Hi and welcome back! I hope you enjoy Chapter 6.

Oh, and happy Valentine's Day ;)

--J


Haku

In the forest's quiet the two ninjas battled, passing like flickering shadows between the trees, over the ground, and through the branches high above as both tried to get position on their unseen opponents.

Over a series of brief, intense skirmishes that had ended as quickly and unexpectedly as they'd began, the ninja from the Hidden Sound Village had rediscovered how fast and accurate his strangely feminine and sweet-faced adversary could be, and quickly adjusted his tactics to never allow the young shinobi a straight, unobstructed shot with his senbon throwing-spines. More then that, he was starting to realize that the boy was clever and experienced far beyond his years, and that all the rookie mistakes he'd been counting on to exploit simply weren't going to happen.

The ninja from Wave Country, for that was the place he thought of as home, found his new enemy uncommonly treacherous, possessed of a devious mind and armed with practically every kind of poison imaginable along with an insidious variety of ways to deliver that poison – in darts, powders, grenades and squirting liquids. The teenager's foe was opportunistic too, knew how to lay traps, pick his spots and was certain to pounce at any advantage.

Both had learned from past mistakes and could no longer be drawn out, lured, diverted or distracted so easily; especially not with water-clones, shadow-clones, replacements or other gen-jutsu.

That was why when a 'Haku' showed up, out in the open, gazing up and around with a lazy, abstracted look into the trees with hands clasped casually behind his back as he strolled with careless abandon between the trunks, nothing happened.

After a few minutes of this, a 'tea-vendor' appeared a few dozen yards away, wandering with equal nonchalance along a parallel course.

Taking notice of each other as if old acquaintances, they turned slowly and approached. Closer and closer they came, feet crunching softly over the fallen leaves and green vines, until they stood barely ten paces from one another. Beams of dappled sunlight glowed through the canopies above, splashing over the forest floor and the two combatants' calm faces as they regarded each other.

'Haku' tilted his head and smiled demurely with eyebrow raised while the 'tea-vendor' returned a smug grin, his head bobbing slowly up and down.

"So," ventured 'Haku' in a conversational manner. "What do you think?"

The ninja really might have been taken for a schoolgirl out on a hike except for his mist-ninja fatigues worn under a vest covered in senbon-filled quivers which lent him a more masculine and militant edge. Even so, it was impossible not to note how strikingly the teenager's warlike attire contrasted with the delicately beautiful features of his youthful face and gentle, grey eyes.

The man hunched slightly, eyes narrowing to slits as he scrutinized his young opponent, raised a forefinger hesitantly then lowered it toward him. "I'll be damned. That's the real you," he ventured with a speculative, professional air, "isn't it?"

The slender ninja hummed as if deep in thought. "I don't know myself anymore," he returned with a coy, geisha's look. "To tell you the truth, I've kind of lost track."

Silence fell, burdened with dread.

The sound-ninja squinted again as he looked at the boy harder and rolled the tip of his tongue around the inside of his cheek. "Yeah," he settled surely in a heavy drawl, this time much more confidently. "It's you."

'Haku' gave a concerned shrug then illuminated: "There's only one way to find out, you know."

The 'tea-vendor's' lips spread into a toothy smile as his eyes went wide with insight. "Call!" the shinobi blurted harshly than erupted into an all-out attack.

A flick of his wrists sent half a dozen grenades, poisonous powders cased in eggshells, shooting forth in an encompassing spread that burst around, behind, above and before their target in clouds of intense, violent color – ochre yellows, swampy greens and blood reds.

The deadly, vivid display floated for a moment, filling the air, drifting uncontested, uninterrupted and long enough for the assassin to imagine victory, but then whirled suddenly into an ugly, miasmal brown as a powerful wind sprang up from nowhere, growing almost immediately into a fierce, mud-colored cyclone. The tea-vendor stared wide-eyed into the spinning current, almost deafened by its roar, then shielded his eyes as it swelled, blew forcefully past him and dissipated into the surrounding trees.

"What the hell?!" the ninja muttered in shock only an instant before the edge of Haku's palm slammed hard into the man's cheekbone and sent him staggering back.

Strikes followed one after the other from all around and in blistering combinations of kicks, elbows, phoenix-eye punches, flat and bladed palms, from every angle and faster then the tea-vendor could counter, block, evade or even see. The sound-ninja covered up and weathered the blows, backpedaling awkwardly and grunting at every impact, then tripped, fell and went tumbling downhill as the uneven ground dipped away at a shallow angle behind him.

Haku leaped after the assassin, jumping high and kicking the ninja hard in the chest, then struck him soundly in the eye with the back of his bent wrist. But as the teenager landed on the leaf-strewn ground, coiling his legs to spring again, he was suddenly overcome by a bitter, burning stench that constricted his lungs and burned his eyes like acid.

Nearly blind and choking, Haku staggered forward, his feet dragging pitiably. The colors and shapes of the surrounding forest merged, distorted then came crashing down on the young ninja as his vision swam and his enfeebled muscles refused to function. The black-haired teenager's eyes widened then as he lurched, slumped down to his hands and knees and gasped uselessly for breath like a fish marooned on land.

With the sounds of their fight fading little-by-little into stillness, the tea-vendor slowly picked himself up. Though covered with dead leaves and twigs which dripped off him as he rose, limping from the beating he'd taken and covering his swollen left eye tenderly with one hand, a ghastly smile stretched across his face.

"Gotcha, didn't I," said the assassin with a laugh as Haku again attempted to rise but failed.

Reaching out then with a palsied hand toward what seemed to be nothing more than a small swell in the ground, the young shinobi tore a handful of leaves away and found the impostor tea-vendor's urn hiding there with all its contents spent.

"Your friend with the doggy was pretty smart the way he cut my hose and all," said the sound-ninja, "but as you can see I still found a use for my urn. That poison I was spraying at you, when not under pressure, expands into a gas that's heavier than air."

Haku, his face darkening, veins throbbing, looked around to see that he was indeed at the base of a not-so-shallow depression – the perfect place for such a trap.

"All I really had to do was set it up and lure you to it," the sound-ninja explained needlessly. "Clever, huh? I like to call it my 'Silent but Deadly'" The man took a deep breath of the poisoned air as if to show off his immunity then drew forth a kunai and tossed it lazily from hand to hand. "Now pay attention, 'cause this is my very favorite part," he announced then relished in the mispronunciation: "the coop-de-grass."

Grinning from ear to ear as he strode purposefully toward Haku, the sound-ninja hardly noticed the rising wind which announced itself at first as a whisper through the trees then louder as a rush. Only when scraps of dry leaves and twigs tumbled past his feet did he look up from his trapped opponent into a blast of air so cold, sudden and intense that it blew him off his feet.

The instant it passed, the startled tea-vendor looked around frantically with his good eye then flung his kunai at the young shinobi's obscured shape, almost cackling with glee as he heard it strike home. Rolling to his feet, the man stared at the mist-ninja who simply stood there completely still and with eyes unblinking, then, as the clouds of debris stirred up by the puzzling wind slowly settled, his eye settled on the kunai buried bloodlessly in the middle of his teenaged opponent's smooth forehead.

"Naw," said the assassin, immediately incredulous. "Something's wrong here."

The tea-vendor approached the girlish shinobi cautiously, took out another kunai then tapped the tip of the blade on the top of his adversary's head, producing a hard, resounding 'clank'. The man frowned, pushed and the boy fell over, straight over like a statue because that's what it was – a convincingly life-like statue formed entirely of ice.

The ninja scowled, looked around peevishly then shook his head. "That sumbitch did it to me again," he mused then grinned as if it had been all worthwhile. "But at least now I know your secret."


Kiba

Some would call it a strategic retreat, others: running for their lives! Either way, Kiba and Akamaru flew through the forest around Senju Park at a pace that anyone would consider suicidal were they not being chased by a screeching, ravenous flock of demonic bird-creatures which followed close behind them, crashing through and around the trees like an inky tidal wave.

One of the sand-ninja, Kaori's, minions, a raptor whose gleaming, obsidian eyes, hooked beak, taloned feet, and feathers were all so glossy black that it defied definition, clawed at Kiba's bare arm. The leaf-genin growled and slashed back with the edge of his kunai and the summoned monster vanished with a blur of disrupted chakra.

The boy leaped, kicked off a tree-trunk high in the air and spun, throwing a pair of his knives into the mass of flapping creatures tailing him before he landed and resumed his flight. Though he'd dispelled three or four more with the effort, it looked like there were three or four THOUSAND more to go!

And there's no way I got THAT many kunai, Kiba thought furiously as he ran.

He was in a bad spot, no doubt about it. If he made a stand, Kaori's birds would tear him and Akamaru to shreds. The creatures were too close for him to make hand signs for a jutsu, and it didn't seem like any of the ones he knew would do any good.

The genin grunted in frustration. His jaw tensed then fell open as the boy suddenly alighted on an idea. Oh, yeah! he remembered excitedly. That sound-ninja's backpack!

Reality set in, dousing the hopeful spark. His pursuers were much closer to him than he was to it.

If I can just GET to it.

More of the black birds came at him, those faster than the lagging pack, and harried him, beating his head and back with their wings, pecking with razor beaks and grasping with fish-hook claws.

Sh-t! cursed Kiba who slashed away while Akamaru leaped and seized one in his jaws. Though the pair made short work of those few it only seemed to cut into the shortening distance they had from the rest of the flock.

Both boy and puppy continued in an all-out sprint, weaving through the trees, up and over hills, gullies and fallen logs until another advancing group tore into them. Kiba ripped and stabbed frantically with kunai in either hand, without even the scant protection of the jacket he'd been forced to shed. Akamaru, barking savagely, leaped and bit at their feathered adversaries but then howled as he was snagged in mid-air as one of them hooked the puppy's furred skin and flapped frantically to stay aloft.

"Oh no you don't!" yelled Kiba who rushed forward and slashed the dark, bird-creature into nothingness, then was himself almost buried beneath a black carpet of the feathered things as still more descended upon him.

The young leaf-ninja thrashed and slashed his way to freedom, beating back the oncoming swarm with Akamaru's help, but again the little ninja-hound was caught -- this time by a group of three that started to carry him off with the power of their combined lift.

Kiba bared his teeth and again threw off his attackers, intent on saving his friend, but the three bird-creatures vanished suddenly even before he could overtake them in bursts of chakra followed by more and more in clusters of three and four as senbon flashed through the air in silvery blurs.

Akamaru dropped to the ground and ran back to his partner who looked up at the unexpected sight of the mist-ninja, Hiroo Okame, leaping down from the trees to join them.

Okame's wide, grey eyes darted then, in the blink of eye, his artful hands flew to his vest which was lined top-to-bottom with overlapping quivers full of senbon and sent them shooting forth by the dozens faster and more precisely than even a canny observer would believe possible. All around the three ninja (two human and one puppy), the black birds vanished in a repeating series of staccato pops. And though the mist-shinobi's astonishing display hadn't even dented their numbers the flock withdrew, settling back further into the trees.

Kiba, a little taken-aback, looked at Okame and his brow knitted -- first at the stranger's skill and then at his appearance.

This…this guy looks even MORE like a girl close up! he noticed. Not JUST a girl, but like, a really, really good-looking girl.

The discrepancy puzzled him.

Maybe the Hokage got it wrong…Okame couldn't REALLY be a guy.

The leaf-ninja looked the teenager up and down then his lupine eyes settled on his (her?) chest and he frowned disappointedly.

Hmm, Kiba concluded, kinda flat there. I guess he COULD be a guy…but STILL…

The mist-ninja in question looked at the genin looking at him, startled for a moment, then asked coolly but pointedly: "What?!"

"Nothing!" Kiba protested harshly then frowned.

"We've got to get out of here," they said at the same time though in entirely different voices: Kiba's a growling, low-tenor; Okame's a mature and level contralto. Both grimaced then looked around as the black flock began to close back in, cawing malevolently and swirling in a wide circle around them.

Kiba, Akamaru and Okame were now completely surrounded.

"Dammit!" cursed Kiba as he brandished his pair of kunai, then quivered angrily when he saw how little good they would do against this force once they began their attack.

Okame pressed his thin lips together then spared him a look. "Do you mind if I…," he began then gestured vaguely.

The genin's face screwed with doubt but, "Hey," Kiba grunted back casually, "knock yourself out."

The visitor from Wave Country settled in a stance, took a breath, circled his hands then slowly pressed one palm up toward the sky while the other pushed down toward the earth.

Kiba made a face. "So what's all that sup--," he began then stopped short when he felt Okame's chakra build and the temperature drop sharply. Water beaded in fat drops of condensation all around them then froze into white frost. The still air began to move in fitful currents and eddies, swelled then stirred through the leaves in tight, rotating spirals that circled around them in a protective arc. "Just," began Kiba, mystified, "just what kind of jutsu IS this?!"

The circling bird-creatures' cackles and cries grew louder as they felt the disturbance. Their collective furor seemed to wane for a moment before they gradually worked themselves up then attacked en masse, curling in from all directions.

An explosion of wind and cold rose to meet them. Kiba shivered, too shocked to speak, then hugged his arms around himself and Akamaru for warmth with their breath misting white as rows of spinning dust-devil vortexes raced around them, sucking in Kaori's birds from the air and vacuuming the surrounding forest almost bare. Branches whipped, trees swayed and flurries of snowflakes darted in the suddenly wintry air. Almost lost in the roar were the sounds of the monstrous birds vanishing as the demon winds battered and froze them.

On and on, the birds came in wave after inexhaustible wave but then at last, Okame staggered back as if stricken and the wind's fury subsided. Kiba nearly choked then as a wave of warm air flooded over them, thick with humidity, and his eardrums creaked painfully from the pressure change.

Of Kaori's bird-creatures, not one was left.

Gradually, Kiba lowered his arms and let Akamaru down. The genin's astounded eyes roamed then over the wind-wrecked landscape, the bare branches, trees stripped of bark and leaves and the circular tracks dug deep into the naked, frozen earth around them. "I…I don't believe it," he mumbled in shock, gave Okame a questioning look then came alert as a figure emerged from the trees on the other side of what was now a clearing.

It was the tea-vendor.

The sound-ninja, this time sporting a black eye, looked around appreciatively at the destruction then slowly applauded. "You'll have to forgive me, kid," the man began as he clapped his hands. "I'm a little slow. I shoulda noticed that you're a little…'different'; that you're not quite like the other ninjas."

"Yeah?!" roared Kiba defensively while Akamaru snarled and barked. "And just what the hell do you mean by that?!"

"Not YOU, dumb-ass!" the assassin hastened to clarify, "our 'friend' from Kirigakure."

"Quiet," hissed Okame with soft intensity, eyes suddenly ablaze.

"'Cause, unless I missed my guess, THAT was a gen-u-wine kekkei-genkai."

The tea-vendor's head snapped back as a senbon flashed deep into his eye socket. The man's body stiffened, went limp then vanished before it hit the ground. "Aw, come on!" his voice continued unabated from somewhere among the trees. "I was f-cking COMPLIMENTING you! I was just sayin'! Anyway," the sound-ninja's observations began again in a less confrontational tone, "it's all the more reason you should sign up with US. My boss just LOVES kids who got a bloodline; can't seem to get enough of 'em!"

Kiba glanced again at Okame. His unlikely ally was hunched over with hands braced on his knees, nearly exhausted and panting for breath. Whatever he'd just done, he'd had to push himself hard. Looking closer, the genin furrowed his brow, seeing clearly enough in the severity of the teenager's changed expression that the sound-ninja wasn't just blowing smoke.

So this guy…this guy's like Hinata too? Kiba blinked then shook his head and grimaced sourly. Oh, THAT just figures, yeah, why NOT another little surprise…because there hasn't been enough of those so far – 'D'-rank mission, MY ASS!

(Stupid Hokage.)

The young leaf-ninja looked around then crouched down low so he could whisper into Akamaru's ear. "The backpack," he said softly but urgently, "get me that backpack we took off the other sound-ninja, ok?"

The ninja-hound yipped eagerly then raced off.

"Be careful, boy!" Kiba cautioned before he'd gone.

Almost immediately after the puppy vanished into the woods, the sand-kunoichi, Kaori appeared high in the trees above them. Her mouth and chin were crusted red from the bloody nose Kiba had given her, and her silver garment hopelessly stained, streaked and spotted.

"I have to admit," she began begrudgingly then leaped down, "you're not the scrubs I took you for."

Kiba advanced then gave her an angry stare. "Would you cut it out, already? We're allies now!"

The light-haired woman returned a sour, dismissive look. "Please," she spat, "just when I was starting to respect you.

"Hey!" Kaori called into the forest. "Eueki! Enough of the hide and seek; it's taking too long. Someone's bound to notice us fighting it out here, not to mention the pile of dead bodies back in the park. We got to get this done quick!"

No answer came.

The girl rolled her eyes and gave a frustrated snort at which Kiba grinned.

"Don't worry, he hasn't deserted you yet," the genin observed then lobbed a kunai off toward his left where it stuck into a tree.

From right behind it the tea-vendor popped his head, obviously miffed at having been spotted, then walked nonchalantly toward his partner to join her. "A face-to-face fight really isn't my style," the man admitted, "but if it makes you happy…"

"You still stink of poison," Kiba reported cheekily. "And you're not nearly as quiet as you think you are either. But now that you're here, why don't YOU tell Kaori how the Fourth Kazekage's body was found out in the desert, killed MONTHS before the invasion; that it was Orochimaru who murdered him then suckered the Sand Village into attacking us!"

Eueki blew a derisive breath. "Come on, dog-boy" he derided. "You could at least TRY to come up with something a little more believable then that."

Kiba's eyes bugged then settled into a more stable sort of fury. Casting a look at his temporary ally, he called out, "Hey, Okame, back me up here, wouldja?"

The mist-ninja swallowed, collected his breath then looked back at him uncertainly. "I'm sorry, Mr. Inuzuka, I really don't know that much about what happened between your two villages – just what I've heard."

The genin gave the girlish newcomer to Konoha an exasperated look. "Would it kill you to work WITH me?"

"Forget it," demanded Kaori. "I already know how it is. For years, the treaty we were forced to make with the Leaf Village kept us weak, under your thumb and a shadow of the greatness we could've achieved. Well those times are over! All we have to do now is turn one live mist-ninja into one dead one. Whatever the details might be, it'll still look like it's you guys' fault."

"Lady," said Kiba, "you are way, WAY out of your mind."

With that, silence fell. There was nothing more to say.

Kiba's eyes roved between all three ninja and couldn't help but wonder how this would turn out, with four ninja hidden villages represented: Leaf and Mist, Sound and Sand. However it ended (and it was hard to imagine it ending well) it was clear how it would start – Kaori would attack first, that was pretty obvious, with poison-boy Eueki looking for an easy kill.

And Okame? Though his skills were solid and he seemed like an alright guy for someone who didn't look like one (a guy, that is), he was still a major x-factor and it was hard to tell if he could really be relied on. Plus, the further down the block he went with Okame, the weirder he seemed to get!

More then anything the leaf-ninja wished that Aka--.

Ah! thought Kiba as he heard the rustling approach and smiled, cheering inwardly. THERE he is and right on time as always. Good boy!

With one last, bounding stride, the ninja-hound landed by Kiba's booted feet with jaws clenched tightly on the strap of a backpack he dragged behind him. Eueki's face pinched with concern as the genin took the backpack then withdrew from it a sheet of paper covered in sigils.

"A paper-bomb?" snickered Kaori. "Am I supposed to be impressed?"

"Kaori," her sound-ninja teammate warned, "Huhn had a whole ream in that pack."

"So what? What's he gonna do -- blow himself up, try to blow US up? There's no way, not when we can see it coming."

Okame, hearing all of this, tilted his head toward the grinning leaf-ninja. "Kiba," he stage-whispered apprehensively, "what are you going to do?"

"Do ya trust me?"

In its intonations, both subtle and not-so-subtle, this question was many things: a dare, a test, a jibe, but also an admission, if one listened closely, that many things hinged upon the answer.

The put-upon mist-ninja blinked at the complexities and nuances a reply of any kind forced him to brush over, frowned, gave the genin a wary look then slowly wiped a finger across his brow. "I suppose," he responded in a very reluctant-sounding affirmation.

"Good," said Kiba assertively, his pointy canines flashing as he smiled. "Now, cover me, then run for your life. Whatever it takes, get your ass BACK to the Hokage's Tower."

The black-haired teenager's eyes went wide with alarm. "THAT'S your plan?!"

Without further word or warning Kiba held up his exploding-note and activated it with a surge of chakra.

"Kaori!" the sound-ninja shouted. "Take him, now!"

The kunoichi sprang at Kiba but was turned away as Haku flung a volley of senbon into her path while his free hand formed seals and created a cordon of water-clones.

Eueki gasped then as Kiba thrust the smoldering, sparking paper-bomb back into the backpack, leaped high into the trees and bounded up it all the way to the very top, above the dense canopy of leaves where he spun like a discus-thrower and sent the backpack hurtling upward into the bright, blue Konoha sky.

"SH-T!" cried Eueki who stopped in his tracks, turned and fled; legs and arms pumping furiously.

Haku, who was already off and running as fast as he could go, took the sudden bright flash from above as a sign that he should hit the ground. Conveniently enough, the eruptive BOOM and thunderous shockwave that followed almost immediately afterward helped him do just that.


Haku

The street that bounded the forest around Senju Park was filled with onlookers who gawked and pointed upward as they exchanged speculation about the colossal explosion that had gone off only moments ago, drawing leaf-ninjas from all over Konohagakure immediately to the scene. Their murmurs rose even louder and more excited when a cut and bruised, battle-worn Haku emerged from the woods, wandered across the grass then into the street where he brushed himself off as best he could then drew much-needed sips of water from his canteen.

At once, the Hidden Leaf Village's curious citizenry assailed the young ninja with questions. "Hey, what happened?! What was that explosion?! What's going on?! Is it a monster?! Are you alright?! It's not ANOTHER f-cking invasion, is it?! Who the hell are YOU anyway?!" they asked at once.

Haku took a breath to clear his mental fog then eased into 'constable mode,' drawing his jutte and kicking as much base into his woefully non-authoritative voice as he could. "Step back, people!" he warned, gesturing slowly but forcefully with his hands. "Clear the street. Get back to the curb!"

It took a little while for him to coax the required number of people into compliance, but once they did, the rest followed suit as peer-pressure/conformance/herd instinct took hold. Once that was done, Haku turned back and waited at the edge of the grass, wondering what to do.

A lone figure stumbled from the forest just then and the shinobi's hand flashed to his quivers, but he stopped himself in time to see that it was Kiba who mugged a look and raised his hands in an exaggerated gesture of surrender.

Haku grinned with relief. "I can't say I ever would have thought of using a huge explosion as a distress signal," he commented with amiable sarcasm as the clawed, scratched and battered boy approached.

The leaf-genin smiled toothily. "It worked, didn't it?"

Zabuza's student shrugged, not really knowing what else to add.

"Come on, Okame," said Kiba, suddenly serious, as he clapped Haku companionably on the shoulder then turned to go. "I'd better get you back to the Hokage's Tower. She's gonna be pissed."

"You're probably right," Haku offered but then stopped, sniffed in revulsion at where the genin had touched him then slid a trio of senbon into his hand. "By the way, Kiba, where's your little dog?"

"Huh?" said the ninja absently without turning. "Oh, he's just off taking a dump. He'll be back soon."

The teenager trailed Kiba by a few steps, careful not to get too close. "Cute little guy," he continued casually though his grey eyes narrowed. "What's his name?"

"Uh --," Kiba began then pivoted suddenly, spinning around into an onslaught of steel needles which stitched across his chest. An envenomed kunai went sailing from his outstretched left hand.

The crowd on the sidewalk across the street from them gasped in collective shock.

In a blur of disrupted chakra, Kiba the leaf-genin was Eueki the tea-vendor once more and fell to the grass.

"'Uh,'" repeated Haku in disapprobation. "That's a terrible name for a dog – no personality. Besides, I remember now, Sakura said it was Akamaru."

Moving warily toward the fallen ninja, Haku startled as he saw what the man held in his other hand – not another kunai but a small gift-wrapped box from the Yamanaka Flower Shop. It was the present Haku had bought there for Mari!

The young ninja stared then approached closer, a litany of curses pulsing through his mind as he vaguely remembered having set it down on the park bench before the sound-ninjas' attack. Keeping his eye on the motionless Eueki, Haku stepped on his wrist to pin it then knelt down and snatched the present back.

The instant he touched it, the sound-ninja's eyes popped open and a jet of thick, emerald fluid spewed from his mouth. Haku turned away and covered the side of his face with his hand which took the brunt of it and was now covered in gloppy, green ejaculate. Furious, the Demon's Apprentice raised his fist then stopped as Eueki laughed.

"You wouldn't hit an opponent after they're already down," the sound-ninja inquired innocently with poison dribbling from his lips, "would you?"

Haku glared but lowered his hand…to the handle of his jutte, took it out and smashed the shinobi squarely between the eyes with the pommel. The man groaned and jerked, his foot twitched a couple of times, then he went still.

"Not if I had a weapon handy," replied the constable acidly then fell back on his rear and tried to shake as much of the contact poison from his hand as he could, then tore off a sleeve from his fatigues and wiped off more.

Taking out his canteen, he washed his hand thoroughly then tied a loose tourniquet around his arm but could already feel the sound-shinobi's venom burning its way into his bloodstream.

Haku cursed himself. Idiot! Falling for a trick like that. Eueki had a bladder implanted in his throat. All he had to do was twitch his tongue when you came within range.

Reconciling himself to his largely self-inflicted predicament, the teenager folded his legs and sat then tried to calm himself, slow his breath and heartbeat. Like Zabuza had taught him, Haku directed chakra toward his liver and kidneys. There was still a chance, he hoped, that he could metabolize what poison he'd absorbed.

An overwhelming sensation flooded over him, a burning under his skin as his eyelids grew heavy.

A narcotic effect? An anesthetic? Haku had just time enough to wonder before everything blurred to grey and he felt himself topple over.


Blinding white.

Sky.

A blue sky into which loomed four indistinct shapes. They were blurry at first then resolved gradually into faces as Haku's vision finally came into focus.

Without any further explanation necessary, the ninja knew that all this attention couldn't possibly be a good sign. But his back lay flat against what he could tell was cool grass, and the solid stability of the earth under his body made him feel at least a little bit buoyed.

Kiba Inuzuka – the REAL Kiba, Haku assumed, knelt close by his left shoulder. The genin's expression lifted a little at the sight of the mist-ninja coming around then fell back into a reverie of preoccupied thought. From somewhere close by his partner's flank, Haku could just hear the ninja-puppy, Akamaru's, soft, sympathetic whine.

At Kiba's other side hovered a strange boy in a voluminous grey coat with a high collar that covered the brooding figure's neck and the lower part of his ghostly white face. Round, dark glasses, so black they seemed completely opaque, hid eyes that were crowned by thin, black, downward-slanting eyebrows which gave the young ninja an expression far too intense for someone who looked to be only in his early-to-mid-teens; his blue leaf-ninja hitai-ate held back a shock of ebony hair.

"Don't move," said the pale figure to Haku in a voice so cold and inscrutable that Zabuza's student couldn't tell if was a warning or just helpful advice.

Across from the dark-haired shinobi, by Haku's right leg, sat a girl whose expression was a great deal more comforting. Though her frame was hidden by a loose-fitting, pewter-colored, hooded jacket, her pretty, pink-cheeked and rounded face, crowned with lustrous black hair, brimmed with warm compassion.

"You're safe now, Hiroo, um, Mr. Okame," said she in a birdlike voice with such deeply-felt concern that Haku actually felt guilty for having made her feel that way. The girl met his curious gaze for a moment then shyly looked away, and Haku noticed just how different her eyes were – pupils not black but of the purest pearl set within medallions of moonstone white.

With a start, the visiting constable realized just who this was. Of course he had heard of the venerable Hyuuga clan and their near-legendary byakugan, but he'd never expected to meet one.

Looking off to his right, the sight of the fourth leaf-ninja's familiar pink hair, fair skin and emerald eyes settled the teenager and brought a smile immediately to his face.

"Hello, Miss Sakura," Haku greeted her in a rasping voice. "I didn't expect to see you again so soon."

"Me neither," replied the kunoichi who smiled then kidded him as she readied an injection, "but you just couldn't stay out of trouble."

Zabuza's former student laughed lightly. "So it seems."

Sakura showed him the prepped syringe. "This is another round of non-specific antidote. It's just a palliative." Her eyebrows rose with bright inquisitiveness. "You don't mind needles do you?"

Haku blinked, caught off-guard by her unexpectedly wicked sense of humor. "Needles, no…irony on the other hand --," he stopped and winced slightly as the girl gave him the shot.

"I didn't think so," she almost laughed then turned serious again. "How do you feel – any pain, anything unusual?"

The teenager grinned. It really was a marvel to see Sakura like this. Back during her Wave Country mission, the girl had seemed a little unsure, a little hesitant and in many ways languishing in Naruto and Sasuke's shadows. But now, here she was in her element, walking her path in life just like he himself tried to walk his. It was as if providence was as work in this, and the young ninja reigned back on a rush of emotion at seeing that she too had emerged from the transformative cauldron of those experiences stronger than when she'd gone in.

Not wanting to keep the kunoichi waiting, Haku took a quick, mental inventory of his body but most everything seemed within tolerances, all things considered, except for this odd electric tingling on his left arm where Kaori had cut him.

"Yes," Haku reported dutifully, "my arm," he said then raised his head to look at it and was mortified at finding it covered in swarming insects.

"Relax," Sakura soothed before he could flinch…or scream. "It's ok."

Haku looked back at her like she was crazy.

"Those are Aburame clan medical insects. They're grown in a sterile environment and are the best thing around for cleaning wounds."

'You…you CAN'T be serious!' – the words almost flew out of Haku's mouth, but it was clear from Sakura's face that she was in earnest.

Taking a second look with a heady mixture of horror and fascination for as long as he could stand it, the slender teenager saw that there were actually three kinds of bugs working in concert – one cleaned the wound, one pinched the skin together with powerful mandibles while a third sewed it shut with a silk-like extrusion. But however helpful this 'treatment' was supposed to be, there was no getting used to the feeling of bugs crawling all over his skin and in and around an open wound! And now that he'd SEEN it…!

Haku's expression wriggled and he bit his lip to try and keep from squirming.

The Hyuuga girl raised her head. "I know it feels a little, um, a little unsettling, but Shino's insects always do a wonderful job," she piped encouragingly in a voice so sweet and kind that it would have been rude to disagree.

"If – if you say so," the ninja answered in as untroubled a tone as he could manage, then added in a shaky attempt at humor: "Tell me, if I threw up…would it completely ruin my androgynous mystique?"

The Hyuuga kunoichi smiled, but it seemed only out of politeness.

Kiba grunted without enthusiasm.

If Shino even had a sense of humor, Haku's remark failed completely to reach it. Of the four, only Sakura actually laughed.

"Don't quit your day job," advised Kiba.

At last, when Sakura and Shino seemed convinced that their pet swarms had done all they could, the dour, black-haired leaf-ninja put a container up to Haku's arm and the insects very obligingly filed into it.

Haku remembered stories now about clans of insect-tamers but had never seen any before and had no idea that they could be this sophisticated with their art. Sakura, the consummate professional, finished dressing Haku's wounds as Kiba smirked suddenly.

"Hey, Okame," he cajoled, "did you really let that fake tea-vendor guy get the drop on you?"

"It's true, I'm sad to say," Haku admitted then gave the genin a wry look. "He used a transformation jutsu and pretended to be you. It would have worked too except that he was SO well-mannered."

"Oh, ha-ha," the genin replied sarcastically.

Sakura and the Hyuuga girl snickered then rose as a team of white-uniformed medical ninja arrived and loaded Haku onto a stretcher.

The novelty of this experience didn't phase the young ninja at all until Kiba brought the whole proceedings to a crashing halt, backed everybody away with snarled threats of immediate and unrelenting violence then demanded that every member of the team identify themselves to his satisfaction.

Though Sakura took strong exception to "what the hell" her classmate thought he was doing, Haku couldn't help but be impressed at the leaf-genin's surprising thoroughness; and that Kiba had the foresight, after having gone through so much trouble already on his account, not to just hand him over without question to somebody just because they wore a uniform.

"Um…WE are going to take you to the hospital," Sakura explained to Haku at last with a smile that failed to hide a flush of embarrassment at Kiba's outburst, then laid a strong, comforting hand upon his arm. Her accompanying him was part of the deal she'd made to pacify the distrustful Inuzuka. "Your injuries aren't very bad and since we got the sound-ninja and samples of all his poisons, I know we'll be able to give you the right antidotes for whatever he used on you."

Haku smiled and nodded understandingly, gratefully, as the medical ninjas lifted him then carried him away.


There! You see that, CPO? You ask for an update, you GET an update. And no cliffhanger this time either. XD

I LOOOOOVE this job, Ooo-rah! LOL;)

As late as yesterday, this chapter was a MONSTER, 40 page, 12,000+ worder, but I'm going to break it here, edit the second part better, then post it as a mini-chapter sooner than my normal (slow) time frame. I was trying to cram in a little too much, plus this is kind of a good spot for a break anyway.

I hope you liked this chapter. Please review! ^^,

--Jono'