Examination: Family
"Meat on a stick," Inuzuka Kiba said, with all the pomp and poise of a lecturing professor, "has gotta be the most awesome thing since people figured out fire."
"Hurf," Akimichi Chouji snorted in agreement, sucking the broiled flesh of an unfortunate ex-chicken from a skewer bound to join one of its many, many expired brethren on the stand counter. Yamanaka Ino just sighed, rolled her eyes, and resumed building a miniature log house out of Chouji's discarded skewers, picking at them gingerly with slender fingers.
"No, seriously. You can tell how cool a place is from their street meat. And this," Kiba said, gesturing wildly behind him with his own skewer at roughly eye level, "has to be the world capital of street meat."
Behind him sprawled the chaos of Sunagakure's central bazaar, a teeming square of narrow footpaths winding their way through a throughly disorganized warren of cloth-roofed stalls. Gold glinted and spices ran rampant through the air, and he was satisfied beyond compare with the kebab counter he'd sniffed out for lunch.
"You're eating a scorpion," Uzumaki Haruka muttered, disgusted, "and it's still moving."
"She has a point," said Ino, pointing a skewer all the way down to the far end of the counter where Kiba's students were sitting. Even Chouji found the time to shoot Kiba a questioning look over a dripping stick of goat.
"I know!" he said, crowing, "Isn't it great? You don't find stuff like this at home."
Kiba's teeth flashed for a second in the light, a slow lingering second before the crunch. All three of his genin, and the six of his fellow instructors, gave up a chorus of sick moans. Well, at least Akamaru would have agreed, but he was stuck outside the city walls, hunting up his own fresh meat.
"It's like, kind of nutty. Like, uh, cashews, maybe? Not as good as the snake, though. I need to get another one of those."
"Oh, really? Which, the rattlesnake or the sidewinder?"
Sure, Haruka was being sarcastic and her voice was positively dripping with false enthusiasm, but he wasn't going to let her take the satisfaction of thinking he'd gotten the hint. Instead he just lifted his fingers to get the vendor's attention again.
"Rattler. Sidewinder was a bit chewy, and the sauce wasn't as good. And a little grainy. Y'know how duck is different from chicken? Kind of like that. But the rattler? Like heaven."
"On a stick," Ino added.
"On a stick!" he said with much joy, taking the meat from the vendor and hoisting it into the air as his own personal battle standard.
"Ugh," she said, balking at the description. "I think I'm quite done. Kids, let this be a lesson to you all: eating scorpions makes your brain go funny."
"I don't think it was the scorpion, Ino-sensei."
Ino laughed, Chouji guffawed because someone with a chest cavity that large could hardly do less, and Kiba didn't even bother to answer as he chewed on the soft, gorgeous cut of serpent fillet, mulling the spices across his tongue as he did. If they couldn't appreciate it, that meant more for him.
He'd never have guessed ten, no, twenty years ago that he would have ended up here, shepherding three slightly hyperactive genin around the maze of domed buildings that made up Sunagakure and buying them lunch before the second round of their examinations. Ten years ago, he would have imagined himself as a swashbuckling rogue of a ninja, traveling the world and perpetually surrounded by girls enamored with the legend of Inuzuka Kiba.
Well, at least he was perpetually surrounded by girls, though when he'd received notice of his team assignment he'd cursed whatever god had taken his dream quite so literally.
There were three of them, all more or less twelve. First was Aburame Kiyoka, about as pure and naive as her name suggested and given over to him because he was the only current teaching jounin with any experience whatsoever with the insects her family used to fight with. Nakamura Nanami was the seventh child of a merchant family and the only one crazy enough to want to be a ninja; he didn't dispute her parents' evaluation. And then there was Naruto's adopted girl, Haruka, generally quiet and serious but capable of more sarcasm than even Akamaru was, which meant more often than not he was getting it from two directions in as many languages.
Ino and Chouji, teaching jounins also, were along with their teams as well, three of the only four Konoha had submitted for certification this year. Ino, for some reason, was in turn cursed with three boys and they'd joked about trading teams for everyone's benefit a few times.
Even so, he had to be proud of his girls. They were good at different things, and they were all naturally pretty sneaky, and even though he'd had to teach them how to be tough and how to fight dirty -- they were here, and they were ready. He figured if nothing else, their opponents wouldn't know exactly what to do with three diminutive kunoichi who brawled and gouged and bit even if they did get close enough to try fighting hand to hand.
"Alright, I'm quite done here," Ino said, finishing her announcement with a beckoning motion that pulled her team away from the counter, "and so are you. You've got a long haul coming up and I don't want you all puking the first time you get hit in the gut."
"That doesn't happen, Ino," Chouji said, and she just shook your head.
"Yeah, but you're an Akimichi, so you can't say anything on the subject."
Chouji shrugged but didn't dispute her assessment.
Kiba spared a glance to his team, but they were all finished already and had been for some time, their discarded skewers resting in shallow bowls of lamentably wasted sauce.
"It's time, sensei," Kiyoka said, because she was just as punctual and exact as her uncle Shino, "we shouldn't be late."
"Yeah, seriously. I can't wait to meet this dumb maze and kick its ass."
"Assuming it has one, Nanami."
Kiba metered out a wad of the local currency and handed it to the vendor before turning around on his stool.
"Hey, that's 'Labyrinth' to you runts and I hear nasty things about it. There's a good reason Sunagakure here has the highest second-stage genin fatality rate of any village. So you be careful and count on each other because I am not carrying any corpses home, understand?"
They all nodded. He'd hardly needed to say it, they were a team through and through.
"Alright then, let's go."
It took them nearly twenty minutes to find the rally point. Sunagakure was not built on anything so simple as a grid or anything near it. The rounded buildings were all designed to channel the harsh desert winds through neighborhoods and around walls rather than attempt to stand up to them, and the streets followed winding, unpredictable paths that twisted and forked on a whim.
The rally point itself was an unmarked intersection just barely large enough to accommodate all of the teams that had made it past the first part of the exam. Surrounded on all sides by steep walled buildings, it seemed to be perpetually smothered in shadow, and the atmosphere was dim at best, sinister at worst. Kiyoka shivered, and Haruka pretended not to notice.
In the centre of the crossroads lay the wide maw of a disused well, bordered by crumbling stones and ringed on one side by a small drift of blown up sand forming an impromptu ramp.
After a while, a Suna ninja climbed the drift and took his place on the lip of the well.
"Attention! All participants are present, so we'll begin. Instructors are asked to step back to the walls, and teams are to come forward to the well."
Kiba ended up leaning on the coarse adobe between Ino and Chouji.
"Was that true?" she said, nudging him in the side with a bony elbow.
"Was what true?"
"What you said, about this test being the most dangerous among villages."
He couldn't help but chuckle, as his team lined up -- seventh in order to descend into the well. Haruka was stoic as always, Nanami rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, and Kiyoka was already discreetly dropping insects from her pant legs which scurried forward and into the masonry of the well mouth.
"Nah. I just wanted to scare some caution into them. I'm afraid they might have learned to be too much like me."
Ino gave him the evil eye.
"Some teacher you are," she said between clenched teeth and elbowed him harder. Chouji stifled a laugh, and it sounded more like a bull snorting.
"The rules are simple. Get into the Labyrinth, and head upstream to the place where it meets the canyon. You'll be provided with a sand worm egg case," and here the examiner held up a bag full of slimy, glowing translucent things, "and they've all been broken open so you can be sure the sand worms will attack you. The first five teams to make it to the finish with two egg cases will pass to the final. It's fifteen kilometers underground. Good luck."
He was sure Ino would make some comment about how nasty the egg cases were, but she didn't say anything as the teams began descending into the well one by one, spaced five minutes apart. Just to be sure, he glanced in her direction.
She was frowning, certainly, narrow eyebrows drawn down to the edges of her eyes. Her thin lips were pulled taut and narrow and she was combing through the end of the long, platinum blonde pony-tail that fell over her shoulder with her fingers. There was something weird about the look on her face and it was decidedly out of place on someone as beautiful as she was.
"Hey," Chouji said, putting one of his massive bear paws on her other shoulder, "they'll be fine. They wouldn't have gotten this far if they weren't going to be."
"I hope you're right," she said, and Chouji's words seemed to have had their desired effect, because her expression had relaxed somewhat.
"I think so. Now, who's hungry?"
Ino just gave Chouji a beseeching look. Kiba grinned.
Sure, they'd be fine. Kiyoka's bugs wouldn't let them get lost, Nanami would keep them hidden with genjutsu, and Haruka could cover with the fire she was so good at. Not to mention that he'd been training them pretty hard for the last month or so, pushing them all to their limits.
He'd even called in favors from his former team mates -- Shino had done a lot of work with his niece, and Hinata had been very helpful bringing Nanami up to speed in her specialty. He had no doubts that Naruto drove Haruka to exhaustion on the weekends, and he knew what she could do with fire because he'd been the one to teach her that.
They'd be just fine.
OoOoOoO
Konohagakure was home to one of the greater and more ostentatious monuments in the ninja world. It was atypical in that no other village had created anything nearing the scale and grandeur of the faces carved into the rock to commemorate its leaders.
Some called it arrogant, assuming as it did the village would remain where it was forever. Some called it over-proud, self-congratulatory navel-gazing at its worst. Some found it wasteful, a flaunting of Konoha's wealth and prosperity. Some thought it sick evidence of a sort of persistent cult of personality. The citizens of the village, naturally, could not have cared less what others thought.
In more ways than one, Konoha was lucky. They were wealthy, the crops grew well, and they'd not had a bad Hokage yet. Somehow, some way, they hadn't fallen into the trap of greed, or of power, or of bloodlust like so many others leaders throughout history.
At that moment, the faces were cast in a noble, orange light, aglow with the fires of the summer sunset. The rock caught the light, reflecting in a softer hue that made them seem to come alive once more. And though they wore grim, determined expressions, the light freed them from the base stone and transformed them into the people they'd once been in a silent metamorphosis of sorts.
Or at least Sakura thought, secretly. History might not agree, but she knew two of those faces, had met them in person, and knew that they deserved every foot of space they occupied on that precipice. Even more fortunately, one of them was still alive, and it was her office on whose door she was knocking.
"It's me," she said.
"Come in," said the tired voice of the Hokage.
It was a ritual they'd been through a thousand times or more. Sakura let the door open just enough to slip her body through, and closed it tight behind her, and Lady Tsunade put down the report she'd been reading.
"How was it?" she asked, and Sakura crossed the wide room until she could lean on the corner of the desk.
"Fine. The daimyo's prince is safely back at home. We weren't hassled at all."
Protocol probably forbade even a jounin from leaning over the Hokage's desk and rifling through her papers for something to read, but protocol probably also forbade the Hokage from assigning her paperwork to her students. As a result Sakura was more familiar with the endless torrent of paper that crossed that desk than most people ever would be.
"Sending Naruto back to Kusagakure again?"
Tsunade sighed, and snatched the assignments roster back from her erstwhile student.
"Yes, again. They're getting pissy for some reason and he's getting good at ironing these things out. Besides, he could use the practice."
She tossed it haphazardly onto another pile, and Sakura never ceased to wonder how exactly her mentor knew where anything was at any given time. Her desk was a perpetual mess, and if not for Shizune, herself, and the handful of clerks who came by to pass things along, half of that clutter would have found its way to the floor and stayed there.
Tsunade -- Princess Tsunade officially -- let her elbows drop to the table and leaned on her hands. For a long moment she stared into vacant space, before turning her pale eyes to Sakura and raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, shishou?"
"Sit down, Sakura," she said, and then interrupted her while she was pulling out one of the seats facing the desk. "Not there. Here."
She patted a narrow space on the desk by her elbow, the only free space on the desk.
"Not if you think I'll be able to wedge my ass in there," Sakura said, and Tsunade let out a snort, but cleared a few more loose papers to the side to join their haphazard cousins.
"Your ass is smaller than mine ever was, so sit down already."
Sakura did as she was told, resting most of her weight on her thighs and hands, leaning forward with her legs tucked under her impromptu seat. Shizune always said it made her look like a little girl when she sat that way, but it was an old habit and hard to break. Plus, so long as her hair was as pink as it was, trying to look her age was a counterproductive exercise.
"I'm getting old, Sakura," Tsunade said, and held up a finger to shush her. "Don't say it. You know as well as I do this little illusion I keep up for my vanity is getting harder to hold with every passing year. Do you know how old I really am?"
Sakura shook her head. Tsunade had never, in the nearly twenty years she'd known the older woman, divulged her true age. Sakura assumed maybe fifty, if her mentor was as old as she was now when they'd met.
"I'll be eighty in a few years," Tsunade said, and patted Sakura's knee when she looked shocked. "I have a good back, and the training pays off, but I'm at least as old as my teacher was when he died."
"The Third?"
"The Third. And he was supposed to have been retired, if not for Kyuubi."
"You're still strong," Sakura said, placing her own hand over her mentor's. With the illusion in place, Tsunade's hand was smoother than hers, without the calluses and scarring that came from years of constant fighting.
"No," Tsunade said, and tapped the crystal set into her forehead. "I'm fading. Slowly, but I am. I've got enough chakra stored up here for one big battle. Just one, in case we do get attacked while I still wear that hat. But if that does happen, I'll be finished win or lose. Day to day, you couldn't ask me to teach you to break stones any more."
Tsunade lifted herself out of her seat just enough to shift it so it faced the window, and for the first time Sakura noticed that it did seem to pain her. Maybe Tsunade wasn't bothering to cover her weakness in this moment.
"Look out there," she said, waving her arm across the vista, across the village hidden among the trees in the shadow of the Hokage monument. "Look at all those people, all those good, hard-working people. I'm glad I came back."
Tsunade's eyes were wistful, and Sakura grinned.
"I'm glad you came back. I wouldn't be where I am today without you."
"That's nice to hear, Sakura. Still, I do wonder if I was the best choice for this job. There were so many others they could have picked, you know."
"I think so."
"But you would say that. It would have been less hassle, they wouldn't have had to send the old perv and Naruto out to find me."
She pointed to the monument, to the western-most face, brilliant in the light of the sun.
"They all had a vision, you know. My grandfather forged the village. Built it, assembled the clans, got us started. He could see a city in this valley. The second, he made it strong, made us warriors, led us to a respected place."
Her finger shifted again, pointing out the third in that frozen procession.
"Sensei -- he made us wise. Taught us respect and compassion, though I can't say all the clans have quite learned that yet."
Sakura made a sad, half-smile. She knew about that all too well.
"I wasn't here when the Fourth was in charge, but I know what he did. He showed us we could deal with anything, that we were indestructible, and that the way we do things is the right way to do things."
Her finger shifted again, to the likeness of a young woman with long hair and a diamond in the centre of her forehead.
"Her, I don't know what she ever did for this village. Kept the academy running, I guess."
"She showed us peace, shishou," Sakura said, squeezing Tsunade's hand. "Showed us it was worth fighting for, worth risking everything for. I'd risk it all again for us to have the peace and the allies we have now. Not to mention all the active medics she got trained."
"Well, she didn't have that in mind at the time. I'll take keeping the peace, though. It's a start. At least my successor has a goal worthy of those others...even if he doesn't necessarily know it himself."
"It was always going to be him, wasn't it?" It was no small secret among Tsunade's inner circle that Naruto was going to succeed her if at all possible.
"When he's ready. Sakura, I worry. He's not ready yet. He's not quite there. He's so close, but I can't name him and retire until he is. Sakura, I need to ask you a favor."
Sakura was about to reply that she'd do anything, but old habits died hard and she'd learned long ago that Tsunade's favors often involved work she didn't want to do herself. Even so, the look in the Hokage's eyes was honest and as sincere as she'd seen them.
"What is it?"
"If I don't think I can make it to the end -- before Naruto's ready -- would you fill in for me?"
Sakura wasn't sure if she'd heard right.
"You mean, pretend to be you?"
"No, I mean, take up the mantle. Even if it's just long enough to hold it down until Naruto's where he needs to be."
She shook her head, violently, her hair tossing.
"I can't! I'm not a leader, shishou. I can't inspire these people like you can."
"I know you don't want to." Tsunade smiled, and Sakura felt some confidence returning. "But it wouldn't be forever, and you and Shizune already do most of this job for me, and you know how shy she really is. You've got spirit, at least."
"I..."
"Before you say anything, Shikamaru is doing more for us where he is now than he would be here. Besides, he couldn't even pretend to look like he wanted to do the job even if he actually tried -- and he's more about finesse than power anyway. Think about it, please?"
"No. Naruto will be ready, I know it. You of all people should know better than to bet against him. I mean, you haven't even told me why he isn't ready."
Tsunade's eyes hardened, and then the frustration forming in them gave in to resignation.
"If...if I have to ask you for that favor again, I'll tell you then. I promise."
Disappointed but satisfied nevertheless, Sakura held out the smallest finger on her left hand.
"Then I'll do you that favor if you promise. I promise."
Tsunade hooked the smallest finger of her free hand around Sakura's, and they let it rest at that. It was juvenile and childish, but a time-worn and honorable tradition, and they both knew it was a promise kept. Sakura looked back out at the darkening village, and the thin streams of light coming to life as lamps were lit and candles kindled. Power flickered through the city, a nervous impulse through a sleeping brain, and she heard a faint music through the glass.
"I've decided what I'll do when I retire," Tsunade said, smiling faintly.
"Yeah?"
"Mm. If we don't get attacked and I don't go out in a blaze of glory like Jiraiya, I'll let my successor take over and then I'll disappear."
"That doesn't sound like you, shishou."
"Disappearing is what I do best, Sakura. I did it all my life. I'll just let this vain facade slip away and let my tits fall down to where they're supposed to be at this age," she said, and Sakura laughed despite herself. "And then I'll rent a room in a town somewhere and hawk beauty creams and anti-aging medicine to all the girls, and gamble away what I earn."
"They'll still know it was you," Sakura said, uneasy with the direction this conversation was going.
"Hardly!" Tsunade cackled quietly to herself. "I'll be some old quack of a crone. Better to have some fun and die unknown than to leave the ugliest corpse a Hokage has ever left. I'm vain, Sakura, and I know it. I'd prefer them to remember me as I am now...and why not be the Sannin that discovered immortality and left to wander the world? We've already got one killed in glorious battle and another who didn't quite figure out how to live forever."
Tsunade's laugh was maybe a little mirthless, but Sakura decided not to press the issue. She decided to let an old woman have that one, small dream left after she'd lost a brother, a lover, and her teammates to the world that treated even good people so cruelly.
"Fine," she said, and turned up her nose because pretending to be huffy would probably give the old woman more satisfaction. Even though it wasn't really her business, part of her really wanted to see what Tsunade looked like, under the skin of that twenty-something she wore like a mask. Would she really be that wrinkled, with liver spots and sagging cheeks?
"You'll come and visit me, I hope," Tsunade said. "You and Shizune...you're like the daughters I never had."
Sakura nodded, still staring off into the distance. Then, she turned and wrapped her arms around the woman who really had become her surrogate mother.
"Of course," she said. "You don't need my promise for that."
"All right then. It's late, go home. You have a real family waiting for you."
"Only if you you actually sleep in a bed tonight instead of just passing out on your desk again," Sakura said as she hopped off the desk and began to gather the fallen papers.
"I don't think it's right for anyone to be telling their teacher what to do," Tsunade said, and crossed her arms. Sakura stuck out her tongue.
OoOoOoO
Neji was furious.
He wasn't given to irrational rages; control was the spine of his very existence, the core of his dignity and strength, and at the moment it was being tested to its very limit. As such, the image of Neji's tall form storming through the halls of the Hyuuga compound was frightening in its intensity, formal robes flaring with each step in time with his own mane of chestnut hair, eyes hardened into silver flints.
And still, with his every measured stride and the hard feeling between his teeth he kept himself a perfect two feet behind and to the right of his cousin, Hyuuga Hinata.
For her part, Hinata wore a beatific expression of peace, small lips arched into a tiny smile, her face calm and unruffled as she walked ahead of Neji out of the main hall and onto the pathway of paving stones. This walkway would lead them out through the main gardens, across the pond and back towards the main residence complex, and finally to the private gardens and the building that housed her part of the clan.
Her eyes, however, betrayed her when she turned aside to let Neji open the garden gates for her, and though she kept them level and even, they glistened ever so slightly in the dim light of the lanterns hanging from the lintel.
They proceeded in utter silence, passing a few lesser members of the clan who made way as discreetly and quickly as possible, motivated in part by courtesy and custom, and mostly by the anger burning in Neji's eyes.
Hinata's face did not break until they were safely behind the closed doors of the main house residence, sealed within an anteroom to Hinata's personal chambers. The instant Neji slid the panel shut with perhaps an iota more force than necessary, she sank to her knees with more grace than the restrictive kimono should have allowed her to, and buried her face in her hands.
Neji said nothing, but sat across the table from her, his legs folded under him.
Hinata did not cry despite her obvious distress, and Neji was proud of her, beneath his own, roiling hatred for the judgement that had been handed down just minutes ago. Her breathing was unsteady behind her hands for some time, and it was not until her third try to calm herself that she finally placed them in her lap.
And Hinata too, who had not said an uncouth word or let her practiced veil of etiquette drop in well over an hour, was furious.
"Enough that he is dying," she said, and her normally high, clear voice was clouded with the hereditary disdain she only used when she had exceptional cause, "but that they should presume to make such decisions before my father has actually passed. Gods, Neji, how did I do?"
A deep breath, and he was just a little closer to re-centering himself.
"As well as could be expected, under the circumstances. The elders no doubt do not appreciate the position you've put them in now. That much, at least, was well done."
She looked a little relieved, and looked away to wipe at her eyes.
"Thank you, Neji."
"Mm," he grunted, and a soft knock outside the door made them both jerk back to attention. "Who is it?"
Another small voice, like Hinata's, only a little deeper and huskier replied.
"It's just me, cousin," it said, and Neji's hand moved to admit the speaker access.
Hyuuga Hanabi slipped into the room, mindful of the secrecy and simmering emotion in the room, and discreetly closed the screen behind her before sitting next to Hinata. Hanabi's sister promptly threw her arms around her shoulders and held her tight.
"Not good news, I take it," she said, and wrapped her fingers around Hinata's arm since her own were restrained close to her body by her older sister's hug. "What did they have to say?"
"Very much," Neji said, his voice bitter. "They have placed us in an untenable situation, but Hinata did buy us some time."
Despite Hinata's perfect poise and the clear heritage declared by her eyes, it was her sister that was a better example of the Hyuuga bloodline. For a long time, she had been shorter than her elder sister, but it had only been a matter of time. Now, at twenty-six, Hanabi was a head taller, a slender willow of a girl in contrast to Hinata's shorter, more womanly form. Hanabi's features were sharper, more like her cousin's than her sister's, the difference between pretty and cute. They shared the same hair, though, and, beneath whatever exteriors they put on, the same diamond-hard resolve.
"Oh, Hanabi," Hinata said, finally releasing her, "they threatened to seal you."
For a moment Hanabi's mouth worked in silence, before she found her voice again.
"What? It's not nearly time for that -- you're not married yet, let alone with children of your own. I mean..."
And despite the fact that they were sisters, Hanabi was the second-born and therefore always destined to eventually receive the hated curse seal that Neji hid beneath his hitaiate, or whatever other means he had at his disposal. Neji hated, too, that Hanabi had long since resigned herself to receiving it. She wasn't caged in the same way he was, but it was coming, and there was precious little he could do about it at the moment.
"That's the problem, Hanabi," Hinata said, "I'm not married yet, and I've produced no heirs and I'm already thirty. The elders think I'm not taking this..." She struggled to find the right word.
"...duty," Neji supplied, and he knew from the sour taste in his mouth that that was the reason Hinata had not said it.
"They don't think I'm taking it seriously enough, especially with father as ill as he is. They want me to take a husband within the clan or else they would seal you to force the issue one way or the other."
Hinata gave her sister a sympathetic look, and Hanabi looked down. In addition to destroying the byakugan upon death and allowing main house members from inflicting untold agony upon branch house members with a mere thought, the curse seal had a secondary effect unique to the women of the clan: it prevented them from bearing children with the blood-line. In some ways, Neji supposed the effect was 'useful', in that it allowed alliances by marriage to cement the secular power of the clan without giving away its most prized asset.
But that, like every other 'reason' for the curse seal, was disgusting to him and everyone else in the room.
There were four families in the Hyuuga clan, and though only one was considered to lead the clan, the other three family heads who made up the council of elders nevertheless held considerable power. Not enough, apparently, since they were now making a play for supremacy in the clan. By forcing Hinata into marriage, any one of them could set themselves up to lead as early as the next generation, even though their blood-lines were not as strong.
If the elders did decide to go ahead with sealing Hanabi, it threatened the core blood-line -- unless Hinata had children right away. It was an odious threat, and one they knew could be carried out because despite her fiercer nature, Hanabi was still a creature of the clan.
And she demonstrated it fairly conclusively in a sentence.
"You know I'd take the mark now if it could get you out of this mess, Hinata," she said. "Who cares? You shouldn't be forced into something like this, not when you'll be leading us one day."
"That is not the point," Neji said, trying to keep his voice even. "No one should be cursed in such a way that their own family could hurt them so easily and thoughtlessly."
"Yeah, but Hinata wouldn't," Hanabi said, and though Hinata gave a small nod, she corrected her sister.
"I wouldn't even though the other families might, but like Neji said, that's not the point. Hanabi, I want to end this business with the seals, and Neji agrees. Not all of it, perhaps -- I agree our blood-line is valuable and needs to be protected, but there's no need for it to be hurtful. I won't let them do this to you."
"And my duty to the clan means I'm to protect you at all costs," Neji said, and the irony struck him as amusing. "I'm only doing my...duty."
Hanabi looked to her sister, and hugged her again, and then reached out to take Neji's hand in a gesture of solemn solidarity.
"Thanks," she said. "But please don't get married for me, Hinata."
"I won't," Hinata said, and she finally smiled.
"She bought some time," Neji said when Hanabi leaned forward to prompt an explanation. "She convinced the elders that we were waning in prominence and political power in the village if not elsewhere, and that she was convinced she could take the hand of the next Hokage, assuming it is a man."
"You what?"
"I did," Hinata said, with incredible conviction. "And I will. Lady Tsunade has hinted that she'll name a successor soon, if only in private. The elders didn't know any of this since they are as much ninjas as the man who runs Ichiraku Ramen."
Hanabi laughed at that, and Neji coughed as a small chuckle finally escaped him.
"But," she said, "what if it's someone you don't like?"
Hinata sighed wistfully, and Neji wished he had her confidence in that matter.
"I don't think that will be a problem."
"Assuming," Neji added, "that things turn out the way you want them to. They gave you a year because they are sure it won't happen your way in that time, and they might be right."
He didn't stay much longer than that. He did promise Hanabi he would come by and help her with technique on another day, and both his cousins bid him a fond farewell before returning to the more immediate problem of Hyuuga Hiashi's illness. In the meantime, however, Neji was due to return home, and as he passed through one of the small, unobtrusive gateways used by branch house members back onto the street, he mused at how strange it was that the grand complex behind him no longer fit that description.
He was still angry, deep down, but the initial rush had succumbed to his will and the reassuring thought that there was, at least, some kind of plan.
He was nearly there.
Home was now a modest one-bedroom apartment within easy distance of both the Hyuuga compound and the enormous tower that served as the village's headquarters. Close enough to the center of town to be in a pleasant neighborhood, near enough to his work and that of his wife, and close to those relatives he liked, even if they lived with the ones he despised.
The lights were on, however, which meant she was home, finally, from her mission, and his heart rose with his body as he decided to forgo the hassle of climbing the stairs in favor of simply jumping to the balcony and knocking on the window.
The last vestiges of his anger evaporated as she undid the lock and slid the glass aside, chewing on the ends of her chopsticks as the smell of leftovers wafted out to him.
"Hi, Neji," Sakura said, and stepped back to let him in, and he wrapped himself around her, resting his chin on the crown of her head. He felt her move to take the chopsticks out of her mouth and then her arms were around his neck and her eyelashes tickled against his pulse.
She seemed small and fragile within the folds of his sleeves, but she was deceptive like that, girlish but stronger than anyone gave her credit for, including himself. She proved it by lifting herself clear off her feet by her arms, high enough that she could kiss him easily, and held it long enough she could make it linger and still lean back to look at him with hooded jade eyes.
"Where were you? I was hoping you'd be here when I got back."
The fury rustled and rose, but he pushed it back; he'd save it for those it wanted.
"The elders called for a meeting," he said, and even then he couldn't keep the contempt from their collective title. "It didn't go well."
He didn't want to tell her they had used her as a reason for demanding Hinata marry within the clan, implying that his wife and therefore outsiders were barren because she'd not had any children yet either. It hadn't been his place to lash out and tell them he did not plan on having any children if it meant they would be marked, either, so he hadn't. And that, really, had been the greatest source of his outrage.
"You'll get yours, one day," she said. "I know you will. And then all those stuffy old assholes will moan about the younger generation while they can't do shit."
Neji laughed. And she was confident, too, and an optimist, even when all he could do was hope. Even so, there was a hint of something in her eyes, something she, too, was loathe to share. She disentangled herself and grabbed the container of reheated leftovers from the kitchen counter, then motioned for him to sit down.
"How's your uncle?"
"Not improved. There is little to be done now," Neji said, as she climbed over the back of the couch and arranged herself beneath his arm and leaning up against his chest. "All there is for me to do is to make sure Hinata is left unhindered in the succession."
She wasn't particularly fond of the way his family operated, and neither was he, but even so she was so very empathetic, the way she nuzzled into him and murmured condolences. But even that aside, he thought, as he brushed fingers through her hair, there was a separate concern in her eyes.
"And what, dearest, is bothering you?"
"Oh," she said, and picked at her food. "It's shishou. She's...I worry about her. She doesn't show anyone but me and I guess Shizune, but she's getting old. I just...I know she doesn't take care of herself as well as she should."
He let her talk, venting her fears and occasionally she would pass him the bowl and the chopsticks. It was a far cry from the stiff, tradition-bound halls of the compound he'd been raised in, but it was a better sanctuary than any he'd ever had.
OoOoOoO
Sunagakure was a dark city at night.
In the darkness, only those few lamps scattered about at street level and a scattering of flickering windows here and there -- windows so scarce because of the blasted winds that harangued the village in the windy season. Above what little light there was rose the pitch black silhouettes of the city's massive domes, blotting out the stars along the horizon.
What stars there were, though. With no light from the ground to interfere with their pallid light, they came in droves, endless waves of scintillating gems on an onyx sea. Here, and later there, a fleeting spark heralded the flaming passage of a falling meteor, and the dim slice of moon smiled in approval.
And despite it all, Ino could not shake the discomfort and malaise that had harangued her since her arrival. Even at night, the city smelled of sand and solder, of a dry decay that stung her senses and made her wonder if she'd done the right thing, bringing her team here.
It wasn't that she doubted her team, or their ability to make good on her confidence in them. Her boys were ready, she knew they were ready, she'd had them for just over twelve months and they were skilled fighters with even a few tough missions under their belts. She couldn't help but worry a little, but she knew them well enough to know they'd get themselves out alive at the very least. Even if they were somewhere hundreds of feet under that great mesa dominating the southern part of the skyline.
No, this was something else, she thought to herself, and she kicked at the banister of the inn's balcony to work out some of her frustration. It was cold, and she had her arms folded tight against her chest, and she shivered. No, this fear was something irrational and unkempt, but it nagged at her all the same.
It would have been ideal to have Chouji around, so she could vent and bitch and whine, and he could tell her she was being silly, and that things were going to be okay. He was good at that, but he'd decided to take advantage of Sunagakure's hospitality and the alliance to trade earth jutsus with some of the locals and she wasn't about to begrudge him for doing his best to be as good as he could become.
The balcony was not exclusively hers, however, rather an extension of her floor's central lounge, blocked off by a heavy door which had been scarred by years of sandstorms, so she probably shouldn't have been surprised to hear its hinges creak and shift behind her. She jumped a little nevertheless, letting slip her unease.
"Oh, there you are," her visitor said, and she recognized the gruff baritone of Kiba's voice. "I thought I knew that smell."
He looked a little more disheveled than usual, which while not exactly out of the ordinary for him, was at least explained by the bottle he seemed to be carrying. Ino's hackles rose, and she turned to him with a sneer and her best admonishing voice.
"Kiba, are you drunk?"
"Me?" Kiba snickered. "Noooo, I'm not drunk. I might be a little on the sober side of buzzed, but I'm not drunk. Yet."
"Come here," she said, in a tone that would brook no argument, and when he did finally obey her after rolling his eyes, she sniffed at his breath and waggled a finger in front of his face. It was hard to see in the dark, but he seemed to meet most of the physiological criteria for sobriety and his breath wasn't that bad. Yet.
"Come on," he said in futile protest when he noticed she hadn't started to believe him quite yet. "If I really was drunk I'd have never found you hiding out here. Messes with my sense of smell."
"Fine. You might just be buzzed..."
"Sober side of buzzed," he said, but she ignored him.
"...but you probably shouldn't be. What are you drinking anyway?"
Kiba hefted the bottle, and spun it to so the label faced her.
"Local fare," he said proudly. "I picked it up in the market earlier, I think it's made from cactus or something? It's not bad, but it's a bit strong."
"And of course you are drinking it straight from the bottle."
He shrugged, and let his weight lean against the wall in a heavy slump. He didn't do anything gracefully, it seemed, but then he'd always been that way.
"Didn't have a glass," he said, and grinned, his oversized canines flashing in the moonlight. "Oh, loosen up. You're more fun than this."
"You're not drinking alone, I hope. Because that's pathological, you know."
"Drinking alone? I'm not that pathetic, why do you think I was looking for you?" He did his best to look offended but it came off more like amusement and Ino gave up.
"Maybe that's the wrong question. Why are you drinking?" she said, and he shrugged.
"Because it seemed like a good idea at the time?" One of Ino's eyebrows slowly raised as she crossed her arms again, and Kiba seemed to shrink a little, finally cowed. "Alright. I was just thinking, I don't think my girls are going to make the finals. There's some pretty stiff competition this year, just from looking at the teams down in there with them...and there isn't anything I can do to help them."
"Well...I understand that," Ino said, mollified by the honesty, and she took a step closer and leaned into the wall beside him.
"It's like...I'm just hoping I taught them well enough. I know we're not supposed to get attached or anything because yeah this is dangerous work. But two of my girls are family of friends, and where I come from that might as well be the same thing as family. Not that I care any less about Nanami."
"You remember what Chouji said? He said they'd be alright, yours and mine, and he's got a talent for that sort of thing. He's never been wrong about people, ever, and I have faith in him. And I have faith in my team."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," she said, and let her back slide down the wall until she was sitting on the cold floor. "Sure, they didn't know shit about being stealthy and they had absolutely no imagination when we first got started, but I think they've got the hang of it now. Typical boys, all balls and no brains."
There was Daijiro, the Katsukawa boy, who'd been all offense and alpha strike before she'd essentially humiliated him in the first lesson; Nakajima Takeshi, who was excellent with ninjutsu and picking up medic skills quickly but hated getting too close to an enemy; and Takahashi Hideo, who was, it turned out, learning to be exceptionally devious with genjutsu and still fast and tough enough to help out Daijiro at close range.
"Well, I know I've got the first thing on that list," Kiba said, and sank down beside her before taking another sip from the bottle. "Ah, I guess I'll see them tomorrow morning, then. You ever wonder if our teachers had any doubts about us?"
"Probably," Ino said. "What a bunch of brats we were, gods."
"Sometimes I feel bad about all the bullshit I put Hinata and Shino through, you know. And Kurenai-sensei too, poor woman. Want some?"
He tilted the bottle in her direction. Well, it wasn't like there was anything she needed to be doing at the moment.
"I don't suppose I can let you finish that yourself. Is it good?"
"It's alright. Strong, though."
He was right on the last count. As for the first, it was harsh and sweet in all the wrong ways; it tasted like cold medicine and she could feel it making a home in her stomach, cozy and fuzzy and a lot more comfortable than alcohol had any right to be. She coughed into her hand a few times, then tried again with more success.
"It's actually pretty nasty," she said, waiting to see if there was an aftertaste, but there was none. Kiba laughed and took back the bottle. "How's your dog?"
"He's fine, I'd know if he'd gotten himself into trouble. Probably gorging on lizards or whatever they have around here."
"Are you really that much like him?"
Kiba smiled like she'd given him a compliment. She didn't get it, the bond he had with his dog. His family was weird that way, eating, running, and sleeping near their constant companions, and she couldn't fathom sharing a bed with an animal.
She sighed.
"Kiba, tell me if this is stupid, but I feel like something bad is going to happen. Call it a premonition or whatever, but it doesn't feel right."
"Weren't you telling me just five minutes ago that things were going to be okay?"
"I don't mean with the exams, necessarily. Just that something is going to happen."
She shivered, and he gave her back the bottle. The drink did help to cut the cold a little, even if she knew it was an illusion caused by the dilation of vessels in her skin. Still, it was pleasant and her next drink was a little deeper than she'd intended it to be.
"Well, I'd call that your gut instinct. And if you think something feels like it's about it happen, I'd say act on it. I do all the time and it's gotten me this far, at least."
"Your gut instinct got you half-way to drunk on weird cactus liquor on a hotel balcony in the wrong city?"
Kiba laughed, a deep pleasant laugh, and she chuckled herself.
"Nah. It's kept me alive. I have to do a lot by smell, especially if I'm going fast. Smell is great, but it's not instant, like hearing or sight. Sometimes instinct fills in the gaps, tells you what you haven't got time to think about or even what you haven't noticed yet. I trust it, but I guess I would."
"So what should I do about it, then?" she said, and turned to look at him. He was tall, in a wiry way mitigated by his relaxed mien, and there was a comfortable ease in the mess he kept of his hair and clothing.
"If it really starts bugging you, just look out for it spiking. Be alert, maybe take some extra precautions. If nothing comes of it, no harm done, right?"
"So you're saying I should definitely not be getting drunk tonight."
"I didn't say that, exactly. Sometimes my instinct has told me I should be getting drunk." He laughed, abruptly. "Man, I feel sorry for your team. They are going to be stuck with unfulfilled teacher fantasies for a decade."
Ino shoved him, hard, and again when he wouldn't stop laughing.
"What are you talking about? They're twelve!"
"So? It's like you have no idea how boys work. They're at the exact age when that shit happens. I should know."
"No way," she said, appalled. "You had a crush on Kurenai-sensei?"
"Hell yes I did. Oh, come on, don't look at me like that. Pretty older woman who you spend most of your time with, your hormones are starting to kick in...and she was not hard on the eyes. Ever notice your boys trying to one up each other constantly whenever you're around?"
She had, actually.
"That's just rivalry, Kiba. There's no way they're...oh lords above. You might be right. Great, now you've ruined how I'll see them forever."
She grabbed the bottle back. His breath stank a little more, and between them, there was considerably less in the bottle than there had been when he'd first arrived. Oh, what the hell, she thought. Nothing's going to happen here in the village. Sunagakure had the place locked down tight enough to stop demons, and Chouji had never been wrong about anyone, let alone her team.
"Nah. They're your students, it was bound to happen."
"So you wouldn't mind knowing if your girls have little girly crushes on you?"
Kiba looked stunned, blinked, moved his mouth around a bit, and it was Ino's turn to laugh uncontrollably.
"Oh, great. It hadn't even occurred to me," he said. "For...dammit. Well, I guess I'm at least hot enough for little girls to think I'm cool like that."
"I suppose I'm sort of flattered you think I fall into that category," she said, and they shared another round of the bottle's bittersweet contents between them.
"Damn straight you do," Kiba said, still laughing, and he wasn't on the sober side of buzzed any more. He turned and pointed to her with his hand still wrapped around the neck of the bottle. "You've got these really awesome eyes, and that whole coy tease thing going on with your hair over your face like that."
She wasn't sure at all if the blush she felt creeping up her neck was due to the alcohol, and she was glad for once that it was so dark.
OoOoOoO
Hyuuga Hiashi was not well.
He was pale where he lay in his bed, a sweaty, pallid gray and he wore a perpetual look of pain, even asleep as he was now. Twin bags hung on a steel tree above him, metering out careful doses of his medication down an intravenous line inserted into the emaciated arm turned out and resting above the covers. It wasn't just his arm, either. The stern lines of his face that had marked him as a man of implacable will were gone now, replaced by sunken hollows that filled the gaps between his bones with shadow instead of flesh.
And even though he had not been the best father, even though he represented many of the things she could not abide in her family, even though he was over sixty now and his time was bound to come sooner or later -- even in light of all this, Hinata could not help but feel a sharp pain in her heart upon seeing him in this condition.
She didn't need her byakugan to see the problem any more; it was clear from the shallow, grasping breaths that shook him that he no longer breathed like a healthy man. His left lung had been virtually swallowed by the malignant growth that had taken up residence in his chest, and despite the best efforts of his doctors to remove it, it had stubbornly continued to grow, spreading through his body until it was only a matter of time.
"Good night, father," she said, because he was, after all, still her father.
She rose to leave, but he stirred behind her, coughed hideously, and then found the strength to speak.
"Who is there?"
"Hinata, father," she said, and forgave his failing sight. The room was dark and there was no reasonable way for him to put the gift of his special eyes to good use.
"Aah. I have not seen you in a while."
"You were resting each time I came to visit," she said, re-seating herself. "I apologize; I've been kept busy."
"Considerable responsibility..," -- he paused to cough again -- "falls upon you. I trust our affairs are in good order?"
"I think so." She decided she wouldn't trouble him with the debacle in front of the elders from earlier. He didn't need more trouble than he already had, and it was her conundrum to deal with, and he nodded with as much dignity as possible.
Things had changed, over the years. Neji had grown closer, she'd grown stronger, and Hanabi had served as a sufficient intermediary between the two of them and the man before her. They still talked only rarely and awkwardly when it did occur, but at least she could speak and be heard.
"Your sister...has told me much. She speaks highly of you." It was like Hanabi to exaggerate her accomplishments a little, even if she wasn't as good as her younger sister at many of the Hyuuga's traditional arts. Still, it was a roundabout way for her father to say the same thing without saying it, and she managed a faint smile.
"Her help has been invaluable as well."
"You have your mother's modesty. You are very much as she was," he said, and there was nostalgia buried under the gravel of his voice and the the rasp of his illness. "And yet, you have found your own way."
It was good enough for her.
"Thank you, father."
"She told me...was it today? Hanabi has told me you were asked to present yourself to the elders."
"This is true." Hinata felt a slight chill creep up her spine, both in memory of what had transpired and her dread at having to explain it to him.
"You must never show them weakness, Hinata. We are the de facto leaders of this clan because we produce the most fighters, the strongest ninjas. But they hold much of the money and political power both inside and outside the village. Without them, we are nothing, and without us, they are nothing. I fear they may try to take advantage...of my condition."
He'd said too many words, and his body was wracked with a new fit of agony as he tried to clear what remained of his lungs. It was a warning too late, perhaps, but Hinata knew she'd not shown them the weakness he feared. Of that at least, she was proud.
"I don't believe I have," she said. "They...underestimate us, Hanabi and I. Neji as well."
In the darkness, she could see Hiashi's lips quirk for a fraction of a second, and she knew he was pleased.
"Good, then. Go on. I will rest, and I am certain you should as well."
He closed his eyes and breathed as deeply as he could, then tried to make himself more comfortable. Hinata took it upon herself to rearrange his bedding so it was less rumpled, and she took his feather-weight hand briefly before leaving. He was incredibly fragile, in this state, and she'd never imagined she would ever be in a position to lend this man her strength...but much had changed in all those years.
When she left, she shut the screen as quietly as possible, and bowed to the branch house guard standing by the door. He seemed surprised as they always were when she accorded them the respect she knew they deserved. Let the elders see that as weakness, she thought, because they don't know anything.
They didn't know that nearly every third or fourth night, she retired to her room, and changed from the kimono she wore for tradition's sake into the far more comfortable gear she wore on missions or when she was training. They never saw her slip into her white jacket, into one of many abused pairs of indigo pants. They never saw her trade her slippers for the spare pair of hard-soled, light-weight combat sandals she kept by her door.
And if they would ever dare to send someone to spy on the Hyuuga clan's heiress after she had gone to bed, all they would see was that she was soundly sleeping, curled up and alone, her face turned to the wall, because they didn't know how she escaped every night she could afford to get away and vanished into the darkness and left only an illusion to fill her sheets.
It was a path she knew well, and followed without sound. The private gardens she needed to cross were usually abandoned at this hour, and though she waited to be sure of it, not a soul drifted anywhere near it. Beyond that, the outer wall, but that took no effort since years of practice had taught her to anticipate the sentries' patrols, habits, and personalities. No one who reported to the council of elders had even the slightest notion that she'd been slipping out of the Hyuuga compound alone and unescorted at night for the better part of seven years, because who would suspect meek little Hinata of flaunting even a single rule?
It was her dirty little secret, known only to a handful of people, and anyone who knew she trusted implicitly in any case.
She'd gotten very good with genjutsu over the years, and had learned that the average, unsuspicious mind needed only a slight push to believe something simple, and so any stray eye that might catch her on her unconventional path would believe that they'd seen only a cat making its way across the rooftops.
At least, until that cat slowed on the peak of a small, tiled rooftop in the shadow of a larger apartment building and came to stop beside the man already sitting there. He looked lonely, as he did those nights she found him there, resting his elbows on his knees, staring out over the lights of the city as it roused and cheered in celebration of another day gone by.
"I wish you'd let me take you on a date," Naruto whispered, as the cat's form shifted and melted away to reveal her sitting next to him. She shook her head, long hair floating on the breeze behind her, and he leaned against her and pressed his lips against her temple.
"One day," she whispered back, taking his warm, weathered hand in both of hers. He put his other arm around her shoulders, and she closed her eyes and reveled in the touch. "One day soon."
He started to ask about her father but she shushed him. She'd had enough of thinking about that already.
"I haven't been alone like this in a while," he said. "Haruka's been around a lot, recently, training for her exam."
The thought of the girl he'd adopted brought a smile to her face. She'd promised, when he'd taken charge of her, that she would help him, and that had brought them closer together than she'd ever dared to imagine. Haruka was, in her mind, her daughter as well, and it had been that thought of her little pretend family that had kept her from losing herself in front of the elders.
"I think she'll do well," she said. "We pushed her hard enough, don't you think? She certainly slept better than usual."
Naruto smiled, and she didn't need to open her eyes to know. He smiled with his whole body, the way he relaxed and opened up.
"Yeah, she did. She's a talented girl, for someone with no lineage."
"Well, that we know of," Hinata corrected. "You were pretty talented for a kid with no lineage once. Can I ask you something?"
"Anything."
She looked up, and he was looking back at her, a contented light in those dark blue eyes glinting even through the thin shadows cast by the cloud of streaky, dirty-blond hair drifting around his face.
"I know I said...I know I said we couldn't be official, that no one could know. Because of all those things, like my father, my clan...the fact that they don't like you, that they're too stupid to see past what you are and discover who you are..."
"Yeah?"
"But if I asked you again...would you...would you be with me? Forever? Officially?"
"Yes, Hinata," and contented was no longer a sufficient word for the light in his eyes. Ecstatic was perhaps most appropriate, and she could feel a thrum of energy boil through him. He shifted abruptly around her, holding her with both arms as his forehead touched hers.
By instinct, her arms coiled up under his and small hands gripped the back of his collar, her fists pushing him towards her as she smiled and met with him with her lips. He tasted right, of seaweed and stories over tea, of ice cream in the dark and sublimated sorrows. She kissed him hard, pushing him against the wall of the neighboring apartment building with no intention of ever letting him go.
"What...what changed?" he said when she allowed him to breathe, trying to catch his breath.
"Nothing yet." She shook her head, blushing hard, and burying her face against his neck since she was forced to use her mouth to speak. "I...I got them to admit they would accept the next Hokage as my husband. So please...you have to..."
"Is that all I have to do?"
He spoke with such confidence she couldn't avoid it, letting it crawl over her, infecting her with its strength. How many times had she heard him tell her she was capable, that the way was open to her if she tried no matter what obstacles stood in her path, even if he hadn't been there to say it himself?
"We can do this," she said, and pressed herself against him again, heard his breath hitch and his heart twitch in double-time.
OoOoOoO
Kaze no Kuni was a vast realm, largely dominated by a stony, wind-blasted desert inhospitable to most life. At its northern frontier, it butted up against the Tsuchi mountains, which blocked the life-giving rains from the north and shunted them into the jungled lands surrounding Amekagure, and from there into the forests and plains of Ho no Kuni. The deserts of the north were rocky barrens, flat and blasted by the incessant winds from which its ninja community took its name. To the south, the nation slid down into an ocean whose waters were fertilized with sand blown from afar and teemed with the fish that made sovereignty even possible in the first place.
And to the east were the low, scrubby flatlands where the natives took their herds to graze, and the poor, inconsequential kingdom that divided Kaze no Kuni from Ho no Kuni. It was a buffer state, one whose existence and sovereignty depended on the sufferance of both its neighbors, although its fortunes had improved along with relations between both kingdoms. Not much grew here -- its sole river was shallow and anemic -- but it was making some progress as a trade intermediary between newly allied super-powers.
But the landscape sucked, Nara Shikamaru thought to himself, as he stepped off the bridge in the middle of that blasted land. The bridge itself was in poor repair, too far north and too far away from the major populations that traded between his country and Kaze no Kuni, but it was more or less directly in the way of the shortest path between their ninja villages and therefore the route most frequented by ninja not trying to be sneaky. Crossing this bridge on foot was a sort of ritual, like announcing one's presence by knocking before entering a room.
Having done so, he sighed, and looked back the way he'd come, shading his eyes from the sunrise that was doing its best to blind him.
"Can't take a little sunlight, huh? Some of us have to spend the whole morning staring into it."
Here we go again, he thought, and turned his head only enough to acknowledge the presence of the other person who'd not been there seconds before.
"Temari."
"In the flesh," the princess of Sunagakure said, stepping up behind him and sticking one hand into the high, stiff plume of black hair that jutted from the back of his head, "You're here earlier than I thought you'd be, slowpoke."
He looked over his shoulder to meet her eyes and sank his hands into his pockets.
"You're a pain in the neck, woman. I gathered from your message that it was probably more important than usual."
She stopped mussing with his hair and leant against him hard enough that he had to push back to avoid falling over. She threw an arm around his neck and poked him hard in the opposite shoulder, and he knew she was alone because that kind of fraternization was dangerously frowned upon. Not that it seemed to matter to her; not that it seemed to matter to him, either.
"If I just wanted to do that I'd have come straight to your door. No, I think we have a problem."
"I don't like the sound of that."
"You'll like the looks of it even less. Come on, I have a team waiting."
She moved, and pulled him by the shirt when he wasn't moving fast enough for her pleasure.
"Come on," she said again, and her voice was unpleasantly sharp, "this is a goddamned emergency."
That got his blood moving, and though he muttered something about it being a tremendous drag, his curiosity was piqued and he followed her pace for pace as she stormed off into the bushes. If it wasn't grass here, it grew in dense clumps of hard thorns with olive and ochre leaves. Everything stank of alkali and dry rot, but as they moved, another smell made itself increasingly apparent: blood, and lots of it.
This was not going to be a good start to what would have been an otherwise uneventful day.
He followed her up to the river's edge several kilometers upstream, where another Suna ninja stood guard with his arms crossed and a stern look on his face. Shikamaru gave him a nod, which was answered with nod and a serious look, which forced him to remember that right, he was in fact a diplomat and actually respected. Which was pretty funny in and of itself.
"So this," Temari said, stopping short, and the smell of blood was quite strong now as she batted carrion flies away from her face, "is our problem."
It was not a pleasant scene, he thought, waving his own hand around to keep the flies away. Two bodies lay before them, with a third somewhat further off. Another Suna ninja posted forty meters on the other side of the river suggested that there was a fourth body there, as well. And the two that lay here, and most likely the other two as well, wore headbands that marked them as ninjas from Kumogakure, the engraved clouds on glinting in the light of the bright clear sun resting on the horizon.
"Not good," Shikamaru said.
"No shit, not good. There's a whole genin team here and their jounin leader, killed on intermediate ground between our countries in the middle of the damn exam ceasefire and the best you have to say is 'not good'?"
"Well, if you put it that way," he said, and gave her a wry look. She looked exasperated. "You said they'd just gone missing. Okay, let's walk through this. I'll assume you've already taken steps to notify Kumo and let them know we're on it?"
"Unlike you I'm not totally incompetent. Still, it was a six hour hike just to find them out here from our nearest border post -- and when I left all I knew is that there were flashes out in the desert and we assumed there was fighting." She yawned. "Shit, I've been up all night."
So had he, considering he'd gotten her call at around three in the morning.
"Great. So, who died first?"
"The jounin. Judging from his position, I'd say he was struck first, in the back."
Temari knelt next to the corpse and reached out to the hole in the man's back, brushing away the flies' eggs to Shikamaru's and the flies' consternation.
"Ugh," he said, and she gave him a look that told him to suck it up, pussy. "Looks like a sword wound. From the angle it looks like it went clear through his heart. Explains why he didn't bleed as much as he could have. Probably dead before he hit the ground."
"Tactically, it makes sense. Kill the strongest first, then the weak."
"Right. I'm guessing this was the next one," he said, and pointed to the headless corpse of a genin kunoichi. Her head was not too far away, her face hidden by the dirt and the overhanging branches of a thorny bush with small grey fruit.
"Probably," Temari said, and wiped the blood and ichor from her fingers on Shikamaru's pants and stood up. She assumed a fighting stance where she thought the assassin might have stood, and guided a ghost sword through the motions: two-handed thrust, withdraw, recovery to the right, and then a hard, smooth slash, low and to the left. "Yeah, that seems right."
"Okay then. And then, what, the other two genin run. They're outclassed and probably panicking at this point."
"Sure. They flunked out of the first part of the exam, so if they weren't even hard enough to handle that..."
"...getting attacked and seeing their cell leader drop without a word wasn't going to help, no."
Shikamaru glanced over as she nodded, not caring that he'd finished the sentence. They were thinking the same thing anyway.
They moved to the third genin, sprawled on his back, his neck at an impossible angle, dark brown hair scattered in the dirt. He still held a kunai in a death-grip, his fingers coiled taut and white around its handle, held so tightly that his nails had cut into his palm, but apparently to no good effect.
"Look at this," he said, drawing Temari's attention and pointing with his foot. "Really slight bruising on his face here. Probably where the attacker grabbed his head."
"Right there, around the eyes? Yeah, I see it. Weird place to go for a neck break though. There's some on his free hand, too."
"Attacker might have grabbed him by the hand first, turned him around. Something's not right here, though."
"Besides the diplomatic shitstorm you and I are going to have to deal with come tomorrow?"
"No, I mean with the kills. What would you have done?"
Temari blinked, and her eyes turned feral. It was frightening, Shikamaru thought, the way her soft greens morphed into a feline viridian the way they always did before she killed, and they flickered with the malice running through her head. It was hard to look away, too. When she spoke, her voice was low and hard, a threatening whisper.
"Okay, I have a sword, and I can use it. Stab, chop -- easy, they didn't see me coming, now two are running. I'm faster, so I'd..."
Temari stopped, turned toward him, perplexed, and her voice rose with her eyebrows.
"...I'd just run him through or hamstring him to kill later."
"Exactly what I was thinking. Why stop to break his neck?"
"Oh, you're going to love this then," she said, and began walking out across the water, hovering across its surface on her chakra, long legs carrying her effortlessly to the clay bank on the far side. "Check out these burns."
Shikamaru followed her, and bent down for a better look. The clay was scorched in a wispy pattern, as though black, inky feathers had been dragged across it haphazardly. Electrical burns and no surprise there, a lot of Kumo ninja were specialists with lighting jutsu. This one seemed to have been trying to use the water to increase its power or range.
"So the attacker gives the last genin time to pull off one of his better jutsus," Shikamaru said.
"Looks like it, yeah. I mean, I'm not the fastest nin I know, but I could cross this in the time it takes your average genin to punch out five or six seals. And even if he did get it off, I can think of a dozen ways to cross the river and take him out immediately."
Shikamaru turned to look at the rest of the scene, and was glad to have the sun out of his eyes for a while. The last Suna ninja was smoking near the body, and he felt a pang in his chest even though he hadn't had a cigarette in about ten years, but thin wisps of ash were rising from a handful of other scorch marks scattered around. One small bush had burned down to a fragile sculpture of coals, the earth beneath it baked black.
"Who do you think did that? Our attacker or the genin?"
"If I didn't know how rare fire jutsus were in Kumo, I'd have to say the genin. And in this weather anything more powerful could have set fire to a lot more than just that."
"Well, you're more familiar with that than I would be," Shikamaru said. "It wouldn't be too difficult to be precise with small amounts of fire, but it doesn't look any of them hit the genin."
"And yet he's too competent to have messed up the other parts of the attack. Not to mention we haven't found a hint of his movements or location yet."
"More signs of fighting. Shuriken, kunai -- this part of the fight could have been as long as five minutes."
"It's like a cat," Temari said, head snapping toward him with the realization. "You ever watch a cat catch something? When they're bored they just play with the mouse or whatever until it dies. They catch it, let it go, swat it around a bit, let it recover and then catch it again."
"So, a sadist." That wasn't good by any means, but at least the probability of this being an agent of another power was that much smaller -- unless Iwa was agitating again. Most likely a missing nin, or someone with a score to settle. He didn't like it, but at least it was something to get going on. "We should see what we know about this kid's family, see if there are any outstanding vendettas going on. Plus we'll have to see the bingo book about missing-nin with fire jutsus and swords. Or even regular nin...too early to tell what exactly they're trying to pull."
The sun was higher now, two hands-breadths over the horizon. Shikamaru looked up, and the last few stars were winking out of existence next to the pale crescent of a waxing moon. There weren't any clouds.
"It'll be hot today," he said, but Temari wasn't listening. Instead she had a finger pressed to her left ear, and a growing look of horror on her face.
"Shit," she said, turning to face him, "that was the patrol. They found two more teams, one from Otogakure and...one of yours."
"Ugh. Better start asking around for a messenger summon, we're not going to find a phone this far out."
"Aren't you the master of the obvious today," she said, her voice no longer scathing. She let one end of her fan drop into the dirt, throwing up a handful of dust that scattered on the wind. "The other part of the problem is containment. I brought out two teams to find them, including my own, and with all the security in the village proper, we don't have nearly enough coverage to go looking for this guy properly and still keep a watch on everyone coming through here, ceasefire or no."
"Then we'll do it," Shikamaru said, voice listless. "This is our common ground."
"I know that tone."
"Yeah, yeah." He waved his hand, dismissing her. He didn't want to do it, but it looked like the world was dumping more responsibility in his lap again. "I get it enough from everyone else without you having to tell me. If we can get a summons out now, I can have a couple of our strongest here in -- maybe twelve, thirteen hours, if they really move it and carry pills."
"So long as they hurry. It's been over a day since phase two of the exams started, and teams will start heading back in this direction soon, if they haven't already left. What'll you do?"
"Wait. Whoever this was has had a four hour head start on us. He won't cross the border on your side, I don't think. You've got massive coverage to make sure your visitors don't try anything, so it's our border that's going to be most porous. Still, if he's predating on the teams that flunk out, he'll be waiting for them here, between our strongest forces. If I meet my people on my side we can sweep down through this godforsaken valley."
"You mean you're going to find a place to crash until they get here," she said, and her eyes told him she wasn't going to believe any other justification. She wasn't wrong, necessarily.
"That too. But there's still something bothering me about this, I just don't know what it is yet."
Temari drummed her fingers on the end of her fan for a moment.
"Alright then. Let's see if we can find anything else at the other two kill sites, and then I'll go with you. My teams can send word back to my village and we can advise anyone else who leaves to be careful and take an alternate route."
He could only agree. It was going to be a long day.