This chapter is like a very very compressed crime novel, so trigger warnings about murder, and stuff...

Reishi walks through the fog, she can barely see before her, or even her own feet, but she can see branches sometimes. The insinuation of foliage here and there.

The forest is quiet. The only sound being her footsteps.

She should be able to walk without a sound, just how Ryouji had taught her all those years ago, but she can't seem to do it. Every time she tries to concentrate on the way she moves, on the way she spreads her weight on her feet, the leaves and branches seem to only grow noisier.

She needs to be quiet though, she needs to. Or else the man will hear her.

A snap reaches her ears and suddenly the fog disperses. Reishi finds herself in a perfectly circular clearing, surrounded by thick tall Hashirama trees that seem to look down upon her in judgement. In the center is the man, his back to her.

Reishi starts breathing quicker as the man turns around to face her, seemingly in slow motion, as the trees around her seem to grow taller and more imposing. Her heart rate picks up and her ears start ringing louder and louder and louder-

There's a senbon protruding out of the man's eye.

Reishi wakes up, disoriented. The first thing she sees are the stars above her and she tries to count them as her ragged breath evens out.

"Bad dreams?" Ibiki is sitting on his bedroll, hugging one knee to his chest. It must be near dawn already, if he is the one on watch duty. Reishi was lucky today and got the first shift, Shirakumo being the poor bastard that got the turn in the middle of the night.

"Not really, just weird," she dismisses, stretching. No point going back to sleep now, she wouldn't be able to relax for a while yet and they are going to be getting up soon anyways. Ibiki shrugs, but keeps his eyes on her anyways as she gets up to continue her morning stretches.

She tries not to think back to her nightmare, back to how the thin trail of blood rushed from the man's eye to fall from his chin in little red droplets. She didn't have these nightmares before, though it's true that she hadn't been outside the village since the incident. She wonders if the nightmares will follow her back to Konoha once their mission is over, or if they will be held back by the walls of the village, only to pounce again when she inevitably leaves on another mission.

The crisp morning air does wonders in helping her clear her mind while they run. Ibiki has thankfully not mentioned her rather erratic sleeping patterns, though she doesn't fool herself thinking that a genius like Shikaku hasn't noticed. As it stands, she figures that he thinks it's nothing worth bothering her about. A lot of ninjas probably experience recurring nightmares, which says more about Konoha's treatment of its soldiers and less about their mental fortitude. Reishi snorts derisively, earning a rised eyebrow from Ibiki, the closest in formation. She shrugs, a little embarrassed by her outburst, and continues running.

The small village – Tomogui, if memory serves correctly – in which their mission is to take place in turns out to be comprised of barely twenty houses huddled together.

They meet with the man Reishi supposes is the leader, or Mayor, she isn't sure how the people address their leaders on the small villages surrounding Konoha. She wonders if they are little more than a spokesperson for the village or if they have any political power at all. Probably not, if she remembers correctly, the Land of Fire is ruled by a feudal system – an aberration of a government, if you ask her, but who would ask a seven year old?

The man, flanked by a lanky boy of her teammates' age, greets them with fidgeting hands and a sweaty brow that betrays his nervousness. Were it not because this is the usual demeanor of civilians outside Konoha towards shinobi, this would have led Reishi to suspect of him somehow. However, by the looks of the rest of the villagers, this seems to be the general reaction.

Dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief one last time, the man finishes his explanations and leaves them with his son, Taeru, as a guide to find those who they think are worth interrogating. Not that they really need him, with how small the village is (the only points of interest being a small inn that doubles as a bar for the locals and the healers house, where she treats her patients), but it would be rude to refuse his help and the villagers will probably be more open with them if they see a familiar face.

The five missing people, in the subsequent order, have been two farmers (Farmer 1 and Farmer 2 in Reishi's head, as she hasn't bothered to learn their names), the healer's daughter, one of the merchants that came with the last caravan and a young hunter, barely fifteen years old; the youngest one thus far.

The healer, a stocky woman who had been tending to a vegetable patch at the back of her house, eyes them with wide surprised eyes when they ask about her daughter. "Do you think that- that maybe she didn't leave like everyone says?" Her voice breaks by the end of the question, and she takes a moment to compose herself, taking a handkerchief from somewhere in her kimono and cleaning her dirt covered hands.

"We cannot tell as of yet," Shikaku says, placatingly. "We have merely been sent to investigate."

The woman nods gravely. "My baby would have never ran away like that. I tried to tell them, but they wouldn't listen! Said that everyone in the village had seen her with that merchant." She spits out that last word like a curse.

"The merchant?" repeats Shikaku.

The woman sniffs, it doesn't look like she needs much prompting to talk. "Yes, that boy that disappeared too. Rika, Noriko's daughter that lives in the hose near the inn, told Akane that she had seen my girl talking with that boy the day she disappeared, and the next day the merchant was gone even though the caravan was still here. They didn't even went missing the same day! It's true that they got along very well, but my girl wouldn't have left me without saying anything! We were very close, you see, and she wouldn't have abandoned her orchard like this."

Shikaku, that had been looking around, lets his gaze sweep over the plants appraisingly. Probably a show for the woman, who seems pretty proud about the vegetables she's standing over. "It is very well tended," he says, and let's his eyes linger on the only plant that isn't a vegetable. "Why the tea roses? If you don't mind the indiscretion."

The woman startles a bit, and looks over to the roses that are currently germinating with a bittersweet smile. "I- I planted those after my daughter- After she left. They were her favourite..."

They leave soon after. Shikaku had encouraged them to ask questions of their own if they thought of something he hadn't, but Team 3 had stayed silent. To Reishi's standards, it had been a thorough interrogation, and she hadn't felt the need to add anything, and it seemed like the boys had also been satisfied with their sensei's questions.

Taeru, who had also been silent save for the occasional sniffing sound (he must be coming down with a cold), letting the ninja do their job, snorts. "Everyone knew they were together, you know? They left one after the other; my dad says that she was probably waiting for him outside the village or something." he comments, to no one in particular, then sniffs again. Reishi wishes he would just blow his nose instead of making that terrible sound, but resigns herself to herself. It wouldn't do to be rude with the son of the guy that's paying them.

Ibiki who is walking slightly ahead of the group, looks over his shoulder. "You mean the healer's daughter and the merchant?"

"Yeah, they spent their free time together everytime his caravan rolled around." He grimaces, then mutters, "they were sappy too..."

Shikaku hums non-committally and keeps walking.

The rest of the day is spent talking with various villagers; they hardly get any new information, and the one they get seems horribly superfluous. So far all they have is this:

-Farmer 1 went missing six months ago, three months after that Farmer 2 was gone, followed only one moth later by the healer's daughter and the merchant, then, two months after that the hunter disappeared.

-All missing people were young, between twenty three and fifteen years old.

-All of them had mentioned wanting to flee Fire country to avoid the war at one point or another, except the hunter.

"Well?" asks Shikaku, rising an eyebrow. They are currently in their room at the inn, having gathered after dinner to discuss the information they have so far.

Shirakumo is the first to speak. "It does seem like they all left except the last one. Perhaps he is the one we should be focusing on."

Ibiki, who had been frowning blankly at the table, nods in agreement. "The hunter seems to be the key, maybe he stumbled upon a trap in the woods while hunting? There are wolves in the area, so it wouldn't be surprising if that's why nobody has found the body yet."

Ibiki's theory is sound, they know that the hunter had used to hunt and sell or trade the meat, and that his mother had been worried about him venturing further into the forest to hunt. While ninjas usually avoid setting traps near civilian settlements, it is possible that the boy had been unlucky enough to find one if he had gone far enough.

However...

There is something that isn't sitting well with Reishi. Shikaku must have noticed it, because he sends a pointed look her way, making the boys turn their attention towards her.

"You don't agree with Ibiki's theory?" he says.

Reishi purses her lips. "I think that it's a possibility worth investigating."

"You think something else might have happened," states Ibiki.

She isn't keen on sharing her theory; it's improbable and far fetched, but still... there's no harm done by investigating it. Right? "I think that Ibiki is probably right, but... it kind of seems like a serial killer to me." When no one speaks, she elaborates. "The pattern of disappearances, with shorter and shorted periods of time without each missing person coincides. Serial killers get more confident with each victim, more cocky, and that makes them kill more often. I know that it's been two months between the double disappearance of the healer's daughter and the merchant, but it was also the first time that two people went missing at the same time and it makes sense that the killer would be satisfied for longer. The missing people also were in the same age range and shared body type and other physical similarities, except for the girl. If not because there are no bodies to be found, this would read on paper more like a series of murders than mere disappearances..." she trails off.

"It seems far-fetched," Shikaku points out.

"Yeah," she says, defensive, "but we wouldn't be doing a good job if we didn't investigate all the possibilities."

Shikaku nods, seemingly satisfied with her argument. "Than tomorrow Ibiki, Shirakumo and I will search the forest, and meanwhile you can follow up on any clues you see pertinent."

Reishi agrees, despite the protests of her teammates at the prospect of leaving her behind. It is a logical decision, they need more people to form a search party than to ask a few questions around. It doesn't escape Reishi that he is probably also doing this as an oh-so-magnanimous show of trust, leaving her alone and trusting her information gathering abilities.

If she wanted to, she could run away and put at least half a day of distance between her and her team, as they won't probably be back until lunch. She could also stay and feed them false information... for whatever reason, though she doesn't see the point in doing that.

Essentially, she feels like she is being tested again, or like he is giving her enough rope to hang herself; and though the possibility of leaving is tempting, she isn't stupid enough to believe that a jōnin wouldn't be able to catch up to her effortlessly. Not to mention that he could inform the patrols constantly running around and she would be bound to bump into one of them sooner or later.

That he thinks she would fall into an obvious trap like this is honestly offensive. Not only is she going to stay in this stupid village, she is going to conduct a perfect investigation and he will have absolutely zero mistakes to write about in his stupid report.

She doesn't know why his attitude annoys her so much, or why she feels such determination to prove his assumptions wrong. He is completely right in thinking that she feels no loyalty towards the village or the Hokage, though the judgement of every gesture she makes is at best tedious.

Maybe it's because she finds the mere thought of leaving Obito, Fuhaku, Mikoto and Itachi abhorrent, says a small voice in the back of her head. She pushes it down, down, down until she can't hear it anymore.

That's not it. It must be her pride acting up, she just wants to be contrary, that's all.

The next morning she decides to speak with everyone that might have known the young hunter, every lead can be useful, after all.

She starts with his mother, asking about his closest friends and acquaintances in hopes of learning something new, though that lead proves to be a dead end.

However, this had been investigated as a missing person case, and not a series of murders, so it is possible that the first person to dissappear had done something to 'trigger' the murderer, even if the subsequent victims hadn't done anything to their aggressor.

Hmmm...

Maybe she should be investigating the first one instead of the last one. That was, if her memory serves her right, one of the farmers, right?

She files the information the hunter's mother gave her away for later and goes to talk to the first victim's brother.

"Good evening," she says.

The young man, who had been nursing a drink at the bar, looks at her, startled. "G'day," he answers, while she climbs one of the stools to sit beside him.

"I'm Ikotsu Reishi, one of the ninja sent by Konoha to investigate the disappearances. May I ask you some questions?"

He nods with a befuddled expression, she supposes it's not everyday that a little girl sits beside you at the bar with the intention to interrogate you. She isn't used to being treated as a tiny adult herself, and she is an adult. Mentally speaking at least. "I know," he says, "I saw you and your team yesterday walking about."

She nods, deciding that if "Do you know if your brother had any enemies? Someone who could have been at odds with him, maybe someone he had an argument with before going missing?"

The man shakes his head. "No, he was a kind man, he rarely ever raised his voice, let alone get into arguments."

Reishi purses her lips, she supposes that that would have been too easy. Nothing lost by trying though. "Was he especially close with anybody? Friends? A lover perhaps?"

"There was, well, Yoriko," he says, the sadness evident in his voice. It won't be long, she thinks, before the pain of remembering his brother reduces him to tears. She better hurry.

"Yoriko..." she trails off. "You mean the healer's daughter?"

"Yes, she was... Well, Yoriko liked to flirt, and she and my brother had been... close," he trails off, lost in thought.

Reishi's eyes threaten to widen in surprise, though her training prevents her from it and lets her keep her face in a professional mask. Shouldn't something like this have been in the file? Although it's true that, in such a small village, it would have been considered common knowledge and nobody would have thought of even pointing it out. She adds this piece of information to the puzzle and continues. "Did something out of the ordinary happen before he went missing? Anything?"

The man takes a long swig of his forgotten drink, probably seeking the strenght to keep talking at the bottom of his glass. "Nothing important, really... Well, there was something. A few weeks prior, he injured his foot while hoeing and had to have it bandaged, bled a lot too, though the healer assured us it wasn't serious."

Reishi thanks the man and leaves, it's a pity that the only relevant information was the connection between two of the victims, she hopes that interrogating the wife of the second victim will bring something to light.

What she discovers is not what she expected.

Again, the file was lacking information about the private life of one of the missing people (or victims, as she has taken to call them in her head). Although disappointing, and very annoying, she understands that the ninja of Konoha are stretched thin as it is, and that the war takes priority over some disappearances, but would a bit of professionalism be too much to ask? Who wrote this report? Did they even bother questioning people?

No matter, if Konoha lets its shinobi do some half-assed job it isn't her problem. She will do a proper job, not for Konoha's reputation, but because she has personal standards.

(And because fuck Shikaku, she'll show him.)

Interrogating the widow reveals that his husband had been distant before his disappearance, which would have fitted neatly into the theory that he had ran away from the village if it wasn't for the notebook the widow had practically thrown at her in a fit of righteous fury. Her late husband, it turns out, had a lover, and she didn't find out until after he had gone missing.

Nobody had gone missing the same day as the man, so it is safe to assume that he hadn't run away with his lover, and from what she read in the notebook (a diary, apparently, filled with love letters and a few smaller notes) this lover must have been from the village too. Maybe she is still here, even.

Reishi spends a while reading through the dead man's thoughts, trying to gauge any clue as to who this mystery lover is, but the only thing she manages to get is her calligraphy on the love letters and some deeply upsetting erotica the man wrote about her. Eugh.

It isn't long after that that Reishi decided to call it a day; besides furthering her knowledge of the love lives of the victims, she hadn't found out anything remotely relevant, and she refused to carry out an investigation based on gossip.

Before going back to the inn for lunch though, she decides to try her luck once more, asking about the hunter and getting only frustration in return. The only new information she managed to gather is that he had been sick a few days before his disappearance, and that by the time he went missing he had been just recovering from the cold. At least this rules out Ibiki's theory; the hunter wouldn't have gone out while sneezing and coughing like an idiot, that would have scared all the prey away. True, he had been getting way better (she had gone back to the Healer to ask for her notes on the patient, just in case his illness had had something to do with him going missing somehow. The woman had agreed to lend her the notebook she usually used for that, though she wanted it back as soon as possible) to the point of barely coughing anymore, but that didn't mean that he was healthy enough to go out in the woods.

She has no way of letting her team know though, and she refuses to greet Shikaku empty handed; she will order her thoughts during lunch and keep investigating afterwards.

Once at the inn she asks for her food to be delivered to her room and starts writing down her observations and all the new information she has gathered, useless as it is.

Reishi is distractedly munching on her food and reading through older notes in the healer's notebook when she sees it: the tiniest note at the margin. The note's content, however, is not what grabs her attention; the calligraphy is.

She scrambles to find the Farmer's diary amongst the mess of papers on the floor and turns the pages until she finds what she is looking for; the love letters from his lover. She compares the calligraphy as she had been taught in the academy and, sure enough, they are the same.

The healer's daughter was the Farmer's lover.

Reishi lets a grin grow as she realizes what three of the five victims have in common: they were all romantically involved with Yoriko.

But what, then, was the connection to the Hunter? Yoriko had been already missing when he disappeared.

Unless...

Reishi lets out a bark of triumphant laughter as everything finally falls into place.

The waiting, Reishi thinks, is the worst part of this plan. Shirakumo won't stop fidgeting to her left and Ibiki's impatience, to her right, is practically tangible. Not to mention the motionless creepy human statue that is their sensei right behind her. She hates this formation.

...is he even breathing?

They have been observing in the shadows for two days now, posted on a rooftop with a genjutsu over them at night and waiting for the suspect to do something. Anything. At this point Reishi will settle for the woman just- dancing naked under the moonlight, whatever, just do something weird so she stops doubting her own intelligence.

It has to be her. It has to.

Two days before, when Shikaku and her team came back from scouting the forest without having found a single lead, she had laid out her new clues and the conclusion she had reached with them before Shikaku, who had nodded and said that he had had his suspicions as well, but had wanted some more confirmation.

(Then why the hell had he left her behind alone to investigate if he already knew? And no, his shitty 'you did well' does not compensate her for the day she has practically lost doing useless research. Asshole.)

The lack of physical evidence, however, had forced them to wait until the woman made another move, and that wouldn't happen with them in the village, so they had pretended to end the investigation and leave the village in the hopes of something interesting happening.

So far the most interesting thing that had happened had been that frog that had jumped at Shirakumo when they had both gone to replenish their water supply in the nearby stream.

So they wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. And nothing happens.

Reishi, despite Shikaku agreeing with her suspicions, is starting to think that maybe they were mistaken, that she had made a mistake and looked at the clues wrong and now they would have to start the investigation from zero again like some fucking amateurs and-

Hands bigger than hers gently pry her fingers from the blanket she had been clutching and Shirakumo peers down at her, frowning. "Are you feeling well? You look tense."

Reishi grimaces, berating herself for not realizing that she had been showing her discomfort. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Ibiki giving her not so subtle glances while he folds his own blanket.

They are back at the camp now, far enough from the village that nobody will find them accidentally and close enough that they will reach the village in minutes if something were to happen. A good spot.

They had decided to take turns sleeping during the day while one of them keeps an eye on the woman, and keep watch together during the night, as the probability of an attack would be higher then. Right now it's Shikaku's turn, the last turn, and both Reishi and Ibiki had been sleeping while Shirakumo stood guard. Night is already falling, and they have to gather their things and hide the camp while they go join their sensei for the fourth time in a row.

This isn't exactly Shikaku's plan, but one they had formulated between the three genin; it's very risky, as they are basically waiting for the suspect to attack a new victim and hopefully step in in time to stop somebody dying. There probably is a better way of doing this, but when questioned Shikaku had merely shrugged in response.

Reishi isn't sure she likes this 'let's let them figure it out on their own' teaching strategy, she can't help but have the terrible feeling that, if left to their own devices, they will probably make a mistake, and in this line of work, that means somebody is going to end up dead.

"I'm fine," she says, in a tone that suggests she isn't in the mood for questions right now. Thank whatever god is out there that Shirakumo is polite enough to understand these things and give her some space. Bless him.

Ibiki, on the other hand, is not so socially aware. "Your mood has been souring since we started the mission, and as your teammates this is something that affects us too," he points out.

"I'm fine," she snaps. Why is it so hard for people to just leave her alone when she's in a bad mood? She obviously doesn't want to talk about it, so prodding will only worsen her mood and make her get mad at them. Can't they understand that?

Ibiki comes to stand right in front of her and crosses his arms. "No you are not. I was willing to put up with it after the test because I understood that Sensei had made you upset, but your temper isn't improving and whatever it is that happened, you aren't closer to fixing it or forgetting it than the night of the exam. So; either tell us so we can help, or let it go."

Reishi takes a step back, because there is, in fact, a kid lecturing her. A kid. She looks at Shirakumo, more to confirm that this is happening than to ask for support.

Shirakumo just stands there, looking out of his depth and utterly uncomfortable in this situation.

"Are you lecturing me?" she asks Ibiki, still incredulous but starting to get angry. They are not entitled to her personal life just because they happened to end up in the same team.

"He's not-" Shirakumo starts.

Ibiki huffs. "Yeah I am-"

Shirakumo gives him a pointed look and Ibiki deflates, looking to the side. "What Ibiki is trying to say, is that teammates are supposed to support each other, and it is frustrating for us when you shut us out. We can't help you if we don't know what's wrong."

"Oh," she says after a tense pause, eyebrows rised. She feels a bit overwhelmed after hearing that, and her anger is gone completely. It is true that they had been told in the academy that a team is like a second family to a ninja, and she remembers how the teams in Naruto had stuck together through everything, but she had completely dismissed that. Thinking it had been an exaggeration. "That is the longest phrase I have ever heard you say," she answers, because being an ass is her default state of being when she feels inadequate. Great going, idiot.

The boys don't say anything, looking at her with pursed lips, though she can tell that Ibiki is itching to smack some sense into her. He can be very brash when he is frustrated and she realizes that this is probably the reason why he has been more aggressive than usual during their sparring sessions.

Reishi sighs. "Look- I don't know what you want me to tell you, shit is complicated alright?"

She is absolutely not talking with her teammates about the constant feeling of being a failure.

Ibiki, who had been getting more agitated by the minute, takes a step forward and opens his mouth, but whatever he is about to say dies in his throat the moment they see the signal; a lone red flare soaring through the night sky.

Their argument is forgotten as they hurriedly pick their gear and run towards the village, where they find Shikaku waiting patiently for them outside of the healer's house. He is leaning on the wall, looking like he's just relaxing and enjoying the night breeze instead of preparing to capture a murderer.

"Taeru is inside," he announces.

"What?!" Ibiki asks. "At this hour?"

His cold, as they had seen while standing guard, had been getting worse; but thanks to the cough syrup, he had been getting better during the last day. It doesn't make sense for him to visit the healer at this time of the night. It isn't too late, only an hour or so after dinner, but the bustling of the villagers has died down considerably and there's hardly anybody walking around.

They hurriedly enter the house and find it empty, which is impossible, because Shikaku had seen them enter himself, so there must be some hidden door inside. Probably a basement of some sort.

True enough, they find a hidden trapdoor under a rug and follow the sound of rustling through a narrow tunnel until they arrive to a small room. The space is filled with what seems to be a table and... butcher's tools? Oh.

Oh.

The smell, like that of a skinned animal – blood and viscera – hits her like a wall of bricks, and she starts to taste copper on her tongue.

This looks bad.

In the center of the room they see the healer and Taeru. The woman has a crazed look, her eyes wide open so the irises are completely visible, her hair dishevelled and sticking out like branches of a leafless tree. She is holding Taeru, one hand over his shoulders and the other pressing a knife to his neck, and she keeps shifting and twitching like a rabid animal.

Taeru isn't even struggling, he seems to be in a daze, eyes glassed over and staring into the distance. Reishi notes that he has probably been drugged, hopefully with something non poisonous that will leave his system as soon as they get him out of here and he manages to sleep it off.

It all happens very fast after that; Reishi stands back while Shikaku tries to convince the woman to let Taeru go. There is yelling from the woman, and a calming voice that comes from Shikaku, but all Reishi can feel is the smell of metal and the taste of copper; everything else feels muted, like hearing it underwater. The colors around her seem brighter, the light shifty, and she wonders if she is dreaming again. If she is going to wake up in their camp again.

Distantly, she observes as the woman grows more and more agitated, and how Shikaku's tone acquires an almost panicked quality. The knife presses closer to Taeru's neck and a small trail of blood-

-like the one that drip, drip, dripped from the man's eye-

-falls slowly down his neck and into his shirt, forming a dark red stain. Her brain helpfully provides a map of the veins and arteries there, like the one she had seen in text books long ago.

Someone yells at the woman, Shirakumo, she thinks. It feels so odd to hear him lose his cool, raise his voice; though it still reaches her through a dense fog. The long haired boy sprints towards the woman and Ibiki follows suit, disregarding Shikaku's efforts to keep them behind him and desperate to get Taeru away from the woman.

Reishi doesn't move. She wants to, she feels the urge to follow her team, she is supposed to follow her team, keep them safe-

She doesn't, her feet are stuck to the ground, like they are slowly sinking in mud.

A shadow slithers like a black snake to coil at the woman's feet, and she pauses mid-action. The knife, instead of cutting all the way through the Taeru's neck, stays embedded in it a few inches before reaching the larynx. The boy gurgles pitifully and Reishi thinks that it might have been kinder to let the woman finish what she started, instead of cursing him to the stillness that is his unfinished death. He must be drowning in his own blood.

(Shikaku flinches as if burnt, knowing that he is doing with his jutsu more harm than good. He hadn't wanted to make any harsh movements, like hand seals, when they entered the room and saw the woman use Taeru as hostage, and now he is regretting it. He releases the jutsu, hoping that the woman will either finish the job and end the boy's suffering or at the very least pull out the knife from his throat.)

A warm red spray had bloomed from Taeru's throat, the colour vibrant in the dream-like quality of the room around her, and hit both her teammates, making them stop in their tracks and look down at themselves. Ibiki's chest has an horizontal dark red stain that starts in his left arm and fades slowly towards the right of his chest. Shirakumo, who had been closer, has been sprayed in his face too; the blood trickles down his cheeks and falls down his chin and into his shirt. He is staring with growing terror at the still bubbling red fountain that is Taeru's neck.

(Some droplets have fallen on Reishi too, and she feels her skin burn under them as if the blood was boiling.)

The woman, taking advantage of their state of shock and finally released from the shadowy trap, pulls the knife out and drops the kid. Taeru writhes in the floor fighting for air and coughing red liquid with a wheezing sound. Then she steps over the boy and towards Shirakumo. Before she can do anything else, Shikaku throws a kunai at her and she falls to the ground, a second corpse added to the pile.

Shikaku angrily sends her teammates outside while he checks the boy's pulse, cursing under his breath when he finds it slowing down. He tries to stem the blood with a cloth, the boy clinging to his arms with small hands and staining the cloth red, but after a few minutes of it the small hands start to lose strenght and they fall with finality. With his back hunched and still turned to her, Shikaku instructs her to explore the room. Probably to distract her, she doesn't see why investigating anything now would be useful; they are both dead, killer and victim, so it isn't like there's anything else they can do.

She sets to it anyways, the stench of blood following her even stronger than before. She doesn't know why everything feels so weird and detached, but at this point she welcomes the numbness that prevents her panicking.

A voice inside her head comments, in a tone dripping with sarcasm, that at least they have completed their mission: find out why there are so many disappearances and stop them. She pushes it down until she can't hear it anymore.

She inspects the room, finding only the butcher's tools, a metal table surprisingly clean and... a freezer. Inside the freezer she counts, between the different body parts, two bodies. The latest ones. Probably the merchant and the hunter, if she is correct. No sign of the healer's daughter anywhere. Reishi frowns, thinking. She doesn't think the woman would be able to chop off her own daughter, even if she had been deranged and had killed her. She seemed to have truly loved her, in her own insane way.

"Where is the daughter?" she asks looking at Shikaku, who had been rummaging through some jars she hadn't noticed before. Her voice sounds even, too lacking in emotions and foreign to her own ears.

Shikaku turns towards her with a mildly surprised expression, but she doesn't speak further, staring at him and waiting for an answer. Finally, he clears his throat. "It's in her garden, under the rosebush."

Her frown deepens. "How did you know?"

"Tea roses bloom after two months of being planted, which is the time Yoriko has been missing. Plus the grave was too shallow and it made a small elevation on the floor, barely perceptible but there. She looked at it out of the corner of her eye every time we mentioned her daughter," he explains.

Satisfied with the explanation, she nods to herself. "Why did you send Ibiki and Shirakumo out?"

If Shikaku is surprised by her change in topics, he doesn't show it. "They were in a state of psychological shock, so I figured they wouldn't be any help here, and it would be better to separate them from the situation..." he trails off, scrutinising her face. Then, he states, "you are acting odd. Are you... feeling well?"

"Yes, just- numb."

"Numb," he repeats.

She looks at the corpses on the floor and the pool of blood forming under them. "...I don't like the smell."

Shikaku looks at the blood and then at her, eyes narrowing. "I think it would be better if you went to see how your teammates are doing, we are almost done here, I just want to have a look at her room and then we'll inform of this and leave."

Reishi nods and leaves the room, walking through the tunnel and into fresh air. She hadn't noticed how nauseous she was before, but now, taking a gulp of air that doesn't smell and taste of blood, she is starting to feel better.

With her mind clearer now, she climbs the stairs and walks out of the house, following Ibiki's voice. The taller boy is rubbing circles on Shirakumo's back, who is hunched and seems to be vomiting the last bits of their dinner onto the dusty ground. Ibiki nods at her when he sees her and she jerks her head towards Shirakumo; Ibiki purses his lips and shakes his head as the other boy spits weakly and a thin trail of saliva dribbles down his lips. It reminds her of herself a year and a half ago.

It doesn't look like there's anything she can do to help, so she goes back into the house to take a look at the healer's room, the sooner they leave, the better. She passes the kitchen and glances at the fridge, wondering if she should maybe look inside, but fearing what she could find. She scrunches up her nose and decides that the fridge is Shikaku's problem, not hers, and walks past it.

The woman's room is littered with clothing and dirt, and it is more reminiscent of a pigsty than something belonging to a human being. There are notebooks strewn about and she picks one up and starts reading. The calligraphy is erratic, as are the words written in it, writhing like dying things trapped on the pages.

Long story short, the healer had killed the first two men for fear of them taking her daughter away, then she had killed her daughter and the third man when she had discovered they planned to leave. As for the last one... you could say that she had developed a taste for murder.

After a bit of reading she feels nauseous enough and decides to put down the notebook, hurrying outside and well away from the asphyxiating walls of the house.

The travel back is silent and grim, guilt hanging over their heads like a sword about to swing down. Ibiki and Shirakumo have both been at the end of a stern talking to, though Reishi suspects that the face of Taeru's father when they had told him about his son's death had been punishment enough for them.

They might have managed to figure out what truly happened to the missing people and put a stop to it, but this mission still feels like a failure and that is something that weighs them down. This mission was supposed to be their first accomplishment on the field, the first mission that isn't a stupid D-rank, and they got someone killed. That has to say something about the kind of ninjas they are.

It's Reishi's turn to watch over the camp while the rest sleep; getting a turn that isn't the first nor the last sucks, because it cuts your sleep in half, but for once she agrees with Shikaku; the boys should take the better turns, they do need some sleep.

Unfortunately, Shirakumo isn't of this opinion, judging by the constant shifting under his blanket.

Reishi sighs, he'd had the first turn, so that means that he probably hasn't slept since Shikaku took over his watch. She debates whether to talk to him or not; on one hand he is obviously troubled, and both him and Ibiki had offered her to talk about her problems with them, so it is only fair that she does the same... On the other hand...

There's no other hand, she has to do it, doesn't she?

She sighs yet again and goes to tap him in the shoulder, startling him. Shirakumo looks up at her, as if surprised that she initiated an interaction, which is fair enough if she is to be honest with herself.

"Hey," she whispers, "can't sleep?"

Shirakumo sits up and looks down at his hands, silent for a few minutes. "I just- I keep seeing it," he whispers softly. "How do you do it?"

Reishi frowns, not knowing exactly what he's talking about. Finally, she asks, "what do you mean?"

"You-," he takes a deep breath and avoids looking her in the eye. "You killed a man, right?"

The question rattles her and she looses foot in her own mind, plunging down to the depths and fighting to breathe. She had, hadn't she? And it hadn't mattered to her when it had happened, so why is it affecting her now? Why does she feel like she can't breathe all of a sudden?

Shirakumo's hand on her arm grounds her and she feels like she is finally resurfacing from the bottom of a lake.

"I did," she answers simply, not wanting to look at him. She realizes that he must be asking her how she dealt with her first meeting with death, not a very surprising conversation topic, given the circumstances. "I-" she starts, and then falls silent, what is she going to say anyways? That she hadn't had nightmares before but now that they are surrounded by trees she can't stop dreaming about the forest and the man with a senbon in his eye? She doesn't even know how she coped with it when it happened. She just lost her appetite for a while and then she cried a little and forgot about it.

"There is no need to talk about it if it will make you upset," he says.

"No. No, it's fine." She swallows and her eyes meet Shirakumo's. "I didn't really felt guilty about it, or bad, or felt- anything. It just happened, and that was it. I guess it's different because..." she trails off.

"He was a kid," Shirakumo says with a pained expression. "If I hadn't- What sensei was doing wasn't working and I just- We had to do something."

He is a kid too, she wants to point out, but doesn't. There is silence, only broken by the wind softly blowing through the leaves and the blades of grass. It is Reishi who breaks it, speaking in a small voice. "Maybe if I hadn't suggested waiting for her to make a move this wouldn't have happened..."

"You didn't do anything wrong," he frowns, "we decided on a plan together, and then I failed to follow sensei's directions and it went wrong. How could you be so calm? You were just- staring. With a blank face, like none of what was happening affected you in any way..."

Ah, so he had noticed. She had been very out of it at that moment, she doesn't know what had happened exactly. It seemed like the smell of blood had triggered something and she had just lost herself. She had considered who to talk to about this problem, but seeing how Shikaku had looked at her before leaving she had realized that he had already made the decision for her and that they would probably have a very interesting conversation once they arrived at Konoha. He is still an asshole, but he is a tenacious asshole that is going to keep poking at her until she gives in, so she will endure it and get it out of the way as soon as humanly possible.

"I was just- you know, a bit out of it. It was a shocking situation, so... I would have leapt with you guys, if I had been able to."

He stares at her for a few seconds and then nods to himself, pulling up his knees and resting his chin on them. The two of them stay a while like that, him curled up on himself and Reishi with her legs crossed, staring into the distance.

She doesn't even realize that she has started talking until she hears Shirakumo shifting beside her.

"I don't think you're supposed to forget about it, and then move on. I don't think anybody can do that, you know? Some people break, some people become addicted, like that woman... some just learn to carry on despite it. It's like death just follows you everywhere once it touches you, like it's got your scent.

"Sorry, I'm not very good at dealing with... stuff. I just tend to ignore it until it comes to bite me in the ass. I don't think I'm the one you should be asking about this..."

"It's okay. Thanks, Reishi," he says. She doesn't know what for, the only thing she did was telling him that he's going to keep feeling like shit about this for the rest of his life. Hearing him use her name without the usual 'san' behind it feels good though, like he has finally forgotten about that pedestal he seemed to have put her in. And all it took was witness a murder together. Joy.

She berates herself, for all she wants to leave Konoha behind and forget it ever existed, she just keeps adopting people.

"Anytime," she says.

EDIT: Krei (guest) made a very valid point, so I fixed the death scene to show why initially I hadn't written Shikaku using his shadows at all. Now it's so much better, so thanks for that! :D

*inhales* FFFFFFINALLY!

God you don't know how stuck I was, this is the last time I write something like this. Crime novels are just NOT my thing. And I did this to myself, I could have written any other mission, but nooooooo it had to be a self-imposed challenge.

Never again.