AN: Some sensative themes in here, consider yourself warned. Experimented with this in present tense and in first person, but decided that was crap, so changed it back. Let me know if I missed any tense or POV changes, and I'll fix it. Still playing with my Wind of Change story, so this is something to funnel off some of the randomness that's distracting me. Not quite as amusing as Tsunade's chapter, but we're getting into the darker sides of kunoichi life now. (My next two chapters have required quite a bit of research, so they make take a few days.) Here we go...

Sakura

There were missions of espionage nature or ordered hits, which only the Kunoichi could complete, because of the advantages of her gender, and where men had no chance of success. There was a saying in feudal Japan that there was no castle guarded well enough that the kunoichi couldn't enter.
- excerpt from Warrior Ways of Enlightenment

The door creaked open, and Sakura fought to keep the nausea and fear down in the pit of her belly. I am a shinobi, she reminded herself firmly. And I am not afraid.

Her customer - her victim - stalked into the room, eyeing her carefully. Tamayuki Shigure was not a particularly ugly man. In his younger days he might even have been quite handsome. But he was forty-eight now, and his features were just a little too sharp, his hair just a little too wispy on his slightly age-spotted head. His fancy court robes were dark blue and made of gorgeous rich material that did little to hide his scrawny body.

Taking a long, deep breath that caused her chest to swell strategically, she lowered her eyelids and murmured in her softest voice, "Are you pleased, sir?"

He looked her over, from the soft pink tresses splayed deliberately across the pillow to the form-fitting red dress that left little to the imagination. But men like Tamayuki Shigure didn't come to places like this to imagine anything. They came to see for themselves. And more.

He smiled at last, a twisted little grin of anticipation that she preferred not to study too close. Behind him, the brothel owner met Sakura's eyes briefly, and nodded his head once. He didn't like her being there, didn't like that she was taking a job that one of his regular girls could have covered for a profit. He especially didn't like the idea that she might even get him in trouble with a wealthy patron like the head of the Tamayuki clan. But Sakura could be remarkably persuasive in these situations. When she had a pouch of coins in one hand and a sharp dagger in the other, most men found that it was best just to agree to her demands and be done with it.

Granted, this was a particularly strange demand. But the brothel owner, in his dull mind, didn't care too much why the strange girl wanted so badly to meet privately in a brothel house with a man like Tamayuki. Probably had wild dreams of making him love her and getting his fortune, or something equally stupid.

But money was the last thing on Sakura's mind as she forced herself to lounge calmly against the piled cushions of the bed. In the flickering candlelight, her light green eyes turned an unreadable, smoky grey. Slowly, languorously, she reached up behind her head, watching as his eyes darted down to stare in fascination at the way the movement caused the thin red material to tug against her body. She lit a small scented candle and rose gracefully to her feet, gesturing to the bed.

Tamayuki lay back against the cushions, watching her with the same twisted little smile. She politely wafted the scented smoke from the flickering candle towards him, and reached to help him pull off his shirt. He was even thinner than he looked under all the thick material. Sakura looked at him from under heavily painted, half closed eyelids that managed to mask her flat, cold stare. She knew her face was a perfect mask of calm and perhaps even lust, but her eyes might give the game away unless she was very careful. Men like Tamayuki were good at reading eyes – it was a political skill they honed in the subtle dance of treachery and power-games in the court.

But tonight his guard was down. This was a high-class brothel that catered to the wealthy men of the court, those who tired of flirtation and dalliances with courtesans, those who wanted sex from trained women – or those whose tastes ran to the more innocent and submissive. Sakura thought of the child she had passed on the way into the room, a girl adorned with more jewelry and makeup than any ten year old should ever wear. Her stomach twisted slightly for a moment, but she too was well trained, and her face stayed smooth and unruffled. Tamayuki reached for her, rubbing a boney hand over her chest, down her side, to the swell of her hip. "You're new," he said. "I'd remember a girl with hair like that."

"I'm new to the trade," Sakura glided to stand in front of him, making certain that her movement swirled the candle smoke over his face again.

"Untouched?" He asked, eyebrows shooting up. She nodded, trying to conjure up a maidenly blush while still looking experienced and sultry. It was harder than she thought it would be. But the excited leer on his face told her that if she wasn't doing it right, he wasn't about to complain. "Well, that is an unexpected treat," he put both hands boldly on her body, and she firmly squelched the urge to slap him away.

"I am many things, lord," she murmured throatily, winding her arms around his neck and kneeling on the bed, legs on either side of his lap. "Unexpected is certainly one of them. And I have been thoroughly instructed, despite being new to the trade."

"So I can tell," he answered hoarsely, licking chapped lips. Sakura tried not to make direct eye contact, but she could see from under heavily painted eyelids that his pupils were starting to dilate. She felt a small surge of relief mixed with hope and worry, and swallowed the emotions ruthlessly. She had no time for any of them, right now.

She took a deep breath and blew the air softly across his face, watching as more smoke swirled in the heat of her breath.

"Tell me, my lord," Sakura leaned forward slightly to whisper huskily in his ear. "By what name should I call you?"

"Shigure-sama," he answered, trying to shift to pull her hips against him, but she wriggled at the last moment and managed to avoid the contact. To keep him occupied, she dragged her fingertips over his chest and around his back, glad of the rubbing oil she had dipped her fingers in only moments before his entrance.

"Shigure-sama," she murmured sweetly, pitching her voice to sound younger. He seemed to like that, and she added pedophile to her mental character sketch of him. "You look like a nobleman. Do you live in the court?" She tried to sound vapid and silly, enhancing the façade of innocence he appeared to be enjoying so much.

He chuckled, obviously pleased with himself as he pulled at the thin fabric of her borrowed outfit. "Oh yes, my dear. I'm a very important man in court. The Fire Lord himself often asks me for my advice on delicate matters of state."

"Ooh, you must be very important, then," she cooed, letting him paw her but being careful not to get too close. It might come to that, indeed, but she needed information first. "I'll bet your whole family is important to the court, and you go to all the wonderful parties and banquets." His tugging on her clothes became more insistent, and he managed to pull the skirt up past her thighs imperiously. Too soon, she didn't know enough yet – Sakura reached down between them and pushed her nimble fingers through the opening in his own robe. He let go of her dress, suitably distracted, and Sakura bit back the revulsion. "Do you go to the court a lot?" She said, a little more loudly than before to catch his attention again.

"Ah course." His attention was vague, and it wasn't just his lack of interest in the conversation. He coughed once, inhaling deeply to clear his lungs. Sakura was careful not to breathe too hard herself now as the fumes from the burning candle thickened in the room. She watched his slowly-slackening face for the telltale signs that he was about to pass out. After all, he was no good to her unconscious. "My son's the favored frien' of the Fire Lor..." he coughed again, "Fire Lord. He even had a banquet 'n his honor once."

"That's wonderful!" Sakura exclaimed, debating whether or not she ought to open the window just a crack. Tamayuki's speech was slurring faster than it ought to; he was breathing heavily now, sucking in smoke faster than she'd anticipated. "Is he in court often?" She sent a brief shiver of energizing chakra into him, jolting his drooping eyelids open.

"My son? Oh, he used t' be." He pulled harder on her waist now, and Sakura knew that she couldn't keep him happy with just her hands much longer. "But lately he's been hangin' out wi' the younger men of some ah th' lesser clans. Stupid boy. Thinks I don't know what's. . . goin' on in. . . own house." He snorted, pupils definitely dilated now and breathing definitely erratic. "But I know. I see what he's up to, and I . . .he's doin' it all wrong. 'S no good to empty the throne now, with that damn Hamano clan hangin' around ready t' strike."

"What is he doing?" she asked quietly, letting him pull her shirt all the way down around her waist. "What do you know?"

"Oh, stupid rebel stuff, boy's dreams," he muttered, attention riveted on her chest. Sakura suddenly felt filthier than she'd ever felt before, including the four days she spent in the rain-soaked mud fields of the Wave Country a few months ago. "Thinks he can assassasina- assina- 'sassinate the Fire Lord," the man heaved a dry, vague chuckle, stopping abruptly as he forgot what he was laughing at.

"Are those other boys he's hanging out with trying to help him do that?" Sakura murmured, only letting him pull her another teasing inch up his lap.

Tamayuki harrumphed in disgust. "Idealistic idiots," he grunted, none too clearly. "Young fools. Havin' meetings at his house. . . 'f all th' stupid . . . tryin' t' get themselves discovered . . . never taught him anything . . . new heir, that's what, I'll tell 'im I'm gettin' … new…"

Sakura pushed him gently back to lay fully outstretched on the bed, carefully extracting herself from his finally stilled hands. She pulled her shirt back up over her shoulders, picked up her discarded trench coat by the window, and cracked the glass long enough to take a deep, calming breath of clean air before shutting it again. The last thing she needed was the chill of the night air waking him up. She left the drugged candle still smoldering by the head of the bed and opened the door. The brothel owner was nowhere in sight, so she gestured to one of the other girls who was patiently waiting in the hall to be called to work.

"Come in here," Sakura ordered quietly, and shut the door behind the prostitute. "Here," she put a handful of coins in the girl's hand, carefully not meeting the childish, big eyes or looking at the too-young baby face. "Get undressed and lie down next to him. When he wakes up, act as if you've been here all the time, and you slept with him, as promised. If he asks about me, tell him you've no idea what he's talking about, and think he must have had too much sake."

The brothel girl was suspicious, but the money was more than she ever got for a regular job, and it was nice to be paid just to sleep next to a man as opposed to with him. Besides, something in the air in there was making her sleepy. She took the money, and before the stranger in the dark coat was even out the door, she'd curled up naked on the bed, drifting off into her own cozy mind.

No one noticed Sakura as she moved through the dark streets, silent as a shadow, as unreal as wisp of smoke or a dream. She never paused in her steady, swift path through the city, face obscured in the upturned collar of the coat. She didn't cry, though her eyes felt heavy and hot once when she remembered the violating rough caresses. She didn't shudder, though her skin felt unbearably filthy. She didn't vomit, though her stomach twisted several times. She had nothing to cry about. She'd succeeded in her gamble, after all. Nonetheless, she knew deep in her guts that had it come to sleeping with Tamayuki to get the information she wanted – well, like she told Tsunade, she was a shinobi, and she knew her job.

It would take her another few hours to find her horse and slip out of the Imperial City. Another five hours (her thighs ached at the memory of her first ride to the City gates, but she wasn't complaining. There were worse things to have between your legs, you know), and she'd be back in Konoha. For now, she was glad to be done with her particular part in the twisted tale. If the Hokage decided that Sakura needed to stay involved in this budding political conspiracy… well, she'd never shunned her duty before and had no intention of starting now, no matter what. Because when it came right down to it, Sakura was a kunoichi, and she was not afraid.