Chapter 26: Song of the Sword-Dancers

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The guard was running from an open field and stroke a spear into the gates. Don't sleep, don't lay, we're going to war. Your girl has been taken by Khazars. I will slice those Khazars with a sword, I will take that girl for a wife. Young Sergei, are you sleeping, are you laying? I do not sleep, I do not lay, I tell myself.

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"One, two, three." Groans and scrapes. Hanako watched anxiously and tried not to wince at the heavy thuds of the crates setting down onto the wagon. She had hovered by all morning long, making sure that all of the product she had purchased was secured and in good condition. She tried not to fuss too much but wasn't very successful as she winced at every movement of the crates that was a little too rough.

The warehouse foreman, a heavy-set man with a great barrel of a chest and a gut that had probably grown with his position supervised with annoyance. "Listen, lady," he huffed, irritation lacing his voice when she told some of the workers to be more gentle with the crates, "my men can do their jobs a lot faster if you didn't flutter around like this. You're always welcome to wait in the offices while they do their job." The foreman was unfazed by the duo of tall shinobi looming over Hanako's shoulders, which impressed Hanako.

Aisu Sorachi had delivered on his promise. Fifty-two word processors had been delivered to the warehouse that the Nakano family used for their storage and distribution operations. All in good condition, all workable. No defects. Save for the odd rust-brown stains here and there, some of them in long spatter marks on the wooden crates. Hanako tried not to think about where those had come from. It was easier to pretend that Aisu was a third-party seller. Not – well not one of those.

She had already checked out of the Continental bright and early that morning. She would miss the luxuriously soft and comfortable king-size bed that she shared with no one but herself. As well as the fluffy hotel towels and robes. Hanako was a sucker for comfortable textiles. Fluffy blankets? Soft sheets, fluffy cotton bathrobe? Sign her up.

But now she was leaving that behind to return to her home in Hidden Leaves. A mix of emotions filled her with it. On one hand, she was going back to her home, her own office, her own place that she had just as she wanted it. On the other hand, it wasn't her home. Her office was spied on, and she constantly had houseguests whether she wanted them or not.

A heavy thud broke her out of her thoughts and Hanako had to resist the temptation to run over and make sure nothing had happened to the crates. It wasn't one of hers though, so she resisted the urge to jump up from her seat.

The loading didn't take the entire morning, but a good majority of it. Hanako was allotted three wagons for all of the computers, plus her personal belongings. The three drivers of the wagons worked for the Nakano family but came as part of the package. They were nice enough, two of them not much more than young boys from smaller villages who had jumped on the chance to escape their villages and make something more of themselves. The third was an older man with grey grizzled hair. Close to noon, once her three wagons were loaded and heavy with goods, and the rest of the wagons were loaded with other goods belonging to other sellers, they left. The mules struggled slightly with the weight but once the wagons were moving, they didn't have quite as much trouble.

Unlike her way in, Hanako left Ashiya with the merchant caravan instead of by the pedestrian gates.

Upon reaching the outskirts of the city, well beyond the tall walls, Nara Emi appeared, alighting on top of a high up boulder next to the road. A cry of surprise came from one of the drivers, but the other shinobi only greeted her. The caravan went on its way. Hanako was surprised to see the kunoichi, having thought that she was probably disguised amongst the merchants and drivers. The ninja set up with two far guards and one near guard.

The wagon train was longer this time. They had set out initially from Hidden Leaves with twenty-one wagons. This time, there were closer to thirty-five. However, this time their train consisted of several trading partners of Eiji's who were planning to branch off from them mid-way through. They were to have company for only part of their journey.

The blonde woman adjusted the floppy sunhat that she had bought in Ashiya. The hat combined with her long loose-fitting linen shirt kept the worst of the sun off of her skin and let what breeze there was cool her off. Still. She felt the sweat trickle down her chest and at the small of her back. It was going to be a long way to Hidden Leaves.

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They knew who they were dealing with, she would give them that. Most ninja would have attacked the first night. The fact that they didn't, kept out of range, told her that they had a basic feel for what her team was capable of.

They didn't attack the second day. Or the third. No, they waited until mid-day, on the fourth day of travel.

The civilians were dusty and tired, the client was exhausted. Which was good, it meant she wasn't broadcasting as much of that hypnotic chakra to throw them off of their game.

Hiroshi had sensed an enemy team sniffing around when they were in Ashiya the same night that their client had made contact with a known mobster and cut a deal. Emi thought at the time that they worked for the mobster. But a few things didn't quite add up. For instance, when the client brought shinobi to a meeting between them, Sorachi should have responded in kind and brought his own hired swords to match. But he hadn't.

And then there were the times on the streets when they tried to get close – tried to slip past Hiroshi's senses. They hadn't figured out yet that he was a sensor, or they wouldn't have followed so closely, trying to get close enough to the client to touch. Only a few neat tricks with bunshin and genjutsu had prevented there from being an all-out fight in the capital streets. Though they might be shinobi, they weren't the only ones employed in Fire Country and they had no intention of bringing the Fire Daimyo's personal shinobi guard down on them. Or his samurai guard, for that matter. Just because they refused to use genjutsu and ninjutsu in normal combat didn't mean that they couldn't or wouldn't if faced with a shinobi.

One of the hardest parts about this job was to ignore the senses-muddling effects of their client. It was difficult to ignore the sensations that told them that they were safe, that they should feel at home when they most certainly were not, and there was an enemy prowling at the gates. One of them had to play far-guard at almost all times in order to stay out of her range to keep a sharp eye out. It was one of the few things that had kept the strange team from making contact with their client. Emi was going to demand hazard pay on this one. Not even their ANBU trials had been this tricky.

So, the enemy shinobi waited. And they figured out that Emi was a Nara.

That they figured that out was inconvenient. It would have been much easier if they would have just attacked the first night and Emi could have used the infinite shadows of the night to crush their bodies. Would it have taken quite a bit of energy? Yes. Would it have saved a lot of time? Also yes.

But they didn't.

Emi cursed herself for not having expected the attack. It's what she would have done if she were going up against herself. Wait until they were in large, broad, and wide-open fields with the sun right above their heads on a cloudless day. The first bomb tag went off and spooked the mules, who then scattered. The client screamed in a shrill, blood-curdling screech. The drivers did their best to keep from panicking and to keep their animals under control, and the shinobi were denied constant cover from the wagons to rally behind.

With the sun so bright overhead, Emi could barely rouse her shadow enough to do much besides hold the first shinobi to appear in a blaze of crackling chakra in place. Stopping his momentum was difficult and almost snapped the shadow bind between them as soon as it started. She couldn't hold all three of them, however, and the other two rushed past her, knives already were thrown with bomb tags attached at Kohaku.

Kohaku managed to dodge one of the knives and deflect the other with his tanto before engaging one of them in close combat, dodging and stabbing around one another in a deadly dance. The last ninja went straight for the client in a flash of lightning chakra, only to be snared by one of Hiroshi's genjutsu and put slightly off course and missing her.

Emi gritted her teeth and held the first shinobi in place with her chakra, and forced him to take a step toward her, and then another. He fought her the entire way, forcing it to look like a strange slow walk against a river current. She raised a hand above her head and grasped the hilt of her sword, making him do the same except his fingers grabbed on to thin air. His face went red with effort as he fought her.

Behind her, her teammates flashed and dodged around their opponents with shunshin and substitutions. Several more paper bombs went off, adding to the chaos. The civilians shouted at one another, mostly warnings to get clear. Mules brayed in fear and the killing intent from the ninjas laid heavy in the air like a thick fog. There was no trace of the usual chakra from the client.

Emi didn't see it happen but knew when it did by the gleeful smile that came over the face of the ninja she was holding. She felt it a moment later when Hiroshi shouted 'no' and two chakra signatures streaked away from the battle. At the sound of her teammate in distress, her concentration slipped for just a moment, but as a fish on a tight line, that was all he needed to snap the connection between their shadows and pull away, and he was gone in a blue flash of a lightning shunshin.

Hiroshi was on the ground holding his leg, red blood spurting from between his fingers in time to his heart. Emi was on him in a moment, fingers flashing through the signs for a field healing jutsu. It was a clean slice through his femoral artery and didn't take long to heal, but that was all it took for Hiroshi to lose a lot of blood. By the time she was done, Emi's flak jacket was covered in her teammate's blood and he was pale and gasping on the ground.

Kohaku kneeled next to them, face grim and mouth downturned.

"He'll live," she pronounced once she was done. They didn't have time for more than a field patch-up healing, so she bound his thigh with bandages from her pack.

"They were following us," Hiroshi gasped. "Just beyond my range, I couldn't sense them until just before they attacked. They went straight for the client."

"You'll have to stay behind, Hiroshi-san," Emi pronounced as she straightened up. "The village is a day away in your condition. You're better off heading for the nearest outpost, probably half a day South. Get word to the village, our client was abducted by unknown shinobi. We're going after them."

"Did you get a good look at who it was?"

"Winter storms loom," Hiroshi replied.

Emi blanched. "Are you sure?" she pressed.

Hiroshi nodded. "Felt their signatures. All three of them."

"Fuck," Kohaku swore and stood up. "We gotta go, now."

Emi nodded grimly. "Relay it to the outpost. We're going."

Before they could turn to leave, Hiroshi stopped them. "Here," he said, handing over his supplies. "They were fast. You'll need it."

Kohaku pocketed the additional food and weapons gratefully. "Hope we won't, but all the same."

And with that, they were off. The hunters had become the hunted.

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The ground sped underneath Hanako in a blur. She was decidedly uncomfortable, draped across someone's shoulders in a fireman carry. Hard body armor dug into her chest and stomach and a grip like a steel band wound across her right knee and clamped onto her right wrist, holding her in place leaving the rest of her body to dangle in place.

She started to move and struggle in place but a slap to the back of her head stopped her along with a guttural warning in a language she didn't recognize. "Ne nado," it sounded like. They kept moving along at that fast speed, jumping up and over objects periodically in movements that made Hanako's stomach jump into her mouth.

When they stopped finally, around dusk, Hanako was unceremoniously dumped onto the ground in a hard drop that knocked the air out of her and definitely bruised the shoulder she landed on and finally got a good look at her abductors.

Three men, two of average build, one of much heavier build with arms like steel pythons. All three of them were wearing nondescript mottled greenish-brown cloaks with high collars and masks covering the lower halves of their faces. Two of them had ash-blonde hair, the third dark auburn hair and darker skin.

They spoke among themselves in a language Hanako didn't understand and hadn't heard before. For a moment she thought she was losing her mind and her grasp on Fire Dialect. It was only when one of them pointed to her and ordered in an accented voice for her to relieve herself before they started again that she realized this was one of the languages from a neighboring country. Which one, she had absolutely no clue.

She didn't hesitate to follow their orders and hunched down behind a log to do her business, though she was a little disgusted at the lack of hand sanitizer afterward. They gave her a small sip of water before the big one slung her over his shoulder and one of the blonde ones made strange shapes with his hands and the world turned black.

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Hiroshi ran. It ground at him that he let the enemy shinobi get past him. It galled him to his very core that he allowed his team to go on without him, without someone to sense enemies ahead. He felt like he was letting them go blind. They weren't though. Even now, he could feel the connection to the client through his tattoo getting further and further away. And he ran in the opposite direction.

He had placed her in one of the wagons concealed by a light genjutsu and used a bunshin with her likeness to act as a decoy and set genjutsu traps all around him that just slightly altered the sense of balance and spatial awareness, the best way to deal with a ninja that spammed shunshin. It had been working, too, until the ninja burst right through the bunshin which dispersed in a puff of smoke and the jig was up. After that, he was casting genjutsu as fast as he could while the enemy team dispersed them as soon as they could feel something settle. It took less than a minute for the enemy team to locate the client and stab him in the femoral artery when he tried to block them from taking her, and immediately escape. They weren't trying to kill her. They were trying to take her.

The fact that the strange ninjas escaped going North wasn't telling in and of itself. It only served to rule out a few villages, like Sand, Grass, and maybe Mist. The continental divide of the Grey Mountains had several passes through it to the north that they could be heading to. And even that didn't mean that it wasn't an independently contracted team, or even a village acting on behalf of a client. But they kept their uniforms covered and any identifying markings obscured which didn't bode well for the culprit being a client.

So, he ran. He ran to warn the village that they had lost their client to not one but three enemies. Enemies that had apparently deduced their abilities and acted accordingly. Hiroshi himself had been taken off-guard by the sudden appearances of the shinobi. They had dropped off of his senses for the past two days and he assumed that they lost interest and left. But no, they had been there the entire time, following just beyond his sensory range.

He had lost a lot of blood and was tired. So very tired, but the generous circulation of chakra made up for it, providing strength to his legs to keep moving. It would hurt later, pushing one's body like this always did, and he might be close to chakra exhaustion by the time he reached the outpost, but they would know exactly what happened.

Hiroshi ran.

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They ran all through the night, stopping only for a small rest and to eat their food and drink water. They were able to keep their speed more steadily than their opponents and had the benefit of being able to track much more accurately than they usually had the luxury of. Though the enemy shinobi didn't know it, their target was marked with a tracking seal linked to the entire ANBU of Hidden Leaves, letting them know her location at all times, no matter how far away. In truth, the village had probably already figured out the client had been abducted by the abrupt change in speed and direction. Hiroshi just needed to let them know who had taken her.

The enemy shinobi moved in faster spurts of speed than they were capable of but conversely had to stop and rest more often.

They bounded and bounced through the treetops of Fire Country all night. When, near dawn, they started to veer east and crossed over the Ishikari river. Emi cursed as she realized what direction they were headed in. Hot Water country didn't have a shinobi village of its own, but the countries beyond it most certainly did.

Emi and Kohaku were both starting to falter. They had already been on the road for several days without full supplies and the kidnappers were setting a brutal pace. Their team wasn't a high-level ANBU team. They didn't even specialize in protection. They were an intelligence and infiltration team. They all three knew that this mission was assigned as a test of their broader skills, but it was never meant to go wrong like this.

Emi thought as she ran. The fact that the client was assigned an ANBU team in the first place meant that she was important to the village somehow, or someone high up in the village. ANBU was the ranks for the shinobi who carried out the will of the village itself, not beholden to the village's clients. Emi wagered that she was important to the village based on the sealing brand that chained her to ANBU like a leash.

The three of them were also low level within ANBU, only having joined the previous year and they were not privy to all of the organization's secrets. So far, their duties had been stressful but nothing they couldn't handle. Emi knew that would change as they progressed through the ranks, but for now, they were low level and weren't handed anything they couldn't accomplish. As they ascended, their tattoos, which were really seals, would be added onto and additional levels of clearance unlocked, giving them access to more expansive libraries of information, higher intel clearances, more dangerous training grounds and weapons, and importantly, an awareness of the important assets they were to protect throughout the village. Before this mission, they were given a temporary addition for the client's seal, which they all three expected to be removed after this mission was over. After all, it was at least four levels above themselves.

If they allowed their client to be successfully abducted, regardless of their team being outmatched, their career progressions would be in jeopardy. They would probably be demoted, or removed from ANBU altogether, and returned to their previous positions among the chuunin ranks.

Emi felt her energy levels running low and signaled to Kohaku to stop so that they could rest a moment. He was as out of breath as she was and gave her a grateful nod. The stopped under a large tree and Emi checked the location of the client through her tattoo. They appeared to have stopped. She made a quick decision. If they weren't going any further, it made sense for her to give her teammate a rest as well. They wouldn't do any good to retrieve the client if they were too tired to fight when they caught up. They had been awake and running for the past two days and were reaching their limit.

They started a small fire and prepared their field rations and a spot to rest. Kohaku took the first watch while Emi slept.

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A/N: I've finally got a week off from work! And so I wrote a new chapter. Honestly it's been super relaxing and wonderful, and Christmas was amazing. I really hope these holidays have been good to you guys as well. In the spirit of Christmas, here's a little gift from me to you. Enjoy it! I can't guarantee when the next chapter will be out, probably the next time I have time off from work and can write.

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Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!