.

"So you really did go down there." Jiraiya muttered. "And you didn't...you know..."

"What? Why do you think an old laboratory is going to make me go crazy? Have you all lost your minds?"

"Well..." Shikamaru began but stopped when she whipped her head around to glare very, very hard at him.

"Okay...well now that you've been caught, you may as well fill us in." Kakashi said and they did fill them in, while Shoko tended to her hand after batting away everyone who offered to help.

All she really wanted to do was look over the contents from Orochimaru's safe and work on her own unfinished jutsu but she would wait until she was alone for that.

After all was discussed and Kakashi and Jiraiya swore to keep it to themselves, Shoko agreed to go back to the hospital before morning since Tsunade would have a cow if she was gone when she went to check in on her.

She wandered past her own vacated room until reaching a separate room a few doors down. She crept in, and after ruffling a sleeping Sai's hair, she walked over to the second bed, leapt in and curled up next to Naruto.

For some reason, his precense made her feel safe.

She quickly fell asleep, despite the constant snoring coming from behind her and the knowledge that when she awoke she would probably be covered in drool.