"In hindsight, antagonizing him probably wasn't the best idea," I muttered as Haku cleaned the blood from my face. My eye was swollen shut already, which was incredibly annoying and made me paranoid. I didn't like being unable to see what was coming for me on that side.

"Probably not," he agreed. I was surprised to find I hadn't lost any teeth, but then again…

I frowned as I remembered Gato's parting words. I knew human trafficking was a part of this world, but I never expected to see it first hand so soon. Lovely.

In clan training, Dad had sat Ino and me down and had a very serious discussion about the technique he was going to teach us. Ino had been very shaken afterwards, but I had been… interested. On one hand, it was nice to know that I had an out if I needed it. On the other, I had no idea if I was going to die again and get a new family and life and have to learn another frickin language or if I was going to, y'know, die normally.

With my luck, I'd be thrown into Game of Thrones or something.

While I'd prefer to not die again and be stuck in some endless cycle of death, I'd rather nope out of this world than become a victim of human trafficking. Especially if whoever got me had a few days head start to lose Sensei.

Right. Sensei. I knew that he wouldn't be able to confront Gato for at least a week, which begged the question of exactly how long it had been since I had been captured and what my team was doing. A day? Maybe two?

Sensei was probably reading porn, Sasuke angsting, and Naruto screeching about 'becoming Hokage, dattebayo!11!'.

On second thought, that was a bad train of thought, abort abort.

"I don't get it," Ino decided, pouting.

Inoichi sighed heavily as he watched his nine year old twins fidget on the grass. They both seemed more interested in the prospect of playing on the cool spring morning than sitting down for lessons. Ino was bored and confused; Inoko did seem mildly interested, but looked confused about the applications.

"Purposeful Lima Syndrome?" she muttered, plucking grass. "That's…"

"Necessary depending on the situation," he said, chucking Inoko under her chin. "If you can create a bond between yourself and your captor, they might be more willing to be… persuaded."

"Why bother?" Ino interrupted. "I mean, if they've got you already, why let you go?"

"Because if they're holding you hostage, you could at least buy some time," Inoko murmured, looking pale. He wasn't sure if it was because of the lighting or her own clear dislike of the thought. "Even buying a few seconds could mean the difference between life and death."

Inoichi patted her head as Ino's face morphed into an expression of understanding. Inoko varied between understanding subjects like she had been studying them for decades and taking weeks to grasp the basics. Sometimes it concerned him, but he told himself that she was a child and still adjusting, and it would pass.

It would pass.

He worried about his younger daughter sometimes.

Pulling Haku over to my side was harder than I would have liked, but it was coming along. He was more and more hesitant and reluctant when I asked him about the Tazuna situation. He came back one morning from gathering herbs for my wound looking particularly troubled.

I'd guess from both my memories and what I knew of my teammate that he had undergone Talk no jutsu.

I said nothing and looked away as Haku lifted my stained shirt up to apply the latest layer of medicinal paste to my wound. Ignoring the pain, I stared at the wall with a tight jaw. It was healing at a snail's pace.

"It's healing well enough," Haku finally said.

"Good to know."

I hurt everywhere. Considering I was only let loose in order to relieve myself twice a day, my muscles were cramping horribly. I never thought I'd say this, but I wanted nothing more than stretch and maybe even exercise a little.

Dear lord, I must be going mad.

Kakashi wanted nothing more than to hit his head against something hard repeatedly. He had done his best to train the boys in the short time he needed to recover, but by Okami did they make it difficult. Thinking he could capitalize on their incessant rivalry was a horrible, horrible mistake.

On a completely unrelated note, the fires had been put out and there wasn't that much damage to the forest.

Anyway.

Once he was actually able to walk around without crutches, he did a bit of scouting. As far as he could tell, Inoko wasn't with Gato. This of course begged the question of where the everloving hell was she?

"Sensei!" Naruto said cheerfully once he arrived back at Tazuna's home. "Did ya find out where Inoko is?"

Kakashi shook his head, feeling frustrated. He hadn't even had his genin team for two months and their first C-rank had gone FUBAR. He really was a crappy sensei.

He wasn't going to let this turn into another Kannabi.

Haku wasn't sure what to think of his captive. Inoko seemed to know just how much danger she was in, but more often than not it didn't phase her. She would joke with him and make terrible puns - he wasn't sure if he liked them or not because while they were clever they were just so bad - like they had known each other for years. Like they were friends.

He didn't know how he felt about that.

Haku knew that she knew things she shouldn't. It had taken nearly four years of serving Zabuza-sama before he had gotten the courage to tell him exactly what had happened to his parents, but Inoko… she had known. And she wasn't afraid of him. There was no judgement in her eyes, just sadness.

Against every screaming instinct in his body, he liked her. She didn't see Haku as less than a human, as his father had when he discovered Haku's kekkei genkai. She didn't see him as something to be used. He was fine with that; he was a tool to be used by Zabuza-sama. But Zabuza-sama was gone now. He really wasn't sure what to do with himself at this point.

From her position tied to a chair, Inoko offered something he never had before. Haku couldn't deny that he wanted it. Even so, he would repeat to himself that he needed to finish Zabuza-sama's last mission.

He didn't want to. He was fond of Inoko, fonder than he should be. Gato had demanded that he turn her over to bait her team into an ambush.

Zabuza-sama had taught him to never feel sympathy for a target, but crushing his feelings was harder this time.

It had started shortly after she had been beaten by Gato's samurai. She had muttered sarcastic remarks under her breath, cursing them and their mothers as he expected. Then she started criticising their fashion choices, of all things.

She had fallen silent for a while after that, thinking hard about something. Probably escape. Unexpectedly, she shuddered violently and began muttering, "Abort train of thought, abort, abort."

She was an extremely odd person.

Inoko would cheerfully talk to him as he did various things around the room, telling him stories about her childhood. While he noticed how careful she was to keep certain things vague, he did find himself lingering in the room merely to listen to her speak. Zabuza-sama had never been one for lengthy conversations.

Sometimes he would ask her questions about her family and clan, telling himself he was probing for information even though he knew he enjoyed actually talking to someone for once. He thought he saw a glint in her eyes not unlike Zabuza-sama's when he succeeded at something, but it vanished so quickly he wasn't sure he really did see it.

As he got to know her, he felt that he could trust her with little things, like being untied to go to the bathroom. She was wounded, after all; what could she do to him? She never took advantage of him, merely smiling in a warm, genuine way and thanking him each and every time he did something for her, no matter how small or insignificant it was.

It made him feel warm in his chest like he hadn't since he was a child.

Time crawled on, and Haku found himself devoting himself to making sure she was ok. How was her wound? (He conveniently forgot that he was the one who gave it to her in the first place) Was she comfortable in her bindings? Did she need anything?

It wasn't unlike how he treated Zabuza-sama.

The night before he was going to turn her over to Gato to act as bait, he caught a triumphant yet guilty look in her eyes. He wondered why.

Slowly working around the indoctrination that Haku had was an... interesting experience. Sure, I knew how to do it in theory, but theory was a good deal different from practice, and I only had a week to pull him around.

Thankfully, a decade spent learning how the human mind works and another decade learning how to manipulate said mind meant I had an advantage. A good one at that.

As I saw Haku slowly becoming more attached to me, giving me slightly more freedoms, I repeated to myself that this was good, this was just another step to getting free, this was fine.

I couldn't escape the feeling I was becoming another Zabuza.

As I slowly returned to consciousness, I had a single groggy thought: I hate drugs.

Seriously, screw the guy who came up with the non-medical knockout drugs. They freaking sucked.

On a slightly more serious note, I was no longer in Haku's hideout. I could tell that much despite being blindfolded.

"Ah, the Yamanaka brat," Gato said. Judging by the position of his voice, he was about three feet in front of me. "How nice of you to come here."

"Ah, the dipshit with the gods awful haircut," I smiled. "How nice of you to invite me."

I probably shouldn't have been surprised as I was when I got hit across the face with his cane again. I spit out a molar I was due to lose anyway.

"Still as impudent as ever, I see."

"Still as ugly as ever yourself," I said cheerfully, spitting out some blood from my split lip. "When's the party starting?"

"If by party, you mean when my men destroy your little team and finally rid me of that bridge builder, then it will start soon."

"Sounds like fun~" I sang out, grinning widely. "Can't wait to see how Sensei is going to utterly destroy you~"

Oh yes. This was going to be great.

Naruto was not happy. In fact, one could even say he was extremely pissed off. Sasuke was even more irritable than usual and Kakashi-sensei was barely paying attention to them when he was even around.

All in all, his teammates sucked. Only a stern lecture from Kakashi had stopped him from sending an army of shadow clones out to look for her.

"Argh!" he shouted, clutching at his hair. "It's been ages already! Why can't we get her?!"

Inoko had been one of his first friends - well, she tolerated his presence at first before she started pulling him along to things. She introduced him to Shikamaru and Chōji, then pulled Kiba into their group to keep him busy. She would tolerate his rants about ramen and Sasuke and becoming Hokage to an extent before informing him he was being obnoxious.

It was Inoko who had taught him 'manners', though she disregarded them herself sometimes. She had done her best to teach him the bunshin, though they both eventually gave it up.

She had tried and tried her very best to help him, and he couldn't do the same when she needed it most.

"Dobe."

Naruto looked up to see Sasuke standing in front of him. Scowling, he said, "What do you want, teme?"

"Sensei said it's time," he explained, a strange new light dancing in his eyes. "Let's go."