Author's Notes: I'm still getting used to this format. I do apologize ahead of time. I've posted most of the chapters on Ao3 already and I'll do them here as well. Thanks.

As far as Neji knew, he is dead. And yet, here he is, thinking about how dead he is. Are the dead even capable of thinking? Neji takes in a full breath and expels them out in one slow breath. He tries to calm down. Neji feels for his body. His hands map the entirety of his chest. It is then that Neji gets a feel for his environment. He is surrounded by walls, four flat walls to be exact. They constrict his movement. He wonders what it is that he is contained in. Pounding on the walls seems to be the most sensible option. Neji feels for the tight walls that surround his body. The walls are smooth to touch and quite cold too. He wonders what container he is in. Neji is more curious than panicked in the situation that he is in. All that he sees in this boxed up environment that he is in is pitch blackness. He faintly recalls the last thing on his mind.

The memory most prominent in his mind is the image of his cousin staring back at him. Fuzzily, other shinobi are there too and it looks like he is in a despairing battleground. Neji quickly glides his fingers across the smooth walls and he trails them up where the walls meet. He's found a corner not too high above his head's height. His shoes hit the bottom corners as well. The container he is in is far too tiny for a body such as his', well any human adult body to be exact. Fear then strikes his heart. "Oh god, I'm in a coffin." There is not a doubt in his mind that this container is a coffin, although coffins are supposed to be round for shinobi. However, he cannot shake that thought away at all. Neji thought he died from the spikes but it looks like he's somehow buried dead, but mistakenly alive. He squints at the ridiculous situation he's in. "I might as well get out before I run it of air."

Seeing as how he is standing with gravity pulling at his feet, Neji supposes that the only way out is to strike upwards. He hits the ceiling of the container awkwardly, jamming his knee forward into the wall in front of him. In doing so, a blaring light seeps into the container from the edges of the walls. Neji raises a brow at the peculiar light bleeding through the cracks. "That's odd," his intonation climbs up as his comment tapers off. Curiousness captures him and he begins to strike the wall in front of him instead. Neji hears a click but disregards it. He hits the wall one more time with both his fists and the walls breaks out. It clangs onto the ground. He is free. "Byakugan!"

The night sky crescendos and Shino signals to Kiba and Tenten two thumbs up. Kiba presses his back against a backyard wall of a house as he stares at the CCTV camera mounted high above the streetlight. He pauses and waits for a few seconds for anything to come from the earpiece in his right ear. He then steps closer to the corner of the backyard wall, making sure not to etch his shoes on the neighborhood pathway's poorly paved concrete. Kiba gulps and stops when his shoulder nears the rounding of the corner. He listens to the earpiece intensively. There is nothing audible at all. "Shino what are you doing?" he whispers angrily to the camera.

"I gave you both a thumbs up," Shino says as he stares onto the monitor screen in front of him. He rolls his chair over to the table behind him to grab an apple slice before returning to the monitor. "You're both on sight."

"Geez!" Kiba hisses as he feels for his gun holster, making sure he still has his weapon on him, "Could've said that earlier! You think we can see you from the cameras?" Kiba detached himself from the wall and straightens out his leather jacket.

Shino shoves the whole apple slice into his mouth and chews loudly just on purpose, "Tenten's not complaining so I don't see how it's a problem-" in the monitor screen, he sees Kiba raising a middle finger to the camera in his feed before confidently assuming a casual posture and stepping out onto the intersecting pathway. "He flipped me off, Tenten."

"Stop entertaining each other and focus on the job," Tenten whispers calmly as she directs her eyes from the CCTV mounted on a streetlight three neighborhood blocks from Kiba. "Just make sure to keep your eyes on the target area. We'll try to blend in as much as we can until we reach the house." She shoves her hands into her puffy black jacket, feeling the bulge of her gun and gun holster on her hip. "It's time to put an end to the White Killer."

Shino glances upwards to the larger monitor with over twenty CCTV screen feeds in the display, "Yep, copy that."

Kiba adjusts his cap and strolls to the right, "That is if he's still in the house or in the area."

"If not in the house, then he should be nearby," Tenten clearly says as her pace fastens down the path. "Gosh, why can't the neighborhood be flat."

Shino spots Tenten cautiously makes her way down the back point of entry. "If it starts raining again, the both of you will be the odd ones for not carrying umbrellas," he rolls himself to the back table again for another apple slice. "Why didn't the two of you wear hoodies?"

"Because it's not gonna rain?" Kiba retorts as a high schooler intersects his path. He quickly pulls out his phone and begins to press random buttons before putting the phone up to his ears. The high schooler just heard what he said. Kiba tries to play it cool, "Mom it's not gonna rain is it?" He slyly looks over his shoulder and sees the high schooler snickering. He shoves the phone back into his pocket, "I hate this place."

"Can we focus?" Tenten slows down and makes a left turn into a narrower pathway sandwiched between two houses.

Shino scoots to the screen, "I just lost you, Ten."

"Gotcha."

Kiba lifts his nose high in the air, smelling street food nearby, "Hey, did I just miss my path?"

Shino directs his eyes to Kiba's figure on the screen, "No, you're on track."

"Are you sure?" Kiba asks as he passes by a dark dead-end alleyway on his right. He pays no attention to it. "I swear I just smelled skewered sweet and sour pork."

"You're seven blocks from the nearest street vendor," Shino tells him. He taps into the CCTV and brings up live footage of the same street food mentioned. "It's located right next to a convenience store. Should we celebrate after apprehending this suspect?"

"If we can catch him," Kiba points out as he descends down a steep path.

Tenten reappears in Shino's monitors and he swipes the street vendor CCTV away. Shino leans back on his chair and stares at Kiba rounding the steep path. A dark blur moves in the dark dead-end alleyway that Kiba just passed by. He sits up immediately and brings his face to the screen while squinting. Shino immediately brightens up the screen and his eyes widen. "Kiba, don't get excited but there's a figure in the alleyway you just passed." He sees Kiba giving him a thumbs up through the CCTV and then smacks his lips. "Tenten, did you hear that?"

"I heard, we're all connected through the same line," Tenten whispers. "I'm backtracking to you, Kiba."

"Got it," Kiba replies. He continues walking past the corner to act as if he did not just receive the intel. Kiba silently reaches for his gun and slowly turns around. He makes his way to the corner and flattens himself on the corner house's gate walls. Carefully, Kiba sneaks around the corner and begins to cautiously take meticulous steps towards the alleyway he just passed. He sticks close to the gate wall. The steep hill path is making it harder to not make any noise. Against the wet asphalt, his running shoes squeak. Nonetheless, he keeps his eyes on the entrance to where the alleyway is.

"The figure stopped moving," Shino details. His eyes dart to Tenten weaving through her section of the neighborhood. "Head straight and take a hard left when you reach the opening, Tenten. We can corner him there." Without a second to waste, Tenten grabs for her gun. She can see the opening emitted by the streetlight ahead.

Kiba has no idea where Tenten is in proximity to him. He cannot even ask where she is in relation to him. If he speaks, the figure might just expose himself and flee. Kiba's jaw tighten. He cannot allow that to happen especially when he is far down the steep path. Trying to run up the hill is not an option. "Damn it."

"He's moving!" Shino shouts. Kiba freezes as he tries to listen for Tenten's footsteps. She may be agile but the cost comes with her heavy feet. Kiba hears nothing at all and decides to proceed to creep up on the alleyway. Shino draws back from the screen and switches his shades for his actual glasses. He plants his eyes to the screen and gasps, "Kiba!"

Tenten is sprinting now. She hurls over a potted plant and thumps her feet onto the ground. Kiba firmly holds his gun with both hands and he aims it toward the alleyway. His own name pierces through his ear and he winces. Right before his eyes, Kiba witnesses a dark figure with dark long hair flee from the entrance of the alleyway. Now he has to run up the hill. "Freeze!" he shouts. The man looks his way. Kiba is thrusting all of his might into his legs up the slippery path. His howl stuns the man and he buys himself two extra steps closer toward the man. If not for his chief specifically telling him and Tenten to catch him alive, he would have shot the man by now. The man is wearing a puffy winter vest. And under the darkness to which the street light cannot illuminate, Kiba believes that the man is wearing an ear warmer headband. The man tries to bolt. "I said freeze!"

The man throws a plastic bag at Kiba forcefully, causing Kiba to halt briefly. His aim lowers and when he draws his gun back up to shoot for a non-vital spot, the man is already lunging up the stairs. Kiba continues to power his legs but ends up short. He slips on the content that spilled out of the plastic bag and falls on his face. "I lost the chase!" Kiba snaps his head up to keep the man in his vision. He broke his nose on the fall.

"Shit!" Tenten angrily whispers as she finally nears the opening. A figure whizzes past her and she knows that this is the man they are supposedly going after. She slips out into the opening and begins to chase after the man up the stairs. Kiba witnesses Tenten's hard fall as she makes a hard turn out of another alleyway higher up the steep hill. "I hate stairs!" she tries to match the man's lunge. "Stop!" she yells to the man.

Meanwhile, Kiba coddles his nose as blood begins to seep out both his nostrils. He huffs through his mouth and stares at the contents on the asphalt pavement: it is a bag from a convenience store with the skewers he smelled with prepackaged food. Kiba raises a brow, "Onigiri and-" he squints at the item that made him slip, "tomatoes?" He winces at the pain at his nose bridge and picks his gun up. A tomato rolls down the steep path. Kiba reaches for the generous napkins the street vendor gave to the suspect for the skewers and begins to fold them before jamming it up to his nostrils. He stands up and begins to hobble towards the stairs. "I'm up! On my way!"

"Hurry up!" Shino's voice screams into her earpiece.

Tenten tucks the gun back into her holster. She cannot aim well while running anyway. "Freeze! Stop running!" She clamors to the man far ahead in front of her. The chase takes over three long blocks of close-knitted concrete homes. Suddenly, the faint a loud bang on a metal sheet shoots into Tenten's ears. Tenten notices that the man she is chasing also heard that sound. They both turned their heads toward the sound as the neighborhood land finally levels flatly. Tenten hurries for her gun again the moment the man slows. "Do not- run!" She slows down to a stop and takes aim. The man is nearly thirty feet from her. He looks straight at her before making a quick right. "Tch!" She runs toward where the man went and is met with a dark and narrow hallway caused by two building awnings meeting. Tenten breathes hard, trying to catch her breath as she cautiously steps towards the hallway, seeing a line of lockers. The sound that she heard earlier came from the moving locker.

"If you go there, I won't be able to see you, Tenten," Shino warns her.

"Did you see him come out at the other end?" she asks him.

"No, he's there somewhere. What's there?" Shino looks intently at the monitor screen. He brings it up to the main screen and overtakes the whole of the window.

Tenten carefully steps closer to the dark shadows with her gun pointed in front of her. A sweat bead traces down her temple and she clenches her jaw tightly. "There is a row of lockers, five of 'em. A cage of some sort is next to it, chicken cage?"

"You're telling me the guy hid in a chicken cage?" Shino's brows furrow at the ludicrous thought. "What else?"

"The locker is making a lot of noise," Tenten announces.

"He's probably hiding in there!" Kiba yelps as he tiredly takes his time up the flight of stairs.

"I'm gonna check it."

Kiba heaves and pauses in the middle of the stairs, "No, wait for me!"

"You're breathing hot breaths in my ear, Kiba," Tenten treads closer to the lockers and is engulfed in the shadows. At this point on, Shino can no longer see her. She sees the locker door jolting with every bang. "Someone's hitting the locker door from the inside," she whispers to them. She grips her own gun tighter than before. Her finger lightly settles on the trigger. With every step closer to the locker, the sound becomes amplified into her earpiece for her team members to hear. Tenten's eyes twitch with every pang she hears. She is now in front of the locker, waiting for the man to break himself out. Tenten drowns out the noise and she takes in cool deep breaths. There are only a mere two or three feet between her and the locker.

Without warning, the locker door's hinges break and it flies straight into her face. Tenten gets hit with the door and she falls to the ground. The sudden hit causes her to release her grip on the gun. It skids and stops at the edge of the shadow casted by the awnings. Tenten can feel her forehead throbbing and filling with blood. She's got a nasty bruise. Tenten glances up and sees the man standing over her. She scurries and crawls to her gun before grasping it and turning around onto her butt. In front of her stands the man coming closer to her. "Freeze!" she shouts. Tenten aims her gun to the man's chest. She tries to get up.

"Byakugan!" she hears him holler.

The dark shadows of the awnings made it impossible to see the details of the man. "Byakugan?" she thought. Tenten tries to stand up but ends up scooting herself out into the moonlight.

"Byakugan!"

"Do not move!" Tenten shakily forces her arms to hold out her gun perfectly as she's trained them. She finally makes it up to her feet just as the man begins to take a step towards her.

"Byakugan!"

"Byakugan?" she ends up thinking about it again. Tenten's eyes narrow. She is beginning to doubt if this man is the suspect they are looking for. "White eyes?" she mouths to herself. The man steps closer to her. "Do not move or I will shoot!" She absolutely did not want to shoot him. Tenten draws her aim to his abdomen instead. She can definitely for his legs but it looks bandaged. Tenten did not recall seeing any white bandages on the man's leg she was chasing just a few minutes earlier. Or did she? She grips her gun tighter as the man begins to move.

The man continues to step forward and for a split second, she swears she heard something other than the words "white eyes" coming from his mouth. "Tenten-"

He is far too close to her. Tenten glances at the side of his stomach and he begins to weigh how her bullet will move through his body in that split second. She pulls the trigger the moment the word barely escapes his mouth. The man collapses onto the ground with a thud and Tenten immediately release the tension in her jaw. "Suspect down." Kiba hears the gunshot crackle into the night along with Tenten's commentary. He grits his teeth and hobbles to where the sound came from. Tenten uncovers her radio and pulls it to her lips, "Send an ambulance," she turns around and finds Kiba limping towards her. He is out of breath. "Make that two."

"What is your location?" the voice from the other end of the radio asks.

Tenten walks over to Kiba and lends a shoulder for him to hold onto, "I thought you guys are tracking us. Didn't you plant bugs on us, Shino?"

Shino watches from the screen as Tenten helps Kiba to stand up, "I did. It's just that you two are deep in the neighborhood maze. The main road is far from where you are."

"I think I sprained my ankle," Kiba tells Tenten.

"That's why I said to stop dressing as if you're going out to a date," Tenten says to him. She looks around for a building address and finds one, "There's a building number, 1142. Take it from here Shino."

"Copy that."

Kiba shines his mini flashlight at the body still in the hallway as Tenten leans him to sit on a wall out in the eyes of Shino's CCTV. "Where did you shoot him?"

"Lower right quadrant," Tenten replies as she rests next to him. "This is the man, right?"

"Definitely," he replies. "Long hair, winter vest, and headband, definitely."

Tenten blows a sigh and wipes away her perspiration before the weather freezes it. "Sweet and sour pork skewers sounds so good right now."