Yo1

by FicReader21

Yo

1. 13-20

Chapter 13: The Stoke .iv

Reina did not carry herself like a typical teenager; she stood with a straight spine and gentle shoulders, assuring a confidence of never hearing 'no' and never knowing the banality of making requests. She spoke deliberately and without excitement, moved her body in much the same way. Every stride was an entrance, and her presence quieted a crowd.

The sight of her took the words from her betrothed's mouth –the man stared mutely at her as she stepped forward from her procession to meet him for the first time.

But then his eyes darted back to the dowry exchange and he found his voice again in the demands he made of his servants. An obvious show of dominance that didn't quite convince anyone in either party with the exception of the man himself. He was one for loudness and an extravagant presentation, but he was a young, lonely, and insecure man.

She could read his actions and learn how he would move.

As their gazes met again, Reina smiled at him with the smallest change in her facade –something only for him to spot in her eyes– and he again halted mid-sentence to consider her. Although he recovered, she knew any power he thought he had in that moment, in their relationship, was an illusion.

-o-

Something had happened years before Reina ever appeared in the territory of her new home. There were scars across the landscape, old and marring the buildings, hidden away in the people. She didn't know what had happened, thought maybe it had been from the decades old conflict between Fire and Stone countries, but she could feel a sense of muffled dread lingering still in the atmosphere.

Miyabe Shoma, her intended, wanted to talk as they traveled. Shoma was asking after her family's history in the porcelain industry, if she had been trained in the art, if there were any prospects for growing their interests elsewhere. What he was really asking, although he managed some amount of tact in not outright asking, was –why was this heiress coming to his home?

Reina had no intention of answering any of his questions that peppered in his babbling. She stared out the window of their carriage, pulled by six horses for show, and kept to herself. He would learn more about her intentions with time and when they were in a more secured place.

"You're so beautiful," Shoma said. Finally, he was taking a different approach in trying to get her to speak. He reached across the small compartment to gently run his finger down the fringe of hair framing her face. "I've never seen hair like yours before. Like the spring blossoms."

She kept her profile to him, but glanced his way. She smiled. "What a sad ending you see for me with such a comparison."

It took a beat for him to see her teasing for what it was and his abashed gaping smoothed into a grin. "I don't mean to be morbid."

It was okay, she thought, he had just lost his first wife. He could be morbid and she could handle that.

-o-

They lived in separate wings of his estate and met for meals in the common rooms bridging the sections, opened that afternoon to let in the bright winter sun. They sat around a low table warmed from an under-burning stone hearth.

The estate was a modern piece of architecture, but maintained traditional materials and elements of wealth. Every piece of moulding, every bit of décor, was purposefully and carefully arranged in an image of aged glory. She could still spot the tells of new construction and again felt the presence of past trouble. Something more than his private losses, something bigger.

"Are you comfortable?" Shoma asked her. They were sharing tea and he had brought out a set she supposed might have impressed her were she actually invested in porcelain. "Your finding the transition easy, I hope."

"It's tolerable," Reina said. The past week had been a fine meeting of luxury and performance.

"It's never easy, I suppose."

Shoma had a full waiting staff and a personal attendant who seemed to balance business and intimate matters. As they spoke, the attendant was within reach.

It was only prudent that Reina would expect a counterpart.

"I'm lonely," she told him and very pointedly let her eyes dart to the attendant.

In his typical fashion, she watched Shoma draw the conclusion as he followed her eyes and thought over her insinuation. "Oh. Right. We can – I'll be right on that."

"And I'm bored," Reina said, then took a delicate sip. She would be the one to make the interviews.

"Of course. Anything for you, my beloved."

He was half right.

-o-

Shoma was surprised by the woman she chose. He looked the woman up and down with visible confusion, stuttered out, "she's old." Tacked on, "Older, than I expected. Is she...properly trained?"

Or –why is this common townsperson now in my fine house?

"Yuzuho won't keep me worried," Reina said, not allowing for argument. It could have been taken as a statement about wandering eyes and hands, about potential pregnancy and lapse in employment, any manner of things. "She's a quick study."

Reina liked that most about Yuzuho; she was a quick study because the woman listened. Not for duties and expectations of an attendant, but more than that. What happened in this territory was the woman's business, and Yuzuho made sure of it without ever calling attention to herself. Reina appreciated that about her.

"How did you come to have her in your employment?" Shoma asked, still obvious in his appraisal.

She had no reason to tell him she had found Yuzuho in a shit situation, had given her a sure way out, had earned the woman's gratitude and trust with a show of power and confidence.

"Why, dear, I asked her, of course."

-o-

The estate was large and if she really wanted, she could lose herself somewhere for a few days. Between the guest house by the pond, the stables, the green houses, the boat house, and the storage cellars, she had plenty of spots to chose from. Reina picked the library out of necessity.

Being in the library meant she was within Shoma's wandering range and eventually he found her.

It wasn't his office or his private collections, so she didn't hide any of her reading materials when he appeared. His eyes went over the assortment of lodgers and maps, different accounts and records. All local business. Some his, some not.

The schematics of the iron and steel mill dominated the table where she was set up.

"Not the direction I had imagined you would be growing in," he said, then took his time reading down her body.

Reina didn't shift very much from her position, didn't immediately look away from her current text. Slowly, she moved one leg out, tracing an arc in the floor with her toes. She knew he was watching. Her foot found his and inched upwards, a lingering path following the inside of his leg.

"I imagine," she drawled, "that first you imagined you would be growing here..."

Her foot rested in a very wanting place.

"And then I," she said, and while one hand flipped a page the other went to her middle, "would be growing here?"

"I want you," he told her, because Shoma was never a subtle person. He leaned a movement against her foot, insisting but it was more like begging.

She moved her foot over the top of his thigh, put some weight into her toes in a hint for him. Obediently, when he understood her instruction, Shoma let his knees bend. She said, "if what you want can overlap with what I want, then I do not see what is stopping you."

Because while he was not a subtle person, Reina was. And she was subtle, subtle, subtle.

-o-

They came in the night, Yuzuho told her when Reina asked about the old trauma hidden in the town.

Reina liked the woman and they spent the evenings alone in her quarters trading words and alcohol. Yuzuho was like another woman in that way. She was rougher, smaller, more vulnerable than that other woman, but she was the most informed person Reina had found and Yuzuho was strong for that.

They didn't target the civilians, she told Reina, they only wanted the members of the dying shinobi clans. Young girls and boys disappeared from the shadows, deeper into the darkness without a noise. None were ever seen again.

But Reina was in the territory for other reasons and she couldn't mind the old scars on the landscape and on the people.

There were fresher wounds to which she had to attend.

"Surely they were not swept into working for that mill?" She asked and poured another cup for Yuzuho.

"No. The mill," said with a slur like a curse, "that's a whole other bit of salt..."

Reina nodded and listened.

-o-

Had Sakura been a civilian plant, then her role in the mission might have had a much longer timeline; being that she was a kunoichi and had access to a vast array of sleuthing skills and techniques, her infiltration into the Carbon Man's operation was a relatively quick task.

The team responsible for assembling and drafting her new identity had been working since the culmination of her first mission into the Carbon Man's territory. She had to be a convincing and attractive candidate for marriage, with a believable incentive for when she had to start infiltrating the operation from within her new home. There had been plenty of preparation for acquiring all of the appropriate information –cultural habits, style, mannerisms, and etcetera concerning her new persona– but the team was absolute in their research and Sakura had always been one for memorization. While working on the painstaking chore of altering her appearance, speech, body language, and attitude until all came naturally to her, Sakura kept the end goal of her mission at the forefront of her focus.

Her village understood that the Akatsuki used the Carbon Man to organize bounties, but the question remained of what the Carbon Man received in return. It was so far undetermined if there were an agreement of protection, of later financial reward, or perhaps of assured political sovereignty at some future point if ever Akatsuki organized into a state. Maybe some other form of reward. Whatever the conditions, it was Sakura's priority to figure out the relationship, and, at the same time, find the weakness between the Carbon Man and his subordinates. If a weakness did not exist, then she would have to manufacture a reason for dissent to grow. With dissent would come incentive for mutiny, and it was her ultimate prerogative to remove the Carbon Man from power and replace his leadership with one aligned with Konoha's interests.

The result of her efforts wouldn't include stopping the bounty operation, but it would make transactions between parties more transparent to and potentially malleable for Konoha. It would keep the Akatsuki from seeking another source of income. It would create opportunities to learn more about their cloaked members.

These interests would of course be obfuscated and the Konoha's involvement completely undisclosed. It was Sakura's duty to manipulate everything from the shadows without revealing herself as an operative to anyone save her "husband." Even then, she would only admit to her faux 'family' being behind her interests with the Carbon Man's territory. Flipping and securing her spouse's allegiance was top priority, but he would never know her status as a kunoichi.

She would only ever be Reina to him.

As Sakura had been reminded many times over the last year, holding and controlling information was a powerful, valuable asset in the shinobi world.

.

.

.

-o-

Don't forget to check in with your thoughts as the story develops

Thank you for reading!

Chapter 14: The Burning

C

soft caress, a white fingered grip, the hit the hit the hit

-o-

In his room, Shoma had four columns bordering his floating platform bed, and between each there were curtains that ran to the floor. The inset fireplace from the opposite wall turned the sheer white fabric a dark, warm red and everything else was shadow and the lining of veiled light. The ceiling was high and decorated above the bed in a lattice pattern of woodwork, but Reina couldn't see that detail very well at the moment.

"You're always thinking," Shoma said. He was curved around her and his voice, low and drawn and textured, came from above her head. His breath was a light touch on her hair, even and constant. "Isn't it exhausting?"

He wasn't criticizing her, just observing. And he wasn't wrong.

She made a noise that wasn't really anything distinctive beyond, 'I'm acknowledging you spoke.'

"I want to show you something," he said, and a little eagerness tinted his words. He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head before pulling away. He was smiling like a child with a secret. "Wait here. I'll be right back."

In two minds, she wondered what he was up to when he didn't return for several long minutes.

Finally, she heard his footsteps and quiet murmurings as he entered the bedroom. She smelled grass and dew on him as he pushed the curtains back. One arm was wrapped protectively across his chest and she saw something moving there.

Shoma inched his way across the mattress to where she had propped herself up on a stack of pillows. He cleared a space in the sheets between them before placing down what he had been carrying in his arm. It was a wispy ball of fluffy hair that twitched quickly.

Reina cooed unintentionally at the baby rabbit. "It's so tiny!"

"Isn't she?"

"She's so soft!" Reina ran one finger down the rabbit's back, petting the long hair. In another second, she had picked it up and was cradling it against her chest. "She's so little."

Shoma resumed his place curled around her, and they both indulged in babying the animal.

When he spoke again, he was wistful and nostalgic. Sad. He said, "Azusa and I were married when we were eighteen. She miscarried three times."

Azusa had been killed by the Carbon Man's mercenaries. Reina knew that much about the woman. Aside from an altar in her memory in a private room, the estate had been cleaned of her presence.

"She really wanted to be a mother. We kept trying. She was... When she died, she was..." Shoma didn't finish the thought, but the intent was apparent.

Reina let some of her weight lean into him and he gratefully rested his head on hers.

"They take and they take," he said, and she knew he was referring to the Carbon Man. There was anger in him, but there was more anguish. He had listened to Reina's thoughts about expanding some of their 'interests' into the Carbon Man's territory, of subverting the man's financial means and taking the metaphorical rug from under his feet. Shoma had agreed to go along with the plans, but not for any monetary stakes. He hated the man.

Shoma whispered another confession to her, more roughness of emotion than before, quieter and remorseful, "I really wanted to be a father..."

Reina didn't say anything.

-o-

The messenger hawk was waiting for her on the roof of her intended's quarters. Reina's intended's quarters. The hawk waited for Sakura on the roof of her mission cover's quarters.

Sakura secured the wraps around her wrists, the last bit of her unmarked uniform for the night, before accepting the scroll from the hawk's outstretched foot. Ken and the rest of their cell were circling her on the peripheral of the territory, never staying in one location very long, but his messenger hawk found her twice a week with updates. She unsealed the scroll and read over Ken's message; he gave her the official approval of her suggested replacement for the Carbon Man, followed by instructions for her next movements.

She left the estate to do more reconnaissance around the mill operation. It was her duty to infer possible points of contention, figure out how she could make a new boss an attractive option for the people working under the Carbon Man.

Sakura didn't have any trouble finding potential weaknesses; the people working for the Carbon Man lived mostly in a shanty village around the mill. From her perch in the trees overlooking the hastily and shabbily assembled shacks, she could tell that the men and women were in miserable living conditions.

Yuzuho would look like a god if she could provide clean and accessible water. ...Properly built barracks, sewage management, reliable electricity, health and medical treatment... Sakura had a checklist of offenses to consider.

The most enticing would probably be wealth and security, she thought. Perhaps the most successful way of undermining the Carbon Man would be to find and destroy his money. It was one thing to shave off money for himself, being that he was the man on top, but what a tragedy if the Carbon Man were then very publicly to lose all of it.

Putting these actions into place would be another step for another night, and so, with her new plan in mind, Sakura dropped from the canopy to make her way back to Miyabe's estate on foot. She didn't have a sense of urgency to hurry –she had a clone feigning sleep in her room– but as she walked, something began to feel off. She realized what was different in the absence of the common noises of a winter forest, the calls of owls and the rustling of small animals, that had accompanied her all night. The unease of something being too quiet.

Sakura made the fatal mistake of tensing her body when she caught onto the atmosphere, and she supposed it was that change in her body language which spurred the person tracking her into action.

The whistle of metal through the air and she dropped to her side to avoid the weapons. The kunai were a feint, and she was unable to roll away from the drop kick coming for her fast enough. She was on her back and she threw one forearm up to take the brunt of the hit, the other arm up so she could grab the person's leg to trap them. Finding a hold, she pinched deep into the tissue of her assailant's leg, clawing for the artery in their inner thigh, and pushed all her weight in one direction to pull the person to the forest floor with her.

Several factors were not in Sakura's favor: she did not have her weapons and equipment; she was alone; she was the prey of a stalking enemy and had been taken by surprise; and she could not use any techniques that could be traced back to Konoha.

Sakura yelped out a short cry and amended –she was also injured.

The person had stabbed her under her shoulder blade and it felt like the instrument was still lodged into her back.

On the ground and the two of them had devolved their fight into a wrestling match. It took Sakura a second to tell that her assailant was a young woman of a similar size and build. They were reluctant to use ninjutsu or genjutsu, but it was clear they were each kunoichi or had received some training at the least.

Sakura was stronger. Or maybe she was just that much more determined. She could feel the energy –the resolve– draining from the other girl, even as Sakura pushed through the white hot pain of the metal piercing into her own body. Her mouth was iron full, teeth slippery as she resisted clenching her jaw, and she thought the clip from the girl's elbow had most likely broken her nose. Her hands were wet with sweat or saliva or blood, and she kept tangling them in long strands of hair as she tried to choke the girl between her legs. Knocked her head back into the earth and tried to strangle her.

She might have done it, snapped the bone under her thumb and let the girl drown in herself, if her clone's dispersal hadn't knocked the breath from Sakura's lungs. The imagery hit her in a slam –snapped the air from her middle and she wanted to fold into herself. The pain in her shoulder, the split across her face dulled and she couldn't breathe.

She could smell the smoke, though. She tasted ash and burning flesh in her mouth –but it wasn't her mouth. It hadn't been but it was.

Sakura's limbs were shaking and not completely obedient but she crawled off her opponent and backed away. She had to go. She had to go.

The estate was aflame.

She grabbed the kunai still in her back and stuck it into the girl's leg, deep into her thigh and then Sakura ran.

It was another attack –like the one Yuzuho had spoken about and Sakura had ignored.

Shoma was burning.

-o-

Akatsuki wouldn't be working with the Carbon Man any more. The Carbon Man was gone and so was half the population in his territories.

The raiding party had come in the night, stolen away children and cut down adults. Ransacked and burned property and stores. Any person with even a hint of affluence had been targeted first and neutralized. Ken posited that Sakura had been sought out by a sensor looking for significant chakra signals. To kill her or to take her, he didn't know, but he scolded her for not ending the girl in the forest.

Sakura didn't have anything to say in her defense. She wished she could return to the estate but her Captain didn't want to involve themselves in the affair any more. Not now, not when other villages would be coming to investigate. Their cell didn't need to hang around and she especially did not need to be seen by anyone.

It was another stained red path back to Konoha.

-o-

Konoha was bright with winter sun; it was a crisp and cloudless day.

Mission Failed report.

She hadn't been in attendance, but Ken had gone earlier that morning after they had gotten back to the village. Intelligence from other cells and sources told of Otogakure having been responsible for the raiding. Ken told her it was a card from Orochimaru's deck and apparently everyone knew this about the man save for Sakura.

Or at least they had been aware enough to suspect, but not Sakura. No one had shared as much with her.

Tsunade must have known...

Sakura could see her breath in the air. She would have thought the sight magical when she were younger, but it didn't stir anything in her just then. She just wanted the misty little cloud to disappear. She wanted the crowds on the street to quiet and to leave, for all the noise around her to stop. She settled for stumbling into an alley between buildings, into a forgotten place that eyes often overlooked.

The alley was full of steam from vents and her breath was lost in the mix. Restaurants and shops to either side of her, and she thought there must have been a residential home above that had a busted disposal; she could see scraps of food splattered and broken on the ground. She let her weak knees take her down to be with the discarded bits, felt the damp that always seemed to occupy alleys and backstreets press into her skin.

Sakura clutched at the grooves in the brick wall with one hand as the other grabbed at her chest to twist the fabric of her shirt into a painful knot. It felt like an edge of glass prying through her skin. A little fissure she tried to stop with insistent pressure. It crumbled into grainy sobs. There was no bandage or wrap that could keep it together so she cried.

But she had cried over corpses before and it had never done any good, so she stopped. She put her fist to her mouth, bit on her dry skin and told herself it was enough.

Yuzuho. Shoma. Reina. All things past and gone.

But Otokagure – that village remained.

Sakura kept breathing. She was fine.

There was always another mission. There was always the mission and she could focus on that.

She was fine.

.

.

.

-o-

Chapter 15: The Hiss .i

-o-

The family apartment was empty when Sakura arrived after the failed mission in the Carbon Man's territory. She had collected herself from the alley and made an effort for a presentable image only for no one to greet her.

In a different place – another home – a leveled estate, a burned plot, no more greetings there... Sakura buried the thought.

She had outgrown her old house slippers and used her mother's pair instead. Her heel didn't quite settle in the right place.

The blinds were drawn and a cloud of dust escaped when she attempted to open them for the morning light – and quickly snapped them shut again. The bins were empty and cleaned, all the food dry goods, the heating unit set to 'away.' The ticking of the clock in the foyer was loud.

On the note board in the kitchen nook there was a letter from her mother; it started with news that Sakura's father had been assigned regular duty as an escort to the grandchild of the Fire Country Daimyo. There had been a little ceremony and everything – a very proud and memorable moment. Her mother had been assigned a tour as border patrol and would be gone for the next fourteen months. No ceremony for that and her mother showed her displeasure with a drawing of a frustrated face and rain clouds. She was also very jealous Sakura's father would be seeing their only child before she would likely even have a chance to write. And with a final flowery flourish of hearts and smiles, Haruno Mebuki wrote that she was very proud of their daughter and all the good work Sakura was doing.

It was in the interest of the village that spouses with children were not sent out in cells and missions together. The same went for siblings. The reasoning came after four members of a small clan had been killed together while on a mission; the lone survivor back in the village was a child not old enough to practice ninjutsu and so their clan technique had been lost to the village.

Sakura realized as she thought about this story that the child had also been orphaned. But such a thing was too common an occurrence to be seen as detrimental in Konoha – the strong children would manage and survive.

As for the weak? No one cared about that circumstance.

No one cared save for the orphans themselves, Sakura had eventually learned. To anyone else, orphans were an understood condition of life inside the village.

Lonely children were plenty.

They made great operatives all the same.

Sakura stared at her mother's sign off and then re-read the note, her eyes pausing on the last line of encouragement. Her mother thought Sakura had been on a mission inspecting clinics in the countryside – and so had no way of knowing "all the good work" was really something very different.

Unpinning the note from the board, Sakura held it to her chest. The thin paper was like nothing at all in her hands and the gesture felt lonelier and more foolish than she wanted. She replaced the note.

She didn't have time for reminiscing anyway; she had a schedule to follow.

Sakura went to the room with all her childhood things, untouched and still dutifully, mockingly, in place, to prepare for the day.

Normal protocol would have her off active duty for a recovery period after her mission, especially after one so immersive and stressful. The village leadership had found that function and operations went more smoothly and more successfully if proportionate rest periods were required after higher grade missions. Mental, physical, and emotional distress was an entirely too costly result otherwise. Her ANBU cell was given four weeks off officially, but unofficially – or secretly officially – Sakura was always under the obligations of her mission with Kakashi.

As the apprentice to the Fifth, she had those responsibilities as well.

But then, she thought, ultimately, every ninja was always on-duty to the call of their Hokage.

-o-

Haruno Sakura might have been the Apprentice to the Fifth, but to the managers and administrators in the One Eleventh Street Clinic she was just another worker body.

To some, she was a young, upstart kid trying to put older, wiser senior medics and doctors to shame. And she was always slacking off and disappearing only to reappear with nothing to show for herself. Sure, she might have led operations in the hospital, but could she keep the charts in order and finished in a timely manner? Was she very good about the logistics of keeping a full-time clinic sufficiently supplied? Her bedside manner with patients was pleasant enough, but she really had an arrogant streak undermining the medical opinions of her seniors.

Sakura had seen two patients and already found herself pulled aside for a reprimanding from the head physician, Mushimi.

"We don't offer chakra healing to civilians," he said. It was the introduction to a lecture she had heard before and one she had ignored before. "It's too dangerous."

It wasn't, Sakura wanted to retort. Not in a physical sense, which she knew he didn't mean, but neither was it detrimental in other ways.

There wasn't a litigious culture over 'malpractice' in the village, but Mushimi and the administrators liked to use the excuse of budget, expenses and compensation, to argue against chakra healing. There was no pay chart for chakra healing and so there was no way to determine the costs of a patient's visit if Sakura healed them, and then that led to other things in the clinic's budget not getting covered. Things like equipment and pharmaceuticals, and new tech and software for when a medic-nin wasn't around to 'magic away' ailments.

'Medic-nin can heal broken bones, but they can't seem to stop strep throat!' was a favorite she heard.

"Can't they just pay what they can afford for the treatment?" Sakura tried.

Mushimi made a show of pitying her suggestion. "That could never work. Do you think anyone would pay if they didn't have to? How naive. You should really learn more of human nature, Haruno, it's much darker than you seem to think..."

Sakura, a ninja, seamed her lips.

He finished his lecturing with the typical threat of relocating her, and then, also in a typical manner, limply sent her on her way because – in reality – he quite liked boasting to his friends that his clinic was the one working with the Fifth's Apprentice.

"You'll clean the pans, today, Haruno," was his last little prick of asserting superiority as Sakura turned to leave.

As if any amount of any bodily fluid warranted a reaction from her at this point in her career – it didn't – but for a moment, she considered calling him out on the tired, juvenile attempt at a power play.

Other women wouldn't have stood for it.

Sakura turned to face the man and thought, Reina would never have coddled such a feeble, inconsequential action meant to humble her.

Reina would have let the man see in her face the vain impermanence of his tepid authority, to see the reflection of his own pathetic character by trying a move like that...

"I-is there an-anything else I c-can help you with?" Mushimi asked, hands and body stilled over the paperwork at his desk, his attention almost painfully on her.

"...No." Sakura lifted a shoulder, letting her thoughts go. That was all the Past. That was Someone Else. "At ease, doctor, I'll just be on my way."

She was Haruno Sakura and she had a boy with an upset stomach and a fever waiting for her in bay six.

The busy mantra in her head almost kept her from recognizing the silhouette that trailed her from an empty room to catch her arm.

The immediate thought upon seeing Ken was panic; for a second she thought she had been found out. And then she saw Ken's appearance, read his body language, and realized she was still in the clear. He had not discovered her and she was safely a Double Agent yet.

"There's no rest for the wicked, is there? Apprentice," Ken said in an affable greeting. He kept his voice quiet for the two of them, kept his body close for privacy.

Sakura returned his smile. "This is unusual. Have you missed me very much since this morning?"

"I have a proposition for you," he said, and giving the hallway of the clinic an unimpressed glance, "and I think you'll be interested. New training tactic. Much more worthy use of your time and skill, really."

"I can't just skip out on my job." She found the ego of an ANBU operative was truly unmatched.

"Come on, my company is so much better." At the skeptical look she gave him, "marginally more tolerable than that fellow's at least."

"I can meet tonight," Sakura allowed with a put-upon hesitance. "What's this about?"

Ken 'hmmed.' "Chakra control, of course. And...output..."

"Vague but intriguing," she said.

"As I aim to please..." And then he remembered something and pulled a packet from an inside pocket of his kunai pouch. "You had your supply torched, right?"

Sakura thought of the bottle of 'women's supplements' lost in the fire of her mission, and nodded. She accepted the resupply of Nocturne and tucked it away. "But we're on a rest period..."

"Just if you need it," Ken said. His light eyes were on hers and he carefully moved a bit of her fringe back behind her ear as he looked at her. The hair found its proper place on her face again and he gave a rueful smile. "See you tonight."

"Regular meeting place?"

He nodded. "And we'll have to talk more about upgrading your lab experience. Seriously, Haruno. Nothing so shameful as to waste talent."

Sakura pulled a face and then Ken was gone.

Waste and talent and worth and shame.

Sakura didn't know how to evaluate herself in relation to any of those things.

.

.

.

-o-

Chapter 16: The Hiss .ii

-o-

Sakura had spent her morning training in refined healing techniques and had then spent her afternoon following up a project in Shizune's lab. She had the evening to herself – which meant she was following up on the training Ken had set out for her. That had been the cycle for her in the past weeks. Evenings in the blocks below Training Grounds Thirty complex recreation.

She considered the walls around her slick with condensing water and then returned her eyes to the empty bowl in front of her. With a few hand seals, she returned the water to the bowl and half-heartedly pawed at it until Ken made his presence in the room known.

He had been with Sai, resuming their two-man cell training while she had been assigned her task.

"Any progress I might be able to see?" He asked, hopeful and without pressure, as was his style when talking to her.

Sakura heaved a sigh and wiped her brow. "Can't say anything exciting has happened yet."

"You'll get it," Ken said. He pushed the mask from his face. "How are you feeling? Your energy alright? Your schedule is pretty busy."

Lifting one shoulder, she shrugged. "Hasn't bothered me yet."

If she designated so many hours to sleep and kept to a somewhat regular pattern, then she didn't have issues with keeping her energy consistent. Nocturne had managed to somehow circumvent some of the more debilitating drawbacks of other stimulants – such as sleeplessness and restlessness.

"And your supply..?"

"I'm still good."

"She has you storing away chakra."

Sakura felt the surprise register in her body before she could stop it. One of Ken's eyebrows twitched up, having noticed the brief flutter in her expression.

"Don't be surprised," he told her. Walking over to where she knelt in the center of the room, he held a hand out for her. "Anyone who knows you knows it was an inevitable development."

"Tsunade's technique is not something just anyone can learn," Sakura said, baring her skepticism.

"Proving my point – you're not just anyone."

He had his hands cupping her face, eyes flitting over her as if he might see the process under her skin.

Sakura huffed, trying to dissuade the blush on her cheeks from rising. For him, she was weak to praise. "Did you have a point? I thought you were just here because you got bored. You always seem to enjoy interrupting me."

"When did she start teaching you this?"

He was on a thought and Sakura felt a tremble in her chest, like a skip in her pulse, and kept her breath from hitching. It was the first time Ken had asked about her training as the Fifth's Apprentice, and by extension, Tsunade.

No more sharing her surprise, she told herself.

"From before our second mission with the Carbon Man," she said, touching her words with curiosity, showing her confusion over why he would be asking.

Ken had a faraway look in his eyes, a smile almost touching his lips. He matched his gaze with hers, and not quite conveying whatever had been on his mind, he said, "see? So busy, apprentice."

She returned the smile with a hesitant, hopeful shyness.

"Keep me updated," Ken said, hands a bit firmer before he pulled away. "I can't let Sai wait too long."

Sakura straightened her shoulders, but she didn't completely halt her leaning from trailing after the hold he had on her.

He noticed that, too.

-o-

Sakura was not restless.

She knew her body wasn't tired.

It wasn't boredom, but maybe it was frustration.

She missed the colder nights as winter had begun to turn in. Sakura sat atop her bed and pressed her forehead to a window pane that wasn't cool enough to the touch.

The smooth but resistant, empty and lukewarm touch of glass.

Her bedding was too scratchy under her and she remembered the whispers of softer sheets. She remembered what it had been like to share the space with someone warm and attentive and loud and there in all her senses. Hands larger than her own and gentle, firm, tentative and sure. The smell of cedar in the fireplace. Maybe if she said his name, as she had said it then... She remembered a heartbeat and a rhythm, careful and thoughtful, a flushing of heat, and then – and her hands were really only an imitation but if – if she could put herself back in a moment –

Sakura tasted ash and carbon and iron. It was in her mouth and when she breathed, it smothered her lungs in hot waves and her head was drowned in smoke.

Her silent room rang in a yell of agony and terror and she remembered the blaze, the frantic thought of – this is the end –

She jerked fully from her bed and landed on her floor, shattering the memories flooding her. Her room was empty and quiet except for her labored breathing. Nothing stirred except for her.

Sakura finally felt the cold and she didn't move for a long while.

-o-

Kakashi had his own missions while he acted as Sakura's handler; he was too skilled to leave in one corner. The village might have been recovering from an invasion, struggling to maintain fragile alliances, going through a transition of power and different styles of leadership, but it was still very much a ninja operation. There were still clients who had money and unsavory needs, and Kakashi was still the highly trained jounin for those jobs.

Well, he was one of a handful. He wasn't that special when it came to assassinations. It really depended on the target, the timeframe, the place and preferred methodology... Maybe they just assigned him because he had nothing more productive to do? Asuma and Kurenai had their teams, Anko had her proctor position in the exams, even Genma had settled back into a cell with Shizune.

And so, if they were all equally capable, then perhaps Kakashi were just slightly more expendable to his village than others?

In a way, Sakura was in a similar position and it was the first time he had ever considered very consciously the two of them to be alike. Because she was an investment and a talented one, as well, and she was also a piece set up for a weighted sacrifice if need be.

It was strange – how their value played out to the village functions.

"I can't meet you here any more," Sakura said in greeting. They hadn't seen each other in months and she barely looked up at him as she entered their meeting room in the One Eleventh Street Clinic. In her hands was a scroll that she opened up into a pile of scrolls. "Ken has been here to talk with me and there wasn't any breach but for my own comfort I want us to relocate. I have a few suggestions, but I'm sure you'll have backups that are already cleared."

She slid around him to deposit her pile onto his normal perch, the table, and started sorting the material.

"I'm grand, thank you," he drawled, his tone a mixture of dry amusement and a very thin hint of worry. "Shoulder is doing much better. Had a cavity taken care of. Pack was run with fleas about a week back – did not make friends with the bath house after that evening of cleansing."

Sakura took a moment to react and looked up at him with a sad sort of bewilderment. Belatedly, "hi."

More belatedly, and standing back at attention, "sir."

"No, no. You got it right before, we aren't really in a place for that sort of formality any more, are we?" But as soon as he made the joke, Kakashi felt the distance that had been between them very solidly in the room. An invisible repulsion between magnets attached to stubborn hands pushing for resolution. He hedged awkwardly, both in his leaning seat at the table and in his approach to his subordinate.

There had been a time when he might have said that and it might have been close to true.

Sakura turned from him, hands slowly resuming a calmer sorting of her things. She said, also slow and a bit quiet, "you once told me I didn't take my kunoichi status seriously."

"Did I? I don't remember being that blunt..."

"You insinuated then," she said, not very heatedly but with seriousness. Eyes back on his, "but now... I wonder, which way do you want it... Which way should I be?"

Too reserved, almost, and honest.

Kakashi didn't know how to answer and so he said nothing.

Which was alright, as Sakura had more to say. Her hands stilled again and her breath left her a little more roughly. "I've been thinking...about how I am. How...I am..."

But that was as far as she could articulate her thoughts and so she stopped.

Kakashi didn't know what to say, but he understood the feeling. He had felt that turmoil years ago, hadn't he?

He shifted from his leaning on the table to take a seat instead. Following her lead in the sorting, he took over the busy work for her. Circling back to her question, he told her, "you can always be yourself with me, Sakura. That's all you have to do."

That was a lie, he thought, and he knew she knew as much because there was more she had to do. There would always be more.

She faked being convinced and being reassured and he saw it in the smile she gave him. It could have been a mirror – he had given her that same expression years ago and now it resided with her as well.

He realized that bit of comfort was something he wouldn't ever be able to offer her again.

An end to bullshit, some part of him decided.

"Right," Sakura said. And then, motioning to her records, "I have some thoughts on our recent pursuit of a money trail leading to Akatsuki. Have you been briefed on that mission...?"

.

.

.

-o-

Chapter 17: The Hiss .iii

placed in a set, set in place, set up act up and get up and run

-o-

Had Sakura known about Tsunade when she was younger, had she understood the story of the greatest ninja of their village, then she would have emulated the woman from the very beginning.

Or, at least, once she had learned enough of Ino's natural confidence and assured attitude. The Sakura from before that point – the shy and insecure child of inconsequential meaning – that Sakura might not have thought herself even worthy of pretending to be like Tsunade. But after copying Ino and finding some tangential footing of her own, then she would have definitely dedicated herself to Tsunade's legacy.

The image of the Fifth Hokage was everything a child could dream to be like: strong, intelligent, fearless, powerful, and influential.

The perfect image to imitate.

It had taken her some time, but eventually Sakura had gotten to that point – basking in the light of someone else and hoping to soak in their qualities in order to assemble something of worth for herself.

That was Sakura's manual for operation; to copy and paste onto herself the behaviors of others. It was really no wonder she had been scouted by Ken, and before that by Kakashi and his superiors. She was a covert operative in her most basic state.

She was thinking about this as she and Sai finished stretching after a morning spar. They sat on the grass of the training grounds together, damp and cool in the early spring dawn, and he had just asked her about Tsunade's technique.

"Does the Hokage help you with that?" Sai pointed to his own forehead in reference to the Byakugou seal.

The question really came from Ken, Sakura knew, because Sai's tone had shifted in a tell of rehearsal and obligation. After months of interacting together, all of his habits had become obvious to her; when he was relaying something on the sly from his teacher, he licked his lips right before a little inhalation and a rise in pitch for his first word.

Sakura wondered his intention behind the inquiry, answered as naturally and diplomatically as she could. "We review my progress weekly. More or less."

"Can you really sprout your limbs right back when it's activated?" He asked, this time from his own curiosity. His tone was bleak, as normal, but the words inspired a ridiculous picture in her head.

Sakura laughed. Teasing him, she hummed to herself, "is 'sprout' really the right word?"

"I heard she can even survive being burned alive..."

A different picture appeared in her head and Sakura's stomach dropped. Burned alive. She kept her expression light and unaffected, allowed for some mirthful incredulousness. "I hope she hasn't had to learn that feat first hand."

She was for Sai: eager, determined, friendly.

Those other memories didn't affect her – Sai would see that.

But he seemed to have made the comparison obtusely and without any connection to their last mission. Sai made a nominally sympathetic noise. "Huh. That would be unpleasant. But the regenerated limbs are a yes?"

Sakura didn't have enough chakra stored to risk activating the seal. If she had to heal an injury, if the seal attempted it, and she didn't have enough energy to manage – it would be a terminal move.

"I'll let you know," she said.

Another little breath in from Sai. "What does she think of your new pursuits? Outside of healing."

"Oh, I don't think she knows about my new hobby training chipmunks to tumble..."

Sai narrowed his eyes after a long moment. "You make bad jokes."

Her smile perked and she wiggled her eyebrows. "I never!"

She sobered a little, noticing Sai's shoulders dip very slightly.

His eyes found something in the grass and a shallow line formed between his brows. "You're her apprentice. You can't be in our cell – not really."

He seemed to be saying as much to himself.

"Have you heard something?" Sakura asked, coloring with some of his apprehension. She liked being in his cell. She had to be in it, didn't she?

"You're her apprentice," repeated, "she'll want you around more," he said. Then Sai shook his head. "I haven't heard anything. I was just...thinking."

She dulled some of the humor in her expression. "You going to miss me if I leave or something?"

Sai paused again before he answered her. He didn't have much intonation and his body stayed still. Like a hesitant confession, "I don't want to remember what it is like to miss someone."

"I am the apprentice to the Fifth," Sakura stated. She didn't smile. Not immediately. She didn't want to – and then she did. A smile and she chose her words carefully. "But I'm not going anywhere."

-o-

Sakura ate her meals in the hospital canteen. She slept in the hospital mess. It wasn't what others wanted for her and she was certain the third night when Ken found her alone in a call room. The lights were dimmed, a unit on the wall hummed out cool air and white noise, she just wanted an hour of rest to 'herself' while not really being by herself.

She hadn't spoken a word beyond what she needed to for work and yet her isolation had thinned too much for someone's liking.

Ken played sympathetic as he interrupted her changing.

Finishing pulling her vest from her arms, she regarded him silently and with obvious uncertainty as he shut the door behind him and leaned there. He had come to confront her actions, but only indirectly. The objective was more for maintaining control. Which route would he take?

"Taichou," she said, voice higher with nerves and rough with disuse, "what are you doing here?"

Ken removed his mask. His eyebrows favored a sad sort of upturn and his eyes always looked on the edge of sleep; it made for a sweet, disarming countenance of concern. When he spoke, his voice was low and would have been smooth like stones wearing in a riverbed had she been able to touch it. "We've been assigned another mission."

"I didn't receive a briefing summons – ?"

"It's not out yet. Mission's going through clearance. We'll set off in a few days."

Because he knew it would be cleared. He was a no one, but there was a someone. It had been the same with the Carbon Man mission – Ken had known more about it beforehand than was typically allowed in the chain of command.

Sakura gripped her vest tight in her hands and lifted it over her chest, her mimicking arms like a shield there. More like bait. She nodded curtly and the movement was stiff. "Alright."

"It's unlike you, not going back to your house," Ken pointed out. And with the mission as his excuse, "that was the first place I checked. Your mail needs to be collected."

"Don't want those take out menus to go unread," she joked, but the attempt was weak.

Neither spoke for a moment and the room was a stretch of honey, long and gratuitous and bittersweet.

"You can come to me," he said, "if you...if you're..."

"Lonely?" Sakura suggested, letting some of her real feelings accentuate the word.

Lies were all the better when framed with honesty.

"I thought it might be a bit of an adjustment after everything," he admitted. "You were very good in your role. I wasn't sure if it would be so easy to slip out of now that you're back."

"And you think that's why I'm substituting busy spaces for intimacy?"

Ken's smile was one-sided and soft, his lips a gentle and patient curl under an endearingly dimpled cheek. Nothing about him hinted of an edge and all he conveyed was open reassurance; he had his arms lowered, his torso open to her, his stance relaxed, mask removed.

He was for Sakura: intuitive, supportive, available.

Sai had said of his teacher, months and months ago, "he's not very good with people."

And that was because in his role as Sai's sensei, Ken didn't have to be 'good with people.' Ken had to be different for the different people around him.

Sakura was the same; she was different people for the different situations in which she found herself.

She was: distressed, stubborn, vulnerable.

"I'm not," Sakura started, a serendipitous crack in the syllables, "readjusting. Yet. But I'm good for the next mission, I am."

"You never have to keep that from me." Ken moved from the doorway, steps purposeful and spelled out clearly for her if she wished to retreat. She didn't. "You are allowed to talk about a struggle you have, apprentice. That is how we keep our ranks functioning – by addressing their needs, whatever they are."

Wonderful assurances. A part of her really admired the perspective. A part of her responded to the lack of accusations of weakness. A part of her yearned for that acceptance.

Lies were all the better when framed with honesty.

She felt heat in her eyes and her vision quivered. "I can taste the smoke from the fire in my mouth. It's different from a wood fire. The chemicals from the construction materials and the fabrics in the home...and then, under that, his hair. ...I remember what his hair smelled like. I remember the smell of it and how it felt in my hands before... I can see it – his hair was fuel around his shoulders..."

Shoma had yelled, pleaded, wept, and cursed. And then the names he listed in his last moments...

Reina had wanted him to die faster, Sakura remembered.

Her clone had wanted mercy for him with a quick end but it hadn't gone like that.

Sakura breathed in sharply, shutting down the lapse to another place. She wiped at her eyes with hasty, admonishing movements, but the wind in her chest was tumultuous and wanted the reprieve of cries.

Ken reached for her, calmed her reluctance with steady insistence until she was firm against his body. He had come to comfort her before anyone else could step into the vacancy. He was there.

She was: distressed; stubborn; vulnerable; and more perceptive and calculating than Ken ever needed to know.

-o-

Returning to the disputed territory between Wind and Grass countries was a risky move, but one that her cell could now make with more transparency.

Sakura's new mission was a joint task between Wind and Fire, the objective being intelligence gathering on the Otogakure nin who had carried out the raid. Cataloguing damage, identifying tactics and jutsu used, estimating the number of forces, establishing a timeline, recording casualties and determining those who were taken back to Sound. It was also a reinforcement for the reestablished relationship between the two villages.

As easily as Naruto had forgiven Suna – others weren't quite so keen, even if it were simply a condition of the lifestyle. Politics amongst competitive professional backstabbers was a trick to manage.

The two squads weren't really meant to deduce what the reason for the raid had been – but there was unofficial speculating anyway.

The Suna squad captain, Kogamo, had the thought that Orochimaru needed to replenish his stock after the failed invasion. She made more than a few comments of how much the Sound nin had relied on Suna to provide the bulk of manpower. Orochimaru's ranks were insufficiently trained, malnourished, and didn't appear to share a cohesive cultural background – which didn't help the already skimpy leadership.

"His men are united by one common thread – reward. Or at least the promise of it," Kogamo said with some authority as the two squads tentatively shared a meal together. "They barely have even a common tongue between them."

Sakura didn't comment; it would have been out of turn for her to speak up. She listened and took mental notes and Ken, acting Leaf Squad Captain and second-in-command of the joint force, was similarly pensive. He knew better than to agitate any lingering feelings between the two parties, and instead nodded along with whatever Kogamo had to share.

"He likes to pick them up young, though, doesn't he?" She asked, finally demanding some sort of response from Ken.

"Easier minds for him to manipulate," Ken agreed with a shrug. "Nothing new to that tactic... But with his turnover rate, you could say the youthful inexperience of his troops is detrimental to his strength and potency more than anything."

He might have added, "and that's probably why he ultimately made for a weak ally in the failed invasion on Konoha."

"So will the Leaf ever clean up their mess, then?" Kogamo goaded, sitting back in her seat in a comfortable lounge. She spun the liquid in her cup idly, watching Ken with an oddly smug and dark contemplation from behind her porcelain mask. "Letting your missing nin grow like an infestation..."

Sakura glanced between the two, as did the Suna nin around her.

"Can't say I'd be the one to make that decision," Ken said easily, calmly taking a swig from his own drink. His eyes met Sakura's, yellow and quick in the firelight.

Bored by the diplomatic non-answer, Kogamo soured and turned her attention elsewhere.

The conversation around her changed but Sakura stayed caught on the question, was Konoha ever going to address Orochimaru?

.

.

.

-o-

Chapter 18: The Hiss .iv

mud in the cracks silver tongue smothering effect

-o-

The Sound nin had taken the horses and a select few other animals from the estate during their raid, and left anything else that managed to survive the fire behind to die from injury, toxicity, or starvation.

Sakura looked over the cages where Shoma had kept his rabbits and tried not to spot any of the little ones that would have perished.

"How many did you flag?" A Suna kunoichi, Dashi, asked, tallying up the total number of body parts in the current scope of their investigation.

"Nine. Fully intact," Sakura answered while staring at the cages. Nine members of the staff. She knew each one by name on sight, knew their stats and personal histories. To Dashi, "I have already ascertained each cause of death. Here."

She tossed the scroll and the other girl caught it with deft fingers.

"Awesome," the kunoichi chirped – only because to her this was a simple task she wanted to finish as quickly as possible. "We've finished with the main house – four total. Way too brutal, I swear. Mayu says it was –"

Sakura knew how the deaths had gone for those inside the estate. She cut off the description, "I'm checking the greenhouses."

"We've already met the number in the latest household records..."

"Doesn't mean that's all the bodies on the property," Sakura stated as she walked away, as if she were being very thorough.

But she knew they wouldn't be recovering another body.

-o-

Intelligence gathered and shared between Suna and Konoha led to one simple action, proposed by Wind, in order to abate some of the turbulence in the contested territory: destroy the mill.

More astutely than that – take away the main incentive for people to live in the territory. No resources, no employment, no money, no reason to live there, no more raids from Otogakure. That was Sakura's quick reasoning behind the additional, belated mission objective. The news came by a Suna messenger hawk, signed off by both the Suna council and the Hokage, and only the Leaf nin appeared to be caught off-guard by the news.

Sakura's reasoning was correct.

"If we continue to let the population grow here, then it will remain a 'fishing hole' for Orochimaru to revisit," said the Suna squad leader and task force Commanding Officer, Kogamo. She was content to carry out the order. To her, the strategy was logical, easy to accomplish, and effective. "We need to snuff out his supply and interest in this area."

"The mill is still occupied," Ken said, and it was clear to Sakura that he wasn't as personally satisfied with the objective, but complicit nonetheless. The task force had avoided the skeleton crew left inside the mill, who from a distance appeared to be doing nothing more than maintenance while processes were temporarily halted. "We'll have to evac any potential casualties."

They were finished with the rest of their duty, which had been an endeavor in retracing steps and careful observation. While Ken, Sai, and Tatsu took other records and accounts, Sakura had recovered and studied corpses, tracking victims and methods of expiration. She recognized damage from vibration-based jutsu like the ones the Sound Nin trio had used in the Chuunin Exams, and it was further proof of those responsible for the raid.

No evidence had been found of the kunoichi Sakura had fought in the forest on the night of the raid. The area had been scorched with an innominate, unidentifiable fire-based ninjutsu.

Ken considered the fact of moving on the Carbon Man's operation, and followed his statement with a wary question. "...Are we targeting any person in relation to the mill?"

The Carbon Man, or rather his operation, had been a potential door to Akatsuki and it was likely that some of those in the Konoha village leadership didn't want that avenue closed – like the 'Someone' to whom Ken reported, Sakura thought. Ken was a no one but there was a someone...

Kogamo unsealed a folder from the recent mission scroll and flipped it open. Her eyes scanned the information and she relayed in the affirmative, "along with specific physical targets within the mill structure, we have a Termination List."

As he had no basis to ask for justification when the order came directly from the Fifth, Ken had nothing else contrary to say.

For an undisclosed reason, the Leaf's pursuit of Akatsuki, or at least one facet of it, was not going to be a combined effort with Suna. At the moment, the only overlapping concern was to conclusively identify Otogakure's involvement in the territory and to prevent further interest from Orochimaru.

At the conclusion of Kogamo's briefing, Sakura went through a checklist of preparation and supplies. She secured her arm and shin guards, disguised her scent again, replenished wire and weapons, made sure the cloth she had wrapped over her hair like a hood was tightly in place.

"Saya," Ken said, using Sakura's codename as he approached her with written directives, "your coordinates. 'M-n-D.'"

'Memorize and Destroy' the instructions before departure.

"You'll be assessing and strapping a quadrant with Hora." He jerked his chin at the Suna nin attached to the name. "You both need to report separately for clearance and for detonation. We have terminal dispersal and base return upon Kogamo's verification. Understood?"

In her peripheral, she saw Ken flash a hand signal. It meant, essentially, 'await further information.'

"Yes, sir," Sakura said, dipping her chin and returning an affirmative signal of her own.

Officially: they would empty the mill complex, place explosive tags, clear for detonation, remotely activate the tags, Kogamo would declare a complete destruction, and then they would all scatter before her cell regrouped for their trip back to the village.

Ken sent her secondary instructions only once they had fragmented into teams of two, and she and Hora were deep inside the interior of the mill where they were to post explosive tags. She didn't notice the little ink mouse for what it was until it had carefully made its way to her boot. Up her leg and torso and to the exposed skin on her upper arm. Sakura used a medical-ninjutsu to open her vision in the dimly lit space in order to read the brief splash of ink scrawling out a message as the mouse repurposed itself.

From the scrambled text, she read: In quadrant. Locate, recover bounties.

Sakura felt a coolness hit her skin, perspiration there anxiously relinquishing warmth like frantic sailors tossing pails of water from a sinking boat.

Ken's instructions were a joke, was her first rational thought as she wiped the ink ninjutsu from her skin.

Did he expect her to casually duck out for a cigarette? Slink around and by 'pure coincidence' stumble across a hidden bunker? Perhaps proclaim, unconvincingly to her Suna partner, 'oops, did I just conveniently discover this secret room acting illicit morgue, totally on accident?'

Sakura halted her internal grouching and pulled a thoughtful frown to herself. The bodies would need to be preserved through cool temperatures, and the complex being a civilian operation would likely rely on power-draining refrigeration units. ...Which meant a noisy generator designated to one particular area – or maybe a damning line of cables running somewhere otherwise inexplicable. It was in her favor that due to the architectural nature of the building, its utilitarian purpose and design, the electrical work was visible.

She had only two minor, minor factors working against her: one, lack of time; and two, her allied company who probably shouldn't find out about her ulterior goal.

At the moment, inside the vast room filled with all the machinery and components of cooling furnaces, tracks, cars, hammers, and hydraulic presses, Sakura was meant to be scouting structural supports for explosive tag placements. Beyond that, any valuable constructs of steel manufacturing and plating were supposed to be tagged as well.

Hora was busy in the upper stories of the building, flitting about with unhurried ease as she did the task in her specified area. There was a lot of ground to cover between the eight of them, and they weren't in a dire rush, so Sakura calmed her nerves and told herself to work logically.

A clone to act as her eyes in spotting potentially leading cables was her first step. It was excusable for also performing the chore of discerning weak structural points.

Her second step required a little more subtlety. She wanted to detect a generator – either by listening for the noise of its engine by altering her hearing and relying on sound traveling through air, or she could figure a way to sense vibrations through the ground. A glass to the floor every couple of meters might have been a little conspicuous, so Sakura went with a network of water that she could manipulate and monitor while moving.

Not an impossible accomplishment – just something a bit unfamiliar.

She had been working with water ninjutsu under Ken's instruction, but only in so much as summoning water around her into a concentrated body. It was a secondary feature of the other chakra control training she had been pursuing – which had to do with separation more than concentration.

At the moment she needed to move water out from her into what would almost look like nerve endings or a root system. Maybe like a web – and like a spider, she would feel out any vibrations.

The work was more demanding of her attention than Sakura realized, and she started at the sound of the Suna kunoichi's voice coming across the com in her ear.

"So who is it, then?" Hora asked, breaking the silence with a vague and somewhat playful question.

Sakura clocked the other kunoichi fifteen meters overhead and some sixty more down the row of presses. Hora was looking over some of the machinery from an overhead walkway with a lazy sort of curiosity and didn't noticeably acknowledge she was addressing Sakura at all.

"What?" Sakura asked smartly, trying to covertly keep up her scouting.

"The hoods you're all wearing – not exactly standard uniform for Konoha special ops. So who is it in your little cell that has the damning physical attribute? One of you has gotta be someone important, right? I hear redheads in Konoha have some sort of legacy... And there's that White Fang around, too..."

A nervous tickle in the back of her throat made Sakura laugh, tight and awkward. "Yeah – no. Nothing like that, promise."

"Uh-huh. Wow, you're a really convincing one." Hora was making small talk to pass the time and her inquiries were pretty mild attempts to smoke out information.

But it was strange, Sakura reflected, how the conversation flowed while the two weren't in close proximity. It felt more relaxed without the constant need to read body language and decipher the truth hidden under layers of obscurity.

And then Sakura spoiled the friendly atmosphere by suspecting the seemingly tame talk to be a rouse of some sort. Her muscles tensed with the worry she might be fooled into revealing something important, and she told herself, 'no relaxation – no 'small talk' and no carefree humor.' She was on a mission and she had multiple objectives to meet.

"I heard there's a dog clan in your village," crackled across the com after a pause. "Any chance one of you is hiding a fur coat under all that fabric? Or – is it bugs? I've heard about the bugs, too."

Acting along, Sakura snorted. "Maybe it's nothing under our hoods? One of us is actually just a hollow man."

"Hmm...not quite as exciting as bugs, I don't think."

"If it makes you happy, sure, I'm hiding a dozen eyes and a pair of pincers under my mask and hood."

"Aha, so that's how it is for that clan..." Hora hummed.

There was other humming, too, that Sakura felt more than heard. She lifted on her heels, suddenly excited, but kept her voice tempered. "We have our stories, too, about your Suna kin."

"Do share."

Sakura moved closer to the source of the vibrations. It was the specific sort of steady puttering of a generator, like one she had heard before at the hospital after the Invasion.

To the com, she said, "a favorite is the clan with the bloated double chin – they store some type of biofluid there, breathe in the sand around them, and then spit out a sticky, cementing mess that encapsulates and suffocates the target."

She followed her water network to an interior wall, separating a temporary holding space for misshapen plates from the rest of the floorspace. Walking the perimeter of the boxed in area, she grinned, noticing a possible hollow space walled off around a column running from the floor to ceiling at the end of the room.

"Pretty cute image, definitely."

"All the Konoha kids look at anyone with a softer chin with a lot of suspicion and worry."

Hora laughed in response, reserved but delighted. "Any other good ones?"

Sakura examined the masonry construction of the wall, and being that she was out of sight, placed her ear to its surface to feel again for the generator.

"There's rumor of a scroll that summons a hypnotic, man-eating, flowering cactus."

The lower she crouched down, the more distinct it became. Instinct told her there was a disguised door to a staircase within the wall and, below that, a subterranean room where she would find the holding unit for the Carbon Man's bounties. A strategic location; the bodies could be shipped back to the furnace with the misshapen steel and disposed of without any trouble.

"Oh, well that one is true," Hora assured her. "I've seen that cactus. 'Course, I was spared, being a young lady and all."

Not seeing any breaks in the wall, Sakura ran her fingers over the stones to find any seams. Thought better of it, and gathered the water back into the palm of her hand, only to send it out like a glass sheet against the wall. She pressed inward, let the chakra she pulsed into the water push into any cracks – until – the outline.

Sakura let out a quick, 'ha!'

"Remember another story?" Asked from the com misinterpreting the small exclamation.

She smiled and used chakra-enhanced taps from her fingertips to chip away holds into the edge of the door.

"Yeah," she said, careful to cover any tell of exertion as she pulled and then pushed the hidden door until it caught on a track to slide open. Her heart jumped, thrill and accomplishment pulsing in her. Stale, cool air hit her face. "I remember hearing about the forbidden technique that's sup–"

The word fell from her unfinished.

A string snapped and dozens of somethings, thin and metallic, thwipped through the air. Sakura barely flinched as four needles sank into her chest and others grazed her sides and arms. A clattering as a countless number of more needles that had bounced off her armor hit the floor. Needles. Weapons.

The air in her lungs left her and her body curled inward slightly, almost quietly puzzled by its departure.

"What's that?"

The Suna kunoichi's question came to Sakura from behind cotton. Her mind and everything else around her was oddly muted. Gargled, little soundless grimaces left her and her next inhalation came in a slow, choppy way.

Sakura lifted a hand to touch one of the needles buried into her.

"I've...I just set off...a trap..." she said, not too sure of how clearly she had spoken, or if she'd said anything aloud at all. She wondered if she had sounded as nonchalant as she had wanted.

No problem. She was a medic-nin. Healing was her thing. Sakura pulled the needles out of her chest – long needles – a lot of needle – and noted the way her chest warmed and then cooled with the blossoming of blood out from her skin and into her shirt. Different rates of bleeding in the wounds – different damage – that one felt like an arterial bleed –

Then she heard the hiss of gas leaving a compressed container and her face paled with dread.

"Saya?" Hora was both in the com at Sakura's ear and somewhere close to her, too.

"Get back!" Sakura said, shouting unintentionally. But she was pretty sure the floor was rhythmically threatening to come up right next to her and that wasn't very good. Her body was going numb. "There's gas – it could be poisonous! Get out of the building –"

Hora heard the word poison and, apparently not very excited by the prospect, disappeared from the room.

Poisonous gas and she suspected, poison on the needles as well.

Unhelpfully, her pulse climbed.

Sakura moved as an appropriate course of action raced and reconfigured and adapted in her mind. Starting with: don't inhale.

The next step was born from many recent repetitions of the same concept – all the time spent beneath the training complex, sending chakra into a pool of water and attempting to shake the liquid into vapor with her energy. Sakura had mastered the technique within a few hours.

She took the water she had been using to locate the generator and then the hidden door, gathered it neatly to a puddle, and excited its state to a fine mist that exploded out around her. It was a fast reaction and the water overtook the gas; Sakura recollected the water, now infused with the poison, and let the mixture fall to the ground.

Third step came immediately, and her hands had just dropped the poisoned water when she took a breath and started medical-ninjutsu. She closed the most critical damage in her torso, winced as her fingers started to feel leadened and resistant as the numbness continued to spread, and then focused on trying to extract the poison from her blood system. Filter it out like a net could catch leaves. Very, very tiny leafy particles. Her arms started to tremble and Sakura found her legs were bending in a way she didn't really want them to...

She wasn't going to be able to do it, she realized, and she dropped to the stone floor with little grace.

One other option remained, and although she thought it was a stretch – Sakura did have an antidote on her.

After she had collected the sample from the mercenary that had attacked Sai so many months ago, on their first mission to the contested territories, Sakura had deconstructed the formula and made an antidote out of curiosity. For the challenge. Perhaps for some form of preparation.

She jerked her increasingly uncooperative arms around until she had her pouch open and the injector in her hands. Her skin was slick and white and she couldn't keep her vision focused. She thought it was pressed against her thigh – hoped as much – and released the antidote.

Seconds ticked by. Sakura was prone on her back, blankly watching the far away ceiling as her ears were made drums by her heartbeat. One second. ...A second. ...A second. She listened to her lulling pulse.

And then she felt a twitch in her hand. Pins and needles in her foot as she pulled it out from under where her upper body had collapsed over it and cut off blood supply.

Sakura laughed, giddy with relief, buoyantly triumphant and a bit smug.

She sobered and let the smile on her face relax.

Her happy revelation that the antidote gamble had worked couldn't last. The logical part of her brain, abstaining from the celebrating, rang a warning. Hora knew there was a trap that Sakura had set off – but traps usually meant there was something worth protecting. There was no time for taking a moment, she had to set the proper scene before anyone found her; more specifically, before the Suna squad returned.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, the eminent, yet loosely defined countdown resumed ticking as she got back to her feet.

'Recover bounties.'

There was no time to waste even the tiniest movement and she had another gamble to pull off.

Kogamo and Suna would learn about the suspicious hidden room, guarded with traps, but they didn't need to know about the poison, the bodies inside, or that Sakura had emptied the containers and wiped any trace of having every stepped inside herself.

Medic-nin were good for eliminating trace evidence like that, and Sakura was pretty capable to limiting chakra residue from jutsu with her near perfect control.

And they didn't need to know the extent of her talent when they found her.

Sakura was pitifully bloodied and slowly healing a puncture wound in her ribcage when Hora and Sai returned for her and gave the area an all clear.

Kogamo eyed Sakura – the helpless, recovering pin cushion on the ground – and the exposed staircase. Her questions were sharp, pointed, laced with suspicion, but she never considered that four bodies in preservation seals left with Sakura as she hobbled out of the mill.

From a distance, she watched the expansive structure of the Carbon Man's mill and all his operations implode and rise in a blackened, grey cloud. Termination, Sakura thought, and allowed some of the triumph still lingering in her middle swell in reprise.

Finally, a mission success.

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-o-

Chapter 19: The Hiss .v

-o-

His old uniform smelled like the storage space in the bottom of his apartment building and Kakashi had spent a good amount of time wearing it in with his pack out in one of the forested training grounds – gave it that nice 'lived in' aroma suitable of an active duty special ops member, and laundered it once to keep up some semblance of hygiene.

Not that he expected his presence as an ANBU guard in the Office of the Hokage –orchestrated very craftily in the records by Shizune– to be anything suspicious.

Well, it might have been suspicious if he hadn't changed the style of his mask and the look of his hair. People did tend to remember the hair of the White Fang, although he didn't find it nearly so worthy of distinction. But for a whelp like 'Ken,' Kakashi figured some sable henna and a shorter cut would be enough to dissuade any wandering interests to the fixed figures in the shadowed corners of the room.

Ken. Full name and date of birth redacted. According to his file, he had been a squad leader for eighteen months, a single student teacher for five years, and very quietly active duty in the ranks of ANBU since the age of nine. There was nothing impressive in his stats; he was the typical 'above average' talent of the special ops, having a well rounded background in each genjutsu, taijutsu, and ninjutsu. Further noted in the report: three nature affinities of water, earth, and fire; an expert with the tanto; fluent in two minority languages of the Five Shinobi Countries; and a graduate of the Strategic Operational and Tactical Information Operations course –or, as Kakashi knew it, classes on management for war fighting systems of support.

After his own jounin promotion, Kakashi had taken both the Joint Forces Close and Mid- Range Operations Component Commander and the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Commander courses. Earning his ranks in an era of war sort of encouraged that route. Ken had only seen the peripheral of the third war conflict at its end and his program completion had been a few years after the fact.

The man was... a nobody. More mission successes than failures, maybe, and a clean infraction record, but nothing outstanding.

But, because he was not outstanding, Ken had opportunity to scout and recruit for Root. That was where his real worth came through and something like that would not be marked in his file.

In person, Ken was not quite as unassuming as he was on paper. He was a little taller than most, solidly built with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, shorter torso and longer legs. Worker's hands, feet turned out at a slight angle, strong neck. Bony wrists and ankles made it conceivable he would be more slender if not for his training regime, but with the extra bulk he pulled off a convincing aura of tempered power.

Ken was very purposefully both approachable and promising of strength – carefully constructed Poster Boy looks for luring in vulnerable people. Everything from how he stood and walked, parted his damn hair, down to his subdued mannerisms and gestures, lent to the effect.

Definitely lacked Kakashi's favored lazy, disinterested slouch which some people mistook for timidity.

He spoke with calm ease – an unhurried pace and a reassuring tone. Even when referencing the failed objectives of his missions into the disputed territories, Ken had the ability to make the effort appear worthwhile in the conclusion of studying the structure and fallout of the raid in the area and their positive combined operations with Suna.

He could spin.

Tsunade was neutral and unperturbed during the debriefing. She twice nodded with approval. There was never an inclination she knew there was more to the operation than presented. She frowned once, a brief pinch in her brow, at the mention of Otogakure and how preliminary on-site analysis did not confirm their involvement in the raid.

Otherwise, it was all routine. No indication that the cell was associated with ANBU Root or any potentially subversive intentions.

Later, when Kakashi and Tsunade met privately to discuss the debriefing, she bared her impatience.

"I can't get a read on his direction," she groused into her ceramic cup, speaking indirectly about Danzo. They were in another part of the compound that made up the Hokage living quarters off to the side of the tower. A rooftop veranda this time, still enjoying the mildly warmer outdoors within the comfort of a kerosene heater. The perimeter of the rooftop was lined with tall Mokuton-seeded boxwood, impenetrable for eavesdropping and spying, but they spoke carefully. "Will he go for the blue binding or the red?"

Jiraiya and his upcoming publication was their cover topic. Blue for Oto, red for Akatsuki.

Kakashi shrugged. "That man has never fancied primary colors. It might be something in between."

Danzo could be pursuing leads in either direction, scavenging for something turbulent enough to tack onto the Fifth's regime and use as a point of leverage to have Tsunade removed from her position. Removed in one way or another…

Making a thoughtful noise, Tsunade said, "for the time being, it seems he's moved on from orange."

Orange. Kakashi softened his bemused snort of laughter. Almost too obvious a stand-in for Naruto. "Ah, but it will remain a part of his collection."

What Kakashi really wanted to talk about was Sakura. Perhaps it was because the Fifth hadn't been meeting with her personally, but it was strange to Kakashi that there hadn't been as many discrepancies between her reports and Ken's. Everything lined up well; the targets, details of taken actions, the movement breakdown, the fallout.

If he traced the complete outline of the Carbon Man missions, what had they learned from Sakura that wasn't plain in Ken's reports? Why the overlap in the vague mission points?

Sakura had taken residence undercover in the contested territories, but there were no specifics over her role there. Something had disrupted their schedule in the mill demolition, but there was no specific breakdown offered. Not entirely unusual in ANBU reports, but there should not have been the lack of transparency from Sakura.

Or maybe Kakashi was impatient and the mission didn't have an ulterior motive to which Sakura would have been privy. She could be in the dark yet.

Except– as Sakura had told him before, she had secrets now too. Had she caught onto the play already and taken precautions? Or had she been compromised?

No. He was surely being impatient. He was overthinking. They had nothing to worry about.

Kakashi could press for answers when he saw her next.

-o-

Their detour had not been necessary to their mission nor their organization's goals, but Sasori had always been one to work when and how he pleased. His partner had loudly and repeatedly protested, and it was not until they were balanced on the rubble of the steel mill that Deidara began to appreciate the driving bit of curiosity for the trip.

The boy had also been annoyingly delighted about seeing the full body of Hiruko from under its shell, so he had been talkative and perky since their arrival.

"You learned about all this from that little thing?" Deidara asked, speaking crudely with his usual ignorance of Sasori's art. His hand gestured vaguely to the little puppet spider. "Doesn't say much good about a village if a bunch of special ops miss a tech piece like that, yeah."

"Incorrect," Sasori snapped. "It speaks more of my own skills and ability."

"But what's left to speak of your humility?" Deidara smartly dodged the swing of Hiruko's tail.

Such lip from children these days.

"This a custom-built piece that operates in a pre-determined pattern along a web -very nearly as a real spider would. There is nothing to notice."

His partner sucked his teeth loudly. "That thing is worthless if it can't tell us who burned our 'employer.'"

But Sasori did not care about the demise of the Carbon Man or the persons behind the destruction of the mill.

He sealed the spider in a scroll and turned back to collecting the other items of interest buried in the debris. No body, as he would have expected, but he did pluck from the dust a long, bloodied needle.

Sasori cared more about discovering the identity of the person who had thwarted his poison ―twice.

He wanted to make certain a third escape would not happen.

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-o-

Chapter 20: The Splitting .i

C

There was something miserable about wet feet stuffed into wet sandals, dirt and water and blood all trapped together by cloth wrappings.

Sai, sitting at the table in the kitchenette of her parents' home, lifted an eyebrow as Sakura unwrapped the dripping bandages from around one of her ankles and then the other. Like her, he was stripped down of most of his outer layers of clothing and trying to warm himself with hot tea and a towel around his shoulders.

The rain outside was relentless and their morning sparring session had been somewhat fun and exhilarating at first, but the march home much less so.

"How do you not have calluses?" Sai asked, his stare very pointedly set on the recently raw skin of her heels.

Sakura poked at the stinging flesh and made a face. "Because I'm a clod who continues to like the feel of soft skin when she rubs her feet together at night and so she repeatedly heals herself before any helpful calluses can ever form..."

With his cup raised to his lips, she couldn't quite spy his unimpressed frown, but his eyes were plain to read.

"How often do you heal yourself like this?"

"Too often," she said.

"And yet you also wear fingerless gloves..."

She could wear more protective fabric, was his point.

"Never a thing as too much practice," she sang back.

Sai took another sip of his tea and his confusion, very nearly bordering on skepticism, escaped him in a low hum. "Do you really care that much for 'practice' or do you just like the pain?"

It could have been a sardonic joke from another person.

"Oh come on...that would really be something if I were in this line of work and couldn't handle a little discomfort," she said with a little humor, well inured to the healing routine and not keen to dissect possible psychological angles behind it.

Sai didn't say anything pressing and they lapsed into silence. Sakura listened to the rain on the windows and smiled ruefully at his calm presence in the house. With his company, she didn't feel nearly so loud as she once had in the empty rooms.

She missed her family with a painful hollowness in her chest. She missed the warmth of company.

But that was good for her mission, Sakura remembered, and she anchored the loneliness down deeper. Deep enough to not notice.

At the same moment, she and Sai both turned their heads to the entry way of the home. Someone had arrived on the stoop outside.

"Sensei is here," Sai pointed out.

Before Ken could knock, Sakura called for him to come in.

"Sai," Ken started, "go and prepare for immediate departure. Three weeks. Make any necessary arrangements."

Sakura was confused at the order and started to get up and ask about the hurry, to help Sai get his things together, but Ken held a placating hand out and told her to wait. She nodded and sat back down, a small collapse seeing she served no purpose.

"I guess – goodbye?" She said as Sai dressed.

"You're coming too, Haruno," Ken told her and her back renewed its normal straight line. To Sai, "we'll brief at the western gate in an hour."

Ken was calm as Sai left, and he hushed Sakura back into her seat when she got up to put away dishes, to be busy with the appearance of more company. He looked her over and said she could use another cup of tea, then got the serving ready for her instead. The kettle on again and refreshed the leaves in the infuser, he retrieved a cup for himself from the cabinet. In his student's absence, he breathed more easily and his shoulders lost the tenseness that came with the cloak of authority he wore as a teacher. He lost his mask, too.

"How are you?" He asked, taking a chair for himself at the table once the tea was ready. He was next to her and took the chance to glance at her bare feet, healed and new and all the looks of inexperience again, and then found her eyes. "Strange habit, apprentice."

"I've been told," she said. "Is this new mission an emergency?"

Ken gave her a sad smile. "You know...that was a dodge if I've ever seen one and in our profession -"

"- You've seen a fair share of dodges," she filled in for him. Her brief smirk was contagious and his eyes were warm.

Warm in the way that made his comfort and ease in her home seem natural. Like her, he was a natural. Ken said, "last we talked, you were struggling a little."

After she had looked to her home, to her work, to her absent friends and found no other source for solace, she had confessed to him her nightmares and he had listened.

"I don't remember it that way," Sakura insisted. She brought her knees to her chin and wrapped her arms around them, took the pose for contemplating.

He read the action as a retreat, as vulnerability, and after watching her for a moment, tracking the way her hair ran rivulets of water down her legs, he leaned forward. Taking the towel still hung around her shoulders, Ken used it to wipe away the water, then patted at her wet locks, took his time brushing it over her head and hair.

"You saw what that raiding party did in the contested territories. You know their terror up close."

The mission was about Orochimaru, then.

He continued, "we've asked a lot of you, Sakura...and this time..."

Ken trailed off and there was almost regret in his tone. Hesitancy or worry, maybe.

Sakura wondered how much of it was sincere. It felt real …But then, it was supposed to.

Ken had paused in his movements and so she placed her hands over his where they rested on either side of her neck. His skin was callused and the hairs over his fingers soft. The heat of him reminded her of her own creeping and enduring coldness.

"You don't have to ask anything of me..." She wanted him to know from her voice, from her expression, from the way her body stayed so comfortably under his, that she meant every word. "Tell me what I have to do."

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-o-