Author's Notes: Blood and ashes! This chapter was waaay too hard to write for some reason. I haven't even read parts of it for a week or so, so I hope it makes sense, and is spelt correctly. ~.~

Disclaimer: I do not own the series Naruto, its characters or trademarked gimmicks. Haruko, I made up; Tennji, I made up.

The morning dawned like dream. The sun glinted off a heavy cover of dew- the uncomfortable heat of the night completely forgotten. The soft chirping of crickets was offset by the crisp singing of birds-

Bang-bang-bang!

Ino jerked awake violently and rolled over- or tried to. There was an arm in the way. In fact, there was an awful lot of someone else in the way. Kimimaro had his arms around her, and their legs had become somewhat entwined during the night. Neither of them had a shirt on, and there was a thin sheen of sweat between them wherever their skin touched. Kimimaro himself was blinking himself rapidly awake and seemed to regard the situation with great interest. Ino squirmed in his grip lamely, abhorring the way she slipped across his chest on a slick of sweat.

Bang-bang-bang! 'Heeey! Kimimaro-kun! Wake up!' came a cry from outside, muffled heavily. Kimimaro's eyes widened in recognition and he released his grip. Ino slithered onto the floor, landing on her right shoulder and stifling a scream. Kimimaro pulled on a shirt and managed to get a hold of Ino and help her up on the second attempt. Once vertical, she found her shirt and looked around frantically for a hiding spot. Kimimaro thought for a moment and pointed to the bedroom. Ino scurried in the direction of his pointed finger without hesitation, and disappeared.

Bang-Bang-Bang! 'Heeeeeeeeeey!' Once Ino was safely out of sight, he waited three seconds for good measure, then approached the front door. He took a deep breath, then opened it.

As expected, he was met by a pair of bright blue eyes framed by immaculately brushed brown hair. 'Good morning, Kimimaro-kun!'

Kimimaro looked down at her with sleep-laden eyes and tried to mop up the sweat that wasn't all his with his shirt. 'Good morning' he said curtly, as though talking to a stranger. The girl was less than impressed.

'What's with that half-hearted greeting? And what's with you coming to town two days ago and not coming to see me? And…' her nose wrinkled 'you stink!' Kimimaro tried to close the door again, but found it wedged open by the girl's face, which she had shoved between the door and the frame at the first sign of closure. 'I-I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Kimimaro-san! But please open the door, even though you stink!' She screwed up her face when the pressure being applied to her skull became painful and tried vainly to push the door open again. 'It-it hurts, Kimimaro-sama! Please forgive me, Kimimaro-sama!'

Grudgingly, as though against his better judgement, Kimimaro let go of the door and the girl stumbled through the threshold, rubbing the sides of her head. 'Uuuu, why are you so mean to me?'

'You should show more respect to your elders.'

'Hiiiii!' she waved her arms around furiously. 'You're only four years older than me, that doesn't count!'

'Four years your elder.'

'I'm telling you it doesn't count!'

Kimimaro sighed and tried a different approach. 'What did you come here for?'

'To say "hello," of course! Hey? Did I wake you up?'

'…'

'I woke you up, right?'

'…I-'

'I did wake you up! How about I make you breakfast to apologise?' There was a gleam in her eye as she said this, like she was asking him to grant her one true desire. Kimimaro twitched at the memory of the last time she had cooked him something.

'Please don-'

'It's no trouble, no trouble!' she was already reaching for a knife.

'Haruko-'

'It's nooo trouble, I tell you! Sit your ass down! What would you like?' She said it with a smile on her face, but the knife gleamed wickedly. Suddenly, Kimimaro wished he hadn't sharpened it recently.

'Something that's difficult to burn.'

'Did you say something?'

'…No.'

'Yes, Haruko,' Kimimaro was saying, insincerely. 'Whatever would I do without your "Delicious Breakfast Charcoal?"'

Haruko looked the table squarely in the eye, not wanting to meet Kimimaro's. Thoroughly disgraced by her attempts at making fried eggs though she was, she wasn't going to cry. She wasn't.

'You don't have to say it like that!'

'Don't cry.'

'I'm not crying!'

Kimimaro poked the thin mass of crumbly black material dirtying one of his plates, attempting to find some hint of white or yellow. Finding none, he set his knife down and pushed his plate toward the middle of the table.

'Gochisousama.'

'Uuuuu…'

'Don't cry.'

'I'm not crying!'

Kimimaro sighed, more deeply than was necessary. 'Are you ready to go home yet?'

'Hm?' Haruko scowled at him. 'You really are being mean to me today.'

'Is that strange?'

'Uh…well…you're pretty mean most of the time…but you seem grumpy today. What's wrong? Did you have a scary nightmare?' A pair of hands clamped down on either side of her head. Kimimaro glared at her from very close proximity. Haruko's expression froze. 'Um…I-I'm sorry. I was being impolite.' The hands were removed. Haruko exhaled in relief.

Kimimaro sat back in his chair and folded his arms thoughtfully. In the years that he had known her, she had become…like a sister, he supposed. He still remembered the first time she had shown up at his front door. She had been very polite. Six years had done much to change that.

'W-what? You're giving me a weird look.'

'Hm?' Kimimaro snapped back to reality. 'Oh. I was remembering…'

Haruko cocked her head to the side in confusion. 'Remembering?'

'About six years ago.'

'Ah…' Haruko smiled, a dreamy expression creeping onto her face. 'Nostalgic…'

Ino groaned inwardly and tried to shift herself into a more comfortable position. There being less room than would allow movement, her position didn't actually change all that much. She ignored the sensation of her muscles cramping up, and tried to listen for any indication that Kimimaro's visitor had left.

She commended herself on being well enough to have hidden in the tiny cupboard above the wardrobe in the bedroom quickly and quietly, but it was turning out to have been a poor choice. In fact, it had started looking that way about an hour ago.

From the voice she had heard through the door and the high-spirited yelling she had heard since, she assumed it wasn't business-related. Assuming Kimimaro got business-visits. But no, this was more of a social call.

She tried moving one of her arms to allow her to reposition her torso, but a sharp skirting board dug into her bicep almost at once. No room. She gave up on moving for the moment and tried not to focus on the sensation that her limbs were fusing painfully together.

'Nnmn, hnmmnmhmnhh.'

That sounded promising. It was coming from…the hall, she guessed. She held her breath and tried to focus only on the muffled voice.

'Hehee, that's true… Mmm. Should I…? Oh, alright… Hehe, I will. I'll see you again, soon, Kimimaro-kun! Bye-bye~!' The final-sounding snap of the door latch was all the confirmation Ino needed. She stabbed at the cupboard door with her fingers until it was open enough to push herself partway out with her screaming legs.

Being out of the oppressive, confined space was such a relief she didn't bother getting all the way out. She hung out of the cupboard, upside down, by her legs and gulped down fresh air.

After a minute or so, just when Ino was thinking about getting down, Kimimaro appeared in the doorway carrying two bowls. He tilted his head curiously upon seeing Ino hanging upside-down. Ino, suddenly self-conscious, tugged her shirt up towards her waist. It had slipped and crumpled its way halfway to her shoulders, but no harm done. Then she remembered that he had seen her with no shirt on numerous times- then she remembered how she had fallen asleep last night.

Kimimaro winced empathetically even before Ino hit the floor. He pondered the wisdom of asking her if it had really been a good idea to hide in such a place, but thought better of it.

'Aaaah. What took you so long? I thought I was going to turn into a statue!' Ino complained, rubbing her head. She had been trying not to fall on her shoulder, for once, but it hadn't quite worked the way she had planned. Not surprising, given that she had formulated the plan whilst falling.

'It was…complicated.'

'Arrh! Who was that, anyway?'

'Don't worry about that- have some breakfast,' he said quickly, offering one of the bowls he was carrying. The smell of stir-fried vegetables made her consider putting off the line of questioning for the moment- but only until she was done eating.

Still not quite sure she should be going along with this; she accepted a pair of chopsticks Kimimaro handed to her. '…Itadakimasu…'

Tennji Nendo -Chuunin of Kumogakure no Sato- paced the terrace, singing quietly to himself with broken, made-up lyrics. He liked to sing when he was patrolling. It kept him from thinking about how far he would fall if a particularly strong gust of wind nudged him off the edge.

He was assigned, for the moment he hoped, to man one of the small lookout posts dotted around the village perimeter. The village didn't have a wall, since most of it was built on sheer cliff faces and tall spikes of rock. Somewhere, far below his feet, ordinary people at the base of the mountain were doing the normal things that often made Tennji jealous. Being a shinobi didn't suit him, he'd decided. Not up here, on the mountain, at least. But he had done the training and passed the Chuunin exam, so it was a little late to be getting scared of heights.

He broke his tune to throw an irritated punch and the bank of cloud that was completely obscuring his vision. It did stop him seeing how high he was, which he liked, but he was meant to be a lookout and he didn't appreciate a cloud stopping him from…looking out. He blew a raspberry at it and started up a new song.

'I~ have a…I~ can see…Ummm…' He tried again. 'I~ hate Toushi~ like a... like a cloud made of…pepper in my eyes~ hmhmhm dodo do… All~ I have here is rooftops and clouds. Geez I hate Toushi, do dododo do…'

The clouds were passing now, and he could just make out a bare spire of rock, that he knew to be approximately two hundred metres away, rising out of the gloom like a ghostly finger. He watched it become more and more defined until the cloud was completely gone and he had an unobstructed view of the landscape as far as the eye could see. He shielded his eyes from the sun and resumed his pacing, occasionally scanning the ground below for any anomalous movement. It was an essentially pointless exercise, since all you could really see from so high up was, say, an approaching army, but better safe than sorry, eh?

'If I see one more damned carriage, I'll…go down the mountain, get a rock and throw it? Or bring it back up and throw it? A-da'yam I hate Toushi~ that cheating ba~stard drew me the short stra~w.'

Okay, so maybe singing wasn't his thing- but he had to do something to pass the time and…gosh, it really was a long way down…

'A-ahaha, I'm n-no~t afra~id of he-eights! Kumogakure Banzai!'

A noise made him turn. Noise wasn't anything new up here, all kinds of noises filtered up from below- loud noises, usually heavily distorted by distance. But this one hadn't been very loud, and didn't sound like it had come from below. He couldn't see anything that might have made the noise- probably that damn crow again. Whoever had been on sentry duty before him had given food scraps to the scraggly thing, and every time he ate it glared at him like he owed it something.

He shrugged it off and started walking again.

'I~ think I'm gonna have fish~ tonight. I'm~ gonna-Ghhhk!' Pain. Lots of pain. Pain like someone had just stabbed him. In the back. Had someone just stabbed him in the back? It really felt like someone had just stabbed him in the back! 'Hnnnhk!' The knife, or whatever had been used to stab him, was violently wrenched free. Tennji managed to stagger a few steps before a kick to the small of his back pitched him over the rim of the terrace, and the ground rushed up towards him.

On the plus side, he didn't have to be terrified all the way to the bottom, since he passed out pretty quickly.

Not bothering to watch the body tumble away, a shinobi wrapped in a thick blue mantle and a Kirigakure no Sato forehead protector made the sign of the Tiger with his hands and transformed in a brief cough of smoke. He quickly checked his disguise over, then began prowling around the terrace -in a professional manner that the real Tennji would have been hard pressed to pull off- and cleared his throat.

'I~ think I'm gonna have fi~sh tonight. I~'m gonna go home and eat some ta~sty fish…do dodo.'

Kimimaro made his way through the village surreptitiously. He had heard an interesting story from Gen- one which gave him cause to take a great interest in it.

The story was that a band of travelling merchants had come into town early that day. Aside from the peculiar fact that these so-called merchants weren't setting up a stall in the middle of town and banging on at the townsfolk about the many benefits of their wares, they weren't really interested in trading, by the sound of it.

What they were interested in was one of their companions, who had apparently become separated from them at some point in their travels, and they would very much like to find her again.

The description of a young woman with blonde hair and teal eyes, wearing purple clothes had, naturally, rung alarm bells in Gen's head, so he had told Kimimaro about it the second he got into town. So- Kimimaro was attempting to find them without appearing overly suspicious. Not hard in a small town. You could hide in plain sight just by wandering around aimlessly.

When he found them, two of the "merchants" were talking to a villager. To be accurate, one of them was talking –quite animatedly- to a villager, and the other was staring at a wall vacantly.

The villager they were questioning shook his head and waved his hand in a definite "no" and strolled down the street to the greengrocer. The animated merchant glanced at the vacant merchant and sighed her disappointment. Almost as though she knew he was there, she looked up- straight at him and made a beeline towards him. The vacant merchant trotted after her obediently, still with a look on his face that hinted at bovine stupidity.

'Heeey, you over there! Hey, got a minute?' Not waiting for a response, she stopped in front of him, in just such a way that would cause Kimimaro maximum difficulty to get past, and asked him a series of questions listlessly, like she was getting sick of asking them. 'Are you a local?'

Kimimaro nodded that, yes, he was a local and tried to take the two merchants in. They were both roughly the same height, weight, complexion, had similar hair and eye tones, were wearing matching clothes, and carried identical wooden backpacks. There the resemblance ended, but they were similar to an extent that they were probably siblings. Something about them bothered him, though.

'Okay, there was a storm about a week ago, right?'

'Yes.'

'Right, did anyone come into town around that time?'

'Not that I know of…'

'Hrmmm…' she hitched up her backpack thoughtfully. 'Haven't seen any strangers in town- apart from us, I mean?'

'Well…' this probably wasn't such a good idea, but it was the most expedient way of getting some information quickly. '…Not in town…' As expected, the woman's eyes widened- even the vacant one seemed to perk up at this.

'So…outside of town, then? Where? When?'

Kimimaro glanced around, careful to look wary of something. 'Maybe we should talk somewhere else…'

'Sure, wherever, let's go! Lead the way, sir!'

Still not sure that this was a good idea, Kimimaro led them away from the village and into the forest. There was a certain part of the forest that few villagers went to, and for a very good reason. There were traps. Animal traps, in fact. Only the huntsmen ventured to this part of the forest, and only every few days. More people and more often would scare away the animals.

The distance they went into the forest was directly proportionate to how uncomfortable the woman became and how angry the man became. By the time they were getting close to the traps he was looking pretty unhappy. And the woman was looking like she was about to freak out.

'Um, sir? How far do we need to go just to talk?'

'Not far now…'

They were almost there. Almost at the large pitfall that the hunters chased wild boars into. No matter who they were, being in a hole would be disadvantageous to them. If it came down to a fight, he wanted to be sure he could kill them quickly. He was dealing with shinobi now, after all, not just some hired thugs.

It wasn't until a few moments after the footsteps behind him stopped that Kimimaro realised the merchants had stopped walking. He turned to find them both glaring daggers at him.

'This is far enough, sir. I'd appreciate it if you'd tell us what you know now,' said the woman.

'No tricks, please,' said the man, a dangerous gleam in his eye, and the moronic expression off his face.

'Very well…' Kimimaro sank into a low stance, ready to extend bone spiked from his palms. 'But first, I'll have you tell me which Hidden Village you come from.'

A smirk spread across the woman's face. 'Interesting… I didn't think we'd find you so soon!'

Then, both merchants were enveloped in a puff of smoke, as they dispelled the simple illusion which had disguised them so well.

Author's Notes: Ha-shaa! Fight time! Nobody in this story has really used any "high-level" techniques yet. But I think that Henge is a vastly under-appreciated skill. Look forward to a fight scene, next chapter!