Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto in any way and make no claim on its copyright or any characters from the series. Original characters are my own property.

Author's Notes: First apologies for the delay in getting this posted, it's been a rather busy week and I haven't had copious free time. Hopefully following chapters should be quicker. Anyway this chapter is mostly about Suzumebachi and Kuroari, but it sets up some of the major events to come.

Thanks to all reviewers!

Other Gifts Continues

Suzumebachi shook powdery snow out of her hair as she reentered her shared room. Warmth assailed her as she stepped in, and she welcomed it, for the cold had seeped down to her bones the moment her furious exercising had ended. It had been a long, chill walk home in almost blizzard conditions and darkness. The storm had not been expected, having blown over the mountain walls suddenly late in the afternoon. It made for a very beautiful but miserable walk back through the snowy boughs of the conifers on the mountainside.

"You're back," the voice of Kuroari was clear and quick to Suzumebachi's hearing.

Her cousin sat on the floor, cross-legged, examining several scrolls at once, all bearing large colored illustrations of various ants. Still, her expression carried little interest in such researches, and instead fixated intently on Suzumebachi.

"So I am," Suzumebachi replied, harsher than she intended. "What of it?"

Normally Kuroari, not an overly talkative kunoichi, would have let it drop at that and gone back to her work, but her expression shifted suddenly, and she bounded to her feet.

Taken aback slightly, Suzumebachi shifted her weight backward, only to be even further surprised when her cousin reached out and grasped her forearm firmly.

"Hard as steel…" Kuroari breathed, and then let go. She took a single step back, but fixed her gaze on Suzumebachi, determined. "Just what have you been up to in those hills?"

"I thought I told you…" Suzumebachi began, trying to forestall the interrogation until she had time to think, and to change out of clothes rapidly becoming sopping wet with melted snow, an uncomfortable feeling.

"Don't start," Kuroari said curtly. "That new body of yours and these long workdays don't come from any testing of old jutsus." With these remarks Suzumebachi recalled her cousin's high level of intelligence, and recognized she would not be able to fool her. "What have you been up to, really? You're not disobeying orders again, are you?" there was a dark undertone to that last question.

"No," Suzumebachi snapped back immediately. "I'm not disobeying orders; I'm following them very precisely." Indeed, so she was, following every bit of Chul'To's brutal training regimen until her body screamed from the exertions. The Vesp battle-master was poorly equipped for the cold, so Suzumebachi summoned her only rarely now, but Chul'To had set nearly impossible goals and objectives, and there were the ancient jutsus of the scroll to be mastered in what little spare time remained. It was almost too much, but the results were obvious to Suzumebachi, and apparently now to others as well, which was more than enough to drive her forward with a flicker of rekindled hope.

"Okay, I see," Kuroari returned. "I believe you, but, just what are you doing up there on those hillsides? And how'd it get you so well, torqued so fast?"

Now Suzumebachi faced a quandary. She knew she really couldn't tell Kuroari the truth, it would make keeping the forbidden scroll a secret almost impossible, and she suspected she would have little success stymieing Kuroari's analytical mind with some partial truth, but she truly did not want to lie to her cousin. Of all her relatives only Kuroari had managed to remain civil to her after learning of the tattoo on her forehead. Everyone else in the clan, from her parents to her former companions Kurobachi and Jibachi, had taken it as an act of disgraceful, shaming, pride, and used the image as an excuse to ostracize her. Suzumebachi couldn't really blame the two genin, who had been punished for going along with her reckless scheme, but if she drove Kuroari away no one in the clan was likely to so much as talk to her. Though Suzumebachi looked down on much of the clan as cowards who accepted their downtrodden fates, she was still doing everything for it, not for herself, and so the concept of complete isolation was abhorrent.

"I, well, I've been training," Suzumebachi began, haltingly.

"That's obvious," Kuroari quipped.

"I know, but, but I really can't say anything more than that, sorry, orders," it was the closest she could manage to apologizing for the situation, though Suzumebachi was rather annoyed at Kuroari for making it a problem in the first place.

"Really?" her cousin appeared to consider this, studying Suzumebachi for a moment more. "Well, if that's the way it is, okay." She turned back and sat down before her scrolls again.

The simple response somehow made Suzumebachi feel terribly guilty for a moment. "Did you think you should be the one singled out?" she blurted. Suzumebachi wished the words back almost immediately, recognizing their source as mixed emotions, including some jealousy on her own part. Kuroari had a good reputation, and most of the clan had fixed high hopes on her to become the first Kamizuru jounin in two decades, passing Suzumebachi over. Seeing it now she had not realized she held such a serious resentment, and was disappointed in herself. Yet, as Kuroari turned to face her slowly she made her face firm, not taking the accusation back, her innate stubbornness asserting itself.

"That was a bit harsh, cousin," Kuroari said firmly, but without anger. Suzumebachi could tell she was not holding anger in, she just wasn't angry, what she did think the wasp ninja couldn't tell. "I will serve as I am dictated to serve, as will you, that's all. I was just curious."

Chastened, Suzumebachi replied. "Well, when and if things can be revealed you'll be the first one I go to," she found she actually meant that, without really realizing it.

"Thanks," Kuroari's tone lightened considerably. "Now go take a shower, you're dripping."

Knowing she couldn't say anything to that with a straight face Suzumebachi spun out and hurried to the shower, already anticipating the chance to truly warm up.

When she returned, wrapped in thick robes, the barracks was built to keep the heat in, but warm clothes helped keep the heating bills down, Suzumebachi found Kuroari had cleaned away her scrolls and seated on her bunk, waiting with fairly obvious impatience. "You've haven't eaten I assume?" she asked the moment Suzumebachi walked in.

"No," Suzumebachi replied. She hadn't eaten since taking her cold outdoor meal much earlier, and she was quite hungry. "Haven't you?"

"Actually no," Kuroari said levelly. "I got caught up in my reading and so haven't made anything yet. Since you're back and we're the only ones here I thought we might eat together."

It was a dead giveaway. Suzumebachi knew her cousin fairly well by now, having spent the past two months of autumn and winter with only her at home, and Kuroari was not the type to idly wait around for the sake of companionship. She would always do things efficiently; asking to share dinner with her cousin meant she had something deliberate to ask. "Fine," Suzumebachi answered, curious what her cousin wanted. "But I'm cooking."

"No problem."

Suzumebachi was hardly a skilled cook, but her cousin had essentially zero appreciation for food at all. If it was edible and nutritious she ate it, taste was unimportant. That might be a good quality in a ninja in many ways, but it rarely made for pleasant shared meals. "You're doing the dishes though."

"Fair enough."

The pair of Kamirzuru kunoichi were silent as Suzumebachi prepared a quick meal, each concerned with her own thoughts. Only after they had sat down at one of the bare tables in the small common room, empty now due to the late hour, and begun eating did they speak.

"So what's happening?" Suzumebachi asked, not feeling much inclined to small talk.

Kuroari reacted in stride. "Well, this training regimen or whatever you're doing, does it take up all of your time?"

That was not the question Suzumebachi had expected, and hinted little at what her cousin wanted, but she had no good reason not to answer honestly. "It's intense," she replied with a grimace, intense didn't do Chul'To's inhuman expectations justice by any means. "But it's not like putting in hours at the office."

"Do you think you could take some time off from it, say a week or so?" Kuroari probed further.

Suzumebachi caught the implication, however, and replied with a question of her own. "Why would I need to take some time off?"

"For a mission of course," Kuroari shook her head, stirring her short-cropped hair along her brow. "What else is there?"

"A mission?" Suzumebachi was seriously skeptical, and with reason, almost no one asked for any missions in the middle of the Stone Country winter, the logistics were far too messy.

"There's a c-rank open mission request that was just posted," Kuroari explained levelly. "Up in one of the valleys in the north part of the country. There's been rumors of voices from high on the mountainside. It's probably nothing but wolves and some odd echoes, but there's an ant species that supposedly occurs almost at the glacial edge on one of the slopes, and I want to try and find out how it survives the winter."

"You and your ant quests," Suzumebachi shook her head.

"As if you haven't gone on wild goose chases for weird-looking wasps," Kuroari countered, with a slight smile. "Anyway, I want to take the mission."

"So why are you asking me about it?"

"You haven't forgotten stone policy have you?" Kuroari's voice chided her cousin lightly. "'All missions undertaken north of the village during winter must have a minimum of two participants,'" she quoted, performing a fairly decent impression of a jounin instructor.

"Right, the hypothermia rule," Suzumebachi did remember, now that she thought about it, it was just something that rarely came up. She had never actually gone on a mission north of the village in winter, there was little call for it, especially for insect masters whose creatures were of little use in freezing cold. It was not a particularly enticing prospect to embark on such a mission with the memory of the chill cold on the hillside still fresh in her memory. "So you're asking me to go with you?"

Kuroari nodded, a slight jerk of her head.

"Why me? You've never asked before," Indeed, Suzumebachi was puzzled as to why Kuroari would risk offending the rest of her family by asking her along on a mission. Her cousin was not the most personable of ninja, her efficient personality combined with the normal Kamizuru insect obsession did not make relationships easy, but she was by no means a recluse.

"Well, there's hardly a wide candidate pool," Kuroari began, something Suzumebachi had to acknowledge as a grim truth. The village was nearly empty, excepting those ANBU posted permanently for defense. For reasons no one, except perhaps the Tsuchikage, quite understood, recent months had seen a vast increase in espionage missions toward the Fire and Wind country borders. As a result almost all stone ninja who could had taken the opportunity to spend much of the winter in warmer climes. "Besides, you'll be willing to let me go looking for ants in the cold when some of my friends would give me crazy looks." Kuroari's smile was knowing and somewhat cruel.

Try as she might the wasp ninja was forced to acknowledge the grim truth in her cousin's smile. She would indeed acquiesce to such a seemingly foolish enterprise, in fact she could already picture herself crawling along in waist deep drifts searching for buried ant nests. If she shared anything with her cousin it was a mutual obsession for any insect with a pinched waist. Silent for a moment she pretended to consider, but her conscious mind really had no ability to refuse. "I'll have to ask the Tsuchikage if it's okay, but otherwise, sure."

"Thanks," Kuroari stood immediately, taking away her empty plate. "Ask him tomorrow, will you," she said over her shoulder as she launched into the limited dishes. "I doubt there's a lot of demand for this mission, but it's best not to take chances."

"Right," Suzumebachi mumbled half-heartedly back as she passed her cousin her empty plate. Internally she was already considering the mission, even though she had no idea whether the Tsuchikage would agree. More importantly, it was clear to the wasp ninja that she would have to push herself above and beyond the mission's challenges, so the time would not be wasted and provoke Chul'To's wrath. The Vesp battle-master's anger was impossible to predict, but held a terrifyingly constant ferocity. Dark visions of black and yellow haunted her dreams when she went to sleep in dour moods, as she would this evening, after a fairly fruitless survey of the scroll for techniques of obvious use in the chilling cold.