Author's notes: Here's some more studies and scientific articles! Since ff is stupid and strips links, you can find the articles very easily by googling the titles.

In case anyone is curious, this is the science article I read that first made me wonder of what would happen if you had a ninja who was incapable of fear. It is about a woman with a damaged amygdala. Rare Brain Disorder Prevents All Fear

This science article, however, indicates that even people without a functioning amygdala can still feel panic in certain situations. Humans Can Feel Terror Even If They Lack Brain's "Fear Center"

This guy actually breaks down the role of the amygdala as possibly creating non-consious fear. The Amygdala is NOT the Brain's Fear Center

Last but not least, this one breaks down the biology of fear, in everything you never knew you wanted to know about fear. The Biology of Fear

Now, in the world of Naruto, where people can heal each other with chakra and you can store chakra constructs within a human vessel, I think it may be safe to say that if this Author assumes that Tsume cannot feel fear but is still able to experience panic in a set of very narrow instances, then it's not a Plot Hole. (Right?) Lack of fear doesn't preclude Tsume from jumping to conclusions and overreacting. So, from an outsider's point of view, it may look like panic.

o-o-o

o-o-o-o

o-o-o-o-o

When Danzo's modifications had completed, Tsume immediately sat upright. "I'm hungry! Can we have the rabbit before or after your blowjob?" His mind stuttered – it barely had time to reverse course from where he had buried his stream of thought into the logistics of fuuinjutsu. "I suppose I should skin it after the blowjob, which would give you time to recover." Danzo barely managed to fend off a twelve year old girl's questing hands.

"I'm fine!" he protested, feeling his face heat up as he cupped himself. "You just… go take care of the rabbit."

She gave him another knowing look. "I can smell your arousal, and I'm not even trying."

"It's part of my training."

Tsume put her hands on her naked hips. The seal still lay open and spread across her skin – silver and black. Between the seal, her stance, and the flickering firelight, she looked like an unattractively scorned fertility goddess rising from the soil. "I've never heard of this training." Then a look of uncertainty crossed her face. " 'Course, I haven't heard of a lot of training, and I haven't been able to do much of anything these last few months since I graduated."

Without the influence of her seal, the lingering arousal burning through his veins was tolerable. "It's shinobi training, meant to harden your body into the ultimate weapon."

Tsume's expression became hungry. "How does it work?"

"A weapon is only as good as its wielder, which in the case of our bodies, is our mind." He pointed first at his head, and then at hers with one hand, still careful to keep the other hand covering himself as a barrier against grabby preteen hands. She frowned unhappily, no doubt because his gesture brought attention to her brain injury. "I have trained my body to not be hindered by the effects of hunger, pain, discomfort, exhaustion… And now I'm working on not being hindered by the effects of arousal." An oversight in his training that he had never before considered. Nor was he going to thank Orochimaru or Tsume in helping him uncover this oversight.

"Why?" Tsume scratched her head with a frustrated look. "I mean, you gotta eat when you're hungry, or you'd starve. Kokoro-chan said that if you didn't eat, your mind would get all foggy and then you'd pass out."

"Sound reasoning on her part, but that is the extreme of hunger." Danzo paused. Tsume tilted her head to the side and studied him. His eye was critical and objective as he rolled an assessing gaze over her body – no personal desire stirred him now, nor was his arousal fanned. If the seal modifications could hold long enough to find someone with the experience, supplies, and creativity to render it obsolete, then he'd never have to touch her again. And he felt no shred or remorse or twinge of loss at the idea of never touching Tsume again. He flashed his teeth in a wicked smile at her, and was gratified to see her hunch down with caution and angle her body away to make it a smaller target, just as she had when she was ten years old. "If you want to tell me how to shape yourself into a great shinobi, I suggest you make yourself useful."

Then he fended off her questing hands again, because he forgot how singular her thoughts were. "Not that type of useful! Go put your damn clothes on and skin the rabbit!" Danzo slapped her buttock for good measure when she wasn't moving fast enough.

Tsume made sure she was safely separated from him with the fire and her strung up clothes serving as a barrier before speaking. "You spanked me!"

"And I'll do more than that if you don't hurry up and get dressed."

She leered at him. It was not an attractive look on a preteen. "Do you promise?"

He made sure that the glower he gave her was one of the worst in his repertoire – the sort that made grown ANBU quiver and quake in their boots. "That is inappropriate, Tsume. Do not ever talk to me like that, again." Danzo was going to have to do a lot of training with this child if he had any hope of maintaining his carefully-built, hard-fought reputation in Konoha.

Instead of being intimidated, Tsume just shrugged and began tugging on her multiple layers of clothes, uncaring about how she was doing it in front of him. To reinforce boundaries, Danzo turned his head away so he didn't have to watch her dress.

As Tsume dismantled the rabbit with a gleeful bloodlust that Danzo wholeheartedly approved of, he rearranged himself so that he knelt before her, like samurai often did to each other with friendly, but professional, exchanges. "The first thing to always keep in mind," Danzo began, "is that your body, mind, and heart are the first, last, and ultimate weapons at your disposal. They will do almost everything you'll ever require, above and beyond reason, but only if you're willing to discipline yourself."

He let his hands rest on his kneecaps instead of crossing his arms, so their exchange would look less defensive on his part. "A ninja is a weapon above all weapons – a weapon forged and designed to wield all things like a tool, but especially themselves. Your mind, your body, and your heart are the foundations on which you build a castle of strength and power. You must have absolute control over the foundations, for the slightest flaw will become magnified as your strength increases."

Tsume paused in eviscerating the rabbit with his kunai. Her eyes reflected the firelight. "I…I don't get it." She huffed in impatient sigh. "I don't do meta, um, metaphysical stuff. Yuu-san said that I'm too literal-minded."

Why was it that every time Danzo attempted to treat Tsume like an intelligent young woman, she would do her utmost to prove how futile such a thing was?

Danzo squashed down his irritation. "Since you insist on hiding behind a façade of stupidity, persisting stubbornly in remaining brainwashed by the lies and propaganda your great-grandmother has fed you for a number of years, very well. I shall endeavor to explain it to you using simple pictures and small words." He ignored how Tsume hunched over her rabbit with an offended look on her face.

"The mind," he said, "rules the body, but is unfortunately guided by the heart – often to the point of mutiny. The heart doesn't rationalize decisions – it feels the decisions, of whether they are right or wrong, and clouds rational judgment. You may take pity on an enemy, as he cries about how his wife is dead and there's no one to care for his three young children. Your heart, overwhelmed by this pity, stays the striking hand, but you suffer the consequences of this decision when you turn your back and the enemy immediately stabs you. The heart opens one up to emotional manipulation. I see such here, and now." Danzo slowly and deliberately pointed at Tsume. "Your great-grandmother leads you astray with her lies of your stupidity. I've told you once before that you aren't stupid, but your heart would much rather believe the words of someone who sold you into sexual slavery – no doubt she leaped forward to volunteer for such an opportunity – over the words of someone who removed you from the slavery."

The lesson he wanted to teach – see how your great-grandmother's emotions of resentment and hatred destroyed your life and potential? – would have to wait for another time.

Tsume rocked slowly, the slightly dismembered rabbit carcass in her lap nearly forgotten. At Danzo's silence, she hastily resumed prepping her kill.

"As a shinobi, the heart cannot take precedence over the mind – emotions are irrational and illogical, and leads the finest astray. The body, of course, is only as good as the mind operating the body, for the body does as the mind commands. I think: I shall run for four hours, and my legs obey. I think: I shall throw this kunai to strike the center of my target, and my hand obeys. Our bodies are our ultimate weapons. A kunai can be knocked aside; an exploding tag can be ripped away. What sort of weapon do you have if your enemy catches you bathing naked? I can kill a grown man with my bare hands by twisting his neck – I don't require a sharp blade or a seal.

"If my hands are incapacitated, I can kill a grown man with my feet. If I don't have my feet, I'll tear his throat out with my teeth. If they kick my teeth out, I'll bleed all over them – blood is corrosive and a bitch to get out of clothes, so at least I'll have died knowing I have irritated some poor laundry lass, somewhere. But the body has physical limitations and buffers designed to protect it from injury and death, therefore my mind must override these weaknesses. A body's weakness – hunger, exhaustion, intolerance of heat or cold, thirst, arousal – must be tempered and honed, so it cannot be a burden that interferes with your ability to complete the mission. You cannot allow the cold of winter to slow your steps when the enemy follows closely behind. You cannot allow the desire to sleep leave you open and vulnerable to enemy attacks. You must work hard to overrule these weaknesses.

"Naturally, all these things serve a purpose as signals to our bodies that a biological process must be met in order to maintain health. But they are also like a poison – little by little, over time, you can build an immunity to these signals."

From the confused, dazed look on Tsume's face, Danzo knew he had lost her a few minutes ago. He sighed, feeling drained and tired, but not willing to show such. "Your body, mind, and heart are weapons, like your kunai. They can always use more honing to keep a sharp edge."

Tsume brightened in understanding at that, and then completed the dismantling of the rabbit.

oOoOoOo

Danzo allowed himself and Tsume a few hours of sleep. She curled up against his side beneath his blanket for shared warmth as the blizzard outside reached its crescendo and the fire inside dwindled down into a pile of glowing embers. Ideally, it was best to hunker down and wait out the storm, but undisturbed footsteps in freshly fallen snow would broadcast their path to the Iwa shinobi as easily as wearing bright orange in the middle of a clover patch. So when the blizzard was still raging strong, Danzo rousted Tsume.

Ignoring her resentful grumbles, Danzo smeared her hands, feet, and ears with the leftover rabbit grease he had insisted on saving. "This will help protect you from frost bite," he explained as she wrinkled her nose and grimaced. Then he did likewise with his face, ears, and hands. He dressed her in his spare woolen shirt, securing it in place with some strategically-placed ninja wire, and tore strips from his spare pants to wrap around her head and hands. If there had been enough room to tuck her in his jacket while he wore it to continue sharing body heat, he readily would've done so. After she climbed on his back once more, he wrapped the blanket around them both, making sure the folds were as tightly secured as he could get without hampering movement. With everything completed, Danzo exited their shelter into the blizzard.

It was dark and bitterly cold. He immediately began circulating his chakra to increase warmth throughout his body. Tsume hunkered down against his back as he dismissed the earthen pit. The blowing snow would cover all evidence of their presence, and, short of one of the Iwa nin being a rare sensor, would be utterly lost.

Danzo didn't travel nonstop through the blizzard. Every half an hour, he would stop and open another underground pit to rest and warm up. He was careful to pace himself within Tsume's limitations, since she didn't have the stamina or experience to circulate her chakra like he could. At one point, after considering Tsume as she shivered under his heavy coat, he said, "You haven't had much chance to improve your stamina or skills since graduation, have you?"

The look Tsume gave him could've curdled milk. "I spent most of the time on my knees or back, and really didn't encourage stamina from my customers. No, no. What do you think?"

"I think your sensei has a lot of work to do."

She was quiet for a long moment. "Do you know who my sensei is supposed to be? I was never told…" She rubbed a stray hand against her bare forehead as she hunched forward against her curled legs. "I didn't even get handed my forehead protector before Grandmother hauled me out of Konoha."

"What happened to Kuromaru?"

Tsume's face crumpled, like she was fighting back tears. "I left him with Kakashi. They get along so well, you know, and Kakashi was still going to need someone to look after him if I… while I was gone."

Danzo realized, with a chill that had nothing to do with the blizzard, that Tsume had expected to never return to Konoha. His mind cast back to the various things she had said. Because I am a kunoichi, and I have a purpose, even if I'm not wanted… It hurt a lot. And there was usually a lot of blood on me and the sheets, especially the first few times – I was just drenched.

You took away my purpose.

I was just drenched.

His memory flashed through that night in the stark bathroom – TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD – and the blood smearing his body. Danzo couldn't even begin to imagine being inside Tsume's head, with her simple and linear thoughts, the first time she was raped – I was just drenched – all for the poorly-designed plans of a man that Konoha proudly considered one of the best. Or how her mind worked and thoughts ran in the months following, bravely holding out for that promised contact.

Unable to sit still with his thoughts anymore, Danzo and Tsume set out once more after he bundled her up again. The wind wasn't as fierce, but the snow still fell rapidly and limited their vision. Danzo had Tsume up her sense of smell to fifty percent max to confirm that no shinobi within fifty kilometers were following them. She caught and held onto Kushina's scent, which helped Danzo maintain a sense of direction within the constantly unchanging-changing world of white as he leaped through the snow, deftly dodging boulders, gullies, and trees.

"I was thinking," Tsume said, her soft voice barely audible above the wind, "that I can talk Aunt Natsumi into having Kakashi sign a summon scroll, too. It would be like my graduation gift to him, when he finishes the Academy. Kakashi is scary-smart. He remembers everything, and I used to read to him at night from my Academy books, so he'll graduate early, I just know it. He helped me with some of the Shinobi rules when I was going over them at the breakfast table – he knew them better than I did! I want to give him the dog summon, you know. He likes the ninken, he should have his own dog."

"Won't your clan be angry?"

"I don't care what Grandmother thinks when it comes to Kakashi. She gave him to me, even told me to take care of him when he was first born, so I have. And I'm alpha, and I've decided that he's mine, and there's nothing she can do or say that will change that. So if I want to give him the same summon that I have, I can do that." There was a brief moment following Tsume's indignant answer. Then she added, sounding rather imperious, "Besides, Grandmother isn't going to live forever. Especially after I ask Kokoro-chan's older brothers for a really good, undetectable poison."

Danzo choked and nearly staggered at that.

Tsume continued blithely. "Not that poisons are undetectable, mind you. All those poisons that are tasteless and odorless really aren't, but I just need one that Grandmother wouldn't be able to detect, which means I'd have to mix it in a meatloaf with lots of onions."

"You're going to poison your own grandmother?"

"Why not?" Tsume's voice was nonchalant. "She poisoned me first, only she used words instead of an actual poison. I thought about what you said last night, you know, about Grandmother brainwashing me. You're right and wrong. See, it's like poison you talked about when it came to training your body to ignore sleep and hunger and all that." May wonders never cease – the child actually listened and retained information! "A little bit of it over time does help you build an immunity to it. Grandmother wasn't so much brainwashing me as she was poisoning me.

"But see, you don't just build an immunity to poison – it also makes you weaker and sicker over time the longer you're exposed to it. And you can't just stop the poison suddenly, not when it's been in your system for so long. You have to wean off of it nice and slow, I think. Or something. It's hard to remember the classes in the Academy on poisoning. But anyway, I have decided that it'll be poison for Grandmother, one way or another."

Her last sentence was spoken with a nervous uncertainty, almost as if seeking his approval, and that derailed his train of thoughts more than the idea of her ruthlessly poisoning her clan's matron.

Danzo's first thought at that was, Please don't let her have a crush on me. He wasn't personally acquainted with the flights of fancy a young girl might have, but he knew that he wouldn't tolerate such nonsense aimed at his person. He was a hard, brutal man without patience or empathy, although it didn't surprise him in the least that she was developing such a misplaced affection – he had rescued her from a horrendous fate, and since she couldn't bond with her captors because of the ongoing brutality, she was instead bonding with him.

His second thought was, How do I crush this as soon as possible before anyone catches wind of it? More specifically, before her great-grandmother, Orochimaru, or Sakumo caught wind of Tsume's poorly placed flights of fancy. The singular or combined realization from any of those three would turn his life and ambitions into the ninth pit of hell.

Inuzuka Shinzou had no problem selling her adolescent great-granddaughter to a brothel under pretense of a mission, and would see an opportunity for public humiliation in said great-granddaughter's crush on Konoha's War Hawk – which meant public humiliation for Danzo. (There was a deep, dark peat bog with Shinzou's name on it, in the Land of Rice Paddies. Or a bottle of poison somewhere that could conveniently be emptied into one of Tsume's meatloaves.)

Orochimaru would snatch at anything for use against Danzo, after he removed Orochimaru's handy-dandy little mole from Tetsuzanshi. Danzo knew that there was already going to be hell to pay when the Hokage learned that Danzo had deliberately intervened against a Black Ops in which he wasn't centrally involved. Danzo knew the protocol for Black Ops – this could destroy his career.

Sakumo… well, Sakumo had the potential to hit Danzo where he was the most vulnerable, because he (reluctantly) liked and respected Sakumo. Although Danzo would much rather die than admit this failing weakness of his to still experience emotions and such simple desires like wanting another person's respect and kinship.

And… well, he had tried to get rid of Sakumo. Danzo had been so efficiently brutal and cruel the first several weeks as Sakumo's new captain that even Hiruzen and Kagami eyed Danzo from across the safe distance of Hiruzen's desk, having brought Sakumo and Danzo forward for questioning as several complaints had been filed in regards to Danzo's behavior. Sakumo said that he was unbreakable, and Danzo had taken it for a challenge.

Sakumo just tilted his head to the side and said, "You know this thing you're doing, Captain? Where you get really shy and scared of feelings so you attempt to be all ninja and quietly sabotage relationships because you can't stand making mistakes or people seeing that you really are just human? Yeah, that's not going to work with me."

On the other hand, there was a great potential in aiming Sakumo at Orochimaru and Shinzou. Such an idea warmed the black cockles of his heart.

Tsume took his sudden happiness as approval. As she cheered, he was hasty to say, "I would never approve of anyone attempting to kill of their allies in this time of war."

She fell quiet a long moment. Against his waist, where she had wrapped her legs like a stubborn barnacle, he felt the muscles in her shins flex and the brush of her moving toes. "I can wait until the war is won," Tsume said with a sly voice.

"Don't poison her out of hate," Danzo replied.

"Oh, I won't hate it. I'll probably enjoy every minute of it."

Except that Danzo knew she wouldn't, because Tsume was an Inuzuka, and her great-grandmother, no matter what was said or done, would always be Pack. But if thinking of petty acts of vengeance helped Tsume come to terms with the damage she had suffered, of how Shinzou had undermined and almost destroyed the potential Tsume and her remarkable nose had as a kunoichi (all gone to waste in a brothel) then Danzo would leave her to them.

And, for now, he'd also let Tsume have her whimsical flights of fancy and adolescent crush. He could smash them tomorrow as easily as he could at this moment.

oOoOoOo

The next time they rested in another earth pit, Danzo decided there was something more pressing to address than her flights of fancy. Namely, what to say about where he had found Tsume without either of them revealing the Black Ops.

"What do you plan to tell people when you get back?" he asked Tsume. He was seated with his back against the hard wall, and she was curled up against him shivering, the blanket wrapped tightly around them both. "Everyone will to want to know where you've been."

"I'll tell them it was a mission with Grandmother." Danzo sighed, and she peeked through the folds of the blanket up at him. "Wh-what?"

"You've been gone for sixteen weeks, child. Fourteen weeks ago, your grandmother submitted a report that you were killed in action because you blundered into the enemy's path, and your body was unrecoverable. Since you don't have a Bloodline Limit, body retrieval was deemed unimportant. Per the death declaration that the Hokage signed off, you are legally dead."

He watched as she slowly tucked her head back beneath the blanket, retreating from the world. "Oh. I hope Kakashi didn't cry too hard. Is he okay?"

"As far as I know. Last I heard, Kakashi is under the dubious care of your Aunt Natsumi while Sakumo is at the war front."

The blanket still trembled with Tsume's shivers. She was also sniffling. "Does – does anyone miss me?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes!" She shoved the blanket back and sat upright. Her hair stuck up in all directions like an angry hedgehog and crackled from the wool blanket's static electricity. "Because if I was missed, then it meant I was wanted. Grandmother told me that I wasn't unloved, but then I also wasn't wanted, and you can't feel loved if you're not wanted! She…"

Tsume scrubbed at her face, and then fisted the blanket. She turned her face away from Danzo as her shoulders hunched forward. "I knew I wasn't supposed to come back. I was so surprised, and so happy when you came back for me! Grandmother said that I couldn't refuse this mission, because if I did, she'd bury me in an unmarked grave. She said, one way or another, she'd be rid of me. And I could see she meant that. And Orochimaru said I'd have to stay there, and I knew that it was going to be one of those thingies that lasted for years, but I wasn't scared of being there. But it's a funny feeling. It's a kick in your gut, can't breath, oh no everything freezes feeling, to think of people forgetting about me. I know what it's like to forget things. It's like… whatever you forget, it stops existing. So if people forgot me, then my existence means nothing, you know?"

"So it does matter," Danzo concluded as he mentally sorted through her frantic speech.

"Yes. It does. Because… I was doing it for them." Tsume sniffled a few more times, her toes flexing. She pressed herself more tightly against him, eyes trained on the ground. She added, in a very soft voice on the edge of breaking, "And if no one remembered or cared about me, why would I keep doing that for years?" Her knees tightened. "They took away… it hurt. It hurt so much, Danzo."

Danzo could only imagine the brutality of that life – I was just drenched – twelve years old TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD – with no end in sight, clinging to a bare thread of hope that eventually someone trustworthy would come with whom she could share her gathered Intel. Alone with her simple thoughts, she was a life wasted.

"That is the nature of the beast when it comes to Black Ops," Danzo said, reluctantly wrapped his arm around her shoulder in a sort-of hug. He tried to remember how to make his sympathy look genuine. "To be forgotten is to be one of the lucky ones. Black Ops, after all, don't exist. There is a subdivision in ANBU – and you didn't hear it from me, or from anyone else – that are known as spooks. Sometimes they operate with sanctioned divisions in Konoha, like Sabotage, and other times, they're free operators. They are without substance, proof, or truth. Their identities are loose, their integrity nonexistent, and their loyalty absolute. Unless ordered otherwise by the Hokage, spooks are sanctioned with the ultimate freedom in using their own methods to obtain information or sabotage our enemies, even if it means the capture, torture, or murder of fellow Konoha nin by their own hands. The only one who will ever truly know is the Hokage – and, perhaps, their overseer, if it isn't the Hokage. The rest of us are kept ignorant.

"Can you imagine, Tsume, having to kill Kokoro-chan because she interferes with your Black Ops mission?"

Tsume didn't look up from where she was huddled, but she responded with a shake of her head. There was a slight arch in her back that indicated she was interested. "Why would I have to? Couldn't I just tell her the truth and get her out of the way?"

"If it only was that simple, child. 'If I can fool my friends, I can fool my enemies.' The more people who know the truth of the Black Ops, the less secure the secret. Secrets are best kept when only two people know the truth, and one of them is dead. The integrity of the mission means more than a single individual's life. These are not easy missions; there is no room for failure. It's very noticeable to your enemies if your friends aren't reacting as if you are the enemy you claim to be. To infiltrate our enemies – who may be quite paranoid and powerful – the spook must become our enemy."

"Oh! Like the way we had sex, to fool the watchers?" She had lifted her head now, and was looking at him with new understanding… as if, up until now, she hadn't really known why she had to have sex with people on this mission to sniff out secrets.

Well, this conversation was definitely heading in the direction of the topic he originally wanted to discuss. "Yes. Your actions must be real, and not illusions. You must be sincere, in order to fool the enemy, even if the sincerity means to hurt someone near and dear to you."

Which was probably why Danzo did his best not to have people near and dear to him, and also why he had so few genuine friendships.

Damn it – why did all these conversations wind up turning into self-introspection? "And therein is the greatest tragedy of the Black Ops, Tsume. The spooks spend their entire lives known as enemies by the very village they love enough to sacrifice everything for. Sometimes, it is better to be forgotten than it is to be remembered."

Tsume studied him with wide eyes. "That's… that's just not right!" she declared.

"That is what it means to be a shinobi."

Tsume crossed her arms indignantly. "Then it's a good thing I'm a kunoichi."

Danzo tossed his head back and laughed. "Oh, to have your simple, linear thinking. But it all comes down to this: Black Ops do not exist. Your mission – being sold at the brothel, obtaining information – none of it happened. Only your overseer, who is Orochimaru, and the Hokage know the full extent of the mission, and they would deny you in a heartbeat if it meant the success of the mission. Your grandmother and I are aware of it peripherally because we were read in as contacts, but we're still required to deny your existence and purpose. Even now, your mission doesn't exist. You were never sent anywhere by anyone. You weren't in any brothel. You didn't have sex with me or anyone else, and I most definitely never rescued you."

Tsume's face suddenly went pale, and she flopped free of the blanket and scooted back until she was pressed against the wall opposite from him. She riffled hurriedly through her clothes until she brought her kunai up and clenched it tightly. "Then – you never intended to take me back to Konoha, did you?"

"Wait – what?"

"You said I don't exist. And Grandmother said I was killed in action. How're you going to explain me coming back from the dead unless you're just going to kill me after we rescue Kushina-chan?" Then she gasped, babbling over his raised protests. "Except you have to kill me before we get to Kushina-chan, because then she'd know about me! You're only keeping me alive long enough to get close to her because you need me to track her. You butthead!"

Danzo pinched the bridge of his nose. "Tsume, while I admit that the temptation to throttle you is sometimes strong, I will not kill you, nor will I harm you any more than I already have. Why would I have gone through all that trouble of rescuing you?"

She stared at him, her eyes wide. "B-Because it would be too suspicious to Madame Haori if I died after we had sex? I don't know! How can I trust you?"

"Do I smell like I'm going to hurt you?"

Tsume's lower lip trembled. So did the kunai. "G-grandmother didn't always smell, and neither did the men at the brothel. I sometimes don't know if I can trust my nose." In a broken whisper, she added, "What if I'm wrong about Kushina?"

Danzo studied Tsume for a moment, and then opened his arms – warily opened up to vulnerability, to allow someone with a sharp weapon come right at his unprotected torso. "Come here, Tsume. On my oath as a Konoha shinobi, I will see you safely back to Konoha, alive and well."

Her eyes shone with wetness. "But can you protect me afterwards, when Grandmother sees me alive after she told everyone I was dead? She wanted me dead. She's going to be so pissed that I'm not dead."

His answering smile was wry and cruel. "I hear that onions in meatloaf cover up the scent of poison rather well."

Tsume didn't hesitate as she dropped the kunai and threw herself into his arms, curling into a ball, and crying. "She said she l-loved me!"

Danzo rubbed her back. He thought of the way Tsume had cared for Kakashi, and rocked her gently in his arms. "Hush. You're a genin of Konoha; a kunoichi. This is why good shinobi – and kunoichi – must not show emotions. See how these tears and this hurt are so disruptive?" His voice was barely audible over her sobs. "Now, your grandmother said your body was never found, which doesn't necessarily prove that you died. We can work with that. We'll say that I heard a rumor that Iwa nin had captured a young Inuzuka tracker and have been trying to brainwash this young Inuzuka into tracking for them. I knew that there was only one Inuzuka unaccounted for, and I know that I had to get this young Inuzuka back to Konoha. We'll say that Iwa nin were waiting for your wounds to heal, and were trying to be kind and generous to you, because kindness will capture a dog's heart faster than beatings. We'll come up with a few more details so our stories match, but if people ask questions that go beyond those details, you need to tell them that it's too traumatizing to remember, and you don't want to talk about it."

The crying dwindled into hiccups. "Okay."

oOoOoOo

It wasn't until the wind shifted from the northwest to the southeast that Tsume said, almost in a yelp, "I smell Namikaze Minato!" Then, after a couple of deep breaths, and in a much quieter voice, "Whoa, he's good. If I didn't also catch the scents of his weapons on him, I never would've noticed that he was even here. Well, I would at a hundred percent, but not thirty."

Danzo said nothing as they bound through one of Lightning's boreal forests; the slim pine and larch trees didn't have sturdy branches to create a highway in the sky for ninja like the forests in Fire. They had to move through the underbrush, which made silent movement next to impossible with the dry lichen and pine needles that covered the forest bed. Thorns from the tangled underbrush tore the back of his hands and Tsume's bare legs bloody.

"He's by himself though. His team is further back by, wow, a full day's worth of hard travel? Fifty kilometers, I guess? And Jiraiya isn't with either group. But Minato's following Kushina-chan at a really fast pace, and I bet he's going to try rescuing her! That meant she wasn't forgotten like me!"

Danzo didn't think that one harebrained genin whom Tsume had always described in her letters as "a mooncalf of a weenie" technically qualified as a dispatched retrieval from Konoha. But it did beg the questions of how Jiraiya's student managed to get so far into enemy territory alone, and how bad things were that Konoha truly was reduced to sending one harebrained genin after their very own jinchuuriki.

Then again, this was the same Konoha that had sold Tsume to a brothel, so the roadmap to figure out appropriate responses to certain situations was hardly usable, at this point in the war.

He didn't like Jiraiya as a person nearly as much as he liked Sakumo or Hiruzen. Jiraiya, like Sakumo and Hiruzen, was just so… so noble, obnoxiously optimistic, kind and genuine. Jiraiya was just far too good to be true – no one could be that constantly cheerful and optimistic without being a deranged, sadistic sociopath. On the other hand, Danzo knew that he couldn't just very well leave Jiraiya's student to wander alone in the woods of Lightning; that student was, after all, Konoha. "Where is he?" Danzo asked. He saw Tsume's arm extend in front of him at an angle, finger pointed steadily.

"That way. I think six kilometers?"

Danzo had spent the last two days focusing on teaching Tsume how to measure distance with her sense of smell, which probably meant that he probably had another fifteen to eighteen kilometers to run before finally meeting up with Minato. "How far away is Kushina?"

"She's about fifteen kilometers that way." The arm swiveled. So he had at least another forty or fifty kilometers to go before he could finally turn around and head to the relative direction of home. "But the Kumo nin are moving slower than Minato. Probably," her voice became indignant, "because they've got Kushina-chan in chains."

Danzo jumped over a few fallen logs covered with thick layers of moss, and then the deep gully that seemed to pop out of nowhere. They landed safely on the other side, and he heard Tsume's sharp intake of air as a branch whipped across her cheek. When she hurriedly moved her hand upward but couldn't stop the sticky dribble of blood down the back of Danzo's neck, he knew that the branch must have flayed her cheek open wide. He felt her chakra flare. "What're you doing?"

"I'm trying to heal this cut—"

"What?" Danzo skidded to a halt and twisted Tsume off his back before she could finish her explanation. Her eyes were wide and her hand was pasted to her cheek. There was a muddy green glow on her palm as he abruptly yanked the hand away. He could see that the blood had clotted, but thankfully the wound wasn't closed – poorly-performed healing could result in trapped infection, severe scaring, chakra burns around the surrounding flesh, necrosis, and worse.

He wasn't surprised that she had the aptitude for healing – Inuzuka offspring had notoriously good chakra control that developed early and was exercised often, and the trackers received training to become medics because they were often the first to find their wounded companions. They were rarely classified as med nin, however, given how often the Inuzuka engaged the enemy willy-nilly like med nin weren't allowed to, unless one's name was Tsunade. However, the point was that the others had training. "I forbid it. Healing is not something you are permitted to perform on yourself or anyone else without experience!"

Having made his point, Danzo pulled Tsume onto his back again and resumed running.

Tsume's little fist smacked him in the shoulder, and Danzo retaliated by pinching her hip. "Ow, you butthead! I do too have some training! Madame Kai showed me how to close wounds on myself in case I was bleeding really badly and she couldn't help me immediately! She said I had a little bit of a knack, and she always trained any girl with any knack how to heal since it saved her the energy. And I could only heal myself when she was there though, because she said it had to be a supervised activity. I actually got pretty good with it, since I had to practice just about every night on myself."

Well, shit.

Somehow, Tsume managed to wrangle up some training on healing techniques as a med nin while in the midst of paranoid enemies who had killed all the other kunoichi that Konoha had attempted to smuggle in for Intel. And, based on how casually she spoke of doing it, Tsume apparently didn't realize just how extremely dangerous that was, how easily those paranoid enemies could've found and exterminated her, just as they had the previous twelve kunoichi.

Danzo didn't know if he should be proud of Tsume for managing to stay alive, or exasperated at her obliviousness.

"We need to meet up with Minato before he does anything. I can't protect you both while trying to rescue Kushina at the same time."

"I can too take care of myself!"

He didn't think she knew how to take care of herself on the battlefield as well as she could in bed. "I'm well aware of how you take care of yourself, but I intend to kill every single non-Konoha nin, and I'd rather you didn't get caught in the middle."

Tsume hunched low on his back and sulked as Danzo shifted directions, towards Namikaze Minato.