"Tsunade-sama!" Shizune called urgently as she rushed into Tsunade's office.
Tsunade quickly hid her bottle of sake before shoving a book in front of her face which she was completely unaware that it was upside down.
Normally, Shizune would make quick remarks about how Tsunade should at least hold a book in a right way if she wanted to fake working but Shizune paid no attention to that. She was breathing hard as if she ran all the way up the Hokage tower from the Konoha gate. Sweat drenched her as her dark brown hair stuck to the sides of her face. "Tsunade-sama… There is trouble," She said.
"What trouble?" Tsunade asked, suddenly more alert.
"As you are aware, Namiashi Raido, Sarutobi Asuma, and Hyuuga Neji were on a mission together on defending the feudal lord. They have defeated the enemy and have completed their mission however… On the way to Konoha, they were attacked, and unfortunately, Asuma had not made it back. The other two are fatally wounded. It appears that they were ambushed by series of kunai and exploding tags," Shizune said.
Tsunade bent the hard cover of the book she was holding so forcefully that it broke. "Asuma was killed?" She asked.
"That is what the other two believe," Shizune said.
"What the hell attacked them?" Tsunade tried so hard to maintain her anger.
"Raido recognized one of them. It was the Sound Four," Shizune said.
"Shit, what on earth is Kakashi doing?"
"The attack was launched when Kakashi was assigned the mission with Tayuya, Tsunade-sama. Also… I think Kakashi-sempai may need some assistance,"
"Kakashi will be fine, there is a reason I sent him," Tsunade said.
"Tsunade-sama… Neji's byakugan was not able to detect them. Someone seems to have the ability to cloak themselves even from byakugan."
Tsunade stiffened a bit.
Neji was one of the best ninja that Konoha had. He was the number-one rookie of his grade in the academy, and was a genius that potentially surpassed the head family members of his clan. His byakugan was a powerful dojutsu bloodline limit that could rarely be avoided. How could they be cloaked from byakugan?
"Assemble Inuzuka Kiba, Hyuuga Hinata, and Aburame Shino immediately. Also, send Sakura with them. Asuma may be in a critical condition like the other two. Don't let Naruto come along,"
Shizune left immediately after the command, leaving Tsunade to think about this rather sudden and confusing event.
A typical morning for Tayuya almost always started with a hangover. This morning was no exception for this eighteen-year-old jonin who was severely addicted to alcohol. Mornings felt like shit and shitty mornings almost always guarantees that the rest of the day will be a complete piece of shit as well. Even this morning, the sunlight pissed her off for being too bright and making her head hurt even more. The blanket was wrapped too tightly around her, and she violently tore it off of her. She then snapped her sight next to her to see… no Genma or any men.
Well… at least one thing was good…
Her morning routine always consisted of: getting up feeling like crap, taking a much needed shower, and finally, finding Shizune who always threatened her to never cure the hangover again but makes her own reasons up as she cures it once again. Most of her reasons though had the name "Tsunade-sama" in it, which meant that the Fifth Hokage had kept on calling her up for dumb reasons… it was mostly to scold her for being drunk again.
This morning though, when Tayuya went to Shizune's place, Anko sat there, with Kurenai.
"Look who's here," Anko said. "How're you feeling, drunken monkey?"
"Really fucking great," Tayuya replied, her voice still drifted to an unpleasant realm of dreams.
Shizune sighed at the sight of her. "Go sit over there far away from Kurenai-san. Repulsive sight of vomiting doesn't help… upset stomach."
Tayuya trudged on to the seat far away from the pretty ninja with pretty red eyes. She collapsed on the chair and decided to think about things then decided against it after an approximately four seconds. Thinking made her head hurt.
Shizune went by Kurenai and Anko and whispered quick words to them that Tayuya couldn't hear –apparently didn't care – what she was saying.
Kurenai stiffened a little but nodded. She stood and Anko followed the move.
Tayuya warily gazed at Anko.
Anko looked at Tayuya. "You have to train some kids today, don't you? Come by afterwards, but don't expect any sake or anything. Yesterday was an exception but I don't feel that Kakashi-san should suffer more than he has to because of you," She said.
Tayuya didn't say anything.
Anko left with Kurenai and she was the only one there with Shizune who was reaching for a refreshing pill for drunks in one of her eighty thousand medical cupboards that dominated the upper walls of her… was there even a name for this room? The cupboard room? Ehh… not important… not important at all.
"Why were they here?" Tayuya asked.
"They have the same rights as you do. There is no law saying that I shouldn't treat normal patients in the morning before treating that lame hangover of yours," She said.
"That wasn't my point," Tayuya mumbled.
Shizune shrugged. She looked a little tired – maybe worried – as she gave Tayuya the pill with water.
"You look dead," Tayuya commented.
Shizune didn't say anything.
It was unnatural to have Shizune not scowling at her for being a drunk and it made Tayuya wonder if Shizune was under the influence of morphine or something. She didn't give much thought to it though. She swallowed her pills, got her treatment, and left to the training grounds to train the genin… without Kakashi this time.
The three genin looked a little beyond uncomfortable when they saw Tayuya appear on the training ground by herself. They knew about his mission… didn't they? They should… It seems that Kakashi never told them anything because when the genins came.
They looked around until Haruko turned to Tayuya. "Tayuya-sensei, where is Kakashi-sensei?"
"So I guess he never told you where he was going… damn it, now I have to be the one to do the troublesome explanation… He's off on a mission that may or may not take a while. Until he gets back, well… I'll be watching over you I guess… He asked me to," Tayuya mumbled.
The genins sighed as if they were old people who gave up on living or something.
"What the hell is up with that? You three should be grateful thatI am training you! Otherwise, you wouldn't be here! You'd be at your homes, sitting on your lazy-ass, eating shit like cake or something!" Tayuya yelled, the reason being her hangover more than her anger toward the three children that were shielding their ears from her voice.
"Well then, Tayuya-sensei? What are we training on today?" Masato asked, with the know-it-all look on his face.
This was supposed to be their first day of going on a mission. Kakashi, as usual delayed the time to start their mission and was not here at all for the genin's first mission. Not that it was his fault this time but… and even tough genin's D-rank missions were more annoying than dangerous… Tayuya wished he was here.
"We're doing a mission today. Go to the Hokage's office," she said.
The genins shared a moment of happiness for finally being assigned a mission, yet they were mildly disappointed when Tsunade wrecked their hopes of looking cool by assigning them to a mission where they had to build a fence around a herd of cattle for an old farmer living in a village near Konoha. What could they expect out of a D-rank mission though? D-rank is for beginner shinobi who still has much to learn about the importance of missions – although even the most patient S-rank ninja would probably get pissed off by even looking at the list of… lame missions. If they were expecting some action, they will not find any in a D-rank mission, which were loaded with things such as construction, babysitting and animal retrieval just because people tend to abuse their animals in a way that they do not know, and the animals go insane and run away. Some of the animals that Tayuya had seen, going back to their master… they looked like the death itself.
Tayuya really didn't know how it felt, doing a lame mission as a genin, for Orochimaru really had no time to assign missions such as "Rescue Dolly the cow." He was more interested in destroying Konoha, in which Tayuya's first and only mission assigned to her as a genin was a virtually an S-rank mission called "Let's destroy Konoha because Orochimaru is mad at the village for not letting him be the Fourth Hokage, and also, he's mildly crazy because he takes humans to experiment them to gain jutsus but the second part of the title must not be included when speaking to Orochimaru because then he'd end up killing her." Her whole life as a genin was a living failure because her one and only mission went to a failure.
Now, she stood here as a jonin, advising a D-rank mission that she had never been on. When she was first brought here by Anko, Tayuya needed time to heal. After the healing period came the Chuunin Exam in which Tayuya urged Anko to recommend her. Tayuya passed the exam along with four others out of the seventy contestants, and was promoted to a jonin just last year, where she only went to A-rank. There was no time for D-rank missions. Until now.
And she wished that she never had to do a D-rank mission ever again whether she was the advisor or not.
She was used to complex tactics and violent fights consisting of elite shinobi. When she had to build a fence around lazy cows that stood there like statues and wouldn't move their fat-ass out of her way where she needed to build, she thought she was going to explode. At least in A-rank missions, she actually got to kick some ass, but D-rank? Oh no… beating up these cows meant complaint to Tsunade and complaint to Tsunade meant she would be angry at Tayuya and Tsunade's anger triggers her monstrous strength to be used against Tayuya and Tsunade's monstrous strength being used against Tayuya meant Tayuya's death.
Tayuya had no idea why the genins insisted on provoking her even more. Haruko insisted on complaining on every chance she had on how smelly the farm was while Honda insisted on hitting his thumb with a hammer rather than the nails. Masato was also scowling at the other two, adding in how he shouldn't be wasting his time doing this kind of a mission.
Tayuya felt her chakra pressing her temper down. She couldn't explode on them… especially since they were not her own subordinates. They were Kakashi's who… well… could beat the hell out of her if he wanted to. She had no idea why he hadn't hit her at least a bit. Her language by itself was more than enough reason for Kakashi to hit her.
Damn that Kakashi… When was he coming? He only left yesterday but why won't he come back? If he was fast enough to cut through a freaking bolt of lightning, why couldn't he just get there, complete the mission, and get the hell back, and tell her if Sakon was alive or not? Tayuya, being a relatively rational person… to think of something as ridiculous as that, she really must be desperate. After all, a mission that is ranked above C, usually took more than three days.
She sank her hand in her pocket and felt something in it. So of course she took it out to find… the green piece of ribbon. As she stared at the fine pece of string made of soft cloth, a sudden pang of guilt hit her like an enraged wave against a watery cliff. She didn't even care about his safety… But why the hell should I fucking care? She objected in her head. So why should she feel guilty? There is no need to…and that was why she was so confused. She felt that she needed to without knowing why. Her thoughts for the rest of the day, constantly shifted between two things – two people – that only gave her trouble.
One was Sakon.
The other was Hatake Kakashi for reasons unknown to her.
The mission was a success as the farmer looked pleasingly at his new fence. He thanked them, saying that he didn't need to worry about the fence anymore. The genins thanked Tayuya and were dismissed while Tayuya headed to a certain copy ninja's house to clean up his porn book. Then she left to Anko's house in which Anko probably wanted to share a deep talk… which didn't happen much.
The mission. To pursue an elite enemy without them noticing you. A skill that is mandatory in order for one to call themselves a shinobi yet a skill so difficult to do in a perfect efficiency. A skill that Jiraiya only mastered so perfectly so he could go peeking on women…
That was most of the mission. Then he would gather information about them and when they prove to be too much of a danger, he must kill them completely. It did not sound as difficult as it actually was. Normally, a chuunin would be able to do such a job, but enemies that were under Orochimaru would prove to be different. Tayuya, Anko, and especially Sasuke easily proved that. Despite her rough language and some of her clumsiness, Tayuya showed no sign of weakness and was a ruthless fighter. Although cheerful, playful and sometimes slow to grasp the situation, Anko was a dangerous woman whose venomous attack is fatal even with just one try, and Sasuke, of course had almost caught up to his brother Itachi, who was feared by all who had heard of him.
Knowing this, Tsunade had sent Kakashi.
Kakashi knew that he was never up against an easy opponent knowing what kind of mission Tsunade usually gave him. But damn these four people… they were so well-cloaked that he could barely trace them even with the sharingan. Already, his nin-dogs were called to trace them. Pakkun, being the wisest of them had found them and warned Kakashi that there was a cloaking genius among them. Kakashi's sharingan wouldn't do him any good, so he covered it again, and had no choice but to rely on Pakkun's sense of smell. Even so, the smell was so faint, that even Pakkun faltered at times.
But no matter what these four did, this was Hatake Kakashi, the son of Hatake Sakumo, the man praised to surpass even the Legendary Sannins. Kakashi was the apprentice of the Fourth Hokage and now is known with his own identity of "copy ninja" mastering the sharingan better than most of the Uchihas. Even Ucihha Itachi, the most powerful of the Uchiha (partly because of the fact that he kind of massacred them all) admitted that Kakashi's talent with the Sharingan was exceptional. If he could master the sharingan, he could complete a mission like this.
Pakkun suddenly stopped. "It looks like they are taking a break. Their scent is lingering and the cloak is wearing off."
Kakashi nodded.
No one fooled Pakkun's nose, and when Kakashi was close enough to take a good look at them, they were… sleeping? Something wasn't right. Why would they fucking sleep? Were they that confident on their skill? He didn't think so.
That's why Kakashi was able to fend off a kunai flying straight towards his face as soon as he turned around. "Don't hide there like a coward, show yourself," Kakashi said, as if he were talking to a group of kids trying to ambush him (although in Kakashi's case, it might work).
A figure jumped off from the trees above. He had a proud grin on his face, and he was as pale as death. The longish hair covering his right eye was grey silver, and his lips were a strange green color that made Kakashi wonder if he had any sort of lizard's blood in him. "I told you, a kunai won't work on this guy," He said, his voice smooth but cold like a oil poured over ice.
Another figure came next to him. A girl this time. "Oh well, we have him surrounded now," She said, flinging her pretty golden hair behind her shoulder.
"Who are you guys?" Kakashi asked.
"You know already, don't you?" The boy said.
"Sound Four, I am assuming. And I also assume that you two are a bunshin. I don't sense the other two around," Kakashi said.
"Thank god we didn't really decide to stay and fight you, you would have kicked our ass, right Ryoko?" The boy said, still grinning.
The girl smirked.
"You don't need to be so sneaky, we don't mind telling you what our plans are… In fact, we don't even want a war," He said.
"Speak," Kakashi said, his voice calm but dangerous.
"We just want the other three that belongs together with us. That's all I think I feel like telling you. Don't bother catching up to us, because… we're not in Fire Country anymore. You won't know even if we told you," He said, almost mockingly.
"Well, we did our part… Sakon," Ryoko said, and they disappeared with a puff of smoke.
Kakashi stood still.
"Hey. Kakashi… do something. What are you gonna do?" Pakkun asked.
Kakashi answered with a short pause and then a shorter answer. "Return to Konoha," He said, before quickly taking off into the thick trees above.
Pakkun followed.
Turbulent thoughts were going through Kakashi's head. Surprisingly, the first person that flashed through his head was Tayuya. It should have been Sasuke, but it was Tayuya.
He vaguely remembered telling her that she is free. The ribbon illustration he showed her… he didn't want that to be a lie. At least, he didn't want to be the one that lied to her.
For some reason, it seemed that he shouldn't lie to her… ever. And for some other reason, he wanted Tayuya to be safe from them. Well… she is his attendant… and that it the reason. Yes, that is the reason.
Nothing more, nothing less.