Chapter 50: Blind Hermit

Sasuke rolled under the glaive, working to figure out where this kunoichi would strike next. She was snakelike in her motions and was difficult for him to predict. Unfortunately, her glaive gave her a longer reach than he was used to. Long-range weapons were something he didn't have a lot of experience countering. Maybe he would see if Tenten would be willing to help him remedy this.

This kunoichi didn't seem to have an area of expertise: one moment she used her glaive, the next she lashed out with a hail of watery bullets to cancel out his katon jutsu, and after that she forced him to dispel her genjutsu. The horrible thing was that she didn't use handseals for some reason. All of her ninjutsu and genjutsu attacks came without warning and from nowhere and everywhere. Also, her chakra aura was strange looking. It didn't deplete when she did use techniques, though it did drain when she used taijutsu. Where had he seen this pattern before…?

Indignation interrupted his musings as the glaive slashed deeply into his shoulder. He snarled and ignored the wound so that he would not become victim to another.

"Ah, Zabuza dear, it's wonderful to have the chance to slit your throat," she crooned at she took pot shots at the man with kunai since he was hanging back. Sasuke had every intention of telling the Hokage about his lack of assistance. "After what you dared to try, it will be a pleasure. Do you have any idea what the size the bounty on your head is?"

"No," grunted the former nukenin passively, pulling his sword off his back as passing it from hand to hand as Sasuke flashed out of range of her wickedly sharp glaive. "Don't even try to tell me that's why you're here. You didn't even know that I would be coming."

"True," she said in a singsong tone as Sasuke gathered the chakra to dispel her latest genjutsu weaving. "This meeting is just an added bonus to my assignment. You live only on borrowed time. I intend to collect the interest." She was fading out of sight and nothing he was doing was countering this. What the hell?

"Then what is that asshole trying to do?" asked Zabuza, batting aside kunai with the flat of his blade.

Sasuke looked hard at their point of origin, but there was nothing. If she had been there, she was already gone.

She laughed, her voice echoing oddly around the clearing, as though she was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. "Wouldn't you like to know? Stick around and maybe I'll tell you before I cut off your head to bring back home for Mizukage-sama!"

Sasuke's eyes scoured the clearing, but her laughter faded away, leaving only the wind rustling the trees and grasses the only sound his ears could pick up on. Damn.

"Don't bother, Poky," said Zabuza, slinging his sword behind his back again. "She's not here. She never was. It's not her style to put herself in danger. That was Mizu Bunshin."

Now Sasuke knew where he had seen that pattern before: Naruto's clones, the ones that had only done taijutsu, had had a similar chakra aura and drain pattern. How had he missed that?

"She's put her own spin on it over the years so that she never has to fight directly. She's gotten even better with it."

Sasuke snarled. He would have been impressed when Zabuza ignored his rage had he not been so pissed off. "Why didn't you tell me?" He had half a mind to redeem himself by taking Zabuza out.

"Calm down, brat. I wanted to get a feel for how much your fighting style has changed since we last faced off and how much she had advanced. You did a good job as a guinea pig. You still haven't got much of a killer instinct though. You held back. You could have destroyed her clone six times."

Sasuke flushed with embarrassment and rage. No killer instinct…!

"You're too soft. You won't make it as a ninja if you aren't willing to take down opponents when they get in your way. Compassion is for those that have time to fix things and don't have to worry about knives in the back. Compassion is for civilians, not ninja. We're tools made to kill. Accept it and learn to do it well enough that you don't get killed in turn."

"Who are you to talk? You didn't kill us the first time you saw us even though you could have." It stung Sasuke's pride to admit it, but it was true. "You played with us. You could have sliced Tazuna and my team to ribbons during that fight, but you didn't." Sasuke felt a rush of satisfaction when Zabuza glared back, his face hardening, but it didn't dispel the wrath that was roiling through him.

"Back to the tower," ordered the jounin in a dead tone. "We need to know that Haku, your teammate, and that dog haven't gotten into trouble. That kunoichi is done for tonight."

Sasuke glared at the spot where Zabuza had stood, helplessly enraged with nothing to take it out on anymore. He had been brutally disgraced. How had he not noticed that the woman was a clone? He had let his emotions cloud his judgement. His mother would be disappointed when she heard about this. She always insisted a cool head was needed in battle for true understanding of an opponent's moves to be reached. Shame left a bitter taste on his tongue as he clenched his fists. He had been improving; he knew that he had been. Why was he still so far behind though?

Orochimaru had wanted him, he remembered. Naruto had told him that the slimy git had offered the clone training, but it had been odd. There had only been signs that he had wanted to bite him and take his sister away.

Still mulling over that, Sasuke sprinted after the probationary jounin. Sasuke wondered if perhaps he would have realized that the woman was a clone if he had trained under Orochimaru.


Sakura bit back a scream of pure pain when the knife lanced through her thigh muscle. She stumbled back and raised her hands to try to catch herself. She was almost relieved when her back hit a tree trunk until a strangled shout from Haku made her look up. She regretted it when a kunai pinned her to the lonely pine tree through her left palm.

Pain! Fury! Terror! Pain!

Her mind couldn't cope with this agony, so she whimpered for a few moments, her nerves screaming bloody murder as she desperately tried to gather enough chakra to perform a healing technique to stop the river of blood running down over her knee into her sandal, making shifting her weight to try to pull the stake out of her hand without moving that appendage too much a very squishy process. She hiccupped as she cried from the bitter pain, using her right hand to yank out the dagger and to heal the damage to those essential muscles in her leg.

She was so slow! So much training under Shishou and she still took so long to mend a simple knife wound that didn't feel quite so simple when she was the victim. Countless hours at the hospital and it still took so many agonizing seconds to get her leg to stop shrieking as Haku fended off the jounin as best he could without her.

Useless! Why was she always so damn useless?

"Hurry, Sakura," called Haku with fragile sounding calm as he wove through the hail of shuriken and deflected those that were on a course that would send them thudding into her. "You are a sitting target."

His pleas didn't help her shattering mental state much. When at last her leg was mended, she bit down hard on her lip and gingerly grasped the kunai hilt. The tiny increase in pressure from her grip made her teeth sink into the flesh of her lower lip, adding minutely to her pain.

Haku's warning shout made her waver. It was horrifying to watch the kunai and shuriken coming. She could see them spinning or simply flying straight at her with deadly intent through the darkness only because the weak light of the moon reflected off their metallic surfaces. Every instinct in her screamed that she had to move, but she couldn't without damaging her left hand beyond her skill to heal. She dug her last three kunai out and threw them awkwardly, deflecting some of the hail, but not enough. Fear froze her and adrenaline-fuelled impulse battled to make her move; fear won. She wailed when Haku failed to deflect a shuriken, and it bit deeply into her side before coming to a halt deep in her flesh.

Haku's renewed and almost frantic sounding pleas for her to unpin herself were the only thing that made her grasp the kunai through the haze of agony and wriggle it out of the tree and out of her hand.


Sasuke winced at Sakura's tortured howls as they crackled through the radio. Kakashi would have to wait. Zabuza changed course as well despite the slight sense that both of them had that not all was right at the tower. The beam of light from the lighthouse wasn't making proper passes through the fog, but neither of them cared all that much with Haku's entreaties for speed and Sakura's whimpers coming over the radio. The only good thing about being able to hear this was that they knew that the other two were still alive and kicking somewhat, though Sakura didn't sound like she was doing much kicking at the moment.

Worry gave him the push he needed to get ahead of Zabuza and to reach the clearing first, one of his kunai nailing the enemy ninja at the base of his skull. The man dispersed into a puddle of water, but Sasuke was already after the next clone while he searched for the location of the original. Haku's near sigh of relief crackled over the radio and mollified Sasuke's earlier embarrassment to an extent that allowed him to stop acting like a crazed animal and truly take stock of the situation. He grimaced when he saw the damage that Sakura had sustained even as Zabuza arrived on the scene by bisecting a bunshin almost casually as his eyes flicked over Haku, checking to make sure the chuunin was not badly hurt.

"I thought you'd do better," he grumbled as he stalked into the woods, hunting down the source.

Haku hung his head and trailed after him, leaving Sasuke to glare at their retreating backs as he closed the distance to his fallen teammate. She was crumpled at the base of a pine, her maimed hand cradled against her chest even as a shuriken wound in her side bled sluggishly, staining her chuunin vest red in the dim moonlight. Her right hand was surrounded by a green glow, healing both wounds at once. Sasuke was impressed by how quickly she was minimizing the damage. Watching her repair herself reminded him of the deep shoulder wound he had suffered from the glaive. He had stupidly run right into her path. The remembrance made his fists clench with shame.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice wobbling dangerously and interspersed with harsh hiccups. "I'm sorry."

She was apologizing for being a burden and for allowing herself to get hurt. It was odd finally to be able to understand her, if only just a little bit. He found that he didn't like it very much. "My shoulder," he said, bending his stiff neck a little to allow her to see that even he had gotten hurt.

The only good thing about the whole wound was that at least the blood running down his back wouldn't significantly stain his dark clothes, though it was dying his chuunin vest a rusty brown. Damn, he would have to patch up these clothes. It hurt his pride to admit injury to her, but she stopped crying and realized what she needed to do very quickly. He was relieved when the pain he had been blocking out with adrenaline actually receded. He grunted thanks and jerked his head, indicating that they had to head after the two probationary ninja.

She wiped away her stupid tears and nodded as she got to her feet and ran alongside him again. It was good to have her there: he was used to it now. He allowed a small smirk to curl the corner of his mouth where she could see it. Even he could tell that she was low enough that she needed some sort of comfort. Being around Ryuuka had taught him a little bit about girls. He knew that she had noticed it when she shook off her bad mood and picked up the pace beside him. They had both shamed themselves, but they would make it up to everyone and especially to themselves. Sasuke sort of understood why Naruto idiotically always smiled now. It was almost amazing how much a simple half smile could influence someone.


Zabuza looked damn talkative compared to this Kiri-nin.

When the enemy simply ran away, Kakashi had to admit he was a little nonplussed. What the hell? The man had been about to level him with a huge watery bullet and suddenly he was hightailing it away. His suspicions about the motivations for this attack began to solidify. This was a distraction for something. He chased after the jounin until he noticed that the lighthouse wasn't performing its function properly. With worry eating away at him, he wavered between defending the tower and tracking down the fleeing jounin.

Making his decision, he called Pakkun out of the fog.


When Sakura saw that Haku and Zabuza had somewhat cornered the man that had caused her such agony, a malicious smile grew over her lips. Control and compassion withered.

Sasuke sported a similarly wicked grin. She wondered what had happened to make him this way as she wrathfully gathered the chakra in her fist and feet and began sprinting forwards, ducking and twisting away from the hail of kunai, shuriken, and watery bullets even as Haku sought to bring the jounin down with a flurry of icy senbon. Sakura almost bellowed her frustration to the heavens when Sasuke used Shunshin to bypass all of the weaponry and casually slammed Chidori into the jounin's shoulder, his red eyes creepy. That damn bastard was going to steal her chance to get retribution!

The Kiri-nin gasped as the lightning crackled through his system and tore through muscle even as it punched through and shattered bone. Not to be outdone, Sakura jabbed two chakra-charged fingers into the flesh covering his kidneys and watched impassively as he went down, ignoring Haku and Zabuza as they turned away to deal with a new arrival that definitely wasn't a bunshin.

Remembering that this was supposed to be a diplomatic mission of a sort, Sakura deflected Sasuke's next strike by knocking his hand aside and pulled some wire out of her pouch to tie the man up. Kaka-sensei would want somebody to question.

When Sasuke glared, she stared back coolly. "Stop it," she told him in the icy tones she reserved for Naruto when he had passed beyond the realm of idiocy into the land of insanity. Sasuke didn't appreciate the implication in the slightest. "I don't want to have to patch him up any more than I already have to."

Huffing, her teammate spun away to join the fight again the other Kiri-nin as she looped the wires around the jounin's wrists and ankles before moving onto his knees and elbows. Who knew how flexible this stork man was? It was better to be safe than sorry. Sasuke-kun could be so petulant, even worse than Ryuuka-chan, she mused as she tightened the loops to the point just before they would cut off blood flow and cause damage. She didn't want to have to heal this bastard more than necessary. It was enough that she had probably severely damaged his kidneys. He would suffer for what he had put her through for quite a while until she got around to patching that up.

He must have expended quite a lot of chakra on those clones. He had gone down too easily. Stamina obviously wasn't his thing either. That or the deep wound in this man's thigh Zabuza had probably inflicted had bled more than he could handle. Several senbon had nearly hit vital points as well. That would have slowed him down considerably.

Pleased that her assessment hadn't revealed that this man was only a chuunin that had managed to damage her so badly, Sakura hauled the prisoner over to a tree where she could better defend him if that Kiri-nin got past Sasuke, Haku, and Zabuza. They seemed to be driving him off together though. He had looked worn when he arrived. She wondered if he had run into Sasuke and Zabuza earlier or if he had managed to escape Kaka-sensei.


Kakashi grimaced and wondered if maybe he shouldn't have sent Pakkun to trail his opponent. His more accurate nose would have been useful in figuring out which of the enemy ninja were responsible for this gruesome scene. Kakashi had never joined the interrogation squad for some very good reasons: just observing this sort of mutilation made him sick. Quick kills he could handle, but not this sick crap. No wonder civilians were so wary of ninja.

The poor bastard had passed out from the excruciating pain. Kakashi was glad that he had been allowed that small mercy. Hanging by his ankle from the outer wall of the tower really wasn't fun, especially not when the man was secured only by a kunai driven through his ankle like a meat hook. What twisted fucker had done this?

Kakashi turned back to the terrified soldiers that had discovered this shortly after Sakura and Zabuza had left the tower. They had been forced to watch, unable to help. The wires were beyond their ability to untie or cut and were secured by a kunai driven into the mortar between two stones at a point only a ninja could have reached since there were no windows or platforms nearby for a civilian to stand on. Kakashi walked down the wall and freed the poor bastard swaying limply in the wind. "Is he the only one?"

It was a relief when the commander nodded, his weathered skin almost grey.

Sakura better have survived; she would be needed to patch up this man's ankle. Slightly worried at how cold that thought had sounded, he shook off ANBU's influence. This was a regular mission, not a black ops operation. He was allowed to care. Refocusing, he assessed the injury again. There was no way he would be able to repair this damage. The kunai had punched through the soft tissue just behind the joint, almost severing the Achilles tendon in the process.

"We have field medic here," insisted the commander, and Kakashi stepped aside to let the almost green-looking man get to work.

"I'll have one of my people fix him," Kakashi promised quietly. "Sakura is a healer in training. She'll be able to reduce the damage considerably."

The commander nodded his thanks, still looking as though he wouldn't be getting much untroubled sleep for a while. Again, Kakashi could relate. He felt a lot of pity for this garrison. This was probably the most action they had seen in their entire lives. They were the less skilled soldiers: this post was primarily a watch point used to prevent unsanctioned landings of sea vessels that were trying to avoid paying the Daimyo's tax on all imports and exports… Ah.

He moved away from the scene to get a bit more space near the bonfire and the mirror as he gathered the necessary chakra to make a mass summoning. It would be a good thing to see if Akino was all right while the rest went hunting.


"Juro," growled Zabuza as Sasuke allowed himself to skid back a few metres, "what are you and Saito up to?"

The Kiri-nin stayed just as silent as he had been for the entire fight, focused on getting past them to secure his downed fellow jounin or to kill him to spare him from being subjected to interrogation.

Sasuke kept up a steady barrage with Housenka no Jutsu while Zabuza countered any attempts to simply barrel past their line with his sword. The screech of that huge sword scraping against the Kiri jounin's ninjatou made Sasuke wince. Haku zipped around the outer edges of the fight, his senbon peppering the bulky man called Juro whenever an opening presented itself.

This man was skilled, about at Kakashi's level when he got really serious, which Sasuke hadn't seen much of. He had heard about it though: ANBU gossip did tend to get passed around in his kitchen. Gekkou Yuugao could be incredibly loose-tongued if she drank enough. She apparently trusted the other women with stories of Kakashi's amazing feats along with other battle anecdotes from other known ANBU members. So far, Yuugao's trust had been merited. Sasuke was very glad that Zabuza and Haku were around to help him with this. Even through his pride, he could admit that this man would have crushed him into paste unless he had been exceptionally clever.

His thoughts cost him. A large, watery bullet that was too fast to truly avoid clipped him and sent him tumbling back. Hissing when his broken arm made itself known, he scrambled to his feet, ignoring his protesting ankle, and managed to use Shunshin to get out of the way of the next attack before Zabuza stepped in with a brutal slash that would have separated Juro's head from his meaty shoulders if he hadn't ducked in time. Pain clouded Sasuke's thoughts as Haku took advantage of Juro's crouch to stick several senbon in and near his spine.

Juro grunted and retreated to the other end of the bluff, where he stood panting and glaring, blood dribbling with gravity's pull from dozens of points. When Zabuza pursued him, sword upraised, Juro backed off. Haku finally managed to get him running by sticking him through the ear with three needles viciously. The near miss of his brain seemed to wake Juro up to the fact that he was not going to win this battle. Scowling darkly, he started running at a speed Sasuke was confident he could have matched had he not been in such bad shape.

Haku started making moves to pursue until Zabuza's finger twitched. "Why not?" asked the older boy, his voice much more impassive than his furious eyes. Zabuza had not come through the encounter entirely unscathed. Sasuke had the feeling that Juro would have been made to pay dearly for those wounds if Haku had been allowed to hunt him down.

"This is a 'diplomatic' mission," Zabuza said. "The Hokage will slap that seal back on us if we kill anyone without 'due cause.' I have no intention of going back to being a butcher only for pigs."

Maybe not being like Zabuza was a good thing, Sasuke mused through the haze of pain as he stumbled on a badly twisted ankle over to Sakura. Okay, maybe it was a good thing she was a good medic. If she patched him up, maybe he would tell her so.

"What Juro has done would not qualify?" asked Haku almost incredulously. Sasuke watched the older boy almost twitch with badly suppressed fury. He had never seen Haku lose control like this. "He injured you. He has badly injured Sasuke. These crimes alone should earn him some punishment."

"He'll get it soon enough," growled Zabuza, tucking his sword out of the way and passing Sasuke on his way over to Sakura. He slung their captive over his shoulder and glanced down at Sakura. "Patch up Poky and we'll go."

She nodded and set to mending Sasuke's arm and ankle.

Zabuza was going to pay dearly when this mission was over if he kept using that name.


Kakashi almost relaxed when the rest of his team approached the tower. He ambled out to meet them halfway and was rather startled to note that they had managed to nab one of the rats. Huh, well that certainly made things a little easier and a lot harder. Three guesses who was going to get stuck interrogating that lout… Sometimes, he really hated his job.

He nodded at appropriate points as they reported the details of their various fights, mentally noting the strengths and weaknesses of the other two jounin and what parts of their narrations didn't corroborate properly. Sasuke, something had happened to Sasuke that they weren't telling him about. It sounded like it had been rather embarrassing for his protégé. Zabuza would definitely be elaborating on that later. Blackmail material was always fun.

"Sakura, go up to the mirror room and see to those there with the medic." He could see the questions pressing at her, but she restrained herself to a quick nod before scaling the height to the window of that room.

"Kakashi," said Zabuza just as he was about to carry his burden into the tower, "how about letting Haku and I handle extracting information out of Fumio here? Haku's got training in that area and we both know this ninja fairly well, or we did before we left Kiri."

Kakashi considered this offer. It would definitely spare him the need to remember the training he had received in physical interrogation tactics. He doubted that this Fumio would respond to mental games unless an expert like Ibiki was working on it. Kakashi was stuck with brutal physical torture, which definitely wasn't high on his to-do list for the year. Haku's needles would work better.

"Go to it." He shrugged before turning to Sasuke. "Maa, that wasn't very fun." He raised a brow when his student nodded sullenly, his eyes distant and his mind obviously reviewing some pretty painful memories if the slightly pinched look on Sasuke's face was any indication. "How's your arm?"

"Fine."

Sakura must have done a thorough healing on it. She would be paying for that later. Kakashi almost sighed and rubbed the back of his head. When was she going to get it through her head that completely healing was a bad idea? Cells and tissues could develop resistance after a while and then make her job more difficult. Letting the body try to heal itself was always a better idea, and it saved chakra for emergencies. He only knew this because he had heard Rin rant on about it once such a long time ago… He closed that line of thought. Brooding on a mission was a bad idea. That could wait until he was back in Konoha in front of the memorial stone.

"What did you think of that Saito kunoichi's attacks again?" he asked. Maybe Sasuke would let something slip now that everyone else was gone.

"She was skilled. According to Zabuza, she uses an extremely advanced form of the Mizu Bunshin technique that can hold its shape in the face of more damage than a normal version of the jutsu. I can verify this. The chakra pattern was very similar to Naruto's stronger clones'. She wields a glaive, as I told you," Kakashi suppressed a grin at the obvious annoyance in that statement. Sasuke must have suspected his motivations for having him repeat himself. Oh well, at least the boy was learning. "She is very quick with it, and her attacks have considerable strength behind them."

He detailed his impressions about her lack of specialization before he added his final thoughts. "She will target Zabuza most likely. She mentioned a bounty on his head, and her grudge against him seems rather personal. It is likely she is close to the Mizukage in some way considering her words. Her attempt at vengeance is likely to be brutal."

It would have been amusing how Sasuke, a self-named avenger, could pass judgement on another seeking retribution, but it was only too likely Sasuke was right. This Saito sounded as though she would be trouble.

"Was she good-looking?" asked Kakashi. There was a lot of doubt hanging around. What had Sasuke done to make him doubt himself so much? Overconfidence had always been his biggest flaw after arrogance. Pride must have been severely bruised for Sasuke to be acting in a way that made the existence of a problem so obvious.

The way Sasuke froze and then twitched irritably made Kakashi smile. It was good to still be able to ruffle this asexual kid's feathers. Sasuke really needed to lighten up and admit that he was starting to understand why Kakashi liked his books so much. Of course, Kakashi knew very well that such an admission would never happen: Sasuke's pride would kill him if he ever tried to the get the words out. It was fun to poke the kid over it though.

"Hn."

It took a lot of self-control not to laugh at that monosyllabic reply. At least he knew just how much he had knocked his student off balance. Sasuke only resorted to "hn" when stumped for a better answer or when irritated beyond endurance. Eloquent responses had been drilled into Sasuke's head ever since the Massacre since he was now heir.

What it meant in regards to the kunoichi though, Kakashi didn't know. It could have been interpreted in three basic ways: "I don't care" being the foremost and fairly likely, "WTF?" being the second most likely and most in keeping with Sasuke's mood, and "damn hot" being the absolute least likely, but definitely the most amusing.

Kakashi chose to misinterpret it as the third. "Ah, pity I wasn't around for that fight then. No wonder Zabuza just stood around and watched. He should have taped it for the rest of us, though we would have had to keep Sakura out of the room. I don't think she swings that way for some reason."

Kakashi mentally patted himself on the back when Sasuke cringed. Ah, it was so much fun to be able to prod his stuffiest student around like this. Naruto reacted well too, but he was a pervert too to a degree, so it wasn't quite as amusing. Sakura had a good girl image to maintain, and she got very violent if pushed too far… No, prodding Sasuke was the safest of his current options.

Content that Sasuke was focused on something other than his doubt, Kakashi ambled back into the tower. He slipped into the room the commander had given them and found Haku inspecting his needles as Zabuza reworked Fumio's bonds.

"He's regaining chakra quickly," said the ex-nukenin.

Kakashi nodded and pulled out a pen and some ink so he could work on the standard chakra-draining seal that was used by interrogation to keep subjects quiet and pliant. ANBU agents were required to know it just in case. He really hoped Haku knew his stuff as well as he claimed. Messing up this jounin too severely was likely to turn this "diplomatic" mission into a coastal defence mission against the Mizukage's forces. That was the last thing Konoha needed.

When Haku nodded and stared detachedly down at Fumio, Kakashi almost shivered. Haku had definitely learned how to freeze his heart better. There was no sign of the empathetic boy in those eyes. The slight shiver in those shoulders convinced Kakashi that recommending this kid to Ibiki would be a bad plan though.

This wasn't going to be a very pleasant night. The warning twitch in his hands warned him that his fragile mental state wasn't going to be helped by observing this. He could handle this though. This was a standard mission, not some sick and twisted assignment conjured by the depraved minds that hired ANBU.


Sasuke strove to block out the muffled howls and focused on keeping watch. He really didn't think that those jounin would be coming back so soon, but who knew how many of them there were? He sat down in the meditation position and shut his eyes halfway, saving them for when he actually needed them since they were aching slightly from overuse. There was no moonlight now to help him out; the clouds had completely covered the sliver that had cast light so weakly when he and Sakura had been drawing maps of the immediate area. Instead, he placed his trust on his ears for the moment, adjusting his position so that the wind was not all he could hear. It was because of his position that he noticed one of Kakashi's summon dogs walking gingerly out of the tower and over to him.

"Sasuke."

Sasuke nodded, used to Kakashi's summons knowing his name by now. Pakkun was the one he was the one he saw the most often, but the others popped by from time to time in training. "Akino, right?"

The mutt nodded cautiously, as though not quite sure if the motion wouldn't pain him.

"Why are you here?"

"Kakashi summoned me."

Sasuke resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

The mutt panted a doggy version of a grin before elaborating. "He summoned me again so Sakura could patch me up. I got on the wrong side of a guy's ninjatou." Juro must have gotten him then. "It's a good thing my ruff is so thick. I probably would have been paralyzed otherwise. That girl can't heal broken spines, right?"

Sasuke shrugged. He had never really taken the time to ask Sakura just how proficient she was. He had assumed that she would handle it as it came up. Now that he thought about it, that was a very stupid assumption. He would have to fix that.

"Either way, I'm grateful to her," said the mutt as he curled up at Sasuke's side. "Kakashi sent me out here to keep you company and to help you keep watch. He said that two tired fighters will keep each other awake and alert better than just one."

Ah, that explained things. Sasuke was torn between being grateful and miffed. He settled on a balance between the two and huffed quietly even when the mutt panted a laugh and set his head on his paws.

"Were you the reason she was sent up after we got back?" he asked quietly after a long pause.

"Partly," said Akino, obviously more tired than he was willing to admit. "There was a man that got on the wrong side of the kunoichi. The scent on the victim is the same as the oldest enemy scent on your clothes. I was also sent down here to check that out. The kunoichi must have come here before meeting up with you. She frightened the men here pretty badly."

The old mutt stayed quiet for quite a while. "They're playing with all of us. We outnumber them, but they are stronger, and they know it. They have the advantage because they have nothing to protect the way we do. They are free to act as they will from where they will while we are tied here. This isn't a good position at all. While partly defendable from the sea approach, ninja aren't limited in the same ways a ship is. This place is a sitting target just tempting them to send the entire thing tumbling into the sea."

It was odd to be given lessons in strategy by a dog. Sasuke nodded, unable to contradict the mongrel's logic. The phantom throb in his arm told him it was only too true.


Sakura curled up in the corner behind the mirror and plugged her ears in a futile attempt to block out another round of screams and whimpers. There was no way she was going to get any sleep in what was left of the night. Oh, she hated this. She really hated this part of her job.

She hadn't considered this aspect of being a kunoichi when she had signed up for the Academy. In battle, she could deal with hurting people, but having them tied up and helpless and still inflicting such terrible pain on them made something twist inside her and made her sick to her stomach. She had had to heave the meagre contents of her belly out the window during the first hour, and she could still taste the vomit on her tongue despite the amount of water she had gulped down to try and sluice the remains away.

The mirror attendant looked just as jumpy and sick as she felt as he pushed the mirror methodically through its passes. There should have been a mechanism to accomplish this, and she was pretty sure that a mirror wasn't what lighthouses actually used in most cases, but there was a pile of broken pieces in the corner of the room that had probably been the original mechanism. When she worked up the will to ask about it, the young man jumped, startled.

"It was destroyed at about the same time the cliff was broken out from under our feet," the man stuttered. "We couldn't fix it—no one here knows how—so the commander has us on manual duty until the technician arrives to repair it and brings a lens with him. This mirror was all we could find in the piles of useless spare parts that we could figure out how to use. It's not as good, but it's better than nothing, and the tower can't go down simply because we don't have a nice rotating lens to make life easier.

"We had a techie, but he disappeared a couple weeks before the mechanism was destroyed. No one was able to find him. He hasn't even washed up against the cliffs during low tide, so we don't even know if he's dead." The man was clearly terrified.

Sakura couldn't blame him, not with the wails echoing up from the ground floor.


Kakashi smiled grimly when dawn finally brought some results. He hoped the tower's other inmates had managed to get some sleep. Haku certainly knew his stuff in a way that was almost frightening. Just what had Zabuza been teaching him after the duo had fled Kiri? Shrugging off those futile musings, he whistled softly for Akino since he was the only summon still hanging around. The mutt scratched at the door a moment later, and Haku let him in on his way out to clean his needles.

"Ah, are you up for a long run or would you rather bear through a transfer?" he asked the mutt with feigned calm and joviality. It was hardly Akino's fault that he had had such a rough night. "I'd send Uuhei, but he's probably quite a ways south by now."

"Running is better," insisted the mutt, and Kakashi finally felt his good humour returning. Akino always insisted being summoned was the worst thing since overly processed dog biscuits. Kakashi couldn't have transferred him anyway: there was no one in Konoha capable of receiving him.

"Right, then I need you to take a message back to Konoha for me."