Chapter 5

Shots

Through the paper-thin walls of the beaten down shack, Shikamaru could hear the low rumble of a storm approaching on the horizon. Just what they needed; more rain. The young Jonin and his team had been in the Land of Rain for a few days and all of them were sick of it- well, everybody except Matsushita, but he was kind of a weirdo. They had arrived at the coordinates where Moegi and Udon were supposed to have been a few hours ago.

Their MIA comrades were still MIA.

Shikamaru had immediately split his team up; half to search the surrounding area to see if they could pick up any sign of where Moegi and Udon might have gone and kept the other half with him to examine the shack that stood nearby.

Upon entering they had noticed that there were no obvious signs of a struggle having taken place. It did however appear that whoever had been squatting there had left in a hurry. It didn't appear to be the "fleeing imminent death" degree of hurry, but it was clear that the occupants had been in a rush to get away. The young Jonin went over all of the possibilities of what that could indicate; few of the things that he thought of weren't very comforting.

He needed to settle his nerves.

Slipping a brand new pack of Pachinko Blacks out of their usual place in the left breast pocket of his shinobi vest, Shikamaru very carefully broke the seal. With the utmost caution, the shadow ninja extracted one of the small black cylinders and stuck it into his mouth. It took Shikamaru a few seconds of fumbling around underneath his parka before he finally wrapped his fingers around the cold iron of his lighter. He out pulled the small metal object; as far as lighters went, it was really top-class. Kurenai had given it to him when she had found out that Shikamaru had discovered the joys of nicotine dependency.

Lighter finally in hand, the young Jonin flipped open the top and watched the tiny orange flame flicker into life. He was just about to touch the light to the end of his cigarette when he was stopped in his tracks by the unnecessarily loud cough of one of his subordinates.

"Sir, what do you think you're doing?"

"…Well, I'm definitely not enjoying my smoke," Shikamaru said dryly.

The shadow user looked at the only other people in the room with annoyance. The Ohata twins, Ando and Ako, were looking at him with identical expressions of disapproval. They were members of the village's Torture and Interrogation Division and normally wouldn't have ventured too far outside of the village. Despite their lack of time in the field, Shikamaru had chosen them to be on his team because they possessed a particular skill set that he thought might prove useful in gathering information. He had expected two subordinates of Morino Ibiki to be a handful, but he hadn't expected them to be so insufferably annoying!

First of all, they were literally identical; from the long hair tied up in a severe bun, right down to the lip-gloss and the black eyeliner. It didn't help that their field gear helped to Ako's feminine curves so that the only way that Shikamaru was able to tell them apart was due to the slightly deeper tone of the brother's voice.

"Sir, don't you remember what we told you about all of the health problems that can arise from smoking those filthy things," the disturbingly androgynous ladyboy chirped.

Shikamaru wanted to snap back with a snarky comment about how he couldn't forget because the two of them would never shut up about it; in the end, he decided to hold his tongue.

"Troublesome," he muttered before clicking close his lighter and slipping his cigarette behind his ear.

The shadow user felt cheated; he had been expecting the twins to be sadists. He had practice dealing with sadists. But militant non-smoker, cross-dressers…

After showing the twins that the offending cancer stick had been put away, Ando and Ako returned to the work which they had been doing before. Retreating to a corner, Shikamaru watched with mild interest as Ako pulled a kunai from a holster and sliced open both hers and her brother's hand. Separating from each other the brother and sister busied themselves by drawing intricate seals onto the floor between them. Almost unconsciously, the shadow user traced the bloody patterns with his eyes, vision cutting through the dim light of the room to follow the every twist and curve being drawn out.

Finishing up their seals, the twins dropped down onto their knees, bringing their faces uncomfortably- for Shikamaru- close together. As one, brother and sister lifted up their hands and cupped captured their counterpart's face in their hands; the shadow Jonin wondered what they were doing as they stayed locked in their odd embrace. Suddenly, Shikamaru quirked an eyebrow as a violent tremor went through Ando and the young man's body began convulsing violently, his sister's iron grip on his head the only thing keeping him from tumbling to the floor. Forcing down his natural urge to help- he had to assume that this was all part of the jutsu- the young Jonin stood rooted in place and forced himself to silently watch what happened next.

Shikamaru felt an infinitesimal spike in chakra at the very edge of his senses; it was all the warning he received. He watched in a strange mix of intrigue and disgust as Ako's throat began to slowly swell and distend until the kunoichi looked something remarkably like a bullfrog. Once the girl's throat reached the point where Shikamaru was sure that her windpipe would come tearing through her skin, she began leaking an inky white….something out of every orifice on her head.

The gunk that the kunoichi was currently spewing out was unlike anything that the Jonin commander had seen in his young life. It looked like a logic defying combination of woodsmoke and lumpy milk; solid and constantly in flux at the same time; plus, it gave off an unearthly smell. The mysterious substance hung in a swirling mass a few inches above head, clinging to the ceiling like a leech. Tearing his eyes away from the amazing regurgitated whatever-it-was long enough to check on the twins, Shikamaru bit his tongue in the midst of a surprised yelp as he saw what appeared to be Ako's mummified corpse kneeling on the floor, locked in embrace with her seemingly catatonic twin.

"Yep, this is definitely one of the weirder things I've seen."

The young Jonin barely had enough time to process this new shock before the floating white gunk suddenly began to descend and settle onto the ground. Shikamaru's skin crawled as the substance passed over him on its way to earth. No sooner had it settled on the floor, the mysterious substance began to warp and shift. Taking an uneasy step backwards into the wall, Shikamaru watched in blatant fascination as the mysterious miasma began to rise and condense, coming together until two humanoid figures arose from the ground.

Unable to hide his fascination, the typically jaded Jonin perked up from his place at the edge of the room. Shikamaru studied the two translucent figures; since they were slightly see-through, it was hard for him to make out their facial features. One was taller than the other and the Jonin could tell from the way that the apparitions held their bodies and moved amongst each other that they were ninja. Their body language also spoke to Shikamaru of their agitation.

A nervous energy radiated off of the murky figures and the shadow user zeroed in on the taller of the two. The ghostly presence was tapping one of its feet against the ground and was fidgeting incessantly. It appeared that the smaller one was mouthing words up towards the taller one; the astral bodies made no sounds so Shikamaru tried to reading their lips. He gave that up pretty quickly; it was hard to catch more than the odd word due to their translucent faces and he couldn't be sure if he was making out the right words anyway.

There was one thing that Shikamaru was sure about though; whoever these two were, they weren't his missing shinobi. The most obvious giveaway was the fact that both of the figures were blatantly masculine in their mannerisms; though the smaller one was about the same size as Moegi, the Jonin remembered the kunoichi to be much more feminine in her character.

Shikamaru's face assumed the scowl that he had gotten so used wearing over the years. These two weren't Moegi and Udon; so who the hell were they? More importantly, where were the two Leaf shinobi? This shack was their last known location and there were not many physical signs that a struggle had taken place, but the pair of Leaf shinobi wouldn't have pulled up and left their hiding place for no reason.

So wrapped up in his own thoughts, the shadow-user hardly noticed when the twins' jutsu faltered, the ephemeral astral bodies shimmering and breaking down their shape, becoming formless masses before dissipating completely. The mysterious substance quickly flooded back into Ako's desiccated husk, restoring her to full vitality and vigor.

"What were you able to get," Shikamaru asked without preamble.

"A word," Ako gasped.

"The same one, over and over," Ando interjected, "…redemption."

"Either of you have any idea of what redemption is supposed to mean," Shikamaru asked.

"No idea," they both said at the same time.

"Okay. What about our two MIA shinobi; were you able to learn anything about what happened to them or where they went."

"I'm sorry to say that there was only the faintest trace of Udon-san and Moegi-san left in this place. All we can say is that they weren't killed here; if they had been, the impression they left would have been much deeper," Ako replied.

Shikamaru sighed in disappointment. He didn't know for sure if the missing duo were alive or dead; he'd just have to keep on working under the assumption that they were alive then. Then, of course, there was the issue of Konohamaru, who was still in the wind.

The young Jonin slipped his cigarette from behind his ear and back into his mouth and lit it. The twins wrinkled their noses in identical expressions of disgust but an authoritative look from their commander silenced whatever protest was bubbling up in their throats.

"Then who were those two ghost things I just saw?"

"They definitely weren't our missing children, but they were ninja," Ando said; Shikamaru nodded, having surmised the same things.

"And they were definitely locals."

"How can you tell that," Shikamaru asked at this new bit of information.

The twins exchanged a glance and shivered as if they had caught the same chill up their spines.

"This country's got this yucky aura to it; it sticks to everything like tar. Those two were covered in it," Ako said.

Shikamaru breathed out a stream of fragrant tobacco smoke into the air as his mind cycled through the information that he had just received. All in all he had found out much less than he had hoped he would; the whereabouts of Konohamaru, Moegi and Udon were still a mystery and he still didn't know if they were alive or dead. On the bright side, his team did have one thing…

'Redemption'

"Good work."

Taking a long drag on his cigarette, Shikamaru turned and walked out of the shack, the twins at his heals. He scowled when he saw that the rain had picked up; fortunately his hat gave him enough protection to keep is cigarette lit. Thank the gods for small favors.

Crossing the threshold the young Jonin swung his eyes around towards long-legged kunoichi whose face was just beginning to show the signs of middle age.

"Hey, Akeginu-san, is the search team back yet?"

The oldest member of their team peaked from under the wide brim of her hat and pointed out towards the ruins of some stables.

"They just got back, but by the way Inuzuka-chan was snarling, I don't think that it went so well."

Shikamaru shrugged as if to say, 'what else is new' and immediately began heading for the skeletal remains of the stable. The first thing that struck the young Jonin about the search party was the fact that they were absolutely filthy, all three- including Inuzuka Aoi's two dogs- were practically coated in the black and blue mud native to this part of the Rain country.

"Yo, Hinata-chan! Please tell me you've got some good news for me," the shadow-user said in a sarcastically plaintive tone.

"That depends on what you consider to be good news," the Hyuga heiress said.

She sounded pissed off; that was never a good sign.

"Trying to track somebody in a place where it rains as much as it does here is not exactly easy, but we managed to find traces of shinobi moving into and out of this area."

Shikamaru took a few puffs from his cigarette and let the smoke stream from out of his nostrils.

"So you found some trails; trails sound good. At least it's something; with that we can…"

Hinata held up a hand, stopping her commander from going any further.

"It is not so cut and dry. We did not just come upon one trail, we were able to locate and trace at least eight different routes that Moegi-san and Udon-san could have used to leave the area."

"Basic training dictates that when you're trying to evade a pursuer you leave false trails to lead them in a wrong direction," Aoi added.

"Any one of them could have been made by our guys to throw off any enemies pursuing them and then those enemies made more to throw off people like us. I got Kazemaru and Toboe," she indicated the two large dogs seated at her feet, "to try to catch a scent, but any trace of those two got washed away with the storms that're always happening in this place."

Shikamaru gave ground beneath his feet a hard stare. So, basically, they were telling him that they had come up empty. Things were not going the Leaf ninja's way.

The young Jonin's mind shifted into high gear as he began to shuffle the information that he had been taking in throughout that afternoon and analyzed it. As he considered his next move, Shikamaru was acutely aware of one factor above all others; time.

It had taken him several days to assemble his desired team and get them to the Land of Rain; he had hoped to simply make a quick trip to recover their wayward team and maybe do some light reconnaissance to glean some more information about that Sasuke imposter. Instead, he and his team had fallen into the worst case scenario. They had three MIA Leaf shinobi, plus they were in the middle of hostile territory- territory that they were, legally, not supposed to set foot on- teeming with unknown enemies.

They needed to find Konohamaru and the others as fast as possible and get out of this country as quickly as possible and then...

Shikamaru shook his head, banishing the thought

'No… that's wrong. That's not the way.'

Unconsciously, Shikamaru brought his hands together and closed his eyes in the now well known gesture that signified his retreat into deep contemplation.

He couldn't allow himself to become hurried or rush, couldn't allow himself to become impatient. While it was true that time was of the essence in this mission, he could not become reckless and endanger the lives of his subordinates in order to recover the missing shinobi. That wasn't how he fought; he needed a strategy. He couldn't take his time with this one, but if he could at least get a better grasp of the situation in this land then he could…

Suddenly, the idea popped into his head. He had a plan; he didn't consider it a particularly good plan, but at the moment it was best of the roughly three dozen he had managed to think up. Opening his eyes, he looked at Hinata.

"How far is the nearest town from here?"