Here we are with Chapter 2. I hope you enjoy it!
Chapter 2
The gang finds a dead body…
"This is the campaign slogan/entrailed in the cargo bay…"
Konohamaru's youthfully raucous voice not so much sang as shouted, the impassioned sound cutting through the pitter and patter of the steadily falling rain.
"…Neutered is the vastness/hallowed vacuum's/chuck the oxygen tanks!"
Udon's slightly higher timber chimed in with his own barrage of sung/shouted song lyrics.
"They hibernate but haven't kissed the ground/pucker up and kiss the asphalt now…"
The simian ninja cut back, his voice building in intensity and fury before he rounded on the third member of their group who was sharing the bench with them under the awning of the rest stop where they were taking shelter from the downpour. Konohamaru looked at the short kunoichi expectantly, waiting for her to jump in and supply the next few lines of the song. Despite being a full head shorter than her energized teammate, Moegi still somehow managed to look down her nose at him.
Shrinking away from her gaze, Konohamaru shrugged his shoulders and turned back to his other teammate. Udon was more than happy to pick up where the simian nin had left off.
"Tease this amputation/splintered larynx/it has access now!"
It was at this point that both young men hopped up onto the bench and broke into a fit of air guitar theatrics, enthusiastically banging their heads and making guitar riff sounds with their mouths. Moegi put saw that they were getting weird looks from the other people loitering around the rest stop; her normally rosy cheeks grew even brighter. The kunoichi put her face in her hands to hide her embarrassment.
"Kami, you guys are so lame," she muttered through her fingers.
"Yeah, this coming from the girl in the green spandex leotard," Udon shot back, though the comment was voiced without rancor.
While Konohamaru laughed heartily, Moegi assumed a haughty look and stuck her nose up in injured pride.
"I'll have you know that Lee-senpai says that these clothes are an essential component in my training. In fact, he credits his bodysuit as the secret of his strength."
Udon scoffed; yeah, it was all in the clothes! And the seven hundred fingertip pushups the guy did every morning had absolutely nothing to do with it. He didn't voice his thoughts and just let his teammate keep right on going as she extolled the virtues of Konoha's Green Beast.
"…I guess I shouldn't expect you guys to understand somebody as complex as Lee-senpai. Don't worry though, I forgive you."
Feeling that she had effectively made her point, the kunoichi lowered her nose and looked at her two companions, a smug expression resting easily on her impish face. Konohamaru and Udon grinned lecherously at their female teammate, causing the smugness to gradually drain out of her expression. Moegi suddenly felt slightly uncomfortable at the way they were eyeing her. It was like they were both in on some joke and were forcing themselves not to laugh at her for being in the dark.
"What," she asked, eyeing the pair warily.
"It's nothing," Udon said- voicing it in such a way that clearly meant that 'it' definitely was something.
"No, seriously; what is it."
"Wweelll," Konohamaru said, drawing out the one syllable word for all it was worth.
"It just kind of occurred to us that somebody's hot for teacher."
Moegi's cheeks, always rosy, turned a color that was very near to fuchsia; it was a wonder that she didn't pass out from all of the blood rushing to her head.
"S-sh-shut up," the kunoichi stuttered, her voice a mix of irrational anger and embarrassment- mostly anger.
This type of reaction from the normally unflappable kunoichi was, of course, a source of enormous amusement for the two male members of the team, who proceeded to laugh uproariously at her. Konohamaru and Udon's laughter died abruptly as they saw the look of pure murder in Moegi's eyes.
"Ooookay, let's all just calm down now," Udon said, adjusting his glasses and putting on a disarming look.
All jokes about secret crushes aside, Moegi had gotten monstrously strong since she had been taken under the green wing of the Leaf Village's resident taijutsu virtuoso. She was more than capable of beating them both to death with one of her shinobi sandals, provided that she had the right motivation.
She looked very motivated right now.
The two male shinobi backed away from her. Konohamaru decided to try and use his much vaunted diplomacy skills to defuse the situation.
"Now Moegi, we're all friends here. We had a few laughs, so now let's just…"
The simian shinobi was cut off as the kunoichi belted him across the face with her right hand. After the dust finally settled, there was a vaguely human shaped hole through the back of the rest stop. Cracking her knuckles, Moegi slowly turned her gazed onto the bespectacled member of her team. She found Udon cowering in a corner as she approached to deliver divine punishment down upon his head.
'Oh. Shit!'
Konohamaru, Udon, and Moegi trudged miserably through the muck; the three Konoha chunin were back on the road, traveling on the sludge path that was this region of the Rain country's main highway. They had had to make a quick exit from the rest stop after Moegi's little… outburst. Through the girl's display of abnormal strength, they may as well have declared that they were shinobi; that wasn't a good thing.
Under the peace accords signed by the daimyo and the Kage of the Five Great Shinobi nations the three of them- as Konoha shinobi- were technically not even allowed to cross into the Rain country's borders. After the business with Akatsuki a few years ago, nearly the entire country had been declared off limits to outsiders. Of course it was common knowledge that every one of the major shinobi nations "occasionally" violated the No-Go-Zone provision of the peace accords; still, actually getting caught doing it would result in a major international incident and embarrassment for both the Daimyo and the Kage.
Moegi shuddered at the thought of what would happen to them if anybody found out about their little detour through the Rain country. The official reprimand she could handle, but the paperwork would be absolute murder.
After they had left the rest stop, the rain had gotten worse; what had once been driving could now be described as 'torrential'. Both Moegi and Udon, from opposite sides of their teammate, shot Konohamaru dirty looks. The simian shinobi could feel their eyes digging into him and sighed, but remained silent; what could he say?
Their current misery was all his fault, after all.
After all three members of the Konohamaru corps had assumed the rank of chunin- and subsequently all of the responsibilities that their new ranks entailed- their team had been broken up as each one of them had been assigned to different duties. It was a fairly uncommon occurrence when the three friends were reunited for a mission. As such it had become a tradition of sorts that when the Konohamaru corps was reunited for a mission, they would make an effort to do something fun together before returning to Konoha.
This time, it had been Konohamaru's turn to pick what they would do. The simian ninja was a massive fan- to the point that he teased his hair out into the shaggy "afro" style sported by most of the band members- of a group called "At the Cinema". He had found out that the group was playing a show at a club in some backwater town in the Grass Country and had insisted that they all go; his teammates had been neutral on the whole idea, but decided that it was worth checking out.
Moegi thought that the performance was alright, but nothing more than alright; it wasn't her type of music and the lyrics- when she could discern them through the high-pitched screeching and guttural growls of the lead vocalist- made no sense to her.
Konohamaru and, surprisingly, Udon had loved it. Unfortunately for the trio, they had unwisely decided to go to the after-show party and, with the enthusiasm inborn in all seventeen-year olds with little experience with alcohol, had all gotten uproariously drunk. They had had to spend an extra day in the Grass Country recovering from the truly epic hangovers they all suffered from.
That extra day had put them behind in the timetable established in their mission parameters. They would be at least two days late if they tried following the usual route back to Konoha.
That was when Konohamaru had a brilliant idea; why not take a shortcut through the Rain Country? They would get back to the village on time and avoid the vicious chewing out that they would receive from their superiors for showing up late. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
But like so many other things that "seemed like a good idea at the time," reality did not match up with the theory.
Travel through the Land of Rain was dangerous, dirty and wet. Very, very, wet. This whole country was in a state of anarchy and the three Konoha chunin were acutely aware of the ever present miasma of paranoia that hung thick in the air. Even battle hardened ninja like themselves would have to watch their steps.
Konohamaru was thankful that the trip so far had been uneventful and- once the rain stopped being such a bitch- they could make a full speed break for the border.
"Hold up a second guys," Udon announced.
"Dude, what is it," Konohamaru asked.
Despite the fact that it had been his idea to cut through the Land of Rain, the simian ninja was in no hurry to spend any more time in this country than he had to.
"I gotta take a leak," the bespectacled shinobi replied matter-of-factly before walking off the road towards the marshy bog lying to their right.
"Why didn't you go back at the rest stop," Konohamaru asked in annoyance.
"Because I didn't have to go then; nature's calling right now!"
"If you pissed yourself, its not like anybody would notice- we're all already soaked down to our bones," Moegi said in exasperation.
Both Konohamaru and Udon looked at her like she had just grown a second head.
"Okay, that's just gross," Konohamaru commented.
"Seriuosly," Udon said, cosigning his friend's statement, "Do you actually do that?"
"How do you not walk around with a constant yeast infection?"
Moegi gave them a flat look.
"….y'know what? Fuck both of you guys."
Shrugging, Udon turned and headed towards the bog. Finding a suitably large bush, he pulled aside his parka and unzipped his fly. The young man gave a long sigh of relief as he felt his overtaxed bladder deflate.
Midway through his Piss of Life the bespectacled ninja noticed with mild surprise that his stream of urine was falling on a person's head. More precisely, it was falling on the head of somebody who was half submerged in a pool of brackish water and black mud. Shaking off and zipping up Udon focused a small amount of chakra to the soles of his feet and stepped onto the pool, his precise control keeping him from sinking down into the muck.
Normally Udon wouldn't have even bothered examining some random corpse he had stumbled across by accident. This was the Land of Rain, after all; with no real government, no army and virtually no police force, people got murdered all the time. What made this particular dead body noteworthy was the fact that the guy, judging by the way he was dressed, was clearly a shinobi. Reaching down and pulling the poor bastard's face out of the muck, Udon used the edge of his parka to wipe the filth away and get a look at his forehead.
'Kusagakure…'
Now what was a Grass ninja doing this far outside of his village's sphere of control? Interest piqued, Udon examined the body. It didn't take him long to figure out why the guy had died; somebody had blown holes into him. Grimacing, the chunin stood back up and walked back to the road where his teammates stood shivering in the downpour.
"Guys, you've got to come and see this."
"They turned a man into a beehive," Konohamaru said hollowly as he stared down at the stripped corpse of the dead Grass ninja.
"I mean, seriously, who does that? These are like actual…hole holes in a human body! That's just like, foul."
"Yup, its pretty messed up," Moegi agreed as she and Udon riffled through the man's clothes.
The trio had pulled the body onto more solid ground and Moegi and Udon had set about picking it clean of anything that looked valuable/important/interesting. Konohamaru, who had always creeped out by the recently deceased, chose to stand back and watch.
"Well, this guy died right here, but I don't think that he was killed right here," Udon said after a while.
"He probably got ventilated somewhere else and then dragged himself to this spot before he finally crapped out."
"Ouch," Konohamaru winced. "So, you find anything cool on that guy?"
"Not in his clothes," Moegi replied, throwing aside the dead ninja's shinobi vest. "Time for the cavity search."
"How long have you been waiting to say that," the simian shinobi quipped.
The kunoichi smiled sweetly, then promptly flipped him off before getting down to the dirty business of searching the corpse. Starting off in his mouth, she ran her fingers through every inch of the orifice. She really hoped that this guy was the type to hide something in his mouth and not shove it up his…
"Found something," Moegi announced as her fingers made contact with something that was jammed in the man's throat; he must have died while in the process of swallowing it.
Udon made his way to the body just as his teammate managed to yank the obstruction out of the corpse's throat. She held it up for him to see; it was a small capsule container. Moegi unscrewed the top. Shielding the contents of the capsule from the rain, the two walked over to where Konohamaru was standing. Huddled together, the trio examined their grisly prize.
"What is it," the bespectacled ninja asked.
"Looks like microfilm," Konohamaru answered.
"No way for us to tell what's on there; we'd need to send it to the cryptologists when we get back to the village."
"So, since we've recovered this possible vital information, does this mean we can ditch this whole low profile stuff and hurry back to Konoha already," the kunoichi asked.
"Yeah, that's probably for the best," Konohamaru answered.
Avoiding detection would have to take a backseat to safety in this situation; that Grass ninja had been killed- they didn't know by who and they didn't know why, but it was a more than safe bet that it had been for what he had been carrying in his throat.
And now the capsule was in their hands.
Whoever had done the killing might still be in the area; all thing considered, it would be a better idea to get out of there quickly. Dropping their civilian facades, the three young chunin tied the symbol of their village onto their heads and leapt into the trees.
"Well this is just peachy! Now we've got something new to worry about; those damn kids! We should've never left this job up to them."
Chiaki was pissed and was letting her agitation be known. The bitter kunoichi looked towards her companion, letting him know with a glance that this screw up was all his fault. The other ninja sighed; Keisuke had to admit that, in a sense, this failure had been his fault. It had been his decision to allow Nanashi's team to handle the Grass ninja; perhaps it had been a mistake to entrust a mission of such importance to such a young and inexperienced group.
"We need to clear this up," he said.
"Send word to cell four and cell eleven; we can cut them off before they reach the border."
Chiaki nodded; summoning a hawk, the kunoichi sent it skyward with instructions to relay the orders to the appropriate troops. From beneath his hat, Keisuke watched the bird disappear into the distance; the hunt was certainly on now.