Second Time Around
By Frozzy
Chapter Two
"It's listed as a simple retrieval mission. Go in, acquire the object, get out," Tsunade said from where she stood and looked out one of the many windows in her office. "But I'll spare you the false pretenses and tell you that halfway throughout it, you will have killed a minimum of two people each."
Right from the get-go of entering the Hokage's office, Sakura had focused all of her attention onto the Hokage and the information that spilled off her tongue. After all, this was an enforced habit. But at the slow rate that the briefing was chugging along, Sakura found it increasingly difficult not to try to catch a proper glimpse of the two men that flanked her sides. Naruto, blonde and restless, stood to her left. Kakashi, tall and somber, stood to her right.
"Your client, Imagawa Kaito, was robbed," Tsunade said. "A set of antique ruby earrings and matching necklace were stolen when bandits raided his village about one week ago. Several witnesses have identified one of those bandits as Fukuda Hisashi."
Sakura's stomach plummeted to her feet.
"It must come as no news to you that he is the infamous hired muscle of Sakamoto Tora. And that is precisely why this will not stay a simple retrieval mission for very long," Tsunade said and walked over to her desk. She sat down in her chair and spent a moment on gathering her thoughts.
"Sakura," she said. "You are aware of Sakamoto's reputation?"
Sakura cleared her throat. She wasn't ready to be singled out while her stomach was still rummaging around somewhere down by her feet.
"She is a former ninja of Grass with no last known location. Still, for the past year she has regularly been spotted crossing the border between Grass and Waterfall. There is reason to believe that she's running an illegal cross-border market. She is also a reputed practitioner of higher level poisons-"
"-known for her untraceable and scentless gasses that can have you drop dead five seconds after inhalation. It's not for lack of trying that there are no antidotes to over half of her inventions," Tsunade finished.
Sakamoto's poisonous gasses had become nothing short of a legend among the Konoha medics. Sakura herself was impressed by the woman's skill level, but she couldn't think like that any longer. Not now that Sakamoto was the target. You couldn't fear your target. Or admire it, for that matter.
"The mission was requested by Grass and has been commissioned by both Rain and Waterfall should you pass onto their territory," Tsunade said. "This means that there should be no trouble when you pass any borders. Given that you do so legally and as part of your assigned mission. Instructions on how to get to the village are listed in the scroll and if you need any further information then that will be in the scroll as well."
She handed Kakashi the scroll. Sakura watched his fingers curl around it.
"Tsunade-sama, may I ask a question?"
"Go ahead, Sakura. And don't be so formal."
"Yes, shishou," Sakura said and felt her shoulders unwind. "Why did Grass ask for our aid?"
"They didn't want to deal with Sakamoto without a suitable medic at hand. One who has experience with poisons of a high level. It turns out that they have no Grass medics with that particular skillset at hand. And we have you, Sakura. Your past experience is why this team has landed this mission. It is also why I'm taking you off your regular hospital schedule and putting you into the field."
No pressure at all, Sakura thought and smiled.
"The payment is that of a regular A-class mission. But it might vary depending on how much of a threat Sakamoto turns out to be. It may turn S-class. Your client has agreed to those terms. Now, I expect you to be off tomorrow morning. No dawdling," Tsunade said and gave Kakashi a pointed look.
"Of course not, Hokage-sama," he said.
Despite his many other character flaws, Sakura had never known Kakashi to be a slouch when it came to his job. He could be lazy and aloof right until he had a kunai imbedded in his neck, but maybe that was just a side effect of his masochistic nature and not a reflection of his work ethic. You didn't go into the shinobi profession and expect not to be irreparably messed up once you passed the ten years mark. It should be part of the job description. Or it should be read aloud to all new Academy students with accompanying pictures and illustrations. That would scare off those who were unsuited for the profession, though perhaps that was a bit hypocritical of Sakura to say. She hadn't been very suited for the shinobi life at first, but she had worked her way up to it eventually. Now she was the Hokage's apprentice. That was something to be proud of.
"Off you go then," Tsunade said and dismissed the three of them. "I don't need any more delays today. I've got enough paperwork to bring me into the next year already."
"One more question?" Sakura asked.
"What is it, Sakura?"
"I thought Sakamoto already had been imprisoned for committing felony?"
"That was one of her cronies."
"Excuse me?"
"She put one of her cronies in her place," Tsunade repeated. "When he attempted to escape his cell, he was killed by the guards. And since his transformation jutsu no longer had energy to fuel it, the charade ended like that."
"That's a low level technique," Kakashi said. "Why did no one recognize it?"
"Because all leadership within Grass is incompetent," Tsunade said. "They're a bunch of pansy asses. But keep in mind that while Grass is incompetent, Sakamoto surely isn't. Don't let this fool you. Now get out."
The group of three exited the office without further fuss.
"What's our plan?" Naruto asked outside in the halfway. Restless as always, he cracked his knuckles and bounced on his feet in anticipation of the upcoming mission. Kakashi pocketed the mission scroll and looked at his younger teammates.
"One of the bandits was captured during the raid," he said. "I suppose our best shot would be to interrogate him and see if he can give us anything on Sakamoto's whereabouts and the stolen items."
"And if he can't?" Sakura asked. Kakashi threw Sakura a sideways glance of quiet contemplation. It was a tough-ass struggle not to look away from that charcoal eye. Flashes of blue doors and high heels came to the forefront of Sakura's memory, as hard and unrelenting as stone. She felt inexplicably relieved when Kakashi decided not to warrant her question an answer.
"We depart six o'clock tomorrow morning," he said. "We'll meet up at Training Ground Four and go through the essentials before heading out. How does that sound?"
"Fucking peachy."
"Think of it like this," Naruto said to Sasuke for the fifth time. "You get to do tons of other missions while we're stuck with this one for who knows how long."
"You're missing the whole point, dumbass."
More like pointedly overlooking it, Sakura thought. She was tired of the discussion that had gone on for over half an hour now. It was running as thick as ever. If Tsunade could predict ten ninjas attacking the local bathhouse on the night of the next full moon, then why couldn't she predict how this Sakamoto mission would shove the stick in Sasuke's ass up so far that he would choke on it and die? Sakura smiled, almost against her own will. You've made your bed, Sasuke. Now you have to sniff your way to your manly nuts and lie in it.
After having left the Hokage tower earlier that afternoon, Sakura and Naruto had agreed on a quick sparring session to get into the mood for the upcoming day. Conveniently, Sasuke had chosen to drop by, which led them to where they were now, heading back to the village with a mood as dark and thundery as the chilly evening sky above them.
Peachy, indeed.
"We didn't ask for the mission," Sakura said.
"You didn't refuse it either."
"There was no reason to refuse it," Sakura said, not in the mood to mother Sasuke's neurotic tendencies. "We fit the criteria adequately and should we succeed it'll look good on our records."
"Adequately," Sasuke said.
"Yes," Sakura said and balled her fists. "Adequately."
"Adequate isn't good enough."
"I can settle for adequate if it gets me by," Sakura said and smiled.
"That's because you lack potential to grow beyond adequate," Sasuke said. Sakura was just about to let loose and rip into Sasuke's less than superb past, but a familiar voice dropped in on their conversation before Sakura got the chance to tear Sasuke apart.
"If it ain't the trio having a spat," Ino said, emerging from the thicket at the side of the road like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. She was followed by Tenten and Shikamaru. That was one downside of having a social circle that consisted entirely of shinobi. You never knew when someone popped up behind you at random.
"Congratulations on the transfer," Shikamaru said to Sakura and rolled his shoulders backwards to crack the joints in his neck. The medic in Sakura roared to the surface, because arthritis!, but she was off hospital duty for at least a couple of weeks, so she shoved it back under again. She needed the break.
"Did you hear that Hinata was offered your old spot at the hospital?" Shikamaru asked.
"I thought Ino would have been taken into consideration first?" Sakura asked and looked askance at the other jonin.
Shikamaru shrugged. "I don't know about that. Hinata declined though."
"Makes sense. I couldn't picture her in that position," Sakura said. "And I bet she can't either. She's skilled enough, but the position consumes most of your everyday. And she has clan duties to attend to. Not to mention the position requires a lot of decision making. Hard decisions. Not that Hinata can't do that, but well, I don't know."
"She did say something about her schedule if I remember correctly," Tenten added helpfully. By now, the large group had reached the outer part of the village, though none of them had taken much notice of it.
"If I was part of a clan as stuck-up as hers, I would work my ass off to get away from it and not the other way around," Shikamaru said with his brows lowered in a soft scowl.
"She doesn't think like that," Tenten told him. "They're raised not to think like that."
Sakura figured that Tenten would know best, given that she had spent years around Neji who always seemed to be a victim of clan business in the most unfair ways. The poor guy had his reasons for being obnoxiously arrogant and conceited, and those reasons had nothing to do with 'because it gets him laid' no matter how wholeheartedly Naruto believed that.
"By the way, where's Chouji these days?" Sakura asked. "I haven't seen him around here lately?"
"Surveillance mission."
"Lee and Neji got called out to an ANBU subdivision two weeks ago," Tenten said.
"I thought we had no ANBU divisions working in the field right now?"
"It's somewhere close to Hidden Rock," she said.
"Shouldn't that be confidential?" Shikamaru asked. Tenten blushed an obvious red.
"Neji is slacking off," Shikamaru said. "He shouldn't tell you this stuff."
Tenten was on the defense immediately. "He is not telling me."
"Oh, really?"
The loud bickering of Naruto and Ino made Sakura tune out whatever Tenten said next.
It was nearing midnight that day when Sakura finally got home after having spent hours on assuring her mother that Hana, the blonde nurse from 4A, would be the one to deliver her prescription medicine until Sakura would return in a few weeks time. Sleep should have come easily to her that night. Yet she ended up lying on her bed, staring up at the spider that had conquered her ceiling for over a week, if not more.
"Yo."
"And he arrives," Sakura said. She sat cross-legged on top of a large rock at the outer skirts of Training Ground Four. Naruto sat on the ground directly below the rock. His snoring could be heard reverberating throughout the cleared space of the training area.
"The nostalgia is overwhelming, isn't it?" Kakashi asked.
"Painfully so," Sakura said and jumped off the rock. She nearly fell to the ground when her thigh decided to go into painful cramps at the sudden action. She had sat still for too long, waiting for Kakashi to finally show his face. Several hours later than what they had planned. The nearby movement roused Naruto from his slumber.
"Kakashi-sensei?" he asked and sat up straighter, blinking owlishly. "What time is it?"
"You've been asleep for two hours," Sakura said and rubbed feeling back into her thigh, trying to look nonchalant about it. "So that would make it nine in the morning."
"Old habits die hard," Kakashi said.
"Let's just go over the plan, please?" Sakura asked and stretched her leg a last time to get rid of the cramps. Naruto stood up from the ground and stretched his sleepy muscles into action.
"The village is located in a valley close to the border of Grass and Waterfall," Kakashi said. "Once we get there we'll talk with the village leader and see if they have gotten anything else out of the man they've kept imprisoned. Besides his name."
"What's the prisoner's name?" Naruto asked.
"Sasaki Fumio," Kakashi answered. It was hard to imagine Kakashi sitting up late at night to go over mission facts until they were engraved into his memory, but the way in which he answered that question made Sakura imagine that precise image. How many missions, how many deaths and survivals, were stored in his mind? All jokes aside, it was very likely that Kakashi did suffer from eccentricity, self-inflicted or otherwise.
"That name doesn't ring a bell. Not in association with Sakamoto," Sakura said. "Are we sure the prisoner is not lying?"
"There are no records of the name anywhere," Kakashi said. "He could be lying or he could be telling the truth. We can't know. But, for the sake of believing in mankind, let us assume he is telling the truth until we have reason to believe any differently."
"What are we waiting for?" Naruto asked and pumped his fist, ever the optimist.
"We've got no trail if the guy won't cooperate. It's not gonna be that easy," Sakura tried to warn her blond friend, but it was like speaking to an owl. All you would get in return would be a lazy blink and a slow shake of a wing.
It took one hour of travelling for Naruto to become bored and for Sakura to punch him in the face for suggesting that Shino had stationed bugs in her bedroom that spied on her when she slept.
"You didn't have to punch that hard," he said and touched the tender side of his face.
"I only punch hard," she said and ignored him after that, choosing instead to focus on the sound of rustling leaves in the late spring air and the feel of soft soil beneath her sandals. She nearly tripped over a large branch stretched diagonally across the road, but she recovered and hoped that no one had noticed.
"When was the last time you were out on a mission?" Kakashi asked. He had noticed.
"Eight months ago. If you leave out the chunin exams last year," she said.
Gaara had hosted the exams that year and his regular contact with Naruto had made him request Sakura's presence in the medical camp when things had gotten severely out of hand and a contestant had been injured to the point where Sakura would have called it manslaughter if he hadn't been patched up and had survived the traumatizing ordeal. That was the most field action Sakura had gotten that year.
Kakashi's voice pulled her back from her thoughts. "It must have been difficult to stay in shape. Those hallways don't give much room for exercise."
"You know that healing people isn't any easier than killing them, sensei," she said. "In fact, it requires more knowledge to sew together someone's brain than what it does to slice it into pieces."
She thought she heard him laugh, but she could have imagined it.
"You all should stop calling me that. Sensei. It makes me sound old."
"Old habits die hard," Sakura said, throwing his own words back at him. It was around that same time that Naruto walked up next to them with an energetic bounce to his steps.
"This Fukuda guy, what's his deal?" he asked.
"He's one of Sakamoto's henchmen," Kakashi answered.
"He is in charge of all the dirty work," Sakura supplied. It was a testament to their long association with Naruto that both Kakashi and Sakura adjusted easily to the topic change.
"How do you know all of this?" Naruto asked with his eyes fixed on Sakura.
"Sakamoto is often discussed around the hospital. Her poisons are-"
"I bet Tsunade-baachan lets you snoop around in the archives."
"She does not," Sakura said, offended that Naruto would even think that of her teacher. "And I'm surprised you even know of the village archives."
"What idiot doesn't know?"
"You, I had thought," Sakura said and poked him in the ribs. He jumped away from her and would have tripped over Kakashi's larger body if older man hadn't sidestepped the blond in the nick of time.
"But who are we tracking down, then?" Naruto asked. "Poison Lady or Henchman?"
"I guess it depends on what information we squeeze out of the prisoner?" Sakura said and expected Kakashi to either agree or disagree with her. When nothing came, she felt free to pessimistically add: "If we squeeze out anything at all."
Kakashi's one eye darted down to her face. "Hm? What was that?"
"What was wha-" she began to say, but for once Naruto timed his interruption perfectly.
"Hey, Kakashi-sensei, how long will it take us to get there?"
Kakashi removed his attention from Sakura. Much to her relief.
"They're expecting us in two days, so we should probably have arrived by then."
"Probably?"
"If we don't run into trouble."
"Why would we run into trouble?" Naruto asked and Kakashi and Sakura both sent him an equally blank look.
Amazingly enough they didn't run into trouble that day. If you don't count the time where Naruto stepped on a squirrel and Sakura freaked out on him until they realized it was already dead. They managed to find a relatively cheap inn in a smaller village where there was room for them to stay overnight. And much to Sakura's poorly hidden joy, the final sleeping arrangements proved that sometimes it did pay off to be female in a profession dominated by crude, muscled men.
Yes, Sakura got the last unoccupied single room all to herself.
"But why don't you share with Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto protested, dangling his and Kakashi's room key in front of her face while he and Sakura walked up the stairs to the first floor.
"I'm not sharing with Kakashi," Sakura said, her ears quickly coming to resemble two ripe tomatoes, but the chances of Naruto noticing that were slim. The light in the hallway was bad enough for you to trip over your own feet and have the floor come right up slap you. Just because the mission said high-class on the paper, it didn't mean that you got to sleep in a cocoon of embroidered silk blankets woven together with gold threads.
"Speaking of Kakashi-sensei, where is he anyway?"
"Said something about scouting the area," Naruto said. "He left while you were using the bathroom earlier."
"That's either a lie or his paranoia is running high already."
They came to a halt in front of a door with '23' painted sloppily on the wood.
"This is my room," Sakura said.
"Mhm," Naruto said. "We meeting up later?"
"Wanna head down to the bar for a drink in an hour or so?" Sakura asked and maneuvered her key into the keyhole with little trouble. "It's only a quarter past nine, isn't it?"
"I'll knock on your door," Naruto said and gave her a saucy wink before he continued down the hallway to find his and Kakashi's shared room.
Perhaps you could argue that whenever Sakura spent quality time with her friends there was always liquor involved. But as long as there was no other easily accessible cure that would help you forget the blood on your hands and the dead bodies under your feet, alcohol would be the number one way to go. The Hokage herself would recommend it, Sakura was sure. You could view it from all the angles you wanted to, but from someone's point of view you would always be a murderer. Even the bad guys had families and loved ones. It wasn't a very joyous thought to carry around in the back of your mind, and it was precisely that thought that had to be flushed out with harsh liquor and cigarettes.
The shinobi profession wasn't cool. I was a job. Just like any other job out there.