Hey! Look at that! That was pretty quick, huh?

Thanks to everyone who welcomed me back from my super-long-chapter haul! I'll be back soon again!

Hope you enjoy! Addi out!

The trail Neji followed was thick, fresh, like a black smear of pitch against the sidewalk. He traced it with his gaze for another block before allowing the muscles around his eyes to relax, dismissing his power so his face had lost all ethereal qualities when he pushed the sunglasses resting on his nose up to his forehead.

"Another block, then a left at the next intersection."

"Another left?" Sasuke slouched a little lower, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his sweatshirt, looking particularly rough around the edges next to Neji's sharp suit. "How much longer are we going to follow this trail? We already know where the wraiths are, and they aren't here; so why are we?"

Neji flipped his sunglasses back down over his eyes to hide his irritated expression. "We're monitoring, like I said before. We need to know more before we can make any kind of move, like if they've managed to swell their numbers any, and if we're going to need to call for backup before taking them on."

"We can't! You said-!"

"I said I understand your point, Sasuke, nothing more. I can see why you wouldn't want to involve others and I agree with you, but the fact remains that we very obviously aren't strong enough to take them on ourselves, and I am not going to prioritize the existence of someone who has already died once over my own life."

Sasuke clammed up with a twisted expression on his face, and Neji sighed. He'd taken Itachi's rejection almost worse than he had the first time, when he'd called him up a crying mess. There was nothing, Neji knew, that would heal that wound but time. He turned his back on his younger partner and started walking.

"Come on. The faster we move, the quicker we can be done."

It took a few seconds, and Neji almost let his own strides falter, fearing that he would leave Sasuke behind, but eventually he heard the stirring of footsteps and Sasuke ran a few paces to catch up with before resuming his normal walking speed. Trying not to let his relief out in an audible form, Neji squared his shoulders and once again pushed his sunglasses up so he could survey the ground in front of him without the obstruction.

When he stopped at the intersection, Sasuke almost walked into him from behind, and Neji had to grit his teeth to stop from snapping something callus at the young man, reminding himself that he was in great emotional turmoil. His flaring annoyance under control, he pushed the button for the crosswalk and took the moment to study his surroundings for any more signs of abnormal spectral activity. He found none, as he expected, and he was just about to turn back to the crosswalk when a spark of something pricked at the farthest edges of his consciousness. WIth a frown, he turned to the opposite side of the intersection, the way they would go if they made a right turn instead of a left one.

It looked substantially seedier than the area they were currently traversing. Flipping his sunglasses back down, Neji murmured a quiet, "Byakugan," under his breath and felt the veins stand out around his eyes as his spectral vision returned to him.

It was very tiny, but there was a second trail branching out from the one they were currently following. It looked even fresher than the dark one underneath their feet, though much thinner, like it had been made by a single ghost traveling at high speed instead of a group searching slowly. He expanded his senses, following the trail as it wound through back alleyways too dark for any kind of upstanding citizen until he lost it in a mess of congealed darkness from the residue of a thousand wicked spectral auras, built up over the past several hundred years.

Sasuke bumped him in the side with his elbow, causing him to drop his Byakugan with a start. "Hey, it's our turn."

"Hm…" Neji pushed his sunglasses up and made a snap decision. "We're not going that way."

"We're not?"

"No, we're not." Neji pointed down the second trail. "We're going that way."

Sasuke regarded the dark road with narrowed eyes for a few seconds before shaking his head. "Whatever you've found, it's a trap."

"You think I don't know that?" Neji scoffed. "That's why we're going to be careful."

"I don't think that's how it works-"

"Shut up, Sasuke." Neji flipped his sunglasses back down and reactivated his eyes. "We're not going far, just until I can see where the trap is set up. Then we'll turn right around and call for backup."

He started down the alleyway with brisk steps, and within a few paces he heard Sasuke follow him, albeit reluctantly. The trail was erratic, unlike the straight trail they had been following before, tracing across the street and back more times than he could count, sometimes doubling back on itself and even darting in and out of the walls of the buildings lining the alley, as if whoever it was they were following was suffering from some kind of mad fever that caused them to move without direction. A frown graced Neji's lips as he walked down the alleyway at a good clip and turned the corner into an even smaller and seedier one, still following the trail. What had possessed the ghost to move like that? Were they looking for something? Chasing something? Or perhaps… running away?

He could tell that the mess of congealed auras the trail led into was the trap. With that many layers of fetid spectral energy it would be almost impossible for him to pinpoint a single one accurately, there was so way it couldn't be. Neji slowed his steps, not wanting to get too close to it. It appeared to bleed up from underground, bubbling up through cracks in the sidewalk like swamp gas in a murky bog. An old sewer, perhaps? Or an abandoned underground subway tunnel?

Something flicked at the edges of Neji's consciousness again, and he came to a halt so abrupt Sasuke walked right into his back with a curse.

"What the Hell, Neji! Again?!"

But this time, Neji had to words with which to return fire. His feet were rooted to the ground as he concentrated on the flutter of energy just far enough away that he would miss it if he wasn't paying attention. It felt like the one that had originally lured him to check out the shady path, but there was something different about it that he couldn't quite place. A delicate shading to the aura, perhaps. If the first one had been black streaked through with the faintest hints of red and orange, this was black with streaks of a silvery blue.

A paralyzing sense of fear crawled over Neji as he felt another aura flick at the extremities of his consciousness, this time with almost childlike streaks of cobalt and from behind them. The silvery blue-black aura flickered again, to his left now, and soon after the one with flicks of flaming red and orange came again, to his right. They were surrounded, the only way out the way forward, into the cesspit of malignant spectral energy. His hand trembling, Neji reached for his phone as casually as he could, so as not to alert their audience as to what he was trying to do.

He had been wrong. The place with the layered black auras so thick he couldn't see through them wasn't the trap. In fact, even the trail leading to it wasn't a trap. The whole city was the trap, with the bait of the fires spread out for them to notice. It was a trap for them and them alone, since they were the only ones who would be able to recognize them for what they truly were: the work of a pyrokinetic wraith.

No, not a trap. An ambush.

The Akatsuki had likely known they were there from the moment their planes landed.

Neji slipped his phone out of his pocket and unlocked it as casually as he could. "Hey, Sasuke?" He asked as he opened an app on his phone, unused but mandatory for all Hyuuga to keep, and found the contact he was looking for, proud of how light his voice sounded despite the underlying tension.

"Yeah, Neji?"

He opened a message to the contact and typed three letters before hitting send. "We may have to run soon."

"What?"

The orange infused aura from behind them suddenly twisted, and a fireball shot into the sky from the force of an explosion on a rooftop two blocks back the direction they had came. Yep, they had definitely figured out that Neji now knew they were there and what he'd just done. He pushed his phone back in his pocket and turned to run back the way they had come, but the three color-streaked black auras were darting towards them at full speed now, and he knew they wouldn't be able to make it in time. A quick glance in the opposite direction, towards the pitch-smeared section of town, proved Neji's suspicions right: there was no one in that direction, meaning that they were being herded there.

Neji heard it in Sasuke's breathing when he noticed the auras as well, his voice catching in fear. "N… Neji? What do we do?"

Herded or no, they couldn't just stand there and wait for their fates to be handed to them on a bloodstained silver platter. They were already trapped, so what difference did it make where they ran?

"Run," he said, and ran towards the center of the maze.

A whine assaulted Shikamaru's ears, and he looked down to find its source and almost blinked in surprise when he saw the ghost dangling from his grasp. Right. He'd forgotten it was there. He gave his hand an experimental squeeze and its eyes bulged out of its head slightly.

"Pl… please…" it begged, but Shikamaru paid its cries no mind.

With a bored expression on his face, Shikamaru conjured up a noose made out of shadow directly over the ghost's neck and gave the end a sharp yank. Had it been still alive, the force would have been enough to snap a spine: an instant kill. As it was, its neck bent at an awkward angle and an expression of pain and terror crossed its face for an instant before a colorless sphere of nothingness exploded in the center of its stomach, imploding it into a void of existence like a black hole sucking something up from the inside. His lip curling up in distaste, Shikamaru wiped his hands on the edges of his tattered army jacket.

His army jacket. Huh. He hadn't noticed shifting into it. It must have happened sometime during his flashback. He shrugged his shoulders to relieve some of the tension using his shadows had brought him and looked around at the specters and figures cringing down at his feet. Low-class spirits, all of them. Nothing he'd done that day had been worth his time. They were all too weak.

"Um, ex-excuse me, M-Master," a nervous voice echoed from down by his feet.

Surprised to hear the voice speak, Shikamaru flicked a single, dispassionate glance down at him. "What do you want?"

"W-well, um, M-Master asked for all names and locations of those Late Master saw as equal or threat… and he was the last of 'em."

Shikamaru couldn't help blinking in surprise. "All of them? Every last one?"

"Y-yes, M-Master. Every… every one in this section of the city."

"That's disappointing." And here Shikamaru had thought that he was going to get at least a few days of amusement out of this game, instead of a paltry seven hours. He had to stifle a sigh; this was why he didn't like to go full out, no matter how fun it seemed at the time.

"And, ah…" the ghost swallowed nervously. Shikamaru noticed that one of his eyes was perpetually shut more than the other, and it appeared to be a tic he couldn't control. That's right; hadn't the some of others called him Squint before? "And why is that disappointing, Master?"

"Because now I'm going to have to go somewhere else."

There was a harsh intake of air from around the room. In addition to the three spectral subordinates he'd stolen from the first draugr he'd ended, he'd gained eight more from various others for a total of eleven.

Squint, who seemed to have been unanimously elected the spokesperson of the group, swallowed with difficulty before speaking again, trying unsuccessfully to hide the hope from his voice. "Will Master search elsewhere for more opponents worthy of his strength?"

Hiding a small smile at his tone, Shikamaru looked up at the ceiling. Even if it hadn't been there, it was still light out, so he wouldn't be able to see the stars. Still, he couldn't help but picture crawling thunderheads and flashes of bright lightening amid the darkness.

"No," he said. "No, I'm not looking for opponents to test my strength. After all, the greatest form of strength is not besting others, but knowing when to concede."

The specters shuffled slightly as they glanced among themselves. "Then why do what you're doing?" One from a far back row asked nervously, shifting uncomfortably as Shikamaru's gaze fell on him.

Thunder boomed across the muddy terrain, and a flash of lightning illuminated Hoffstead's terrified expression. Shikamaru looked at him, then looked away, unable to meet his gaze.

In some ways, Neji reminded him of Hoffstead. Shikamaru could admit that he wasn't the most capable man when it came to his own emotions, preferring to manipulate others' instead, but he was certain that he had loved Hoffstead, in a way. Just as he was now certain that he cared for Neji. What was it that Neji had accused him of not having? A protective instinct?

"I do it to protect someone. Someone who means more to me than I can ever say."

That was obviously not the answer they were expecting. He could see it in their eyes, their shifting expressions: Perhaps, if he's doing this out of love, he will be reasonable. Perhaps he will be a good Master.

Shikamaru almost felt bad to crush their hopes.

"So…" Squint ventured, "You're leaving? Are you taking us with you, or…" He trailed off, poorly disguised eagerness in his tone.

Little shit. He knew that they couldn't leave their section of the city, and he knew Shikamaru knew it as well. He was probably hoping that when he left, Shikamaru would leave him in charge. He was a relatively weak ghost, no match for any of the one the phantom had ended that day, but strong enough to be a contender amongst the bottom-feeders here. Well, he couldn't allow that to happen. There was a reason ghosts like these tended to break up in factions and fight one another: so they wasted their energy fighting others like them and didn't terrorize the weaker ghosts in the same area. Forming a single, cohesive group out of the remnants before him would be like signing all their death warrants, and as callus a Shikamaru was, he wasn't that cruel.

"Unfortunately," Shikamaru said as he strode towards the door, "Neither of those are viable options right now. You can't come with me, and I can't leave you to your own devices either, not with the behavior you showed me earlier. That leaves me with only one option, though I am loath to take it. I am sorry."

"Wh-what? Master!" Squint tried to struggle to his feet, but was cut of by a twist of shadow that wrapped around him and squeezed his throat closed. A few seconds later, he had disappeared in a flash of black and the shadow dissipated on the ground before flowing back to Shikamaru.

There was almost two full seconds of silence before the entire crowd of spirits erupted into shouts and screams. Some ran at him, whether to beg for their lives or try to avenge their fallen comrade Shikamaru didn't know, but he ended them anyway with a twist of his wrist and a flare of shadow. It was over within a minute, every ghost that had once stood in the room besides him gone into a void of nothingness.

It left a bad taste in Shikamaru's mouth. It was for the best that the more violent ghosts of the area develop from the ground up again, he told himself, for the protection of the smaller ghosts, the weaker ones, but the words rang hollow in his own mind. The shadows that hung around him sank into the ground and his tattered army coat dissolved in a wisp of smoke to something more casual.

A tiny sniffle caught his attention. Looking up, Shikamaru discovered the ghost of a small ghost, a young girl of perhaps seven or eight, peeking through the wall at him with a terrified froen expression. When his gaze met hers, she shrank back in fear, but didn't flee.

Taking a step forward and licking his lips, Shikamaru started, "Are you-?"

But before he could finish his question, the girl screamed. The sound was shrill and pierced his eardrums, causing him to wince. Without any other warning, she backpedaled through the wall and fled as quickly as she could, still screaming like she was being chased by a monster.

Shikamaru clenched his hands and jaw. He wasn't a monster. He was helping. He was protecting her by what he was doing. He was protecting Neji. He wasn't a monster.

If he was a monster, then he would have ended the little girl as well.

Taking a deep breath and then expelling it from his lungs, Shikamaru forced his body to relax. He had a job to do, more draugrs to seek out, more lives to save by ending others. He didn't have time to be thrown off his game by the opinions of little girls. He whipped the shadows up around him and sank down into the ground, disappearing without a trace.

Tokuma Hyuuga sat behind his desk and sighed deeply, quelling the urge to lay his head down on his desk. The File Operator position for New York City was just awful. There were too many ghosts, not enough men under his command, too much crime, not enough justice, too many incidents, not enough time, too much paperwork, not enough space to file it all, too much and not enough of everything! Right now they were even running out of ink in the printers from the mind-bogglingly huge amount of reports they were printing!

Tokuma had only been in the job for eight months and he already wanted to quit. Well, he'd wanted to quit from day one, but now he really really wanted to quit. He doubted the Elders would let him, though. He'd managed to hang on for those eight months already without ending up in the hospital or suffering a mental breakdown, longer than his last five predecessors had managed and his last three had almost managed combined, and he was sure that put him in the running to keep the position permanently. The only way he'd get out of it now was if he really did end up in the hospital or having a mental breakdown.

Briefly, he glanced at the partially concealed door on the other side of his office, the one that led up through the innards of the building to the rooftop before deciding against it. He wasn't that bad.

Yet. But he was getting there.

Letting out an audible groan, Tokuma lifted up the paper he had been trying to read before and attempted to force his blurry eyes to focus on it. It was a notice telling him that the File Operator from Seattle, Neji Hyuuga, was going to be in his territory for a while, following up on an interunit code orange that he'd called. The corners of his lip pulled down in distaste; he hoped Neji wouldn't find anything. It would make Tokuma look bad if someone from outside his territory identified and solved a problem before he was even aware of it.

And of all people, it had to be Neji. The boy was practically a prodigy, and with his close connection to the hereditary Main Family, there was simply no besting him. That's how he'd managed to land the prestigious Seattle File Operator position, and at such a young age as he had. Tokuma cursed silently and rubbed a hand over his tired eyes. He wanted to work someplace quiet like Seattle. Or maybe Salt Lake City. Or some tiny city in California or Texas with a population of only a couple hundred thousand people - not normally big enough to warrant a File Operator, but far enough removed from everything else around it that there needed to be someone stationed there.

Or anywhere that didn't have someone stabbed to death in a back alleyway every five minutes, actually.

Well, it could have been worse. He could have been stationed in Detroit.

So engrossed in his exhausted mental griping was Tokuma that he almost didn't notice the tiny alarm sounding from his cell phone, hidden somewhere under one of the piles of uncompleted paperwork on his desk. The one that came from his computer several seconds later was extremely noticeable, however, covering his entire screen with red flashing lights and the words EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! repeated over and over again while an alarm went off and a siren blared from the landline on his desk. Cursing, he grabbed the desk phone and held it up to his ear while trying desperately to turn the rest of the alarms off.

"Emergency notification received," a robotic female voice intoned in a pleasant manner. "Please promptly check your cellular device for further information. Emergency notification received. Please promptly check your cellular device for further information. Emergency notifi-"

"Alright, already!" Tokuma yelled, slamming down the receiver of his desk phone and finally cutting off the wail emanating from his computer, still desperately searching for his cell phone hidden under piles of paperwork. "Jesus! What the fuck is going on?"

When he finally found his cell and opened up the notification, Tokuma froze. It was a simple message, only three letters long, sent through a special messaging app developed specifically for the Hyuuga and only available on their phones.

SOS.

The message was marked as having been sent by Neji.

Tokuma swallowed against a suddenly dry throat. He'd heard of something like this happening, of course - it had been part of his training before he'd been given the job of File Operator to memorize every one of the emergency codes the Hyuuga used - but he'd never seen it in real life before, not even as part of the New York team, notorious for bad situations: an SOS, a call for help in immediate backup and extraction from a potentially fatal situation.

As soon as the shock melted from his muscles, Tokuma sprang into action. With a few economical clicks, he dismissed the flashing red lights and declarations of EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! from his screen to follow the alarm link to the software that would track the phone the alert came from. It took a few seconds to establish a connection for the computer to spit out a GPS coordinate, and he instantly sent it to every man under his command with the same alarm that he had received.

Their dots popped up on his monitor too, and he cursed again, this time not so silently. There wasn't anyone close enough! Neji's dot was moving quickly through an area of the city that they never frequented, and it would take at least twenty-five minutes for the nearest person to reach his position.

His office was close, though. He might be able to make it in fifteen, if he ran and cut through the alleys between the buildings. Just as he was standing up to grab his gear, his secretary burst through the door into his office with a panicked expression, an alarm blaring from her phone as well.

"What's happening, Tokuma?! What does this mean-?!"

"I don't have time to explain!" Tokuma barked, grabbing her and sitting her down behind his desk. She blinked at the abrupt move but didn't try to interrupt him. "Listen: There's an emergency, and I'm the closest person qualified to help. Sit here and pay attention to the screens, and if anything else happens, call me immediately and I'll tell you what to do. Okay?"

She nodded, her pale eyes wide, and Tokuma spared a second to pat her on the head before sliding his arms through his jacket sleeves, tucking the only weapon he had, a gun with six silver bullets in the clip, through his waistband to hide under his suit jacket. His hand trembled when he withdrew it, and Tokuma forced it into a fist to stop it. He'd never actually shot it at a real ghost before, just targets. That wasn't a Hyuuga's job.

But he was the only one available right now, so it fell to him.

"You'd better not fucking die before I get there, Neji," Tokuma muttered under his breath as he started out the door of his office. "Not when I'm on duty in this city."