The first thing I was aware of was the sharp pain in my right side. I hissed slowly through my teeth as I opened my eyes. It hurt almost as bad as cramps I used to get a lifetime ago. I was in a wide stone hideout of some sort. Not underground; I could clearly hear the wind rustling in nearby trees.

I had been in Zabuza's body, hadn't I? I was helping Sensei fight him when I had been thrown back into my own body. Then pain and a white mask hovering over me before darkness.

"You're awake," a feminine voice said softly. My gaze snapped over to the hunter nin sitting in the corner. Speak of the devil. "Don't bother struggling; you've been thoroughly secured."

We both sat there for a moment, sizing each other up. "I'm thirsty," I said after a moment.

"You killed Zabuza-sama," he said flatly, ignoring me.

"I didn't lay a hand on him."

"You and I both know that you don't have to touch someone to kill them, Yamanaka-san."

"I didn't kill him. I merely briefly controlled him to free my teammate, Haku." He pulled back in surprise for a second before removing his mask.

Haku was incredibly pretty for a boy, but his good looks were marred by the haunted and grief ridden look on his face. I almost felt bad for him, remembering how devoted he had been to Zabuza. Almost.

"How do you know that name?" he asked quietly. I didn't flinch.

"I have a habit of knowing things I shouldn't," I replied flatly.

"You're an odd girl."

"So I've been told."

We made a weird pair, one of us free and the other tied to a chair, staring into each other's eyes. "Why am I here?" I asked after a second to break the silence. We had been instructed at the Academy that in the event of being captured by the enemy to find out everything we could without endangering our lives. Information was useless if you weren't alive to tell it to someone. "I presume I'm your hostage?"

"You would be correct."

We sat in silence for several seconds. I could only guess as to what Haku was thinking, but my own thoughts were occupied by escape plans and the like. Why didn't he just kill me? Why take me hostage? Information? Eventually I decided to fall back on my upbringing.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. Haku barely glanced at me. "For what happened to Zabuza."

Haku frowned. "Why do you apologize?"

"Because we're the same." Taking in his surprised look, I pushed on, "Zabuza was your precious person. You would have died for him, and even now you're carrying on the mission he chose, correct? I…"

I had a choice here. Zabuza had died, meaning that certain things were fixed in time. This in turn meant that Haku would likely die as well, probably by Sensei's hand. In the end, this information would remain safe. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.

"I see things. In my sleep. Things that haven't yet happened," I said slowly, careful of what I revealed. Hopefully, if he did tell someone and it became public, it would be disregarded as mad ramblings. "The things I see... the future I see, isn't a good one. I'm trying to change it. One of the things I see is my father."

Haku made a noncommittal noise.

Well, he was listening at least. That was something, right? I took a steadying breath and continued. "So, I also have an important person I am trying to protect. Many important people, actually. Zabuza was one of them. Unfortunately, not everything can be changed."

"You still could have tried," Haku said in a low voice.

"Maybe. But some people mean more to me than others." His head snapped up, anger in his eyes. "Would you have done any differently in my place?" I asked. The anger faded from his eyes as he visibly lost steam.

I glanced down at my aching side. Judging by the state of the congealed blood, Haku had stopped the bleeding, but it still hurt like a mother.

Slowly taking a deep breath and focusing on the sharp stab of pain, I began to work through what I knew of Haku. I couldn't afford to go unconscious to drop into my mindscape to revive my memories, so this would have to do. He was loyal to Zabuza to the point of jumping in front of a Chidori. He had intimate knowledge of herbs and healing techniques. He -

"Prove it."

I opened my eyes in surprise. His face was a calm mask devoid of emotion, but I could sense the turmoil in him.

"Prove it?" I asked, trying to buy time.

"Prove to me that you do indeed… see things."

"Well, if you untie my hands -"

Haku laughed harshly. "Don't take me for an idiot. I know that Yamanaka need their hands for their jutsu."

Well, there went my plan of disabling his mind and untying myself.

"Did you really think that I would let you go after telling me that you had mystical visions of the future?" he asked incredulously. "I was an idiot for thinking that you might actually be telling the tr-"

"You were so proud of yourself that day," I said in a low voice, not looking at him. He froze. "Finding out that you had those powers. You went to show your mother, but she was so angry for some reason."

"Impossible," he whispered, recoiling from me. I met his eyes as I continued. I could see the pain in his eyes, but I couldn't stop.

"She hit you, didn't she? You didn't understand why when she told you to never show those powers."

"Stop it."

"But someone already saw you -"

"Stop it!"

"- and they came, didn't they?"

"Shut up!"

I kept pushing, kept staring at him with a single minded intensity as the temperature dropped.

"Your father was the one who struck the final blow -"

"Shut up shut up shut up!" he screamed, frost creeping up my skin. We sat in silence for several seconds as he panted and I inspected the ice on my skin. While it felt great against the burn of my wound, I had to admit that I might have pushed him a little far.

"Do you believe me now?"

Haku stared at me for a couple seconds more before vanishing.

Well.

I guess it was a bit of a bomb to drop.

Gato was pleasantly surprised when he was contacted by Zabuza's underling. He had been expecting quick results, but nothing like this. Shinobi really were a force to be reckoned with.

"Where is your master?" He frowned when only the underling appeared at the entrance to the hideout.

"Dead," the boy said shortly. Well, that was disappointing.

"And the bridge builder?"

"Still alive. He hired shinobi himself."

Gato took a steadying breath. This was… unfortunate, but… "I trust you called me here for a reason, then?"

The boy nodded, leading the way down the hall. "He hired a genin team. Their jōnin sensei is the one who killed Zabuza-sama."

Gato himself didn't notice how Haku's voice caught ever so slightly, but his samurai did. They glanced at each other and gripped the handles of their swords just a little tighter.

"I was able to capture one of the genin. She's down the hall."

As they walked, they could hear a child's voice… singing. The same four verses, over and over and over again, slow and eerie, punctuated by hysterical laughter.

"Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream~ Merrily, merrily, merrily, mer, life is but a dream~."

Gato was starting to be creeped out, but this was a child. Anyone who'd even heard his name knew to tremble in fear. Full grown men had pissed themselves in his presence. He'd teach her to fear him.

When Haku opened the door to where the genin was being held, he could see a chair in the center of the room knocked over. There was… someone tied to it, long blonde hair strewn across her face and the floor. She was rocking against the floor as she sang.

"Merrily, merrily, merrily, mer, life is but a -" The child broke off mid way and stared at them through her hair. Her pupilless eyes were blank. "Dream," she whispered. Slowly, a wide smile crept over her face.

"Are you strangers? Or are you frieeeeends?" The blonde rocked her chair over onto its side. "I like friends. Let's be best friends. Forever." She giggled, wide eyes never leaving Gato.

"Shut her up," Gato said, waving his cane towards her.

Waraji strode forward and grabbed a fistful of her long blonde hair, yanking her into an upright position. Her face briefly contorted with pain as he held her there, but the crazy grin was soon back.

"Are we playing now? Playing with lots of friends is always so much fun."

As she began to laugh again, Gato studied her. She looked like a civilian, really. There was a large bloodstain on the right side of her jinbei top, but it was dried and dark now. The only parts of her clothing that suggested that she was a ninja was the wrappings on the right leg of her knee length pants and the sandals that every ninja seemed to wear.

"What's your name?"

"They call me Nonya," she said wistfully. "Nonya business." Gato nodded at Zori, who hit her in the gut with the pommel of his katana. The girl gave a loud cry of pain.

"She's a Yamanaka," Haku said after a moment. "You would do well to mind yourself around her."

"The voices say I can't kill you," Yamanaka said before that damned grin came back. "Yet."

Gato walked forward, inspecting her for a moment before hitting her in the face with his cane.

"I'm going to enjoy it~" she sang, spitting out blood. She grinned at him with wide unblinking eyes. "So much."

"And if I kill you first?" Gato asked, curious. This was the first time someone so powerless hadn't feared him at all. He was intrigued, honestly.

"No matter. I'll just use the seed I planted in your mind." Gato recoiled. "I'll use it to take over your body and ruin everything you've worked so hard to build," she whispered, pleasure on her face. "It will be so easy."

"You're bluffing."

"Am I?" She sounded so amused by the fact he was trying to call her bluff - because it had to be a bluff - that he was almost convinced. Almost.

Her smile was lopsided now due to her face swelling. But she was still smiling. Closing her eyes, she began to sing her stupid little song again.

Nodding to Waraji again, the samurai hit her in the crusty red spot on her shirt. This time she screamed, curling in on herself as much as she could while tied to a chair.

All mirth had vanished from her gaze when she looked up, panting.

"I think… that I won't mind killing you at all," Yamanaka hissed, a dark look in her eyes. "In fact, I look forward to it."

Leaving the room, Gato merely smirked to himself and began mentally going through his list of contacts, wondering how much someone would pay for a young female Yamanaka. Behind him he could hear the sounds of his bodyguards hitting the girl.

"I would prefer that you not permanently maim or disfigure her," he called back. "That would significantly lower her value."

Her hysterical pain-filled laughter echoed in his ears.

"What do you mean we can't go now?!" Naruto shouted furiously. Kakashi sighed heavily, head aching and coils feeling awfully empty. Sasuke was clearly enraged as well, which surprised Kakashi. He hadn't realized that the Uchiha cared about the girl so much.

"It's an effort for me to even sit up right now," Kakashi explained. "Any effort to rescue Inoko right now will have to wait at least three, maybe four days if we want it to succeed." He just hoped that she made it that long and didn't flip the kill switch.

Back in Anbu, he'd had a Yamanaka teammate explain to him about the kill switch jutsu Yamanaka were taught a month before graduation. It was a remnant from the warring clans era when getting captured and interrogated would mean death for clanmates. So they came up with a kill switch jutsu. It would utterly destroy the mind to prevent anyone from spilling vital information. It didn't require any hands signs, just dropping into their mind and flipping the metaphorical switch.

Said teammate was forced to use it barely a week later. Needless to say, he didn't want to see his student like that, and damn it, he was getting attached.

It was probably her deadpan sarcasm. He knew for a fact that there were jōnin who couldn't be as sarcastic as she could, leaving one unsure if she was insulting you or not.

"We could at least do something rather than sit here and be useless," Sasuke snapped.

"Our mission is to protect the client," Kakashi reminded him, as much as he hated to say it. "For now, that's all we can do. C-ranks have significantly more risk to them. Inoko knew that she could die when she signed up for this life."

"So what, we're gonna abandon Inoko because she got captured?!" Naruto demanded, shaking with rage. "I thought you said that people who break the rules are trash, but people who abandon their comrades are worse than trash!"

Kakashi winced a little. "We're not abandoning Inoko," he replied firmly. "I'm just saying that our primary objective is to keep Tazuna safe while he builds his bridge." And how he hated that. He'd thought about it thoroughly, and it would take at least two days for one of his summons to make it back to Konoha, and another two days for the Anbu team to come back. At this point "There aren't any other high level shinobi that ought to be an issue around here aside from the one that took her. After a few days of rest, I'll be able to take care of them just fine. On the bright side, if Gato just happens to die under mysterious circumstances while we track down our missing teammate, well…"

It took Naruto a moment, but when he got it, a sly smile slid across his face, matching the smirk on Sasuke's.

"Ah, I get you, Sensei," he grinned. "We're gonna rescue Inoko, dattebayo!"

Kakashi had his book out, feeling too troubled to really see the words when Naruto said, "Wait, are we going to kill Gato?"