Troublesome Fate
By: Lone Ronin
Author's notes: I've done some art for this story, only pencil drafts since I really don't have the time to ink and color. You can use them if you want, but please give me credit and/or explain that it's for this story, or I'll hate you. I've posted the first of several art pieces that I've done for this story on my author's page, so go check it out.
Yumi is 16 and Roka is 17. I haven't done any art of Subatsu, but he's basically an old man of 43 who looks kind of like Raido with more scars and heavier armor on his bad arm. In response to some reviews, yes, Shikamaru strikes me as more the type to be a team player on a mission, he's only really the leader when he has to be and no, Spaz, Yumi will not interfere, unless by interfere you mean help along, hehe.
Part 4: A Perfect Mission?
The Warlord's base was a sprawling camp of camouflaged tents near a convenient source of water that flowed into a valley. Guards on horseback guarded tents full of stolen goods, supplies and hostages. Shikamaru's team waited in the brush at the edge of the camp and prepared to infiltrate the base. Looking around the area they noticed the corral that was full of the strange horses on the other side of the camp.
'So that's what they were talking about.' Shikmaru thought as he instinctively felt fear.
They didn't look like normal horses. For one thing, they had yellow eyes with no pupils and their teeth looked sharper then they should have, but the one thing Shikamaru had noticed about the horses that really frightened him was that each one had markings on their bodies that looked like the ones on the Sound Five when they went to their other forms.
Suddenly, a crow fluttered out of a nearby tree, as Hayataru and his team approached the horses, signaling the start of the mission.
Nobaru, the warlord who had come to be known as The Butcher in the lands he had acquired control of, was bored and getting impatient, waiting on the magistrates who had promised that they would be coming in to finalize negotiations. He wasn't planning on staying in this pathetic area long and terrorizing these helpless small villages and farmers, he had bigger plans for Fire Country…
His thoughts were interrupted as his troops escorted some frightened farmers who owed him protection money into his tent and inspected the bag they presented.
"You call this a payment!" he screamed in rage, flinging the bag down in disgust.
"Forgive us please, Nobaru-sama, the rains were late this year, it's all that we have. Please, our loved ones…" one of the old farmers began to beg.
"Will have to be sold up North to make up the difference of what is owed." Nobaru cut them off.
"Up North? Where?"
"I don't know or care where the slave caravans go, they say it's towards something called 'Orochimaru', whatever that is."
"Really, now?" Anko asked as they revealed their true forms in a puff of smoke.
The chuunin and jounin had set about quietly assassinating the guards in front of the tents as they infiltrated the camp. Their main goal was to locate the hostages, they had no idea where they were because Nobaru was constantly moving supplies, equipment and hostages around his camp. They hadn't been discovered so far, but the Konoha ninjas were having a difficult time because they weren't used to the conditions in the area. The heat was sweltering, worse then even the hottest days in Konoha and their equipment and camouflage didn't help either. It was sticky and humid and there were biting insects everywhere. Roka and Shikamaru met with Subatsu and Yumi, disguised as army guards as they snuck another group of hostages from a tent. Hayataru then caught up with Shikamaru's team, wheezing and covered in blood.
"Anko tried to assassinate Nobaru, but his guards were able to hold us off long enough for Nobaru to escape, he's still somewhere in the camp and that's not our only problem, my team is having trouble slaughtering those horses. They're proving harder to kill quietly then we expected. We need to regroup." the chuunin captain coughed out, the humidity didn't seem to be helping his throat.
"Hayataru, you sound like you could use some more of my medicine." Yumi offered as Hayataru led them to the horse stables.
"That would really help me, Yumi-chan." He answered.
Roka and Subatsu suddenly pulled Shikamaru back.
"You're not the real Hayataru! Kyouki Kuma!" Yumi suddenly slammed her naginata on the ground, releasing the chakra she had channelled through it into a powerful blast.
"I knew it was only a matter of time before I saw you again. How can you forget our sacred oath to first, do no harm, Kabuto-kun?" Yumi called out as the smoke cleared.
"Yumi-chan, you know I am Orochimaru's loyal servant first, a medic second and a ninja third." Kabuto answered as he revealed his true form.
"What do you want?" Yumi asked as the team faced off against her cousin.
"To make sure you don't get hurt." He replied.
"I find that hard to believe, considering what you did to those horses." The female medic said as she raised her naginata.
"You can't kill me, I'm stronger then your captain and your idol, Kakashi and you never will be. You can become more then you've ever dreamed of, this is your chance to save yourself, to come with me."
"Make sure nothing interferes while I fight Kabuto and don't even think of trying to take him on yourself, he's beyond your level." Subatsu instructed his team as he drew his blades.
"I remember how this mouse screamed when he died, that idiot wouldn't have even noticed him if I hadn't said anything." Kabuto said as he jumped back and performed a set of seals.
Roka tried to block the forbidden summon jutsu by making his birds weave an intricate lattice around the structure rising up from the ground, but it didn't work. Then a sword blade sliced through the coffin and the vines to reveal the temporarily reanimated body of Gekkou Hayyate. Subatsu tried to chase after Kabuto as he ran off, but Hayyate blocked their path. Shikamaru and the team prepared to fight, when the flash of another sword connected with Hayyate's.
"You killed my father! How dare you defile his soul?" Hayataru screamed at Kabuto's retreating back as Hayyate began dueling with his son.
Hayataru's team caught up and tried to help their captain, but suddenly a horde of reanimated corpses came out of the ground, complete with armor and weapons and surrounded them, separating Asahi and his teammates from their leader. Shikamaru's team instinctively tried to cover their mouths and noses as the smell of rotting meat filled the air, Shikamaru felt like he was going to retch.
"Hurry up, Roka. What are you doing?" Subatsu ordered as he cut some of the corpses down with his katana blades.
"I'm on it." Roka answered as he summoned more vines to form a temporary barrier against the horde when the ground seemed to become quicksand right under them.
"No, don't do that, I know what Kabuto can do and this is no genjutsu." Yumi stopped Shikamaru and Roka as they prepared to cut themselves and break what they thought was just an illusion.
"This is for real? How strong is he?" Shikamaru asked as they leapt into the vines.
"I don't know." Yumi answered.
"There's got to be something we can do." Roka replied as he whipped out a kunai and wrapped an explosive note around it before hurling it into the chest of a corpse.
It blew the body apart, but some of the pieces hit Roka's vines, causing them to rot and fall apart wherever they splattered.
"Don't let them touch you, even pieces of it will suck the life out of you." Kakashi's dog Pakkun called out as he suddenly appeared from the brush and dashed up the network of vines to the team.
"Pakkun, what's going on?" Roka asked.
"The Sound are more involved in this then we initially thought, they were likely Nobaru's main supply line. Kabuto has raised the corpses of humans and was experimenting on those horses, this whole camp is a death trap. Subatsu, Kakashi is tracking Kabuto, he wants your help, the rest of you have to hold off the bodies or they'll follow and slow us down." Pakkun replied.
"Wait, how do we fight those things?" Yumi asked.
"Don't waste your chakra on the bodies themselves, focus on Hayyate's body, that's the source. Use techniques to freeze, burn or shatter the corpses so he can't reanimate them, physical attacks are useless. Touching them will burn a hole through your hand at any rate." Subatsu advised them.
"Take the scroll in my bag and use it carefully, Kakashi only had time to prepare one. It will stop Hayyate and the corpses should stop with it, but you have to use the scroll within 2 meters of him, or it won't work." Pakkun let Shikamaru take the parcel on his back before Roka opened the vines to let Subatsu and Pakkun out while they fought Kabuto's undead army.
Yumi's Katon no Jutsu easily burned down large groups of the corpses, but more simply came up out of the ground, making it impossible for Hayataru's team to help them or their captain. When she finally managed to get near enough to perform it on Hayyate, he performed a spinning move similar to Neji's Hakkeshou: Kaiten and deflected it. Hayataru charged his father again with his sword raised, when a well-thrown weapon from a corpse cut through his ankle, crippling him, followed by another through his hand, stopping him from performing any hand seals. Shikamaru grabbed Hayataru's shadow and threw him backwards just in time to avoid the worst of Hayyate's attack, but even with the protection of his flak jacket, the sickly chuunin captain was slashed deep and left streaming blood.
"These reanimated corpses are everywhere and they're getting smarter by the minute! Can't you used Kage Mane no Jutsu?" Roka asked Shikamaru, using his whip to break apart as many bodies as he could.
"My shadow just goes through tem, it only works on living things." Shikamaru replied as they did their best to hold off the corpses while Yumi dragged Hayataru towards their group and stabilized him.
Roka tried to attack Hayyate with his summoned vines and crows, but Hayyate's spinning move just knocked the birds back and cut the vines down. He used more vines to make a barrier to hold the onslaught back, but it was only stalling for time.
"I don't think I have enough chakra to do that again. If we could just stop Hayyate from using that spinning move, we'd be able to get him. What are you doing?" Roka asked Shikamaru as he pressed the tips of his fingers together for a moment, then checked his equipment.
"Yumi, can you perform Katon no Jutsu again?" he asked.
"Maybe a couple more times." She answered.
"Then try to get him to spin again, I have a way to stop him. Both of you give me all your trap wire and any kunai that you can spare. Roka, take your vines down, but get ready to bring some back up again."
Roka pulled his vines down while Yumi sent our Katon no Jutsu. As Hayyate deflected the move, Shikamaru threw several strings of kunai with trap wire attached to them. Hayyate's spin to began to take up the slack wire he let out, forcing him to stop and cut through the web of wire to free himself. Roka finally managed to grab Hayyate's foot with a vine and Shikamaru activated the scroll. As the reanimated corpses stopped and Hayyate's body again became ashes, the body that was originally sacrificed for the jutsu was revealed. It was that of the sound-nin that Shikamaru's chuunin team had defeated during their trip to the rendezvous point.
"This whole place reeks of death." Pakkun said as he led Subatsu.
"Hey, old man." Kakashi greeted.
"I'm only three years older then you and you know it." Subatsu's customary answer assured them both that each one was who they claimed to be.
Neither of them spoke afterwards, their years of experience in tracking and knowing how each of them operated meant no words were needed as they did their work. Kabuto tried every effort to lose them, knowing he didn't have a chance if they both caught him. Just when they thought they had Kabuto, Kakashi finally saw the red herring as the body fell over, revealing Kabuto's skill at altering a freshly killed body to look like his own.
"He's getting better at reanimating these corpses." Kakashi mused as the entire herd of horses Kabuto had been experimenting on ambushed them.
'I thought Hayataru's team killed them, looks like he was able to evade us with another prepared body and reanimate those as well, smart guy.' Subatsu thought as they prepared to fight.
"My teammates, are they all right?" Hayataru groaned through the pain of his wounds.
"Sh, don't talk, relax, they went on ahead to help Anko." Yumi said as she continued to treat him.
"The wound is deep and the Achilles' tendon in his ankle was severed, this should help, you should recover enough to move in about an hour but you have to get more treatment back in Konoha. It will take about a month for everything to completely heal." she cleaned and bandaged him before performing Chiyute no Jutsu.
"We need a spot to hide him until the fight is over."
"My crows are saying that the others have killed Nobaru and the horses, most of the soldiers too, but some of his followers are still alive. They've got a hostage situation not far from here." He quickly translated the cawing noises going on overhead.
As they dragged Hayataru through the camp, they pulled open a nearby tent and found some stolen goods, such as cloth, glazed pottery and huge jars of expensive plant oils and products from the livestock that the villagers raised.
"We can hide him here for now." Roka quickly pulled a blanket over Hayataru and instructed a crow to watch over the tent before asking another bird about the situation.
"Most of the hostages are safe but there's one last pocket of resistance that Anko's dealing with, they have a hostage in a standoff. Yumi could stay with Hayataru while we deal help the others, the only problem is our side is looking pretty worn down, we might be in for a bad fight and I'm low on chakra."
"Wait, I have an idea." Shikamaru cut in.
"Now calm down, your leader's gone and you're surrounded, you can't hold her forever. What good will it do if you hurt her? Nobaru's gone now." Anko spoke calmly to the soldier as he held a dagger to his young hostage.
"I don't believe you, even if you are telling the truth, I don't have anything to lose. Nobaru-sama saved me from starving when my own village threw me out." The foot soldier looked like he was trying to pull the dagger closer to the girl's throat, when he suddenly found himself unable to move.
"I've got him, do it now!" Shikamaru pinned the mercenary's shadow and pulled the weapon out to a safe distance as Roka dashed in and scooped up the young girl before sticking an explosive note on the thug's chest.
Roka's crows suddenly flew over the last of the resistance, throwing clay pots full of flaming oil that Yumi had set ablaze. By now the enemy's base was in ruins, with most of Nobaru's troops either gone, cut down or unable to fight while the Konoha shinobi had minor injuries as they destroyed equipment and captured commanders for interrogation later on.
"Shikamaru, that idea of yours was so wild, devious and destructive, I'm upset I didn't think of it." Roka complained from his vantage point as they watched the chaos.
"I guess I'll take that as a compliment." Was all Shikamaru could think to answer as he held what was left of Nobaru's followers with his shadow, allowing the other chuunin and jounin to make short work of their enemies.
The mission had gone better then they had hoped. They hadn't lost a single hostage and all the warlord's horses and troops were either dead or captured while their team had not lost a single shinobi and with the exception of Hayataru, no one had very serious injuries. The few hired Sound-nin at the camp and the mercenaries that Nobaru had hired and made most of his forces had not been more skilled at brute force then at guerilla warfare and had been easily overpowered by ninjutsu. The only real failure of the mission was that Kabuto had managed to get away again, despite Kakashi's tracking abilities and Subatsu's field experience. They finally reappeared, covered in blood and filth with Subatsu limping slightly.
The only things that remained to finish the operations were to escort the freed hostages to their hometowns and pack up. Most of the villages were small clusters of huts where farmers and shepherds lived with little more then a wall around them for protection. Anko and Hayataru entered the elder's hut of the last village where they needed to return villagers and collect their payment.
"Thank you so much for returning our people and most of our property. But we do have one more problem we were hoping you could take care of for us." The village elder said as he handed over the money that the villages with kidnapped inhabitants had pooled in order to pay Konoha for the rescue.
"Something has been eating our livestock, we've lost a quarter of our sheep and cows. We recently tried arming our shepherds but they've been disappearing too. I know that you've already done so much for us, but we're getting desperate. Can you please find out what's doing this?" he requested.
"A few of our men were injured and we're rather tired, we'll need a moment to discuss this." Anko replied as they took their leave and left the elder's house to explain what had happened to the other chuunin and jounin teams.
While they waited on Hayataru and Anko to finish speaking with the elder, the shinobi quietly chatted with each other and the villagers. Yumi took the opportunity and secretly spoke with Shikamaru.
"Shikamaru-kun, I have to ask you something about your mission when you went to get Sasuke back." The medic asked him.
"What is it?"
"Was Kabuto involved in it in any way? Did you see him there at all?"
"No."
Shikamaru told Yumi everything he knew about Sasuke and about what had happened during his mission to get back him from the Sound Five, before Yumi told him what she knew.
"…then the Sand-nin took us back to Konoha. I don't know if Sasuke's alive, I don't even know why he went to Orochimaru in the first place." He finished his story.
"I need to warn you to watch out for my cousin, Kabuto. He's loyal to Orochimaru and he's not going to stop until Konoha's destroyed. I suspected that he was the one who developed all those seals that you described on those Sound Five, those horses just confirmed it. Beyond that, he'll probably be keeping an eye on you and your friends, since you all came so close to stopping him from getting Sasuke." Yumi warned him.
"Can you tell me what you know about him?"
"My uncle found Kabuto on a mission and adopted him when he was really young, he was like an older brother to me. He kept failing the chuunin exam, but my aunt kept forcing him to take it because she wanted him to be a successful ninja."
"So why does she hate you so much?" Shikamaru listened carefully, realizing there was a whole aspect.
"She was jealous of my parents because I passed the chuunin exam on my second try while I was training at the same time to be a medic, but he kept failing it. But I think the main reason that she really hates me is that he sent a raptor with a message only to me while I was away on a mission and you were both taking the chuunin exam. It said that he was leaving Konoha because he felt that I was the only one who really loved him, that he felt leaving would help me become a better ninja and that he was going to go reach his true potential."
"What did he mean by that?"
"Kabuto was very gifted and trained to be a medic from a young age, but there was a controversial incident that ended his career. A very young girl became sick with a mysterious illness; nothing the medics did seemed to help. So Kabuto secretly began an elaborate research project, but partway into his work, the girl died. When he announced that he had developed a powerful jutsu that could reanimate the dead girl's body, the medics felt that this knowledge was too dangerous and secretly banned him from practicing as a medic, but still allowed him to be a shinobi. Kabuto was angry, he felt that the officials didn't understand what it meant to be a field medic, we constantly tread a fine line between dealing life with one hand and destroying it with the other."
"So he felt that he had been treated unfairly."
"Exactly. The very laws and system that governed Konoha, he viewed as a barrier to what he could really become. After he was disciplined, he started acting strange, training at odd hours and helping his team moving parcels around. When I got that last message from him, I finally put all the signals together and I had one of Roka's birds send a message to Kakashi-sempai, he's been a close friend of my parents for many years. I told him that I was worried and asked him to keep an eye on Kabuto, but I didn't realize that anything was really wrong until it was too late. I guess in the end he decided that sacrificing everything he valued and everyone he cared about was worth the power Orochimaru promised him. I imagine that's what happened with Sasuke too."
As Yumi finished telling Shikamaru about how Kabuto had betrayed Konoha, Hayataru and Anko appeared and began gathering the Leaf ninjas to discuss if they should look into the elder's request.
"I don't think we should be looking at this, it's probably just wolves or some other predator, it's a trapper's problem." Anko was reluctant to have to go from an important strategic military operation to investigating some lost livestock, especially since they probably wouldn't get paid much for it, she would have a lot of paperwork to take care of as the mission hadn't been preapproved and formally issued and they had to deal with their injured team members.
"Even if it's not a shinobi's problem, it would make for a courtesy to at least send a few of us to look into it. Perhaps Roka could just use his birds to cover a wide area?" Hayataru suggested with a cough that seemed to be lessening a bit.
'Don't take the mission, don't take the mission.' Shikamaru pleaded mentally.
"My team came later and none of us were injured, how would you all feel if we investigated while everyone else went back to the post town?" Subatsu asked his charges.
"I'm sure my birds could find out before we even lifted a finger." Roku was still riding on the confidence of their last mission and felt certain that they wouldn't run into trouble.
"Shikamaru?" Subatsu asked with a 'you-better-not-say-it's-troublesome-before-I-give-you-hell' look.
"Shouldn't Yumi deal with our casualties?" came his excuse as he hoped in his mind that Yumi would agree with him.
"I've stabilized Hayataru and the others enough that they can go back to Tanaka without a problem." Too bad for Shikamaru his team's medic was happy to go investigate.
"How troublesome." Shikamaru muttered under his breath.
"I heard that!" Subatsu snapped.
"You may have done fine as a genin, but you're a chuunin now and you're expected to be at the next level. You're training to your full potential as soon as we get back from this mission." Subatsu admonished as they leapt through the trees.
Well, if there was one think that Shikamaru could say was going wrong, it was that his captain really was, as Asuma put it, a slave driver.
"Don't take it personally, he was harsh with us when we first got him too." Roka told Shikamaru.
"This guy's worse then my mom."
"Well, he hasn't threatened to pour water on your head yet." Yumi answered.
"You think you have it bad? My mom throws things." Said Roka.
It was decided in the end that Subatsu's team would remain behind and that they would meet up with other teams at the post town once they had figured out what was wrong. They began their search by making their way towards the fields in the valley where the villagers had reported they had last seen their shepherds and their livestock before they disappeared when a bunch of birds in the distance began flying up into the air. Hawks, gulls, sparrows and all kinds of songbirds circled and cried out over some kind of conflict in an old abandoned quarry in the distance.
"Can you understand what they're saying?" Subatsu asked Roka.
"They have funny accents and what they're saying doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Some gibberish about their nests and humans, something about bad chakra, they're going on about a giant snake." Roka didn't think it meant anything, most wild birds he had spoken to were pretty stupid and said a lot of nonsense, but the words 'giant snake' grabbed Subatsu's attention.
"What kind of giant snake? How large is it? Does it have a gash under it's right eye? Is there more then one?" The captain demanded to know.
"I know you're thinking that snakes mean Orochimaru, but the birds say a lot of dumb nonsense, any snake that's bigger then them is considered giant. Wait, they're going on with some strange stuff about it sprouting another head and cheering for humans to kill it." Roka's reply sent Subatsu into full fighting mode as he stepped up his pace and drew his weapons.
"Do you think the humans those birds are going on about are the other teams?" Yumi wondered as the rest of the team drew their weapons.
"No, Kakashi would have sent one of his dogs to tell us there was a problem. Listen to me carefully and follow my instructions. I once fought these creatures in my youth; these snakes are servants of Orochimaru and they're extremely dangerous. Whatever you do, don't use taijutsu, it will only make them stronger."
Author's notes: Contrary to popular belief, "First, do no harm" is not a part of the Hippocratic oath, but it is very similar to how Yumi describes the oath of Konoha's medics and every modern medical school makes its students swear to some form of it upon graduation.
Kyouki Kuma - A move I made up, it translates to Deadly Weapon of the Bear; charka is channelled through a weapon to increase its damage. A bladed weapon can cut things with charka that extends beyond the weapon's physical blade. It can also release the charka in an explosion when the weapon is struck against something that can also generate enough force to knock opponents back.
Hakkeshou: Kaiten -Hand of the Eight Divinations: Heavenly Spin