Venatori

Summary: Kankuro was a few minutes too late, and Kiba died. Now, Shino and Hinata work to ensure that no more traitors get away alive. Divergence from chapter 212.

The Laughing Phoenix does not own Naruto and makes no profit from this work, other than her sense of accomplishment.

WARNING: Massive spoilers in future chapters. Character death. Blood, gore, and questionable use of medical knowledge and techniques. Some OOC-ness.


First Gamble

About a week after the Chuunin Exams, a meeting of the clan heads was held to go over the business pertaining to the clean-up after the exams. Once they'd finally finished, Tsume approached Shibi and Hiashi as they made their way out. "Hyuuga-san, Aburame-san, can I speak t'you for a minute?"

The two men looked at her in surprise, or something approximating it, but agreed and moved to the corner of the room, to be out of the way.

"Inuzuka-san, it has become rare to see you at these meetings," Hiashi said, voice dismissive.

Tsume shrugged, fighting the urge to bristle. "Missions. But I wasn't interested in talkin' about the meetin', my business is a little more personal."

Shibi raised an eyebrow. "Personal, Inuzuka-san?"

"Yeah. Your kids invited me to the exam tournament, an' I was pretty impressed with how they did. They were Kiba's team, an' since the exam I've been thinkin' about bringin' them into the pack."

"Into…the pack?" Hiashi looked at her like he was trying to decide if she was quite sane.

"I take it this is a form of adoption?" Shibi asked.

"Pretty much," Tsume said. "Basically, they'd be considered clan-cousins. They could ask any Inuzuka for help anytime with pretty much anythin', no questions asked, an' they'd be expected to help any Inuzuka the same way." She shrugged again. "For most, this wouldn't be such a big deal, but I figured that since they're your clan heirs I should talk to you about it first."

"If Shino accepts then I have no objection," Shibi said calmly. "In fact, I should thank you for honoring him this way."

"Hinata has not been considered as a candidate for heiress in some years," Hiashi said dismissively. "As long as it does not impede her duties to the clan, then you may do as you wish." Turning away, the Hyuuga head left, robes swishing behind him.

Kuromaru growled from his place at Tsume's side the minute the Hyuuga was out of earshot. "Sometimes," he rumbled, "I really want to bite that man."

Shibi regarded the large dog with a raised eyebrow. "While a bite might not be my preferred method of attack, I cannot say that I disagree with the sentiment, Kuromaru-san."

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The next day, Hana caught Hinata and Shino as they were leaving their usual training ground and asked them to come by the Inuzuka household. Slightly puzzled, they followed only to find themselves confronted by a pack of dogs at the end of the street, the people the dogs belonged to standing at their doors or gates, watching silently.

It was, quite frankly, eerie. Hana led the two down the street to her family's house, and the pack of dogs followed at a short distance while the humans watched silently. When they got there, they were greeted by Tsume, for once out of uniform, with Kuromaru sitting as usual at her side. "Come on in, you two," she said.

Exchanging confused looks, the newly-minted chuunin obeyed. Tsume led them into the living room, and directed them to the couch, before settling herself into one of the chairs. "Now," she said. "My clan's got a little proposition for you two." She surveyed them critically. "We're considerin' adoptin' you into the pack."

This time, the look Shino and Hinata exchanged was startled. "Inuzuka-san," Shino began, "With all due respect, what exactly does that mean?"

Tsume smirked. "Some other clans use the term clan-cousin. Basically, if either of you ever need help from an Inuzuka, you'll get it, no questions asked. You'd be part of the family. 'Course, that means you'd have to return the favor, but I don't think that'll be a problem for either of you. I've talked to your clan heads, and they're okay with it."

"This is a great honor, Inuzuka-san," Hinata murmured, bowing her head, casting a sideways glance at Shino.

"We accept," the pair spoke in unison.

A toothy grin spread across Tsume's face. "Good. Now, we just need to show you off to the clan, sign a couple of papers for the farts at the clan council, and it'll be party time!"

"Now?" Hinata asked, startled.

"Yup." The Inuzuka matriarch stood up and trotted to the door. "C'mon you two!"

Shino and Hinata followed Tsume outside and into the middle of the street, trying not to flinch when she dropped her hands on their shoulders suddenly, neither being used to physical contact. "Inuzuka!" she bayed, calling the clan out of their houses and into the street. "Tonight, we welcome two cousins into the family! From this time on, Hyuuga Hinata an' Aburame Shino are pack. They'll be at our sides in battle and out, as we'll be at theirs."

A graying, heavily scarred man stepped forward, accompanied by a pair of grizzled dogs. "Have they proved their loyalty and strength to the clan's satisfaction?"

Hana responded to the challenge, with an air that told Hinata and Shino that this was part of the ceremony, instead of serious opposition. "These two were teammates to Inuzuka Kiba," quiet rippled through the assembled Inuzuka, and both Hinata and Shino caught their breath. Even five months on, it still hurt, "They were loyal teammates in life and have proved true to his memory in death. As to their strength," she smirked in a way that made her look very like her mother and dead brother, "The Chuunin Exams can attest to that. These two are young, but they're growing well."

The older man nodded, stepping back. "Then the clan is satisfied. They are welcome."

"Inuzuka, I give you our new cousins!" Tsume barked, hands tight on Shino and Hinata's shoulders. A roar came up from the clan members, and then the entire group jumped into movement, some pulling tables from the gardens into the street, others hurrying into the houses only to come back carrying dishes loaded with food.

In the midst of the noisy bustling, Shino and Hinata turned to Tsume. "Thank you, Inuzuka-san." Shino said softly.

Tsume flashed them a fanged grin. "Can't call me that anymore. I sponsored you in, so it's Tsume-obasan t'you."

Hinata smiled softly, then, to the surprise of everyone involved, gave the older woman a hesitant hug. "Tsume-obasama."

The startled clan head looked down at the petite girl, then gently placed a hand on her shoulder. "I'm never goin' to get you to drop the formalities, am I?" Shino and Hinata both shook their heads, and she gave a barking laugh. "Well, what are you two waitin' for, this is your party!" The pair allowed themselves to be shooed into the mass of exuberant Inuzuka, swept up into the movement of the people around them.

There were some moments of awkwardness, because neither were nearly as demonstrative as their hosts, usually preferring to observe quietly to interacting, but the sheer energy in the street party was infectious. At first, it was largely the shinobi who'd attended the exam tournament who spoke to them, asking questions about techniques and training methods, but before long a couple of older clansmen had drawn Shino into a philosophical debate while a group of chuunin-ranked members in their late teens tried to tease Hinata into a game of shinobi-style tag.

Funnily enough, it was a child who cemented their place as honorary clan members. The youngest had been keeping their distance, slightly intimidated, though none would admit it, by Hinata's white eyes and the way Shino's coat hid his face. However, a game of chase between puppies and toddlers led to a little boy tripping as he ran from an excitable puppy and sprawling on the ground near Hinata's feet.

Hinata picked up the child, who was barely four, if that, and gently pushed the leg of his shorts up, examining his scraped knee. Before she could dig in her pouch for one of her ointments, however, Shino stepped up next to her. "Let me," he said softly, carefully forming the hand seals for a basic medical jutsu he'd been teaching himself. A green glow lit up his palm as he held it over the child's knee, closing up the small cuts. Minutes later, both were swarmed by children, cries of 'Hina-neesan' and 'Shi-niisan' filling the air as the clan's youngest members clamored for their attention.

Tsume, watching the proceedings from nearby, nearly laughed until she cried.

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A couple of weeks later, Hinata and Shino were sparring at their usual training ground. This was one of the rare times when they spent the entire day training alone, as both Kurenai and Anko had been called out on missions. They'd spent the earlier part of the day reviewing the jutsu they were learning, and decided to have a quick spar before going in search of lunch and an afternoon spent updating their supplies.

Hinata jumped backwards out of range of Shino's punch, ducking in low almost immediately, trying to get under his guard. The Aburame blocked, forcing his teammate to disengage before he caught her with his retaliatory strike. They kept trading blows for a while, pressing whatever advantages they could, before winding up in a deadlock, one of Shino's kunai against Hinata's throat, her palm resting over his heart. Their spars had been ending up like this more and more often lately. Every so often one would learn a new technique and gain a slight advantage, but they'd become so good at reading each other that the advantage never lasted long.

After a moment in stalemate, the two disengaged, returning weaponry to the appropriate pouches and catching their breath. In an easy silence, the pair picked up the weapons they had discarded in the fight before returning to their packs, lying under a tree at the clearing's edge.

Hinata and Shino had just picked up their water bottles when they heard a soft cough from the tree behind them. Turning around quickly, they were confronted by a shinobi clad in dark grey-green and brown, wearing a bone-white mask with Konoha's leaf on the forehead and black stripes at the corners of the eyes. Shino relaxed fractionally, his hive sensing the change in Hinata's chakra as she released the chakra she'd called to her hands. A hunter-nin. That would explain why we didn't sense him coming.

The hunter-nin cocked his head to the side, seemingly amused by the pair's reaction. "Hyuuga Hinata and Aburame Shino," he said. "Interesting."

"Can we help you, hunter-san?" Hinata asked, doing her best to keep her voice steady.

"So businesslike," the hunter-nin sighed, before straightening up. "Well, if you insist. The hunter-nin have been keeping an eye on you for a while now. We've found your use of the Tora mission really quite resourceful, by the way. After your truly impressive showing at the Chuunin Exams last month and your promotion, we've decided that you'd be worth recruiting. You've proven to be a pair of devious, sneaky, and efficient kids, and while that may not get you far with, say, the pre-genin at the Academy, it makes you exactly the kind of material the Hunter-nin like. However, since we prefer to recruit those older and with a little more field experience, you've got one last test."

"Test, hunter-san?" Shino was fighting a rising tide of excitement.

After all the thought they'd put into their training regimes, all the work, they were being noticed. And recruited young, if he understood the hunter-nin correctly.

"Yep!" The hunter-nin chirped, sounding entirely too pleased with the situation. "There's a mission coming in – it's ranked as a C, but it's a high C. You are to take it alone, without your sensei. If you can complete it in two weeks, we'll take you on. If not, you'll have to wait another year or so."

"May we know the mission parameters?" Shino asked.

The hunter-nin considered that a moment, then shrugged. "Don't see why not. Up at the edge of northern Hi no Kuni, near the border with Taki, is a village that sent to us for help with a small group of bandits. As far as we can tell, it's a group of five or six thugs, no real threat to a shinobi. Their leader, however, is a missing-nin from Iwa." The hunter-nin pulled a card out of his pocket and tossed it to Hinata. "That's Nobu. He just barely made chuunin at the age of twenty, and seems to have come down with a case of swollen ego. He was punished several times for insubordination before he left."

"And Iwa has no interest in pursuing him themselves." Hinata concluded.

"Exactly!" the hunter-nin sounded pleased. "He's a low-ranking shinobi of no specific clan or talent, so they aren't worried about him running around loose with village or clan secrets. There's also no love lost between Konoha and Iwa, so they don't really care if he's causing trouble on our territory, so long as they can prove they had nothing to do with it."

Shino was looking over the card. "Are we simply to deal with the bandits, or were there specific requirements?"

The hunter-nin shrugged. "Deal with the bandits as you like, but the political types would prefer Nobu alive. Once you've collected him, you're to take him to the nearest outpost and turn him in there. I trust you know the outpost locations around Hi no Kuni?"

The pair nodded. Between the pair of them, they could draw a fairly accurate map of the outposts in the country – Anko had spent a memorable three days drilling them, with ten minutes of Anko-style target practice as penalty for each one they missed.

"Good. Well, I'll be off. Impress us, Aburame Shino and Hyuuga Hinata. We'll be watching." The hunter-nin shunshin'd away, leaving dancing leaves behind. Shino was about the slip the card with their target's identification information into his kunai pouch when Hinata reached for it and turned it over, having spotted something on the back. A short note had been left in an untidy scrawl at the bottom of the profile: Good luck. –Jakkaru.

Collecting their belongings, the two headed back into the village proper, deciding to grab a quick lunch before going to see about the test mission. As they entered a little café that their sensei favored (and with good reason, in their opinions) Shino murmured "It is oddly fortuitous that sensei is on a mission, and will not return for a few days."

Hinata glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, understanding the unspoken message. This was arranged, and we get a lead. "It should take us only a few days to get to the border," she said softly.

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Getting the mission was easier than they had expected. All they had to do was request a C-ranked mission out of the village, and when the shinobi working the missions desk recited them, their desired mission came up fourth. It probably helped that Iruka wasn't working the missions desk – despite the fact that they were technically the same rank, he still saw them as his quiet students. The fact that Iruka tended to familiarize himself with the details of missions he gave to people he cared about as a matter of course made their former sensei that much more formidable.

"Right," the older chuunin had told them, rolling up the scroll. "The details are on there, so there should be no issues. You'll be making your initial report at the outpost, and they might ask you to carry some documents on the way back. They're down a shinobi, last we'd heard, and they don't want to spare anybody for courier work." Nodding to say they understood, the two left.

The mission scroll in hand, the next order of business was retrieving their belongings from home. The pair split up, deciding to meet at the gate within the hour and get as far as they could before stopping for the night.

Shino took to the roofs, taking the fastest route to the Aburame-dominated section of the village. Landing on the street outside his house, he slipped inside and put together his pack as quickly as he could before going in search of his father. He found Shibi in one of the incubation rooms, examining the progress of a young colony.

"Father."

Shibi looked up from the queen he had been inspecting. "Shino. Do you need me for something?"

Shino shook his head slightly. "I came by to tell you that I have a mission. We are expected to return in two weeks." He augmented his words with slight gestures. Hunter-nin recruitment test.

Shibi raised an eyebrow. "I see. I will see you in two week's time, then." Good luck.

On his way to the gate, Shino made a small detour to the Memorial Stone. He dropped easily to the ground from the trees and knelt in front of the stone. I can't stay long, but I thought you should know that we won't be here for two weeks. A hunter-nin approached us, and he made us an offer. If we complete this mission in two weeks on our own they'll take us on as trainees. Shino knelt in front of the glossy black Stone for a few more minutes before levering himself to his feet and heading toward the gates. He'd need to hurry to make it on time.

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On her way back to the Hyuuga estate, Hinata stopped in at the cemetery. "Forgive me for not bringing any incense, Kiba-kun," she said softly, kneeling in front of her teammate's stone. "But there wasn't time. Kiba-kun, a h-hunter-n-nin a-approached us." She clasped her hands, trying to calm her excitement so that she could speak without stuttering. "He s-said that they've b-been watching us, that they wanted to r-recruit us! There's a t-test we have to do first, a C-ranked m-mission, without sensei. We have two weeks to go h-hunt down a group of bandits. The bandits are civilians, but the leader's a rogue from Iwa." She bit her lip, weighing her urge to talk to her teammate against her remaining time. "I need to go pack, or I'll be late, but I w-wanted to tell you first." She bowed slightly to the gravestone as she stood, then hurried to the estate.

Fortunately, she didn't pass anybody in the halls on her way in. Throwing together a pack with the ease of long practice, she pulled it onto her back and hurried into the kitchens to pick up some trail rations, then into the stillroom for an extra jar of ointment. While in the stillroom, she scribbled a pair of quick notes for her sister and cousin, sliding them under their doors. The message was the same. Will be on a mission for two weeks. Take care.

Once she had all her gear together, she trotted down the hall to her father's office, knocking on the door. When he called her in, she entered obediently, leaving her pack next to the door.

"What is it, Hinata?" Hiashi asked, looking up from the clan accounts.

"I h-have a mission, Father," Hinata said softly, eyes on her hands. "The projected t-time is two weeks."

Hiashi made a little noise in the back of his throat that, in another man, would have been an exasperated sigh. "Very well. You will be expected back in two weeks." He turned back to his papers, wordlessly dismissing her.

Biting her lip, Hinata left the Hyuuga estate silently, making her way to the gate. She was early, and as she waited it occurred to her that they'd forgotten to leave Kurenai a message. Borrowing a piece of paper from the shinobi on guard duty, she wrote a quick note to Kurenai, apologizing for leaving on short notice and telling her that they'd be back within two weeks. Shino showed up as she was finishing, and she passed him the paper. He read the note, then borrowed her pen to add a few last lines of his own. Once the note was complete to his satisfaction, Shino folded the paper up into a small packet, and summoned a few of his insects from below his coat. They took the paper and disappeared in the direction of Kurenai's apartment.

The pair signed out without a fuss and took off into the trees, heading north. After about three hours of tree-jumping, Shino signaled Hinata to look for a campsite. About fifteen minutes later, Hinata led them to a clearing not far from a small stream. They set up their camp quickly, needing only minimal conversation to direct each other. Once the fire was starting to heat enough to cook on, Shino pulled the mission scroll from his pack. He rolled it out across his knees and read it aloud as Hinata put together the ingredients for a quick meal.

"The mission was requested by a small village about 30 kilometers from the border. Over the past month, they have been harassed by a group of bandits. Villager estimates place the group size at six, and they say their leader wears a hitai-ate with a slash through the insignia. One of the villagers managed to get a good look at it and recognized it as Iwa. We have his name because the group insists on announcing themselves and demanding that the villagers call their leader 'Nobu-sama'."

"Do we know anything about how they attack?"

Shino scanned the scroll "As far as I can tell, they've been going after food, some valuables, and have harassed village women if they find them alone. One was nearly kidnapped, but managed to get away in time. They prefer late afternoons, and tend to hit the outskirts of the village. Nobu uses some flashy jutsu, while the rest of his band are armed with a variety of weapons, primarily short swords, although one has been seen to carry an axe."

Hinata nodded. "We should probably check in on the village first. I think we should reach them in two days if we keep up our pace."

Shino made a noise of agreement, reviewing the scroll again. He wasn't really expecting anything to go wrong, but this was an important mission for them, and he had heard something about Team 7's first C-rank being a mislabeled A-rank. After reading the mission details over twice, he put the scroll away and went to collect some more water while Hinata dealt with placing the meal in the hot ash to heat.

Two days later, in the late afternoon, the pair reached the village that had sent the mission request. Announcing themselves to a man hauling a cart full of wood led them to present themselves to what amounted to the village leaders – a handful of elders and the blacksmith – while what had to be half the village looked on.

A lot of the glances were admittedly dubious. While the pair were obviously Konoha shinobi, and wore the insignia to prove it, what use was a pair of kids? However, the blacksmith had a rough idea of what skills a chuunin-ranked shinobi possessed, and informed the elders (and pretty much everyone within earshot) that for the two of them to be chuunin at their age meant that they were good.

The question of their competency might have been left at that, had a large farmer not pushed his way to the front of the crowd and started sneering. "We send to Konoha for help and they send us a pair of wet-behind-the-ears brats? What, is our money not good enough?"

Shino fixed the man with a stare from behind his black-tinted goggles. "Not at all. The mission was evaluated as a C-rank, and a C-rank is what you will be charged for, unless something…complicates the matter."

The man shifted irritably, but before he could say anything Hinata cut in. "We are trained specifically for this kind of mission, sir." She stared to the left of his ear, trusting her eyes to unnerve him. It seemed to work, for he quieted almost instantly and stepped back into the crowd. The awkward moment was broken when the blacksmith offered to put them up for the night. The pair accepted gracefully, and early the next morning headed out on the trail of the bandit gang.

It took them only a day to find the bandits. There were seven of them gathered around a campfire, in a rough circle dominated by their leader. Nobu was easy to pick out, all strutting pride and loud voice, his slashed Iwa insignia prominently displayed. Of the remaining six, five were large and burly, tough men carrying a motley assortment of weaponry. The last was smaller, a boy in his late teens who moved with a limp. An hour of careful recon told Hinata and Shino that the boy was a would-be member of the gang, who had been conscripted into being their general dogsbody due to his limp. It was certainly he who did most of the camp chores.

The pair retreated some distance from the camp to discuss their plan of attack. It didn't take them long to agree on a strategy, Shino proposing methods and Hinata examining them and suggesting modifications. They wordlessly agreed to follow one of their senpai's favorite instructions: "Keep it simple, stupid."

Some hours later, once the bandits had settled down for the night and their fire was down to glowing ashes, Hinata and Shino slipped quietly into the camp. Five of their targets went down quietly, dropping into a drugged sleep thanks to the careful use of senbon. The last bandit woke up as Hinata stabbed him with her poisoned needles, and while he didn't have time to do more than thrash around a little, the movement woke Nobu.

The Iwa rogue scrambled to his feet, drawing a kunai and turning to face Shino and Hinata. The pair flanked him silently, waiting for one false move. This would be trickier – they were fighting to incapacitate, not kill, and Nobu had no such restriction. After a few moments of standoff, Nobu swore loudly, brandishing his kunai. "Come on you Konoha rats! Scared to face a real shinobi?" When neither dignified that with a response, Nobu lunged at Shino, swinging wildly.

Shino dodged out of the way, taking advantage of the darkness and movement to release some of his hive. Hinata moved in, metal glinting between her fingers in the faint light of the glowing ash. She scored a slight cut, but was forced to dodge away before she could tell if she had broken the skin below the fabric of Nobu's shirt.

Swearing again, Nobu whirled on the small girl, launching into a sequence of hand seals, calling up a doton technique. Hinata substituted away, while Shino jumped to safety, leaving the stone spires scything upward uselessly. The bandits were not so lucky. Nobu caught three of his band in his technique, leaving them with mortal wounds if not killing them, while another two were hit with debris.

Before Nobu could get off another jutsu, Hinata substituted with one of the many pieces of stone thrown about, sinking a trio of senbon deep into his shoulder. She quickly substituted away again, and Nobu stumbled as he was swarmed by insects. It was over in minutes. The man collapsed heavily, and Shino dropped next to him, disarming him and binding him with wire quickly.

Once Nobu was bound to his satisfaction, the boy stood, leaving a good portion of his colony behind. Hinata meanwhile had coaxed new flame from the campsite, and was bending over the forms of the men who had been caught by the technique. Two were already dead, and the third was bleeding out. Perhaps fortunately, he was unconscious, knocked out by blood loss and the remnants of Hinata's drug. Leaving the three as lost causes, Shino crossed the campsite to examine the luckier ones.

One had been half-crushed by the debris. His legs were, as far as Shino could tell, badly broken. There was no way he'd survive without immediate and advanced medical attention. As he was still unconscious, Shino left him for the moment and bent over one of the other two. He was heavily bruised, and there was a bloody streak on his head where a stone had hit him. The last was the youngest member of the band. He'd been lying farthest from the campfire and had thus escaped serious injury. Although a bit dusty and battered, he was otherwise fine.

Shino returned to the man with the broken legs, and Hinata came to join him. "This one's legs are shattered," he told her softly. "If he survives the trauma, he will likely never walk again." Hinata bit her lip, then reached into her pouch for a small vial. Understanding, Shino crouched next to the man's head and wrestled his jaw open so Hinata could pour a few drops down his throat.

"It's fast," she told Shino softly as he let the man's jaw go. "I don't think he'll even wake up."

The pair then turned to the other two men. When they began to examine the one who had been hit in the head, Hinata frowned. "Shino, do you know any diagnostic jutsu?"

"One, but I haven't mastered it yet."

"Can you check his head for me?"

Shino did so, and discovered that there had been more damage than he'd originally thought. He stood, wiping the dirt off his hands. "It looks like there's been some bleeding inside the skull. I don't know enough about the head to tell what will happen to someone with his injuries."

They looked at each other. "Should," Hinata swallowed and tried again. "Should we watch him when he wakes up and see what happens?"

Shino closed his eyes in thought. "We don't have a whole lot of time. We need to get Nobu to the outpost, and the sooner the better. And there's still one of the band left."

Hinata leapt at the delaying factor. "Let's take a look at the last one."

The older boy was as they'd left him. Hinata leaned over him, biting her lip. "Do you suppose…he could be rehabilitated?"

"That would require waking him up first," Shino pointed out.

"Shino-kun, we aren't going to get Nobu anywhere tonight, not in the dark."

Shino nodded, conceding the point. "I take it we wait until morning?"

Hinata nodded, and slipped a coil of wire out of her pocket. She bound the boy's hands efficiently, and tied him to a tree. Shino, seeing where this was going, checked Nobu's bonds before moving him to a tree and tying him there. This took some effort, as Nobu was heavy. Once he had the older chuunin propped upright, he quickly patted him down, removing weapons and a couple of poorly-made tags. Meanwhile, Hinata bound the hands of the man with potential brain damage, pulling the debris away from him.

The survivors restrained to their satisfaction, Hinata and Shino retreated a little distance, keeping their captives between them and the carnage, before settling down to nap and wait for dawn.

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While Shino and Hinata conducted a raid on a bandit camp, Yuuhi Kurenai was returning to her apartment in Konoha. The mission had been challenging, requiring careful use of multiple genjutsu and genjutsu-breaking techniques, and in the end it had come down to a straight-up fight in very muddy terrain, but it had been successful. Injuries had been kept to a minimum, and while Kurenai felt like she'd been put through a clothes-press and had mud and dirt in more places than she really cared to think about, it was nothing a hot shower and some sleep wouldn't fix.

Once she'd consigned her clothes to the laundry, set her pack against the coffee table to be sorted through and restocked, had a shower and put on blessedly clean clothes, Kurenai began the usual process of catching up on her more immediate chores after being gone for some time. Opening the window to water her plants, she was surprised to find a square of paper tucked into the side of one of her window boxes. Her name was on the outside, and she recognized Shino's precise handwriting. Picking up the paper, she watered her plants, then retreated to her kitchen table to examine the note.

It was written in a simple cipher her three students had developed half as a joke just before their first chuunin exam. As they'd been clowning around after a training session when they started on it, it was full of references to dogs, insects, colors, and flowers. Well, Kiba had been clowning around. Shino was being sarcastic and Hinata was trying to muffle her giggles. Resolutely pushing the memory of a complete team aside, Kurenai deciphered it with ease, finding herself left with a short note written by both her students.

Kurenai-sensei, the note began, in Hinata's delicate, fastidious hand. We'll be on a mission for two weeks from today. We've taken a C-rank to track down a bandit group in Northern Hi no Kuni. I know we shouldn't have taken it without letting you know first, but there wasn't time. We'll explain more when we get back. Hope you had a good mission.

The note continued in Shino's handwriting. Sensei, we took the mission because we were approached by a part of our goal called Jakkaru. Having read the mission objectives, we should be able to complete this mission on our own. Don't concern yourself, we will see you in two weeks. Shino and Hinata.

Giving an exasperated sigh, Kurenai dropped the note on her table. She wasn't really surprised, knowing her students as she did, but that didn't mean that they wouldn't be facing a truly brutal training session when they got back. Pushing herself to her feet, the tired jounin made a mental note to brief Anko on the situation as she dug through her cupboards, looking for something to make a quick and easy dinner. If there was anyone who would know just what type of training would be appropriate for the situation, it was the energetic kunoichi.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Shino woke up just before dawn, and stretched quickly, before waking Hinata with a hand on her shoulder. The Hyuuga girl woke up almost at once, requiring only a sleepy stretch to return to awareness. The pair quietly approached their captives. Nobu was still unconscious, but the older boy was starting to wake up.

Letting Hinata keep an eye on their waking prisoner, Shino approached the one with the head injury. Performing the diagnostic jutsu again, he quickly discovered that the man's vitals were lower than he expected, and there was a lot of blood pooled around the back of his head. In the growing light of morning, he could see what the night had concealed from him – the man's head had been struck hard by a stone knocked upwards from below, probably during Nobu's doton jutsu, before the man was hit in the head by the debris from above. From Shino's limited experience, the brain seemed to have been injured first on the front, and then again, with slightly less force, behind.

Hinata came to stand by Shino, watching the older teen out of the corner of her eye. "What happened?" she asked softly.

"There is bleeding on the brain, and his vitals are down," Shino told her, voice quiet. "I think he is comatose." He drew a kunai from his pouch. Hinata glanced at the blade in his hand, and nodded, biting her lip. Bending down, Shino quickly slit the comatose man's throat. Wiping the blade on the man's shirt, Shino slipped it back into his pouch and stood, looking at the five dead bodies lying amid the chaos of the ruined campsite.

Hinata cast a glance sideways at her teammate. "We should check to see what they had with them," she said softly. Shino nodded wordlessly, and the two started scouring the campsite, making a pile for salvageable cloth and valuables, and a separate pile for weapons. The piles were small – the doton jutsu had completely torn up the campsite, and the food was completely ruined, most of the packs sunk halfway into or buried by the dirt. Eventually they had a respectable size pile of weaponry, some completely useless, some of fair quality, and a small pile of halfway decent cloth and a few valuables: a couple of pieces of jewelry, a small pouch of coin.

That done, they managed to pull the bodies to the center of the damaged ground, where the soil was looser. Working with soft instructions to each other, they used a doton and a suiton technique to sink the bodies in a mass grave. By the time they finally finished, the sun had risen above the trees, and the older teen was awake. Shino dispatched some of his hive to drain Nobu's chakra some more, and the three teens watched each other warily.

Unsurprisingly, it was the older teen who spoke first. "So, what now?" His voice was resigned. "Do I end up like them?" he gestured to the disturbed earth with his chin.

"That," Shino told him softly, "depends entirely on you."

The young man snorted. "Uh huh. Right. Look, if you're after money or information, I don't have any."

"You misunderstand," Hinata said, drawing on the Hyuuga-voice her Father used when angry. It came out a calm, dismissive tone, but it was close enough for her purposes. "We'd rather not kill you."

"Why did you join this group?" Shino asked.

Their captive stared at them for a moment, then snorted. "Sure beat the hell out of slaving in the fields, that's for certain, especially with this leg. And there's nobody who'll take on someone like me as an apprentice-"

"Were you ever involved in any of the raids?" Hinata cut him off.

"Nah. They didn't want someone who couldn't move fast along. I watched the camp while they were gone."

"Do you want a second chance?" Shino's voice had become steel.

The young man's gaze turned wary. "What do you mean, second chance?"

"We were hired by a local village to deal with their bandit problem." Shino said, businesslike. "If you so choose, we can take you to them, tell them that you were a captive at the camp, and see if we can arrange for a job for you."

"And if not?"

Hinata slipped a hand into her pouch. Ignoring the movement, Shino spoke. "Then your death will be regrettable."

The young man's eyes widened. "Ah…oh. Do I get some time to…think it over?"

Hinata pulled on the expression she saw on the faces of the Hyuuga Elders when they were irritated with her. Shino, watching out of the corner of his eye, was impressed by how like a Hyuuga she looked. "Think fast. We have a mission to complete, and little time in which to do it."

Ignoring the older teen, she spun and crossed the clearing to examine Nobu. Deciding that she wanted some insurance, she picked out a vial from her pouch, drew a senbon, dipped the senbon in the liquid and stuck it in the muscle of Nobu's arm, above the brachial vein. When she turned away from the Iwa rogue, she noticed that Shino's expression spoke of slight amusement. She fought the urge to stick her tongue out at him.

A groan drew their attention back to the older teen. "I'll go to the village," he said irritably.

It was about midday by the time they returned to the village. The residents stopped to stare at the group they made: a small girl, a boy her age carrying a full-grown man, and an older teen limping along next to them.

Shino dropped Nobu unceremoniously in the dirt while they talked to the villagers. Their rendition of events was brief, and when they described the older teen as having been a prisoner of the bandits, nobody really argued. The teen was turned over to the custody of the blacksmith, and they had to decline several offers of food or lodging as they left.

It took them two days to get to the outpost. Unencumbered, it would have only taken one, but Nobu was almost as big as the pair of them together, and they had decided to keep him drugged and drained of chakra to make life easier. When they finally reached the small guard tower with attached block of rooms, they were more than ready to dispose of their target. The outpost was manned by a motley group of chuunin, headed by a trio of ANBU. Two of their number, one chuunin, one ANBU, had been injured by a rockslide the week before. Nothing serious, but they still had a few more days to go before they could be considered combat-ready again.

They were greeted by the senior chuunin, who handed Nobu off to an ANBU for processing, then insisted they stay the night and leave the next morning, as opposed to setting off in the late afternoon. Succumbing to the desire to sleep in an actual building, Shino and Hinata accepted, and spent a night sharing the bunk bed in one of the rooms.

The next morning, they were approached by the senior chuunin as they got ready to leave. "Here," he told them, plopping a trio of scrolls on the bottom bunk. "Reports to go to the mission desk. We'd send them in ourselves, but what with our injuries and you going that way already…"

"We'll hand these in for you," Hinata promised, slipping them into her pack.

The return trip took two days, and was largely uneventful. They got back to Konoha late one afternoon, and reported in, handing over their own report, the paperwork committing Nobu to Konoha's custody, and the scrolls from the outpost.

Leaving the Hokage Tower together, they were startled when a figure wearing a hunter-nin mask, this one with black-rimmed eyes and tan lines running from the inside corner of the eyes to the edge of the mask level with the jawline, passed them at the door with a slight wave.


A/N: And two members of the hunter-nin are introduced! I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Some parts of it practically wrote themselves.

Here I am afraid I will have to break my usual chapter per fortnight rhythm. My schedule is rolling into the first round of exams and major papers, and I any spare time I have will be spoken for by extra study or sleep. That, and my little sister beta's going to be out of the hemisphere for the next two weeks, so even if I did get a chapter done within that time, she wouldn't be able to read it and get it back to me. Thus, the next chapter will be up in three week's time.

Thanks to everyone who's kind enough to leave me a review. It's the comments I get that make me get excited to work on the next chapter. And Pyrozia, as usual, for (hopefully) keeping me from making stupid mistakes.

The brain injuries Shino finds are actually really common in car accidents or victims of Shaken Baby Syndrome. When the body stops moving suddenly, the head gets thrown backward, and then forward: this is whiplash. What that means for the brain is that the brain is knocked against the front of the skull, before the hyperextension of the neck smacks the brain into the back of the skull, causing bruising of the brain. This kind of injury is called a "contra coup" injury. The skull's made of dense bone and ridged on the inside, the brain is very soft tissue. Anyone who's ever had to dissect a mammal in Biology class will recognize this. If blood vessels tear, then the blood can put a lot of pressure on the brain, as there isn't any extra space within the skull to speak of, and in severe cases the patient can be rendered comatose.

Jakkaru – The Hunter-nin's second in command. His codename, according to my search engines, translates to 'Jackal'.

Next Chapter: Recruitment Procedures