Chapter 5

There must be some mistake it can't be. He wouldn't be here now. He wouldn't jeopardizes my mission. It made no sense why would he be here when I had just gotten into the village. I had no information and he was standing in front of me looking so uncaring.

None of this made any sense! He looked too young, the lines where gone from his face his hair was short and messy. Itachi didn't wear the Uchiha clan's sign anymore and when did he go without his traditional fighting gear? A transformation jutsu? No he look too much like himself. Itachi would do it better.

Then he looked at me and his eyes were different, less merciless, full of ancient grief and an old hatred kept fresh by long hours of dwelling alone. They were too lonely and told the story of his life to the well trained eye. It all made sense now this wasn't Itachi at all this was his brother, Sasuke Uchiha. The family resemblance was striking.

I didn't let any emotion show on my face at all instead I deverted my attention to the other two members of my new squad. One was a pink haired girl with green eyes and the other was a blue eyed blond boy in orange. How perfect Naruto Uzumaki was on my new squad. This was far more than I had hoped for.

Allowing a look of boredom on my face I walked to the stump next to the pink haired one. I leaned against it concentrated on her a bit more, assessing her skill. She was not a very accomplished ninja, she had apparently good chakra control and had mastered the basics but as far as I could tell she had no real talent for any particular jutsu.

I moved my attention on to Sasuke he had the most potential of the three. He was strong from hours of training and his sharingan was just as far along as Itachi had told me. His Uchiha blood was strong and his resentment to Itachi was almost palpable. I'd thought as much especially after their last encounter.

I moved on to my main objective, Naruto. I didn't bothering to turn my head as he stared at me, confused. He had a considerable amount more skill than the girl and almost as much as Sasuke, though his came more from pigheadedness than anything else. I could just feel the hint of the nine tailed fox's chakra under the surface and decided I would have to test it, see it first hand.

"What are you looking at weakling?" I asked Naruto not turning to look at him.

"What did you just say?!"

"You heard me."

I looked up at the sky. Despite my leaving early I was an hour late. Kakashi still wasn't anywhere near us though. I was not unhappy that I had not kept them waiting but it was strange that he was not be here yet.

"Hey!" he shouted, "I'm going to be Hokage one day so-"

"Hokage? I really doubt that." I said amused. You'll be dead before that.

"Why I outa-"

"Is he always this late?" I interrupted. It was almost two hours past the time we were supposed to meet

"Ya he does this every time." Sasuke answered in a this-is-so-normal-it's-boring tone. His voice was almost as enticing as Itachi's.

I felt him coming before the other three did but I expected as much from genin. Kakashi appeared in a whirl of leaves in front of us holding a book.

"Kakashi." Sasuke greeted with a tilt of his head.

"Hey guys, what's up?" He raised the hand that wasn't holding his make out paradise novel.

"Hey Kakashi who is this?!" Naruto demanded pointing at me.

With a look of slight impatience Kakashi said, "As I told you yesterday, Naruto, we have a new member of squad seven. This is Sorin Kagura. Sorin this is Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha, and Sakura Haruno, "He jerked his head in the direction of each as he said them.

"Huh?" Naruto turned a dumb face to me.

Kakashi sighed, "Why don't you introduce yourself Sorin."

"Alright I'm Sorin Kagura the last of the Kagura clan. I'm a traveling ninja and I came to the leaf village to offer my services." I replied uninterestedly.

"The last, what happened to the rest of your clan?" Sakura asked.

I let my eyes cloud with the sadness of my memories partly for effect. "They were all murdered." I whispered loud enough they all heard me.

They all reacted, Sasuke looking in my direction, Sakura giving a little gasp, and Naruto's expression turned to shock. Kakashi already knew my family history and didn't say a word.

"That's awful... it sounds almost like..." she looked at Sasuke hands clasped. I could when she looked at him that she cared about him with almost an obsession. It reminded me of how I felt for Itachi. Were my feelings as easy to see?

I looked at Sasuke, his expression had changed ever so slightly in the direction of surprise then to a small amount of anger. "Who did it?" he asked voice strained trying to control of his emotions.

"One of us and they suffer dearly for it." my voice was hard from the truth of it.

"How did you survive?" Sakura asked in a horrified whisper.

"My clan did an experimental jutsu when I was young and it worked," to Sasuke I added, "I heard the Uchiha clan met a similar fate."

Sasuke's jaw clenched, fists tightening. Then he seemed to realize that I was watching and wiped his face blank, relaxing his body but his eyes stayed alert. It was a familiar gesture that sent butterflies loose in my stomach.

"Ok we have a mission to complete." Kakashi brought our attention back to him.

"It had better be a good one this time Sensei I'm sick of all this little kid stuff." Naruto complained.

"It's nothing big, we just have to be decoys delivering some fake documents. Another squad is delivering the real ones but the Village Hidden in the Rain wanted to be sure that no one was after the real thing." Kakashi said uninterested turning a page in his book.

"Oh are they like important war documents or something that a band of highly skilled rouge ninja are after?" Naruto looked almost buoyant in his excitement.

"We can't be sure."

"ALRIGHT!! At last a cool mission!" Naruto continued on about being the greatest and no ninja would get to those documents but I tuned him out.

"Calm down Naruto it's not that big a deal." Kakashi said exasperated.

"I wonder what kind of rouge ninja we'll meet. They had better be a challenge cause I want to use my new cool technique to blow em away."

"Shut it loser. We'll only be decoys it's not like we're the ones delivering them." Sasuke told him. My hearing seemed to sharpen when he spoke.

He's not Itachi. Remember the mission. He's not Itachi. I told myself furiously.

"So, it's still better than what we've been doing lately." No one argued with that.

"Alright let's get going." Kakashi said and headed to the village gate.


We'd been going for nearly four hours and nothing interesting had happened except Naruto "falling" into a bush. I had actually gotten annoyed and tripped him. No one but Naruto seemed to care too much. It apparently wasn't too uncommon. He just wouldn't shut his mouth about finally having a mission that was remotely interesting and had a chance of danger.

"Did it have to be the Village hidden in the Rain." I muttered irritably as we rested at a turn in the path.

We hadn't been going long enough for a break in my opinion, but as I could go for three days on the run without stopping for anything I really couldn't expect a bunch of sheltered genin to keep up. I had an amazing amount of stamina and endurance from being in the Akatsuki and the terrible strain my jutsus put on my body. It shortened my life span but I didn't plan on living all too long anyway.

"Why do you have something against them?" Sakura asked.

"We had a bad run in a few years back. I refused to give them some information on the last village I had joined and let's just say it wasn't pretty. They use mostly genjutsu and the experimental jutsu placed on me by my clan doesn't allow me to use any jutsu besides my own. I still beat them senseless but it was one of the closest battle I've ever fought."

"But if you weren't with that village anymore why couldn't you tell them anything about it?"

"All my clan had a secrecy seal set on them when they made the decision to be shinobi," I flipped my left arm over to show them the swirling marks on my forearm. They all leaned in closer to take a better look. "As the seal remains we can never reveal anything about the village to anyone else. As the seals are almost impossible to break the secrets usually go with us to the grave." This was, in my case, only half true true. I could only tell Itachi the secrets of the villages, him being the one to have loosened the seal.

"Wow. How many villages have you been to anyway?" Sakura asked in aw.

"Hmm, let's see six I think. I stayed with the the Mist village for a year, the Rain village for six months, year and a half with the Sand village, almost a year with the Waterfall village, and most recently a year with the Hidden Stone village. Oh ya and a few weeks with the Sound before that. I didn't get along well with that Orochimaru. Talk about twisted." I made a noise of disgust at the last bit.

I'd spent time with the Sound village but only to see if Orochimaru was any danger to our cause. It had been my least favorite village to visit. With the insane experiments done daily and the irritating loyalty all his ninja showed him despite being mutilated and tortured by his own hand had made me sick.

Sakura shuddered at Orochimaru's name, Sasuke's hand twitched in the direction of his shoulder, Kakashi leaned forward more engaged, and Naruto looked at the ground with a darkly. I should have expected as much. Their village had been attacked by that freak after all.

"Come on let's get moving." I said being quite sick of sitting around. The others followed suite.

We traveled for another hour in which I thought hard about my mission. Naruto was right in front of me, Sasuke was off to my left, Sakura walking as close behind Sasuke as he allowed, and Kakashi was just behind us. This was a pretty good spot and I was able to overpower all of them easily.

I could grab Naruto and get out of there before the others knew what happened. But if I did that I would lose my cover and never get into another village. I could always lure Naruto off into the woods knock him out and go back yelling that we were attacked and Naruto was taken but they were already suspicious of me and that would only make it worse. Itachi wasn't too far from here if I could get them close he could take Naruto and use his sharingan on the others. But I had Sasuke with me and he would go for revenge again. Itachi had told me to help Sasuke train and not to lead him to Itachi until I was sure he could handle the fight. My only option was to wait.

Contemplating new tactics to get Naruto to the Akatsuki I noticed ninja lurking near us. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed them before. Nine of them waiting for us to walk into their trap. They had been using something to cover their chakra so I didn't sense them. I stopped and so did Sakura, Sasuke, and Kakashi. Naruto hadn't even noticed he just kept on walking.

"Naruto, stop it's a trap!" I called urgently to him.

"What?!" he was only feet from it when he froze.

One jumped out of the trees going for Naruto yelling, "Let's take them." Two more leaped out after the first. Another six jumped out circling the four of us. We were surrounded.