A/n. Happy new years everyoneeee, hope you had a very nice holiday season, i sure did for once!

Here is the newest chapter, its sort of a filler but i hope you dont mind it too much :)

We have reached 110 follows and 60 favs so far and i want to thank you all for the support you've given me and the story. Let's all continue to work hard this year for TWYG's second aniversary! I hope we can all continue this journey togther.

As always happy reading and thank you,

Bruce Rosie

Chapter 24: Road to th Land of Grass

In all of my trips to the Land of Rivers, I'd never had reason to visit the docks, even if I'd sent Doyun to infiltrate more than a few cargo ships. If I had ever been under the impression that the main road in the capital was overcrowded, it had immediately left my mind once we went throught the gates at the port. Every member of the local police force that we had noticed had been missing within the city walls, was out in the port. One would have thought that with the utter state of chaos the city was in, the docks would have been better off with the entire police force present. Thwy weren't, every officer there was either guarding shady looking cargo or bullying honnest tradesmen into paying made up taxes for the port's "services". All the people we had managed to avoid in the city was conglomerating there: human traffickers, drug dealers, people deep in the trade of organs and animals and sellers of devices and objects that were of dubious presedence. They were all there, and we were now in the big leagues. There was no place for mistakes going forward.

We definitely looked out of place there, even if our clothes were those you could find on any child of a merchant's. Brown, moss green, grey, and a bit of terracota were the most predominant colors ammong us. Hotaka was wearing brown lenses and I had hidden my braided hair under the hood of my green cloak. It had been a gift from Hana for my last birthday, it was short, it reached my hips, effectively covering the harness that held my weapons to my side and back. It allowed movement just fine and had an inside layer of light mesh that offered an extra layer of protection.

Both Hotaka and Takahiro blended into the crowd than I did, even when they both were sixteen, as tall as Sensei and visibly built; their darker complections made them look like they had been travelling their entire lives. I for all my disguise, still looked like a clan kid, sharp features, slanted eyes and white, milky skin meant that I was either a brothel worker or part of a clan. The bright red hair and purple lenses did not help in the slightest either.

Well, what do you know? Hotaka had been right. Awful decision on my part really. Oh well, what was done was done, no point crying over spilt milk I guess.

The fact that at fourteen I still hadn't grown much did not exactly help either, but there was no avoiding that; Shisui had never been that tall anyway.

So from an outsider's point of view, I probably looked like a distant relative of Taka's. That or they were escorting me either for protection or merchandice "safekeeping". Which was pretty funny since I was and had always been the muscle of the team. The tallest and bulkiest members of team eight were the medic and saboteur respectively which gave us the advantage since looks were deceiving like that, and since we were living proof of it, it was a principle we lived by.

Akira-sensei had stayed behind to speak with his contacts in the city, and had sent Kosuke with us. Not because he didn't trust we couldn't take care of anything that came up, but because none of us had a sense of smell as sharp. Kosuke was, alongside Sensei, our only tracker in the team and regardless of how much we tried, we never would have been able to do our job without him. Even if we were still genin at what was considered an advanced age, none of us were particularly bothered, underestimation was a very powerful weapon of ours so letting the enemy think that Kosuke was there for protection would play in our favor.

And we loved the expression of utter shock with a hint of confusion and desperation whenever our enemies realized they had in fact fucked up.

We pretended to mingle with the merchants, buying things here and there, and asking around for the best way to travel to Grass if one wanted to be discreet about it, laying falce traces to throw off any tails we had on us. Oh and Kami did we have tails, seemed like people had taken an interest to us. It wasn't ideal, but we could use it to our advantage if we were smart about it. And smart we were, because the next day most of the people following us were sailing to grass without us. Jiraiya-san thought it was hilarious.

We amanaged to retrace Jiraiya's contact's steps all the way to the capital of the Land of Grass from a few merchants' account of the trip, who had travelled almost all the way there with the man. According to their testimony, the man had dissappeared during their second night in Grass, leaving all his posessions behind. He had sailed with a wine cargo ship and had done nothing out of the ordinary according to the crew, except maybe refusing to "judge the quality of the goods" when they opened a few bottles each night. Jiraiya-san had said he always abstained while on the job, so it had definitely been him on that ship. All of this, he already knew, we were just confirming all of his suspicions. There was not much else we could do in the city, so on our third day, we set off for Grass on foot, and sent the orphans on boat, making sure no one knew the six of us were affiliated. Only Emiko stayed to hold the fort, but none of us ever doubted her ability to do so. Nothing of interest would ever get past her. She was good like that.

The road to Grass was not hard. There were no steep hills to climb, no treacherous crossing of swamps, no rivers infested with man-eating beasts to swim across. No, the road was peaceful, surrounded by rice fields and various other corps that were watered by canals dug from the rivers around. The heat was not suffocating and the wind was not strong enough to make dust fly into one's eye. Men and women worked the fields to both sides of the road and paid no mind tho those who travelled across the country.

Anyone would think that with the pace we had all set, we were in no rush to get to our destination. Anyone would think that the two adults that travelled alongside three teenagers and a dog were simple merchants. No one looked our way twice, no one's eyes lingered on us more than they would on a simple passerby. But even if nobody seemed to realize it, we knew. We knew we were shinobi on a mission, and we knew that, even if it didn't appear so to the untrained eye, we were being watched. We couldn't place where the raising of the hair in the back of our necks came from, how many pairs of eyes were actually watching or whom they reported to.

We just knew they were there.

The foliage mooved a bit too much, a bit too suddenly, and in the opposite direction the wind was going. They were watching allright, but we would not be worthy of our title if we let them know we were aware of their presence. They could later lead us to their employers of their own accord.

For the time being we would continue to carry out our mission as planned. Other interested parties would have to wait. This did not mean, of course, that we would lower our guards. Kami forbid we died because of it, Sensei would bring us back from the underworld only to send us back himself. Inuzuka Akira did not train lousy shinobi that died from a kunai to the back of the head. Not in the presence of the legendary Toad Sage Jiraiya at the very least.

Everything seemed to be in order were someone to pay a little more attention to our little group. Jiraiya and Sensei spoke animatedly about the things they had both encountered during the time they were apart. Hota and Taka discussed the most effective way of transportation when wanting to travel unnoticed; and Kosuke and I brought up the rear in comfortable silence, simply enjoying eachother's company. True, he was a dog, but he was older and wiser, and even when in silence, I never once felt lonely around him.

Kosuke was a part of our team, and without him, there was no team eight. The great dog had been there from the very beginning and was as much a mentor as his human companion. He trained with us, pointed out openings in our defence, and even served as a source of heat in missions during the colder months. No member of team eight lacked a bite mark on their skin, since we had all irritated the animal enough to warrant it at some point. He was our team mate, and we were his pups. We were family, we were pack, and the pack always sticks together. And pray for the poor bastard that hurt his pups. More than one enemy had met their end at the hound's jaws after hurting one of us. But the most brutal of those incidents had been when Taka recieved a kunai to the thigh and Hota hurriedly tended to him while I attempted to keep the enemy at bay. Sensei and Kosuke had gone ahead of us, but unluckily for our enemy, Kosuke turned back to check on us three. The poor souls were not given time to react when the black mass of fur started to tear at flesh and bone like a beast possessed. None of us had doubted the animal's ability for cruelty again, and neither did we forget. Kosuke was home. Kosuke was family. Kosuke was safety and warmth. We would all give our lives for him without a second thought, and in return, he would do the same.

The night was beautiful, clear, and silent. The wind had stopped and the open fields had been momentarily replaced by a forest. The trees gave us cover behind which we could make camo for the night, and the higher branches provided a vantage point for our sentinels. Firewood was collected, a perimeter was set, and tents were pitched while Hotaka left to hunt something down for all of us to eatwith the help of Kosuke.

Takahiro worked hard to reduce the time it took him to set up the perimeter each time we were out on mission, and it was no differnt then. He managed to cut his time half a minute that night and announced so as he climbed up to where I sat so we could start first watch.

As the night began to settle, and food was handed out, our routine started to resemble that of our missions before Sumiko appeared, only that with the added presence of of Jiraiya.

We looked like any group of merchants stopping for the night in their trip to a place more profitable. But it was our conversation that, if overheard, would give out our identity. Our talk was done in hushed tones, never whispers because those carried, and it was littered with information that could be useful to our enemies. Now when you know someone is watching and keeping an eye on everything you do or say, the game changes. It was now up to them to choose which pieces of information to believe. We were aware that quiet conversations in the dead of the night carried the most valuable intel, but it was also the perfect opportunity to spread the wrong kind of intel. So we spoke truths, but they were layered with thick layers of lies, and so discussed the mission without fear of being overheard.

But even with such precautions in place, Jiraiya stillpllaced a secrecy seal around our camp when he told us what he and his contacts had been investigating. There were two big situations he had been keeping tabs on that were of paramount importance, and as we had been told before, it was those in Ame and Oto. What we had not been told, was exactly what there was to be found in those places. In the unnamed country where Amegakure was, there had risen to power someone the people venered like a god, who apart from his own "angel" had the company of an entire organization by their side. Ita was when they had all arrived that the rain had started, never to cease, creating a natural barrier for intruders, who would find it near impossible to find safe passage to the village through the swamps. There was a single road in, and it was guarded almost as tightly as a kage's office. There was something brewing there, we understood, something big after the misterious death of Hanzo the Salamander wich would affect us all in some way.

Politics, I'd learnt, still ruled the world, still dictated my assignments, still decided wether I lived or died. Which meant that even if I hated the idea of bureaucracy and the fact that decitions were made depending on the interests of who made them, I still needed to learn to live with them and simply keep an eye on how they affected me and those around.

All of this seemed a little depressing in my eyes. A fourteen year old orphaned girl who's job was killing people who had found themselves on the wrong end of a scope just because they had somehow been in my employer's way. Lovely. Still, infiltration was my specializarion, not assassination, my currency was information, not blood money. And about the fourteen year old orphaned part, well, I was not alone, not anymore at least.

I tried not to question it all too much, his was my life, my family, my job, my own hard earned abilities; and a system so corrypt it would instigate a coup in another country just because they had refused to sign a trade agreement would not, could not take it all away from me.

Still I would gather information on all the key players. They would not catch me off guard, I would not be betrayed again by my own country, the people I was supposed to trust with my own security

But for now, I would focus on getting to the bottom of the Ame and Oto situation. I would go back home wiser, to a promotion which would give me access to high ranking restricted archives. I'd work my way up, and when I saw a chance to uncover the truth behind the massacre, I would not hesitate to take it.