Published: 4/10/2019


"Who's this?" Itsuki-sensei asked politely. I could tell by the look on his face he knew exactly who Kakashi of the Sharingan was, so I figured his real question was something closer to "Why is this famous village jounin standing in my shop looking at you, Suzu?"

"Sensei, this is Kakashi Hatake, my teammate on Team 7," I introduced quickly. "Kakashi, this is Itsuki Mikawaya. He was my sensei on Team 11. We're catching up after a long time apart."

"Hello," greeted Kakashi.

"Hello," replied Itsuki-sensei. He was too good to let it show on his face, but despite the long absence of Oyuki's guidance I found I still had the eyes to read the wariness in his eyes. I wondered if he had experienced a lot of harassment from fellow jounin since his retirement.

Kakashi, though, was still quite infected with the kindness bug. Instead of making some comment or another, he used polite speech, apologized for interrupting us, and asked if he could speak to his teammate, please, Mikawaya-sensei.

"Go ahead," Itsuki-sensei said. "No need to call me sensei anymore. Suzu-chan only does it out of habit, I think."

"You'll always be my sensei," I replied. I think Itsuki-sensei might have blushed if he were a blushing sort of man; as it was, he looked away with a wistful half-smile and waved me off.

"I'll come by again," I told him as I stood. He nodded silently and began peeling the fruit once more.

Kakashi had relocated while Sensei and I were speaking and was waiting impassively for me outside. I almost immediately began tugging my scarf tighter, but he looked unfazed by the cold.

"What is it, Kakashi?"

"The Missions Office sent me a notice this morning," he replied. "We're back on active duty."

That was to be expected. Kakashi had cleared his eval with only a follow up, and I had been out of the western ward for two weeks now. It was about time we got back to work.

"I take it you've become the commander of Team 7? Since our captain is the Hokage now."

"More or less," he shrugged. "Though with two people we could hardly be called a team."

There was a twinge of guilt in his voice. I looked at him, concerned, and said, "You know, Kakashi… She jumped in front of you. You couldn't have helped any of that."

"Let's go inside to brief." Kakashi blatantly ignored me and began strolling towards an oden store across the street. He stuck his hands in his pockets with forced nonchalance. Doubtfully, I followed after him but didn't say anything more.

I was swiftly distracted once we stepped inside. Almost immediately heads began to turn, and in a moment it felt as if the whole shop were staring at us. I reflexively began to inch behind Kakashi, who gave the people a cursory glance before making his way over to a booth in the corner.

"What's going on?" I asked in a whisper as I slid into the seat across from him. "Why are they staring at us?"

Kakashi looked at me. Then he reached into his belt pouch, pulled out a book, and said, "Here."

The book in question was an international Bingo Book. I was still for a moment. Then I put a hand on my head.

"No way. Really?"

"Look for yourself."

I quickly flipped the thin volume open and went to the red Fire Country tab. Entries were organized by descending rank, so the first few pages were all household names: the Snake Sannin, the Toad Sage, the Slug Princess, the Professor, and, of course, the newly inaugurated Yondaime Hokage, the Yellow Flash.

And, apparently, his students.

Appended to his entry were two little portraits. Photography was a precarious endeavor in this universe, so most all of the profile pictures contained in the book were sketches. Kakashi's masked countenance was on the right and mine was on the left. It was very rough, and no one would probably really be able divine my actual facial features from it, but the image was certainly that of a girl with a blond ponytail.

"Kakashi of the Sharingan and Konoha's Bloody Threads," I read slowly.

"They bumped my rank up to A in this edition," Kakashi noted. "Probably an effect of perfecting Chidori."

I was a rank B. Compared to Kakashi's entry mine was quite sparse. My personal name was unknown so I had only this moniker, "the Bloody Threads," to identify me. The only other information available was that my signature weapon was ninja wire, that I was dangerous in close- to mid-range, and that I had defeated an Iwa company singlehandedly.

"Reading this makes me seem more fearsome than I am," I said after a long moment.

"But it's not an inaccurate report," Kakashi pointed out. "Is there any way to look at thirty dismembered and beheaded ninja and call it nonthreatening?"

I only had silence to answer that. Then I shut the Bingo Book and pushed it back across the table, feeling faintly sick. Everyone knew about the Iwa company now. Minor or not, I was an official international killer with a bounty on my head.

"What's the mission?" I asked, no longer wishing to dwell. Kakashi accepted his book back and put it away without protest. Then he broke the seal on the mission scroll and opened it.

"B rank," he reported after a moment of reading. "Four to six weeks. Location is a mining village on the Kusa border. The village chief suspects someone from Iwa has been illegally extracting ore from their mines and has requested a team from Konoha investigate and, if possible, expel the thieves. The higher mission rank is due to the potential contact with Iwa-nin."

"That's…" I stared a little incredulously at him. "That's an awfully problematic mission to accept when the armistice is less than a month old. This almost guarantees a hostile encounter between Leaf- and Rock-nin. Who authorized this?"

It reeked something awful of politics. And with this timing? As I had just discovered, Kakashi and I were currently in wide view. If two well-known Konoha shinobi were caught in a fight with Iwa ninja now it would doubtlessly be an international incident.

"I don't know," Kakashi said. He was also regarding the scroll with a dubious look.

We were quiet for a moment. Then I asked, "Is someone in the village administration trying to restart the war?"

If it was a person who could manipulate mission approval it had to be someone of high authority. Certainly not someone we could take on without help. Well, we could bring this mission to Minato and contest it, but was that a good idea? He barely had a foot in his own office. What would it look like if the first thing he did as Hokage was overturn a mission for his two former students? What would we look like? Two kids fresh off standby, trying to foist off a mission by going to their sensei...

Kakashi did not rebuke me for my speculation, which indicated that he likely had followed a similar train of thought.

"What do you want to do?" I asked. I couldn't see a way out of this, but maybe he had an idea. He was a genius and a prodigy, after all. Perhaps he could construct an effective plan.

Kakashi, though, put a hand on his chin and slowly shook his head. "I can't see any other option but to carry out the mission," he admitted. "There's no choice. We'll just have to be extremely cautious."

In tactics there were a variety of ways to respond to a trap. Most often the best choice was to avoid it altogether, but there were times when the costs of evading an ambush were so prohibitive that it was just as bad, if not worse, as falling into the scheme. In those cases it became a gamble: evade and take the damage, or spring the trap and try to maneuver out.

It seemed that we were going to take the latter option. It wasn't worth it to jeopardize Minato's still-unstable position. He was a great ninja and an undeniably popular war hero, but he still had many doubters and detractors. And their grievances held weight that appealed to the older generation: worries about how young he was, about his administrative capability, if he was not just a puppet ruler who would be manipulated to extend the Professor's reign…

It had never occurred to me that Hiruzen Sarutobi had been a controversial leader, or that his resignation and Minato's appointment had been due to the pressure of that controversy. In Naruto's time the Sandaime had been respected and trusted, but here in the present there was a faction of villagers who were extremely critical of his administration. The Third Shinobi World War, lasting for over ten years, had brought Konoha lower than it ever had been. Why, they asked, had this war gone on so much longer than the previous ones, and why under this leadership? The armistice itself was also the greatest point of issue. Though Konoha has been poised to truly annihilate the Rock-Cloud alliance by the end, the Sandaime had closed the conflict without any sort of demand for reparations. To those who had lost entire families, friends, businesses—it was unthinkable. They had been thirsty for vengeance, but the Sandaime threw it away.

He had, in a way, sacrificed himself and his leadership for the peace. A true peace, not just a stop in open fighting. What sort of conflict would have awaited in the future if the Konoha alliance had slammed its enemies with burdensome monetary and military reparations? What would trade restrictions have done to the economy of the Five Great Nations? I thought of the world wars from the Earth girl's universe. Had their second war not started, at least in part, because of the resentments caused by the provisions of the first war's treaty? The Sandaime must have known. It was after I realized that that I came to see the Third as the most silent of unsung heroes. What he had done or had failed to do in that distant TV future was hardly a thought in my mind.

Kakashi and I began planning. Then we split for a while to gather our supplies and conduct independent preparations. I stopped by D&FA to get a sitrep on the Kusa border and advice about how to handle the potential political complications of the mission. Many of the reactions I got were the same as Kakashi's and mine had been—who in their right mind would authorize such a mission?

Twenty minutes later I went away loaded with scrolls detailing every possible bit of information about the situation at the border. Trade routes (there were many), renowned merchants (an oligopoly), notable families (mostly the merchants)—rather overkill for a B rank mission, but considering the circumstances, it was better to know more than less. Besides, it was not nearly as much studying as I&E agents did ahead of their assignments. During my apprenticeship there had been a Yamanaka infiltrator who had prepped for a whole half-year before going into the capital as support for the spymaster in the daimyo's court.

I absorbed what info I could and then stuffed the rest into a storage scroll for downtime reading. Then I stopped by the House to grab gear, supplies, and to let my family know I would be going out of country for a new mission. Auntie Reiko and Uncle Souhei, who were sitting across from one another at the tea table on the sitting room floor, looked up as I came down the stairs.

"Hi, obasan," I said. "Hi, ojisan. What are you up to?"

"Having a strategy meeting," Uncle Souhei replied. He looked a trifle weary.

"Don't mind us," said Auntie. "Are you going out? Do you have a mission?"

I told them about the assignment and explained the circumstances. By the end of it they were both frowning.

"It's just the two of you?" Auntie asked.

"Considering Kakashi's rank, someone might say that the mission is actually over-staffed," I observed in reply. "A jounin is more than enough to handle a B-rank."

Uncle Souhei eyed me with an unreadable look. Then he asked, "Who authorized this mission?"

I just put a hand on my face and began to laugh.


We left the village at a brisk but even pace. It was a marvel how far I had come since I first left Konoha on that disastrous message run; my top sprinting speed as a genin all those years ago was only an energetic jog now. With longer legs, more chakra, and better control, I found I was keeping pace even with a jounin like Kakashi.

The journey took about four days' time at that pace. As we drew closer to the border and the trees began to thin, and I signaled at him to stop. We halted in the boughs of a large tree.

"What is it?" asked Kakashi. "Did you hear someone?"

"No, that's not it. I was just thinking—do you suppose it's a good idea to just show up looking like this?" I motioned to our clothes, hair, and general appearance. "Since we're trying not to draw attention to ourselves…"

Kakashi gave me a calculating look.

"Do you have civilian clothes on you?"

Even though I was currently attached to a general platoon, I was still an I&E shinobi, so it was slightly hilarious of him to even ask. Kakashi seemed to realize the silliness of his question after a moment and cleared his throat.

"What did you have in mind?" I asked as I swung my pack off my shoulder. I had commoner's clothes loose in my pack, but the magic of fuuinjutsu also allowed me access to a whole wardrobe of outfits suitable for every class from pauper to minor princess. I even had a few of my embroidery projects stowed inside in case I needed high-class props.

"You said merchant caravans often traffic this region, didn't you?"

"Yeah, that's right. According to D&FA, two major trading routes intersect here in Kinoko Valley. The Junbei line runs east-west and the Kourei line runs northwest-south. Both are major arteries in the metal market's network."

I began pulling out traveling clothes. Brand new clothes and sandals would be suspicious, so they were purposely a little worn and raggedy at the edges. Kakashi nodded approvingly.

"Kids separated from their caravan?" I suggested. "Maybe cousins who were late returning from the market in Yurisou-shi, cutting through the countryside to catch up with a Watanabe train traveling on the Junbei line."

"A Watanabe caravan? Why not the Machida?"

The Machida traders were well-known across all of the Elemental Countries and were a household name even in Konoha. I was not surprised by his question.

"You'd think they would be the better choice because they're major in the metal markets and they have so many associates," I mused, "but when I spoke with my friends in D&FA they said we'd better not. Apparently there's infighting going on. If we proclaim ourselves associates of one branch or another we might get into trouble, either with the other branch or with their backers. The Watanabe, on the other hand, are big enough to have an assortment of associates while still having minimal structure. Pretty much anyone can pull carriages for them as long as the family gets their kickback, so they're ideal for impersonation."

Kakashi seemed somewhat taken aback this sudden deluge of information, but after a moment he began to look thoughtful.

"Having Intel connections is more useful than I anticipated," he mused.

"We do our best," I replied a little dryly. No doubt an I&E shinobi was, at this very moment, sitting on a merchant train somewhere and taking notes about all the drama.

We changed right there on the tree, keeping the inner layers of our gear concealed beneath the thick winter fabrics. As expected Kakashi could not keep his ninja's mask on while impersonating a civilian, but he replaced it with a forest-green scarf while my back was turned. I gave him a bit of a look, but he only looked inexpressively back at me.

"Luckily we've left Fire Country, so my hair won't make me unusual," I commented as I took it out of its ponytail and let it fall down my back. I pulled out a sealing scroll and emptied a stash of wooden hair sticks into my lap while Kakashi put on a conical hat to hide his own unusual hair color. A braid and a bun later I was also finished, and I resealed the remainder of my kanzashi without much further ado.

After we had dropped down from the tree and had been walking for some time, snow began to fall on the path in front of us. I eyed the sky for a moment. Then I went into my embroidery scroll, found a long cloth, wrapped it twice around my neck, and then pulled it over my head to make a hood. It was a brightly patterned pink fabric, just the sort of thing a twelve-year-old girl ought to have liked, so it felt like a good addition to the costume.

"In a way, it's good for you, too," I said as I rummaged some more and found a cloth that matched Kakashi's scarf. "You'll be able to cover your head even when you can't use the hat."

Kakashi accepted the cloth somewhat bemusedly. Then he asked, "Why are you carrying all of this?"

"I'm a seamstress in my spare time."

"But you're on a mission. You wouldn't be carrying sewing supplies for fun even if you do have fuuinjutsu."

"It's part of my infil kit," I confessed as I kicked a pebble on the road. "I was training to be a domestic infiltrator during my apprenticeship. They're embroidery props."

Kakashi reexamined the fabric in his hand and found that a half-finished shower of gingko leaves was stitched into it. He stared.

"There shouldn't be any needles in it even though it's unfinished," I assured him. "I checked them all before I put them in."

Kakashi regarded me with another bemused look.

"Were you really meant to join ANBU?" he asked.

It figured he hadn't forgotten that slip. I sighed and blew at my bangs.

"There's a reason I'm not with them now. I know I'm not suited to that kind of work."

"But someone tried to get you to apprentice in the Special Forces?" he clarified.

"...Yes. Don't go spreading it around."

Kakashi seemed to ask me with his eye if he looked like a gossipmonger. I just gave him an exasperated look. But in the end it was my fault for talking to begin with; I needed to keep a better hold of my tongue.

Several minutes passed in silence after that. Eventually, though, Kakashi said, "You know all about Team 7 and what happened to us. But I don't know what happened to you and Team 11."

I glanced at him sidelong.

"Are you asking?"

Kakashi seemed to hesitate for a moment. But then he nodded.

I looked up at the sky. Well, wasn't it fair? I had seen Kakashi's worst moments. I had been privy to nearly every detail about Kannabi Bridge and I had done nothing to stop it. Didn't he deserve to hear about my ill-fated team?

"We got captured by Iwa-nin while delivering a message to Tatsumi River," I finally said. "They killed my teammate Yoshiya and Sensei snapped before we were rescued. My other teammate Akihiko and I ran orphan missions together for a while after that, but about a year and a half ago we met an ANBU captain on a supply run to the western front. I wanted to stay in the General Forces so Akihiko joined without me. I apprenticed in I&E awhile after that, but there was a mandatory transfer. You know the rest."

"You never intended to return to the general platoons?" Kakashi questioned with surprise.

"No." I looked away. After meeting Itsuki-sensei again, I had actually begun to wonder if I wanted to remain in the General Forces at all. But Kakashi didn't need to know that. "...There are people waiting for me back in I&E. I intend return to them if I get the chance. I know Team 7's not my home." How long I would stay with I&E after returning was different a question, but until I actually had a chance to transfer back, it was a moot point anyway.

Kakashi went strangely silent after that. Eventually I fell into thoughts about my career. I wondered whether Naoto, Anzu, and Oyuki would be upset if I tried to retire before I put in a few years with them at I&E. Maybe I wouldn't wait to transfer back if I was going to quit. Maybe I ought to do it before I went back to them.

—But no. I couldn't quit being a ninja. Not yet. When I got back to the village, I would speak with Jiraiya again. There was quite a bit more to do before I could even think of leaving.


We arrived in the village just as dusk was falling. It seemed that this was not the first time traders had come through playing catch-up to a caravan; one of the villagers actually went out of her way to point us in the direction of the village chief's residence. Summarily we went to his house, surreptitiously flashed our hitai-ate at him, and were quickly ushered inside.

Kakashi and I presented ourselves in all our snowed-on civilian glory and were met with a brief episode of incredulous doubt. But eventually the chief, named Kubo, paused long enough for us to explain our incognito appearance and offered us his spare room to stay in for the duration of the mission. In short order Kakashi and I set up shop in the back and began planning our next move.

First of all I dumped all of the reading D&FA had given me onto the floor for his perusal. We spent a goodly hour consolidating our knowledge, though we had to stop every now and again so I could translate all of the Intel lingo and annotations for Kakashi. After that step was done, we began preliminary information gathering. It was decided that Kakashi would stay in with Kubo to go over his account and to examine the bookkeeping for the mines. My task would be to go into the village, put my demeanor training to good use, and cross-examine the residents. Subtly, of course.

It proved to be a frustrating exercise. They were aflame with gossip, and speculation about the ongoing thefts (or claimed thefts, in the speech of some) was rampant, but no one had anything of true substance to report. A frightful four hours later saw me return to Kakashi with an armload of ghost stories, embezzlement accusations, and even an elaborate conspiracy theory.

"Is that all you got?" he asked me, dismayed, from across a sea of ledgers.

"Just about," I sighed. "The rest was all chatter about the harvest, the recent earthquakes, the village cats…"

Kakashi returned a sigh of his own.

"I'm the same," he reported glumly. "Kubo claims he saw a figure in shinobi gear when he went to check out the mines last month, but even disregarding the credibility of that encounter, it's hardly anything to go off of. I'm trying to see if any patterns emerge in the records… I'll let you know if anything comes up."

We spent a moment in brooding solidarity. I looked out the window at the setting sun and propped my chin on my fist in thought. Then I paused.

"Here's an idea," I began slowly. Kakashi looked up at me.

"What is it?"

I went over to my pack and began digging through my seals. Eventually I found my training scrolls and went through them until I found the volume on surveillance and security jutsu.

"Let me go investigate the mines," I requested as I opened the scroll and began scanning the techniques. "Before we started the unit on ciphering Oyuki told me there are jutsu that can be used by chakra sensitives to detect the remnants of chakra emissions."

"Isn't that a skill restricted to olfactory sensors?" Kakashi regarded me quizzically.

"Not necessarily. Natural gustatory sensors can do it too depending on how old the emission is. But this is actually a different class of technique altogether, or so it seems. Olfactory and gustatory sensors detect aged emissions through their own bodily abilities of perception. Techniques like these, on the other hand, actually function by releasing one's own chakra into the environment and using an alternative sensory ability to canvas…" I read aloud, increasingly intrigued, and then scanned ahead to look at the technique's actual mechanism. "Oh. Hm. That's interesting."

"What is?" Kakashi rose then and made to look over my shoulder. I quickly flattened my palms over the text and hunched over to hide the scroll beneath my chest. He stopped short and regarded me with a look of pique.

"Sorry," I apologized. "These are actually Yin Release techniques shared with us by the Yamanaka clan. Since they're not ours, dissemination outside the unit is forbidden. I'm permitted to discuss their general function with outsiders in case an explanation is needed mid-mission, but I can't actually share the workings of the techniques with non-I&E personnel."

Kakashi looked very off-put for a moment. Then he looked away and sat back down amongst the ledgers.

"Do you carry sensitive jutsu information around in your pack like that on every mission?" he asked after a while.

"There are genjutsu-based security seals keyed to my chakra," I replied. "If you tried to read it on your own you wouldn't be able to. It would look like nonsense, or like something else innocuous, like a set of essays about some other topic."

Kakashi turned and gave me an incredulous look.

"Tuned to your chakra specifically?" he asked doubtfully.

"They're standard in most infil kits," I explained. "Oyuki fitted me with a whole set of locks a little after I joined the unit. For ninja who take long-term missions, or have to carry a lot of references with them, it's important to become familiar with them early on…" I trailed off. As an apprentice it went without saying I had to carry a lot of reading with me, but Kakashi was already turning back to his books with a sudden air of distant silence, and I got the feeling that he was no longer in the mood to talk to me.

I quietly gathered up my materials and excused myself. He made no move to stop me as I slid open the door and set my eyes in the direction of the mines, so I figured I was free to do as I wished. Pulling my shawl over my shoulders and my hood over my head, I set out across the yard and began walking down the path with scroll in hand, musing silently on the future as I went.


A/N: Kakashi and Suzu have an interesting dynamic this chapter. He's used to being the competent one, but she got to do all kinds of flexing today, didn't she?