Author's notes: It took me three weeks to write this one...or was it four? The words are leaving me! And I have a horrible suspicion that I'm only a third done!

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Disclaimer: I has no monies! Be leaving me alone! I owns no official characters of Naruto! They...belong to Kishimoto!

And now for something completely different.

Kimimaro threw himself against a tree and waited for the brief storm of pulverised earth to blow past him. The suspicious shinobi had wasted no time in forcing him to realise that he had underestimated them. Normally, he wouldn't have had so much trouble against a dozen chuunin-level shinobi, but this wasn't normal, and they probably weren't chuunin.

The two shinobi he was now facing didn't look particularly formidable at a glance, but the girl with pink hair was using some method of chakra-manipulation to throw a devastating punch that could easily destroy the ground he was standing on and send chunks of dirt and rocks flying in all directions. The fat one in red hadn't done anything particularly dangerous yet, but that was just an extra reason to be watchful.

The sound of running footsteps and a grunt of exertion made him jump sideways, avoiding an explosion of splinters and the body of a collapsing tree. He sidestepped the fat one, who had, at some point, started rolling around like a ball, and got out of the way of another crushing blow from the pink-haired girl.

This was going to be difficult. The girl was too dangerous to approach carelessly, and the fat one was rolling in a way that made it difficult to stab. Hm…

The next time the human bowling ball came towards him, he managed to get behind it and kick it, going with its rotation. The impact made it bounce haphazardly into a tree, but it rolled down and came at him again. Truly bothersome. He reminded himself that there was more than one opponent, and ducked a chakra-laden punch that detonated above his head and gave off an appreciable wave of air pressure. But he was within striking distance now.

The sharp tip of the bone protruding from his right hand swept diagonally up towards the girl's collarbone. Defending her body with her forearms, she suffered a gash on her left and a nick to her right, but was otherwise unharmed. She jumped out of his reach to try and recover, but he was less than a step behind. She was expecting another swipe with the bone blades, so he kicked out side-long, catching her in the stomach and sending her sliding backwards on her toes. The rolling man wheeled past, preventing Kimimaro from following up, and allowing her time to regain her balance.

Then, suddenly, there was another noise. A crashing of leaves, but an absence of footfalls. Kimimaro glanced sideways in time to see a blur of orange, black and yellow heading in his direction, and had just enough time to duck before a human shape passed through the space his head and shoulders had been occupying a moment before. The shape sprang off a tree, and landed safely between the pink-haired girl and the fat guy, who had stopped rolling. They all had smiles of victory on their faces, which served to annoy him even more.

He was about to wipe the smirks from their faces when he realised he wasn't moving anymore. He tried to step forwards, and found that he couldn't. Then, rather jerkily, he started walking forwards, even though he hadn't wanted to. His arms fell to his sides, and he made his way towards the three shinobi, and noticed that there was a fourth walking forwards to join them. He stared Kimimaro directly in the eye with a steady, brooding gaze. He came to a halt about four feet away from Kimimaro and, after a few moments of scrutiny, looked over his shoulder at his associates- and Kimimaro had the uncomfortable experience of being forced to look over his shoulder at a nearby tree.

'Sakura, are you alright?' he asked, addressing the pink-haired girl.

'I'm alright, just a cut and some bruises' she returned, laying her open palm over the wound on her left forearm.

'Are you OK, Sakura-chan?' the orange-clad blonde asked her urgently, even though she had already answered that question.

'Yes, Naruto.' Her voice held some irritation at being interrupted, but when her hand came away from her arm, the wound was completely gone. Iryou-nin?

'Shikamaru, we should be careful with this guy,' said the fat one, in a less porcine voice than Kimimaro had imagined him having.

'Yeah,' said the apparently leader of the group as he turned his head to face Kimimaro again, mirrored by Kimimaro. It was then that Kimimaro caught sight of something very, very important. They were wearing Konoha forehead protectors.

'Konoha?' Kimimaro blurted out, surprise obvious in his voice. The one called Shikamaru raised an eyebrow incredulously and tried to put his hands on his hips. The blunt edge of the bones sticking out of Kimimaro's hands prevented him from doing so, and so too prevented Shikamaru from doing the same. He put his hands back by his side.

'Yes, we're from Konoha. Were you expecting someone else?'

'…'

'Hmmm… This is troublesome…' he fell back into a sitting position, causing Kimimaro to do the same. 'But I'd like you to tell me a few things. I've got time.'

In the quiet, dimly lit antechamber of a mansion in the underpopulated hills an hour by foot outside Denza -a large city in the county of Lightning- a single finger drummed impatiently on the armrest of a centrally positioned dais. A contingent of silent servants, their faces tastefully shrouded by black cloth stencilled with the lord of the house's crest, ringed the room. With a flick of his wrist, the occupant of the dais sent a porcelain cup bouncing across the stone floor. It was made to withstand this kind of treatment, but a hairline fracture split the green surface as a faceless, black-clad servant darted forward to collect it. The lord of the house didn't seem interested. The finger continued to drum unabated.

Something wasn't right. No information was getting through to him from his spies. There was a blind spot in his overview of the country. The fact that the blind spot obscured virtually everything outside the mansion walls vexed him greatly. He had heard nothing from Tsukasa since he left to investigate, and even Kimimaro had failed to make scheduled contact to report the success of his last assignment.

The drumming finger paused thoughtfully before being raised to point at the servant industriously picking tiny slivers of chipped clay from between the floor's gaudy flagstones. When the servant realised it was being addressed, it palmed the shards into the broken cup and sat respectfully at attention.

'You' the lord said dryly. 'Where is Tsukasa?'

The servant bowed low from a sitting position, lamenting that it had no favourable news to convey. 'I regret that I do not know, Raitengeki-sama. He must still be outside the household.'

Lord Raitengeki bit back a surge of fury that urged him to punish the servant for being so useless. There was no point to getting over-anxious. He needed to calm down. It took him a moment to notice that the servant still had its forehead pressed to the floor, awaiting either instructions or punishment.

'You may go.'

'Yes, my lord.' The servant was well-trained, and immediately returned to clearing up the remaining specks of clay and spilt tea. Lord Raitengeki was glad that he had refrained from beating it, and decided that showing mercy was an adequate reward for such admirable servitude.

He settled himself again and tried to force his muscles to relax. Not easy, as he was extremely tense today. He felt restless. Perhaps some swordsmanship drills would calm his nerves.

He rose deliberately from his sitting position and the shrouded servants immediately drifted forward to wait on him. He made his way towards the double doors at the entrance of the room, which was opened at his approach, and headed for the dojo.

Thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine, forty. Ino pushed herself away from the floor, switched arms, and started doing one-armed push-ups with her right arm. She shrugged off the sharp bite of pain from her shoulder, as well as the dull ache from the larger bruises and deeper cuts that hadn't quite healed yet, and powered through another forty.

It hadn't been a good idea to train these last few days, so now that the level of pain she felt from various places on her body were easily tolerable, she wanted to try and catch up on lost time. She wasn't a huge fan of physical training, but she felt like a cat that had been in a cage for too long. She wanted to run around, and jump from tree to tree- anything! But, she didn't know the area (at all), and Kimimaro had very nicely asked her to not leave the house. So, since she was already drenched in sweat and stank to high-heaven, she had decided to do some stamina building exercises before having a very long bath.

After finishing breakfast, she had jumped right back to the topic of who the hell the girl that had come visiting was. Kimimaro had managed to placate her by briefly explaining that Haruko was the first friend he had ever had, and that she was like a little sister to him.

That still sounded a little dangerous, but she was content to believe that the "little sister" wasn't any serious competition. Kimimaro was all hers… sort-of.

Easing into the steaming hot bath, grateful that the house had running hot water, she fell back to her biggest gripe at the moment: Geography.

Kimimaro lived here, in the Kaminari no Kuni countryside. Ino lived in Konohagakure no Sato in Hi no Kuni. "Long-distance relationship" was putting it mildly. If you wanted to get from Kaminari to Hi you had to pass through at least two other small countries on the way.

She couldn't just leave Konoha, but Kimimaro apparently had no affiliation to Kumogakure, so he could move to Konoha without having to be a nuke-nin. But she couldn't just ask him to do that, he had friends here that were the closest thing he had ever had to family, if the way he talked about them was any indication.

She groaned inwardly and sank further into the hot water, ignoring the faint burning sensation from her injuries. She submerged her head and blew petulant bubbles that rolled up over her face in an oddly soothing way. There was no point in thinking about it now. She vaguely remembered Kimimaro saying something about giving her an answer in three days, but she wasn't sure if she had dreamed that or not. Her best bet, she supposed, was to wait and see what happened. Her mission was still important, and had to be completed as soon as possible, but she really did need Kimimaro's help with that. Assuming she actually knew what to report, that is.

She knew Hourai was up to something, he had help from Kirigakure, and he had said something cryptic about "changing" this country. It was hard to say precisely what he meant by that, but it definitely wasn't something benign.

She resurfaced and wiped the water away from her eyes. The bath was good. How long had it been since she last had one? Two, three weeks?

She sighed, as though breathing out all her troubles, and enjoyed the water.

'It's not that I don't believe you, but you must understand how the situation looks from my point of view, right?'

Kimimaro did- it was only prudent to treat a story like "I found your friend, conveniently alive, and decided to save her on a whim" with some measure of caution. He understood that, but… he couldn't help feeling like he was being ominously watched over by fleas. The girl, Sakura, the energetic Naruto, and the other male he hadn't caught the name of were standing behind him, presumably to kill him if he made any sudden moves while Shikamaru listened to his story. He had no overwhelming desire to be hit by one of Sakura's monstrously powerful attacks, and Shikamaru's shadow was difficult to deal with, but apart from that he couldn't help feeling that they were simply beneath him. But, Shikamaru had graciously removed the technique that had forced Kimimaro to mimic his movements while they talked, and the compromise was that he endure being stood over by the likes of Naruto in case he tried to kill them mid-conversation.

'I can imagine.'

'As long as we understand one-another,' Shikamaru rose (inelegantly, in Kimimaro's opinion) to his feet. 'So, assuming you're telling the truth, I'd like to go to your house to see Ino as soon as possible. I'd appreciate it if you'd lead the way.'

'Would you feel uncomfortable having me behind or next to you?'

Shikamaru smiled at the question. 'That's very perceptive.'

Kimimaro smiled at his response. 'That is very sensible.'

'Huh?' the one called Naruto seemed confused by this exchange. 'You guys are sort-of similar, aren't you?' he crossed his arms and pondered why this might be the case.

'I guess so,' Shikamaru mused, 'I guess it's intellectual appreciation. You wouldn't understand.'

'Hmm-hey!'

'Naruto.' Sakura stopped the conversation immediately with the tone of her voice.

'Sakura-chan?'

'We don't have time to argue.'

'What's up?' Shikamaru apparently found her intrusion into the conversation important enough to take his eyes of Kimimaro.

'When we were asking around town about Ino, we did find out something.'

'What?'

'That someone else had been asking about her before us.'

Ino was in the middle of drying her hair when the alarm was raised. Kimimaro had, at some point during his occupancy, installed some basic perimeter alarms in the woods around his house. At the moment, the rope in the rafters -running along the length of the roof- marked with the number Four was shaking, causing the wooden tags suspended from it to chatter against each-other excitedly. The chattering lasted only a few moments, before it settled down. Then there was a slight shiver.

Ino was no psychic, but she could tell what had happened as though she was watching it happen first-hand.

One or more shadowy figures approaching the house carefully, accidentally kicking the trip wire. The mistake was realised even as it happened, and the foot was pressed into the ground hard to stop it moving suddenly. Then, with exaggerated care, the foot was slowly and smoothly dragged backwards until it was clear of the line.

After a few agonising moments of complete silence, whoever was heading to the house -deciding the element of surprise had been broken- moved in with less caution. Alarm ropes twelve, six, three and nine jerked suddenly, clacking as though someone had stepped heavily onto the trip wires they attached to. Ino had no idea about the layout of the wires, so she didn't know what direction they were coming from, but she was sure she only had a few seconds to figure out a plan.

She pulled the towel she was wrapped in tight, secured it, and ducked behind the doorframe of the bedroom silently. She was unarmed, but she was still a shinobi. She made her clan's trademark symbol with her hands, looking through the gap between them at the door as though looking through binoculars and waited.