Against the World

"We didn't notice the storm coming, but we certainly enjoyed the calm."

-x-

A thick, sealed envelope was dropped on the desk.

"Results?"

"Failure, Hokage-sama."

"Where did it go wrong this time?"

"That's all in the report, sir. I am simply the messenger."

"Very well, dismissed, Sparrow."

The ANBU known as Sparrow bowed, and then disappeared in a swirl of leaves.

Kato Dan grabbed the envelope and broke the seal. He scanned the first page, which summarized the report, and sat back and slowly let out a long breath when he reached the end of the summary. That was it, they were done. No more chances. They didn't have the resources or time to continue investing in Experiment 4869. They needed their people working on other projects, ones that were viable. While Experiment 4869 was a brilliant idea and, if it worked, would provide a huge boon to the village, it was just too unstable in its current stages, too wasteful.

Unlike some people, Dan was Hokage. He couldn't just toss resources at a top secret project that seemed to go nowhere. For him it wasn't a matter of passion, it was a matter of practicality. He may have been the one in charge, but people could still question him and make things difficult for him. And of course, it was hard to argue in favour of the project because of the (quite necessary) secrecy involved. He could tell them how great it would be for the village if they succeeded, but without details his promises were just hollow words, they meant nothing.

If he continued the project he would risk people losing respect for him, or worse, thinking he made poor decisions. That was not acceptable.

"Hopefully he's had more success than us..." Dan murmured to himself, flipping through the rest of the report, paying specific mind to the section detailing the differences from their last attempt. He would have Jiraiya drop the report off on his next visit.

-x-

Nineteen

I was assigned to the next patrol rotation. Rotation teams usually consisted of two regular three-man teams, but since Sakura was needed in the base's medical sector, there were only five of us.

Aiko and I were paired up with two men and a woman, all of whom appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties.

One of the men was a Hyuuga. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place where I might know him from. Then again, the entire clan looked eerily similar. Not just in colouring, though they all had white eyes and dark hair, but they all had the same facial structure, too. Too much inbreeding, probably. Some clans were weird like that.

The other man had pink hair, a shade paler than Sakura's familiar bubblegum hue. I could imagine he was teased for it quite mercilessly as a child. He had a strong jaw and a serious demeanour though. He didn't seem like he would tolerate any nonsense from us.

The woman was tall and plain looking. She could easily be anyone or from anywhere. She made me think back to the infiltration lessons I'd been put through after my team escaped from that Rock base. Dollface would have loved her.

All three of them wore blue pins, indicating they were chuunin, too.

They introduced themselves, but I promptly forgot their names. Perhaps I should know better and tried harder to remember them, it was only just recently that forgetting someone's name had caused me problems, but I really couldn't help it. Names just didn't stick with me in these sorts of situations. The pink haired man was the leader of the team, so I could simply call him Taicho. The Hyuuga I could address by his family name, and the woman I would call senpai, if necessary. If I ended up needing their names Aiko could tell me. Perhaps in the future we could arrange a signal to indicate I needed her or Sakura to inconspicuously tell me someone's name... I would bring it up to her privately when I got the chance.

Pinky-taicho gave us a run down of what to expect on the patrol rotation. We would be out for a week at a time, patrolling a specific area west of the base, near the border with Rice Fields. Aiko and I relaxed when he mentioned that, knowing Rice Fields was safe territory for whatever reason. Taicho noticed and gave us a strange look, but continued on with briefing us, pulling out a map to give us a visual of the area we would be covering.

When he finished, he made sure Aiko and I were packed for a week off base (which we obviously were), and led us out.

Pinky-taicho arranged us in a diamond formation for travel. He took point, I was directly behind him with Aiko and senpai on either side, while the Hyuuga took the rear.

"Let us know if we're going too fast for you." The woman said as we picked up speed. Her words may have seemed kind, but something about her tone made it sound less than. "It's also important that we remain quiet and don't leave noticeable traces. We'll be patrolling about twenty kilometres out. To our knowledge, this base isn't known to our enemies, so we don't want to leave a trail to it."

Aiko and I nodded. We were well trained in not leaving a trail, and Aiko said so.

Our older teammates nodded, though they looked doubtful. It didn't matter, we would prove them wrong.

-x-

Two days into our week long rotation and I already hated my temporary teammates. Aiko was not fairing much better.

It was like these people assumed we were fresh genin instead of chuunin. They were babying us, treating us like we didn't know how to do anything. I had no idea why they were acting that way.

That first day when they assumed we didn't know how to cover our tracks properly, fine, okay. It really was reasonable to assume we weren't well versed in it, though it was rude to doubt us when we said we were. Plenty of sheltered chuunin fresh from the village who had never done this sort of mission wouldn't be very good at it. (Clan kids, mostly, who graduate later and think they're better than everyone else. Who run easy missions as genin, then get promoted to chuunin with little practical experience outside the village.)

But it didn't stop there. They explained every little thing to us like we were both as young as I appeared. They gave us a half hour lecture about how to do night watch properly. Night watch! Like we hadn't been doing it for years. It may be our first patrol rotation and our first time stationed at a base, but it was hardly our first time out of the village overnight.

To add insult to injury, they insisted on one of them joining us for our watch shift, "just in case." It was beyond insulting. It was implying they didn't trust us to have their backs while they slept. (Maybe they didn't.)

I wanted to talk to Aiko about it, vent, but we were never alone long enough to talk without being overheard. It was doubly frustrating because she had signalled to me that she wanted to tell me something non-urgent when we next got the chance to talk, though with the way things were going, that wouldn't be until we returned to base.

It was likely an explanation for the way the these people were acting. She must have seen something in their heads.

There were so many times I wanted to snap at those three, to make a sarcastic comment or call them out on their poor behaviour, but I held back, Itachi's words still lingering with me.

I couldn't do that out here. People wouldn't put up with it, they would just think I was disrespectful (which was true) and immature (less true, I liked to think), and it would make me look bad. I didn't particularly care what people thought of me in general, but I'd been made to understand that I had to care what people thought of my capability as a ninja when in the field.

-x-

The older chuunin didn't get any better, but on the third day I came up with a way to let off some steam.

I couldn't make my sarcastic comments out loud, but I didn't need to do so for Aiko to hear them.

After a particularly annoying lecture that morning I looked towards Aiko and rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger, bringing them together over the bridge of my nose. She tilted her head a bit, probably curious at what I needed to communicate to her immediately, but she made eye contact regardless.

'If they like giving lectures like these maybe they should apply for positions at the academy,' I thought at Aiko.

She snorted and broke eye contact, but nodded.

After that I no longer even had to signal to Aiko I wanted to communicate something to her after a lecture, she just immediately made eye contact and I supplied her with my thoughts on the matter.

'Wow, thanks for changing our diapers, senpai!'

'Thanks for holding our hands while we walk through the village! We would have gotten so lost without you.'

'This is brand new information that I never would have known without it being spoon fed to me.'

I think they caught on that something was up, but they didn't know what. I doubt it endeared us to them.

I didn't care. They couldn't prove I had been anything less than respectful.

I just wanted the mission to end and to get back to the base.

-x-

When we did get back we were ordered to write up individual mission reports. Barring certain circumstances, it was usually up to the team leader to write the mission report, to remove unnecessary redundancy. It was a waste of time for admin and intel to read the same thing multiple times. Pinky did specify that we were to hand them in to him, not the base's office, so it was likely he just didn't want to do a verbal mission debrief with us before he wrote the official report to be turned into the base's admin office.

Still, it was annoying because a verbal debrief was faster for everyone involved. I pointed that out to him, but he just said it would be good practice for if I led missions in the future. I couldn't help but roll my eyes when he said that. "I've been writing mission reports for years as the leader of Team Four. I don't need practice."

"Then I expect an excellent report from you, Hoshino." he retorted. "I expect the two of you to bring me your reports by the end of the day." With that he and the other two left me and Aiko alone.

Aiko made a mocking face at me, and I nodded in agreement with the sentiment.

"Pinky sure is a piece of work." I said to her.

Aiko laughed. "That's for sure. The other two as well." She shook her head. "Come on, let's go take a shower and then find Sakura. I have stuff to tell you."

"I have some things I want to bring up with the two of you as well."

We walked back to our barracks, where we found Sakura asleep in her assigned bed, still wearing her lab coat. It was the middle of the day, but I was willing to bet that medical had been working her to the bone for the past week. It was rare that a base had access to a medic of her calibre. Sakura may have been a few weeks shy of thirteen, but she'd been Tsunade's apprentice for close to three years and had studied at the hospital since she started the academy when she was seven. With her natural talent, it was hardly a surprise she was the village's third best medic. Another few years under Tsunade and she would be her equal, if not better.

The base's admin probably had her working harder than reasonable, taking care of things other medics couldn't, and she wouldn't say no. Sakura was no longer as shy as she was when we met, and was certainly no push over, but she would want to bring the base's medical sector up to her standards while she was here, regardless of how much work it was.

By the time Aiko and I returned from washing up, Sakura had shifted, but was still in deep sleep. Aiko and I silently agreed to let her sleep and work on our reports.

An hour later Aiko lost a game of rock-paper-scissors and left to hand in our reports while I unsealed some of the algebra exercises I copied from the D-archives before I left. I scanned through the list, looking for an exercise that would make for a nice warm up, and settled for showing that at least one of e times pi or e plus pi was irrational.

Two hours after that I was half way into proving an abelian group had a composition series if and only if it was finite when Sakura finally woke up.

She let out a low groan, slowly rubbing her eyes.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty." I said to her. She pulled her hand down her face, turning towards me.

"Sekai, you're back." she mumbled around a yawn. Her eyes flicked down, to the bunk below me where Aiko was reading, having returned from submitting our reports some time ago. "Hey Aiko. Good to see you guys. How was patrol? When did you get back?"

Below me, Aiko's book snapped shut. "Not bad, we got back a few hours ago. You up to a conversation?"

Sakura groaned, pushing herself up into a sitting position. "Oh hell, what did Sekai do now?"

I scoffed, slightly offended. "I didn't—why do you think I did anything?" I grabbed the papers that I'd strewn around my bed as I worked and organized them quickly before sealing them away in my arm. Hopefully I remembered my train of thought when I came back to the problem. With everything put away I leaned over the edge of my bunk, arms dangling, so I could see Aiko.

Sakura just rolled her eyes and looked at Aiko, who smiled.

"She was on her best behaviour." Aiko confirmed. "Whenever she had a comment to make, she just..." she gestured to her eyes.

"Clever." Sakura said. "Then what is it?"

Aiko looked around the barracks. It was almost five thirty, so most people would still be busy working or heading to the mess hall for dinner. There were a few stragglers relaxing in their bunks, but it was as quiet as the barracks were going to get. Aiko gestured for us to join her on her bed.

Sakura, who must have been more exhausted than I thought, practically crawled over from her neighbouring bed while I flipped down onto the bunk below.

"First, Sakura I want you to tell us what it's been like here for you this past week." Aiko said.

"Why?"

"I'll explain after." she promised.

"Well..." Sakura gnawed on her bottom lip for a moment, then sighed. "Busy. It's like everyone except the other medics think I'm incompetent and got the position as the base's head medic just because I'm Tsunade-sensei's apprentice. Yet they think she hasn't taught me anything." She shook her head and shrugged. "Whenever I try to delegate to the other two, someone makes a comment about how I'm passing the hard work off... So I end up doing more. It's been exhausting."

My lips thinned in displeasure. How dare they treat Sakura like that? I expected her to be overworking herself, but not because of something like this.

Aiko ran a hand through her hair and sighed. "I figured something like that might have happened."

"What did you learn?" I asked, apparently clam. My frustration on Sakura's behalf didn't leak into my tone voice. "You..." I vaguely gestured to my eyes. "Right?"

"I did, yes." Aiko admitted. "And I'll get to that, after we fill Sakura in on what happened on our end..."

By the time Aiko finished, with some interjections from myself, Sakura was scowling.

"Why were they treating you like you're incompetent?" she asked.

"That's what I wanted to talk to you both about. Apparently, the team we were with was informed that this was our first time stationed at a base, and they were told to show us the ropes."

"So?" I asked. "They could show us how to do patrol without the attitude."

"They were also told that if we died, it better be because they're already dead." Aiko responded gravely.

Sakura frowned and began chewing her lip. "They were angry about that."

Aiko nodded. "Yes. We know our team is different than most, that we're all apprenticed to important people with the intention of eventually replacing them. But most people don't realize how much of an investment the three of us are for the village, and how they almost lost us once and don't want to lose us again. They just see us getting special treatment."

Sakura groaned. "They just think we're spoiled kids with connections and resent us."

"Yes. It doesn't help that word got out that Sekai got away with being disrespectful to the base's commander and appears to be close with Itachi-taicho, who is third in command."

Ah yes, apparent favourtism. No one would appreciate that.

Sakura glared at me, and I flopped back onto the bed with a groan. "Sorry." I told them. "Itachi already lectured me, I'll do better about the disrespect thing. But it's not my fault he and I are friends."

"The damage has already been done, Sekai." Sakura hissed, her green eyes narrowed.

"Exactly. I can't undo it. I won't repeat the incident with the commander, and I'll stay away from Itachi, that's all I can do about what already happened." I argued. "Instead we should focus on how this is going to affect us and what we need to do going forward. Suggestions, Aiko?"

"Pay attention to how people treat you. I'll keep an eye out and report back my findings if I get anything important. Right now, my best guess is that we'll be protected in the field, but people are going to try to waste our time or make us miserable without putting us in danger." she replied.

I nodded thoughtfully, tapping my chin. I could just imagine all sorts of things that we would need to deal with. "They'll be passive aggressive, but careful not to overstep and get in trouble. They'll have a justification for everything they do."

My team nodded in agreement.

"I'm not sure what they'll have us do next, but we need to do check-ins like this as often as possible, so we know what's going on and who to trust. While I believe that in a situation like running patrol we don't need to worry about our allies watching our backs, if we end up in large scale combat situation where there are too many involved to place blame on anyone specific..." I trailed off.

"They would likely put the focus on their own survival despite orders and leave us to fend for ourselves." Aiko finished for me. I nodded in confirmation.

"Moving on, we need to establish a signal for the two of you to unobtrusively tell me someone's name. That will go a long way in keeping me out of trouble."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "You could try just remembering it when they tell you."

"It's not that easy," I protested. And it really wasn't. Generally speaking, I had trouble remembering names unless I saw them written down or heard them often enough. I didn't mean to forget names, though admittedly I didn't consider them terribly important most of the time. But that lack of consideration was more of a side effect of my difficulty recalling names than anything else.

It was just really hard. When I thought of someone I knew, in my mind I didn't pull up their name, I pulled up their image. It was only when I had no image to connect to a person that I substituted their name, and when I did have an image and knew the name, it was usually filed away in a subsection under that image, like any other information I had on the person. It was just easier for me to remember people I met that way.

On the other hand, if I had a name and information before I saw someone, the order of information swapped. I drew up the name, then the image.

It was weird and not terribly efficient for a ninja, but I really couldn't help it.

When I did remember names after first hearing them, it was usually because I could relate them to something to help remember them. For example with Sakura, she had pink hair, like cherry blossoms, so her name was easy to remember.

But usually I needed repetition, and often people didn't use names out loud! On our most recent mission Pinky and the others didn't actually address each other by name very often, and Aiko barely spoke to them, so I never heard their names beyond the introduction.

Sakura looked surprised upon hearing my explanation. Unlike Aiko, I was no mind reader, but I got the feeling she thought I just didn't care about people enough to remember "unimportant" names. It likely never occurred to her that I genuinely had trouble with it. It kind of rankled me, because she was my friend and it felt like she thought so little of me. But on the other hand it was what I wanted other people to think, rather than admit I had trouble with something that seemed so simple.

Aiko seemed to consider what I said seriously. She had a pensive look on her face and remained quiet for several seconds, even stopping Sakura from commenting with a raised finger. Finally, she nodded, and started suggesting subtle ways to indicate whose name I needed to know.

-x-

We spent the next two weeks on base. Sakura continued to work in medical, and Aiko returned to the intelligence unit. I was passed around to do whatever was necessary. I made some sealing scrolls to be used on base and did some menial work, like running deliveries between departments or cleaning, but mostly I was left to train.

There wasn't a big training ground or anything, but there were small areas that were dedicated to sparring and physical training (no ninjutsu). We were expected to control ourselves of course, and be careful not to destroy anything. I mostly trained alone, but got in a short spar every couple of days. Most of the other ninja didn't care to spar with me, whether because I was disliked around the base or because of my apparent age. I wondered if the ones who did agree to a spar genuinely were willing or if they were ordered. Sadly, Aiko wasn't around for my spars, so I didn't find out that way.

Then again, those who agreed were usually special jounin and seemed to be particularly vicious in our spars. I often had to stop by medical or ask Sakura to patch me up afterwards. Perhaps that spoke to their motivations for agreeing.

When the two weeks drew to their end, Aiko and I were sent on another patrol rotation, again with Pinky's team. It went much better than the first patrol since they didn't have the same excuse to go too far with their "teaching," but they did keep up the whole "teaching us" thing by constantly quizzing us on what we should do.

We patrolled the same area as before, near the border with Rice Fields. Once again, our patrol was clear. We saw no sign of enemy activity.

I wasn't sure if I hated patrol because I genuinely found more enjoyment on base doing menial chores or whether it was because I disliked Pinky's team. I mentioned it to Aiko once we returned, and she said it was probably the patrol I disliked.

She felt as I did about Pinky's team, but she also felt the same about her coworkers in intel, and she still preferred being on base. Apparently her coworkers completely ignored her clearance level and didn't share all that she was authorized to see. It frustrated her because there wasn't anything she could actually do about it, as those who were making the decision all had high clearance as well, but they also were of higher rank. She was treated like all the other chuunin were, even though they all had lower clearance than her.

They didn't know about her bloodline though, so they were still vulnerable to it, and she managed to gather information that way.

Not that they had much to go on. Apparently it was mostly trading messages about supply runs, reading mission reports (nothing interesting), and stuff like that. There were no prisoners to interrogate, any enemy intelligence we intercepted was mostly just sent back to the village, nothing exciting.

Over the last few weeks things had quieted down for Sakura as well. Most everyone had stopped bothering her about little things and had begun to trust her competence.

Overall, life on the base was quite boring, nowhere near as exciting as our introduction would have led us to believe. The most interesting thing of note was when we had quiet celebration of Sakura's thirteenth birthday, where I revealed the small birthday cake and present I had sealed away when I realized we'd be here for her birthday. Other than that, it was just missions and work on base and periodically being sent out to patrol that same stretch every couple of weeks.

At first the other ninja were as prickly as we predicted, but eventually our comrades on the base seemed to warm to us, no longer being as condescending or distant. I was no longer seeking Sakura or medical out after my spars, and I was finding more willing partners. Perhaps they got used to us, perhaps we proved ourselves.

We settled into a routine, weeks passed, March blurred into April, which faded into May, and little changed. We were never sent back out to any major battles, and according to Aiko there was no news of any significant skirmishes, or atypical enemy movement either.

Perhaps that was why when the base caved in we were completely unprepared.

-x-

Notes: I said June and it is still June, if barely.

Sorry it's been so long. It's been a rough year. Online classes are harder and more work. My health has also been pretty poor. I ended up in the hospital for a week a few months back and it's been slow to recover. Then my dog died and. Yeah. I didn't take it well. I didn't mean to take this long to update, though I have been working on another fic since December.

This arc (chuunin/III) was meant to go up to Twenty Five, but I've already added an extra chapter... and will need another extra chapter. Theoretically, the next chapter was supposed to be part of last chapter.So we'll see how it goes. My outline goes up to Thirty Eight, and by then we are in arc V. I have so much planned for this story, and so many ideas. I don't plan to abandon it, and if I ever do need to give up I'll post all my notes/plans so you have some form of closure. Don't worry about that though.

Even in canon, I feel like medics didn't really get a lot of respect. The same holds true here. Sakura is well respected for her skills within the medical hierarchy, but outside it, no. Most ninja don't know what is hard or easy for a medic, so they judge her competence inaccurately.

There are some new notes in the databook about characterizing the general population that are relevant to how Team Four is perceived.

The math problem about at least one of pi+e and (pi)e being irrational was on my first assignment for Algebra 3. It's a common problem, you can find an explanation by googling it. The one about abelian groups and composition series was on my final for the same class. I imagine Sekai hadn't gotten that far before she died, so these questions are on things she has studied in her spare time in this world.

Sorry this is a bit short. Next time we get some action.