Chapter 28: Better Not
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I know it's hard to admit it that you found love. It's hard to stay in it, but he's better than anyone I've seen you with before. So, talk to me, tell me 'bout all your insecurities and I'm tryna make you see what I see: You're happier than I've ever seen you.
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A chain of events had been set into motion. Senju Hiroshi had come stumbling into one of the Hidden Leaf's further outposts, words falling from his lips about the ambush and subsequent kidnapping of his team's client. While a medic saw to his wounds which he had mostly reopened in his rush, another shinobi took his report and sent it off to the village.
Upon the message's receipt, it was immediately taken to the Missions Office, where a secretary made note of the mission's code number and forwarded it to the Operations department. There, another secretary forwarded it personally to the Office of the Fire Shadow, where the Fire Shadow's secretary handed it off to the ANBU attaché that oversaw the more subtle operations.
The report itself was bland of details, taken in a rush, but it did contain several keywords. Winter Storms Loom. By the time the report made it to the Lord Fire Shadow's desk, his advisors had already been summoned and briefs written out. In the dead of night, they began to arrive, one by one. Nara Shikuro, the ANBU commander, Senju Itama, the Jounin Commander, and the Fire Shadow's council: Utatane Koharu, Mitokado Homura, and Shimura Danzo.
They gathered in one of the war rooms of the Fire Shadow Tower and began briefing themselves over the mission and the background around a large table engraved with a map of the Elemental Nations while they waited for the Fire Shadow's arrival. They murmured to one another as they familiarized themselves.
The door to the war room opened. The assembled councilors fell silent and stood as one in respect of their leader. Sarutobi Hiruzen looked as though he had been awoken in his sleep but was alert regardless. He sat down at the head of the table and nodded his head to his council.
"Be seated." As a unit, they all sat down again. "Report."
"Approximately ten hours ago," began Senju Itama, "One of our chuunin teams hired to escort a businesswoman to Ashiya and back to Hidden Leaves was ambushed. The client in question was abducted. One of the chuunin was incapacitated and stayed back to relay a request for backup, while the other two engaged pursuit of the abductors."
As he spoke, Sarutobi Hiruzen's eyes darted over the documents in front of him, quickly reading the brief.
"Which team?" Sarutobi inquired.
"One of ours," Nara Shikuro intoned. "An intel/infil squad still in their trainee stage. It looks like they were ambushed by a combat squad and couldn't hold up against them." Not without time to prepare, he mentally added.
"Why were they placed on a chuunin-ranked escort mission?" Hiruzen could already hazard an accurate guess but he wanted to hear the justification from his ANBU commander's lips.
"Testing their other skills, sir. We wanted them to be prepared for more than just infil missions."
Hiruzen's lips tightened. "The attackers?"
"Unconfirmed, but the trainee said that Winter Storms Loom."
"And the client?"
"Yamada Hanako, the civilian accountant that –"
Hiruzen cut him off. "I know the one. I personally authorized her travel." The Fire Shadow pinched the bridge of his nose. "Do we still have a location on her?"
"The tracking seal is still in place," interjected Mitokado Homura. "At this distance we can't pinpoint the exact location, but the last known trajectory was north east toward the border of Land of Hot Springs."
"Just how valuable is the asset?" he asked Utatane Koharu, leaning over and speaking lowly.
"Very, sir." She replied instantly. "The operational performance of our higher level ANBU squads has gone up since we placed her under guard. Mission completion rates have increased, and casualties decreased as our operatives have taken less risks. Suicides are down as well."
Danzo coughed to clear his voice before he spoke. "We cannot let this go unanswered. First, Hidden Clouds tries to abduct our Jinchuriki, and now they come for one of our assets? The Ai goes too far with his policies of bloodline theft."
"This one isn't the Ai. He's folding to internal pressure," Utatane declared. "The current Ai cannot keep his position without placating the nationalists. It's making him sloppy. Cloud used to be more competent in our days."
"I don't particularly care if he's on unstable ground with his own village," Danzo muttered. "The fact remains that Cloud thinks that they can take whomever whenever they want. This cannot go unanswered. If we relent now, they will only be emboldened and brazen." The other councilors nodded their heads in agreement.
"Whatever the retaliation, it can't be open," said Senju Itama. "We're too fresh out of the last war, and the daimyo will have something to say about it if they see this."
"What of Land of Lightning's daimyo? Shouldn't they be coming down on their Hidden Village for provoking us so openly?"
"If he knew about it, yes." To say that the royal court in Land of Lightning was complicated was an understatement. The current daimyo's mother was the true ruler of Land of Lightning. She was the favorite consort of the previous daimyo of Lightning, and despite her son not being in the line of succession, she had somehow managed to put him on the throne when the previous daimyo died.
Danzo spread his hands. "Sir, if I may?" Hiruzen nodded to him to continue. "We send five teams. Preferably ANBU. Two combat and three assassination teams. Overwhelming force. Once Yamada Hanako-san is found, one combat team will return with her and the trainee team, if they are still alive. The other four squads will continue ahead and target the Hidden Cloud's intelligence network. Take out the nodes that we know of, kill some nobles in Land of Frost and frame Cloud for it, and kill any Cloud shinobi they encounter outside of the village."
"That goes too far," Nara Shikuro butted in. "The framing, fine. The intel networks, fine. But if we engage and kill any teams we find outside of Cloud and get caught, we'll have another real international incident on our hands. If just one gets away, they're fucked."
Hiruzen pondered while Danzo and the Nara bickered back and forth on the merits of the idea.
Hiruzen raised his voice, cutting off the two arguing about raising tensions and how tensions were already raised. "The asset is valuable. One combat team to retrieve her. As much as I wish to bring down the wrath of the Leaf on Ai for his brazenness, the daimyo will not stand for it. Three additional teams are to accompany the first, with orders to remove key members and allies of Cloud's affiliates in Hot Water, Frost, and Lightning. They are disavowed if they are caught." He continued laying out additional mission parameters, adding and removing a few at the suggestion of his councilors.
"Nara Shikuro-san, do you have any teams in mind for this mission?"
"Several that would volunteer for it, Lord Fire Shadow."
"Good. Put a roster together and send them out." Hiruzen rose from the table and left, determine to salvage what he could of his night's sleep, leaving his advisors to work out the fine details behind him.
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A hail of bullets impacted the concrete wall above Hanako's head, sending dust and bits of concrete flying down and hitting her head. On the other side of the concrete barrier she was hiding behind was a line of men dressed in black body armor complete with full face helmets, firing G36's.
Red glowed around Hanako's hands as she caught her breath and then dived from around her cover, using the magic as a shield to block the bullets from hitting her with one hand and the other to throw several in the air. Only to duck back and try to block one of the soldiers when he bum-rushed her. His steel arm stopped on her shield, but the impact sent her skidding back.
Just how many Marvel movies had she watched? Hanako ducked and weaved around the Winter Soldier doppelgänger with speed and dexterity that she didn't have in real life. So far, she had fought several superheroes and supervillains and was getting tired of it.
He lunged at her. Hanako sent a burning car flying at him in response, which he dodged, because of course he did.
She could escape, fly away, and that would buy her maybe ten minutes of rest, and then they'd be right back at it again. Hanako gathered the magic around her hands again and used it to propel herself into the air.
Only to come down again and land roughly on an eighteen-wheeler rig driving full speed across an endless desert, sand and rock in every direction around her. The back of the tanker trailer she had landed on had a pod of some kind at the end that she could take cover in that looked it had seen years of neglect. In the far distance behind the truck, was a line of cars and trucks, covered in spikes, some emitting flames and smoke racing after them. One of the trucks was pulling a trailer that looked like it was made of nothing but speakers playing the sounds of someone shredding on an electric guitar. Hanako groaned.
Why did she have to watch so many action movies, again?
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With each explosion around them, Emi and Kohaku grew more desperate. It was obvious to them now that this shinobi was the combat specialist of the team they had engaged. He was fast, and his halberd forced the two to keep their distance. Emi had grabbed by the handle once to try and disarm him, only to be forced to release it by a shock of lightning chakra. She was bleeding profusely from a gash in her side, and Kohaku wasn't much better off. Emi was also low enough on chakra that she couldn't use her shadow possession on him unless she got within touching distance, and the nin had been careful to keep his distance from her, preferring to engage Kohaku when he could and throwing her teammate in between them.
Then, there were the explosions all around them where the shinobi had obviously had time to prepare plenty of traps. She had already almost blown off a foot several times.
To their credit, their opponent wasn't much better than they were. The two Leaf shinobi were tag-teaming him, swapping out as they could and when the other got hurt, and he was alone with no backup. They were giving as good as they got. Kohaku had shanked him between the ribs, just barely missing his diaphragm, and Emi had nailed him with a few senbon coated in a paralytic. They were wearing him down; it was just the damn bombs everywhere that kept them from finishing the job.
This was why you didn't engage an enemy nin on territory where they had time to prepare. A prepared shinobi could take on opponents of higher levels than themselves if they set enough traps and had a good enough plan.
Kohaku was the first to make a mistake. The wrong placement, and it was over for him. Emi could only watch helplessly as a bomb tag went off right under him.
"Kohaku," she screamed as her teammate went flying, his left shinbone a shattered and bloody mess. Desperately she blocked the halberd with her tanto to shield her teammate from the final blow. She didn't have enough chakra to both heal him and overpower their enemy. One of them was going to die, maybe both.
Emi pushed back, forcing the shinobi to jump back or be knocked over and she went on a renewed offensive with an intensity and aggression she had never felt before. Her blood rushed through her ears making it hard to think as she swiped, stabbed, and lunged after the bastard.
She didn't hear the howls. She didn't hear the growls. But she sure did see the black and tan Malinois that latched on to the enemy shinobi's arm in a flying tackle with enough force that it spun the two around. Two more dogs were on him in an instant, savaging the shinobi and ripping at his limbs with a ferocity only found in war dogs.
The enemy shinobi screamed in pain and yelled in Storm dialect at Emi to get them off. She spat blood that had pooled in her mouth from where she had bitten her cheek and turned her back to walk away. The dogs wouldn't kill him until their master gave them the order.
Kohaku had stopped screaming but was now moaning from the pain of losing his foot and she couldn't decide which was worse. His eyes had rolled back in his head and she could only see the whites as he rolled on the ground. She started to shift what was left of her chakra into a ninjutsu to begin trying to stop the bleeding when the rest of the team that had saved her burst from the treetops, much the same way as she and Kohaku had done that morning.
Emi sagged in relief when she saw that they had a medic with them. He wouldn't die. She wouldn't die.
"Careful where you step," she called out with a rough voice, trying to be heard over the growls of the dogs and the screams of pain from the enemy ninja. "He rigged the town with paper bombs."
Behind her, the dogs were called off and the Leaf reinforcements began interrogating the shinobi for intel, their tongues slipping into the rough cadences and hard consonants of Storm Dialect.
The cursed town was practically swarming with Leaf shinobi. As one of the two medics stabilized Kohaku, the other looked over Emi's wounds. The captain of the group also gave Emi a look over once he was done with the interrogation. With how fuzzy she felt and how fast everything felt like it was happening, she knew she was in the beginning stages of chakra exhaustion. The captain, a big Akimichi with russet colored hair took her report.
"Team of three," she reported. "Took us by surprise. Knew I was a Nara. Knew Hiroshi was a sensor. Ambushed, took the client. Got Hiroshi. I stopped him from bleeding out. Pursued." She trailed off and the captain had to snap his fingers in front of her face for her to snap back into focus. "Sorry, Captain. We pursued. They realized we were – tracking – the client. Ambushed here. Set up – Bomb traps. The others went for Okisaki Gai."
The Akimichi captain said something to her but she couldn't hear it, it was so far away. The world faded to a gentle grey and then black.
She had saved Kohaku though.
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"Confirmed, Captain," reported one of the masked ANBU. "They're Cloud."
"Shit," murmured his second-in-command. The captain quite agreed with him.
"Did he give up anything on his squad or their orders?"
The ANBU nodded. "Hidden Cloud Squad #0557 had completed an escort mission to guard a client on their way to Ashiya. However, the night before they were set to return to Land of Lightning, they came across Yamada-san, and witnessed her chakra emission ability. Per their village codes, their captain followed their tertiary mission directives to gather any unusual bloodline limits when possible. They observed the Leaf escort team for roughly a week before ambushing and abducting Yamada Hanako. This one, Ishida, was assigned to stay back and set a trap to test his captain's theory that our trainee team was tracking Yamada-san directly since they had bypassed multiple booby-traps and false trails. The captain, Totoro, was to proceed directly with their other team member Haku, to Okisaki Gai to find a black-market seal master to remove any tracking seals on Yamada-san."
Captain Akimichi nodded once. "Anything else out of him?"
"Not without some more time to work him over."
"We don't have that kind of time. Are the trainees stabilized?"
The captain made a quick decision. "You," he gestured to one of his men, "Fall back with the trainees, keep them stable, the return team will gather you when we retrieve the client. Get them out of this town. It's bad luck to die here," he said darkly, looking at the grinning skull of a child that smiled at him with far too many teeth.
His shinobi immediately went to work. One of them used a tanto to give a quick, clean death to the Cloud shinobi with a single thrust through his spinal column. They searched his body first before dragging his body and throwing it on top of the pile of rotted corpses.
They had barely done so when they all felt it.
A flickering through their tattoos. Like a candle flickering in the wind.
"Looks like they found that seal master, Captain," intoned his silver-haired second-in-command.
"Let's go."
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Hanako was done. Done! This was, officially, the World's Worst Car Trip Ever. She lifted another white-painted desert mutant and flung him under the wheels of a truck and dodged below the stab of another one. At least she was no longer wearing the long burgundy trench coat which had accompanied her through her last three hallucinations. No, this time, she was wrapped in some long white gauzy dress thing which was obviously meant to show off her curves and had absolutely no practicality whatsoever. Barely a scrap covered her hips, and the top was a bandeau to cover her breasts which came dangerously close to popping free every two seconds. And, for whatever reason, two long ribbons of fabric were tied to her biceps to float in the wind.
Hanako wanted to strangle whoever was the costume designer for this nightmare. Oh, wait, it was her. Because she was trapped in her own fucking mind fighting for her life for the past god-knows-how-many hours. And she couldn't even figure out what was the trigger to change the channel.
She rolled forward to avoid a mutant with a chainsaw and – Goddamnit! There was that Bucky-Barnes-looking motherfucker again! Beneath her the war-rig honked, almost blasting her ears out with its volume. She gathered up scarlet magic in her hands again, intent on blasting him into tiny pieces across the desert sand when a white-hot pain surged on the back of her neck.
Screaming, she fell from the top of the war rig onto the sand, barely avoiding getting run over by the pursuing vehicles.
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"I said hold her down! This is a very delicate process; I can't mess up drawing the counterseal or it might kill her."
"I'm trying," snapped Totoro as he held down the bucking body with his weight.
It certainly looked painful. Ichigo was using a large brush to ink characters on the woman's back with an ink that looked more like tar. The smoke and smell that came from where it made contact with her skin smelled like burning flesh. He had already put the woman in a genjutsu to keep her unconscious and afraid so that she would stop putting out that damned chakra effect, but it didn't seem to keep her from feeling pain from the outside world.
Ichigo finished another character and started on another long one when the woman woke up with a scream and thrashed even harder. "Keep still, woman," he threatened, but it didn't have any effect. "Haku," he gestured his head, and the other shinobi grabbed a rag lying around and stuffed it into her mouth, stopping the stream of foreign words from pouring off her tongue. She screamed around the gag, eyes bulging open, but much quieter now.
"It's fine," Ichigo reassured. "Neighbors won't bother to investigate."
And if that didn't have some unpleasant implications, Totoro didn't know what did.
"How long until you're finished," Totoro asked, bracing against another twist.
"Just a few more characters and then it will be done." He kept painting bare skin with the tar-like ink for a few more brushstrokes before he finished with a triumphant noise and stepped back.
The fresh ink turned a glowing white and blazed on her skin before it spread to the original seal, where the entire array lit up with a glow and burned on her skin before turning an ash grey color and sinking into the skin.
Ichigo clapped his hands together as the woman stopped thrashing her body and sobbed in pain. "A perfect seal removal, if I do say so myself," he said, pride thrumming through his voice.
"It better be, or we're coming back here after you," Haku threatened.
Totoro counted out barely half of what the seal master had demanded and dropped it on the table.
"This is less than what we agreed upon!"
"We didn't agree upon anything, scum. Take what you get and be glad I didn't open your throat."
"Get out of my shop."
"Gladly."
Haku picked up the still-crying woman bridal style and the two shinobi left.
Once safely outside the shop and bounding over rooftops and boat cabins, questioned his subordinate. "Did you get a message to the village?" He had sent Haku out to send a message to their village and resupply while he waited on the seal master to draft a counter to the tracking seal.
"Sent one off with one of our contacts. The village should send some reinforcements to the border of Frost to meet us. If we can get to the Okaeri Pass, we should be safe."
"If the Leaf stops at the border, you mean," Totoro said darkly.
They touched down in front of a small café and looked around at the customers there, searching. "Ishida didn't arrive at the rendezvous," he stated when he didn't spot their third teammate or any of the signs that he should have dropped to let them know he had been there. On a mailbox across from the café, the chalk mark that should have been made under theirs if Ishida had been by was missing.
Haku scoffed. "He's probably dead."
So, he did get skewered. "I always hated that stupid fucking halberd," Totoro muttered aloud. "Let's go. We have to get to the border of Frost before nightfall."
"That Nara's probably too exhausted to catch us even in the dark, and I'm getting tired," Haku protested.
"I don't care. I'm not taking that risk." The two lifted off once again. Totoro couldn't wait for this mission to be over.
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A/N: Another update! The words have just been flowing this week.
So, headcannon time. All of the Raikage are named A, so I kinda figured that it makes more sense that A is the title, not the name. So that's why the council refers to the Raikage as The Ai. I also kinda played with the spelling to distinguish is more from the determiner.