Author's Notes: So, time for another chapter. Less action here, but more puzzling. It's one of the things I'm trying to do differently with this story, add some more problem-solving elements and convoluted plots. So, I hope it works out.

I think I might need to mention at this point that Ying, despite being from Stone, has absolutely nothing to do with the ninja currently being shown in the anime fillers. I actually wrote everything so far before all that came out anyway, but I'll have a brief in story explanation eventually too.

Thanks to all reviewers and hopes for more!

Chapter 4 – Tempered Reaction

(Konoha ANBU Headquarters – Five Days Later)

Uzuki Yuugao's expression had gradually darkened throughout the course of Shino's report. She was not bothering to hide her irritation with the way things had gone. However, when Shino finished she looked at the scroll sitting on her desk, and then at a sheet of paper next to it. Slowly, and with deliberate care she took a stamp from a drawer, pressed it to an ink pad, and stamped a small open box at the bottom right of the paper. "Mission completely successfully," she said, and filed the paper away.

That done the ANBU captain turned back to the chunin sitting before her. Her narrowed gaze was highlighted by her purple air, and she appeared as some cold witch from dark legends, ready to freeze bones and drink blood.

Shino was unperturbed, though he did wonder if Yuugao knew how fantastical her image appeared at the moment.

"Chunin Aburame Shino," Yuugao began, her voice chopping up each word as she seemed to work slowly through the way she wished to let her aggravation free. "There is a substantial irregularity to your report."

She gave Shino the opportunity to say something here, but he did not rise to the bait. It was the Aburame's opinion that he had said his piece; he would let Yuugao say whatever she had to say. He already understood the consequences of his actions. He did not need this reminder, but he made certain to listen carefully in any case, just so he could repeat Yuugao's words if he later must.

"You have indeed brought back the scroll you were ordered to retrieve, and as there are no reports of unrest from the area it appears that Kodori's men were unaware of the retrieval," Yuugao would never call a ninja mission a theft, even though that had been the essential heart of the task. "That much is acceptable, however, your further actions deviate sharply from what you were instructed to do."

"While it is commendable that you recognized another person had appropriated the target scroll and moved to retrieve it, this is where the problem arises," Yuugao looked straight into Shino's eyes. Rather, she looked into the blank reflected darkness of his sunglasses, something that tended to spoil the affect, but Yuugao continued anyway, willfully ignoring those glasses existence. "You allowed a ninja from another village to acquire the data contained in the scroll, a village that is not an ally of Konoha. This information was to be retrieved secretly so only Konoha would possess it and no other village would learn it had been acquired. That objective of secrecy is now a failure." Here Yuugao paused, her tirade complete. She looked at Shino, but the young chunin had not moved at all in his borrowed chair, but simply sat calmly with his hands tucked inside his long jacket. Though the ANBU captain could not tell whether or not she had affected Shino in the slightest, she acted as if everything was in her control. "Now, chunin Aburame Shino, what have you to say in your defense?"

"Nothing more than I reported," Shino answered. He was still not certain what Yuugao was trying to provoke him to say, but he would give only the reason he had given before. It was not as if he was lying, the reason was true enough, and there was no need to say that he had not particularly desired to either kill or be killed by the stone ninja. "As the battle continued I was uncertain whether or not I would triumph. As I was alone I prioritized retrieval of the scroll over keeping absolute secrecy, and accepted the offer the stone ninja made. I used my best judgment based on what I knew at the time."

"Very well," Yuugao said when Shino answered, some of her fire abated. "That is acceptable. A ninja must always act according to their own judgment in the absence of overriding orders. Simply remember, we must all live with the consequences of those choices now."

"Understood," Shino answered.

"Good," Yuugao stood with a sudden motion, but her voice had changed, and seemed to shift suddenly from anger to contentedness.

This emotional change puzzled Shino. He could not tell if it was real or an act. That annoyed him, he disliked things he could not determine, and he resolved to work harder at reading such emotional cues.

"However," the ANBU captain smirked slightly. "Now we get to go tell the Hokage."

Shino couldn't help the small jerk of surprise than ran through his body at that announcement. He quelled it as quickly as he could, and tried to cover it up by standing.

"Did you not expect that?" Yuugao smirked slightly, something that irritated Shino. He didn't like to be mocked for mistakes, as it caused others to bother him. For such reasons the young ninja had always tried to make as few mistakes as possible, it was easier to work hard toward perfection than deal with other's focused attentions. "Because another village, and a non-allied one at that, is involved," Yuugao continued. "This matter must be brought to the Hokage's attention. She will have to decide how we proceed from here. Come with me."

Aburame ninja followed ANBU captain from the headquarters; neither brightly anticipated the coming meeting.

"Yes? What is…oh it's you," the comments were abrupt and distracted at once, as if the person speaking could not be bothered to pay attention to the ones entering the room. A moment later, when Uzuki Yuugao and Aburame Shino stood fully inside the wide office of the Gondaime Hokage, that voice finally got back to them. "Yes Captain Uzuki?" Tsunade asked, pushing a tall stack of papers out of the way so she could actually see the pair of ninja standing in front of her desk.

"I'm afraid I have a matter that requires your attention Hokage," the ANBU captain began formally.

"This had better not be more reports," Tsunade interrupted. "I'm awfully sick of all this paperwork."

"No, this is rather more serious," Yuugao kept her voice formal, even though Shino thought it was clear that the captain found Tsunade's paperwork aggravation amusing. He just hoped they would get to the point and not start some sort of insult trade. It had been rumored among the ANBU that Tsunade liked to get into shouting matches with those who interrupted her during frustrating sessions of paperwork. That was one of the more minor rumors Shino had heard that wasn't truly meant to reach his ears. He tried to keep his mind off them; it would have been hard to take Tsunade at all seriously based on some of the things whispered in dark corners. "We have retrieved the ninja employment scroll of Kodori Tokimitsu."

"I remember that mission," Tsunade muttered, and then barked. "So what? Just analyze the scroll and assign additional missions accordingly. Why are you ANBU bothering me about it?"

"Well, I'm afraid we are not the only ones who have the scroll," Yuugao said far more quietly. "It seems the Hidden Stone Village has a copy as well."

"What?" Tsunade's gaze now moved from Yuugao to Shino. "This was your mission wasn't it?" she addressed him for the first time. "Explain."

Shino had waited for this point, and so he spoke clearly and readily, reporting the events much as he had done to Yuugao only an hour or so before. "I penetrated the Kodori manor as instructed and found the scroll's hiding place, but the scroll was already gone. Tracking, I found another ninja leaving the area, and the corpse of a lightning ninja. So I pursued this ninja. It was a female stone ninja, and she did indeed have the scroll. I attempted to acquire it, but she resisted and I was not confident of success in the battle," Shino paused, allowing him to stress what he would relate next. "She then offered to give me the scroll, provided I allow her to make a copy. As I was not confident of victory, I agreed. The Stone ninja used some technique to make a copy of the scroll very quickly, and then gave it to me and I returned to Konoha as quickly as possible."

"How did she copy the scroll?" Tsunade asked.

"Onto a piece of glass."

'Really?" Tsunade tapped her finger against her desk repeatedly. "It must have been a fairly skilled stone ninja to give you such a challenge, chunin. Your skills are generally well regarded."

Sensing that Tsunade wanted an explanation, Shino gave the simplest one that came to mind. "As I was the pursuer in unknown ground the conditions were somewhat difficult, also, my opponent had some grasp of how to fight against my clan's abilities."

Tsunade tapped her fingers on the table again. "Interesting. Well, bad luck for us then that they got there first. I guess we'll just have to deal with Hidden Stone having a copy. Hopefully it will be of less use to them than us, as the banker's businesses were located closer to the Leaf." The Hokage appeared to consider things for a moment, her brow furrowing slightly. "Captain Uzuki."

"Yes." Uzuki replied smartly.

"I want you to keep Aburame Shino involved in this matter. If the Stone become involved there is no need for them to learn anything about an extra Leaf ninja," Tsunade smiled and turned to Shino again. "You have just inherited a lot of work young man. Now, dismissed."

The two ninja nodded and turned smartly to leave the Hokage's office. Once they were outside, Yuugao turned to Shino. "Since you are to be fully involved with this process you will have to keep it completely secret. However, to avoid suspicion you will keep up your usual activities. The extra time working with us will come out of your family time. Your father, because he is a jounin, will be made aware of this matter once he returns to Konoha. Now, you will report to our headquarters immediately after dinner to assist with the scroll analysis."

"Understood," Shino replied. He was somewhat disappointed, but he had expected some sort of punishment or complication for the mission anyway. Extra work for the ANBU was something he could handle; it was far preferable to some of the scenarios he had concocted in the past five days for his punishment. Beyond that the secrecy was not something Shino considered troubling. He hadn't planned to tell anyone about this mission anyway.

"So, as you can see the scroll is divided into three parts," the ANBU ninja explained, gesturing to the unrolled scroll on the long table. "The first part is a list of names, and we can identify some of them as ninja from various reports, so we assume these are the ninja hired on missions. The second part is a list of dates and locations. Obviously, these indicate what mission was performed and when. Now, the third part is the tricky one. It's a list of coded words each linked to an amount of money, which must be how much was paid. All the information is here, the problem is we don't know how the names and places are linked to the money, or even which missions go with which name. The secret must be in the code, that's obvious, but we haven't figured it out yet. Actually," the ANBU paused. "I hadn't even started on it. So far the analysis has been preliminary. I guess you get to assist in the decoding."

"As ordered," Shino muttered with his usual quiet and unassuming voice. He did not know the name of this member of the ANBU, and wasn't interested in finding out. There were some things a ninja didn't need to know, and Shino had the good sense not to bother trying to determine who all belonged to the ANBU. Regardless, Yuugao had ordered him to assist the ninja when he'd reported for duty after dinner. She hadn't seemed interested in his presence at all, but was reading some other documents rather intently behind her desk.

The ANBU cleared his throat slightly. "Well, yes. Okay, like I said the trick must be in the codes. Each one is exactly seven letters long. I've run a few standard decoding patterns against the codes, but they don't work. Based on how these things are set up I don't think these codes are actually words at all, but some simpler form of puzzle. Each one probably contains a fairly simple cue as to what entry they match with, it's just going to be finding that cue that's the hard part."

Shino listened carefully, but didn't respond, instead, he looked up and down the scroll carefully, studying what was recorded there. Names, dates, payment, location. Shino understood that most likely the location corresponded to something more detailed Tokimitsu had recorded elsewhere, but still he felt that there was something missing from the scroll. Thinking back Shino recalled how carefully ordered the banker's apartment had been, how organized. This scroll seemed to be missing something.

He thought about it in silence while the ANBU ninja went over some patterns and things they might look for in the codes. Shino was only half listening, as he became convinced something was missing. Finally he said it. "There's not enough data."

"Huh?" the ANBU turned to look at Shino, puzzled.

He saw only the Aburame ninja standing silently with his hands in his pockets as always, nothing readable behind those dark sunglasses.

"I said there's not enough data," Shino repeated, somewhat disappointed that the ANBU hadn't caught on quickly. "There are no ranks or countries. Tokimitsu was meticulous. He wouldn't leave that out."

"Well…" the ANBU thought about it. "You're right. I suppose it would make sense to record that. Actually, he probably should have recorded the rank of the mission as well." The man turned toward the scroll, scanning down the lines of code. "Hmm, it seems he did."

Shino's eyes followed the ANBU's finger as it moved over lines of code, and he saw what the other saw in a moment. Still, he remained silent, letting the older ninja say it.

"So, it seems the fourth letter represents the mission's rank, since there are only five letters. Really only four, as S is only used once," the ANBU smirked. "Well, that's to be expected; even a powerful banker would rarely be involved with an s-rank mission. Hmm…I can't seem to identify the rank one. I thought it was the second letter, but there are eight letters not four, and there are only four ranks he could have employed: genin, chunin, special jounin, and jounin. I see those letters there, but maybe only one in three is one of those. How odd…"

"He used the other four letters for missing-nins," Shino interjected.

The ANBU turned back to the scroll, looking at it again. "Well, it seems you're right. H is a missing-nin genin and D a missing-nin chunin. How simple. A good thing to notice that," he nodded at Shino in acknowledgement. The Aburame ninja didn't bother reacting. "Let's see then, if the pattern continues then the sixth letter will be the sign for the country." The two ninja looked at the scroll carefully. It was somewhat puzzling. Finally the ANBU broke the silence. "Well, I think I'm still correct. L is the letter used most often, and that must be ninja from the Lightning country. There's a lot of F marks as well, those must be us, Leaf ninja from fire country. I see signs indicating the occasional Stone or Mist ninja as well, but there's a bunch of others. They must indicate ninja from minor countries or ninja clans without a village. Well, that's three letters, but we still haven't figured out how these codes relate to the names or locations. That's the real trick." The ANBU returned to staring at the scroll.

Shino had been listening, and he was thinking even as the ANBU explained things he had already figured out. He understood the link was there, but he wasn't about to try and decode the pattern the way the ANBU was attempting. If that ninja couldn't do it, and he surely was trained in this sort of thing, Shino was certain he'd be of no help. However, he knew there would be some way to provide a clue. It was a puzzle, and Shino thought about everything they knew about the scroll, recalling for a moment one of the ways to find hidden insects. Look for a line out of place, or something unique, that was the method he'd been taught. Shino was aware that it was unusual things that provided insight into the ordinary. Then, he had it.

"Only one s-rank mission you said," he spoke suddenly, startling the ANBU slightly.

"Yes, but what of it?"

"Couldn't you figure out which location that mission must be using ANBU records?" Shino questioned.

"Well," the ANBU thought about it. "We might be able to. Let me see those locations, and get me that book from the wall."

Silently Shino trod over to a low shelf behind an unoccupied desk and grasped a large folio. He brought it over to the ANBU, who opened it carefully.

"If there's any location that matches s-rank missions we know about or guessed at then it should be here," he began leafing through the folio, looking up and down the list of locations again and again. "Got it!" he burst out suddenly, drawing angry looks from the various other ANBU in the room, but the decoding ninja did not mind in the slightest. Turning to Shino he let his excitement come out. "This is the one," he pointed to record on the scroll. "Ushui Castle, five years ago. The local lord's castle was set aflame and his daughters were almost kidnapped. Leaf ninja were serving as his guards. Hmm, I guess one of Tokimitsu's business partners had something against the lord." The ANBU turned from that record back to the list of names. "Now, if this report we have is correct the defenders believed the assault team consisted of jounin from lightning country. Lightning jounin…lightning jounin," his finger moved up and down the scroll. "Ah, I've found seven different entries. Assuming a four man team four of these entries should have something in common."

"The fifth and seventh letters are the same for four of them," Shino inserted, providing the answer, not that it would have taken the ANBU any time to figure out.

"So they are. I and E., how very basic, it's simply the last letter from each word. Well, I suppose he never really expected anyone to steal the scroll," the ANBU ran his hand along his chin. "I wonder if Tokimitsu was going to use the same code for the names," he looked back to the scroll. "No, he was a little more creative. He used the first letter from each name instead. Still, that's easy enough. Well, I guess we know the whole code now." The ANBu turned to Shino. "Thanks, you were helpful, this went quicker than I expected."

"Are we done?"

"Haha!" the ANBU laughed with great amusement. "You think that was it, funny. No, you weren't really here to help me solve the code; you're here to help copy. So, grab a sheaf of paper, we need to recopy every mission and all the ninja involved so that everything is unscrambled. I expect it will take a few evenings, and you get to do most of it yourself."

Suppressing a sigh Shino did as he was asked. Here at last was the tedious chore he had expected to be saddled with for his failure, the copying of name after name. However, the insect-wielding ninja immediately recognized that the task was not something to be conducted blindly. He was to be the first ninja in Konoha to understand the full contents of this scroll. There was a tremendous amount of information to be condensed from those names, ranks, and missions, and Shino intended to become quite familiar with it all. After all, information was a weapon like any other, and knowledge like this might be worth many lives one day. He set down to copying diligently, but made certain to internalize as much as he could about the data every time his pen made a mark.