Author's Note: Chapter eleven released, and it's all yours to read and comment on, my dear readers! xD I just noticed that I got into double digits already, wow O.O And I'm not even close to being done… I hope I can go through with writing the whole thing…

Blah, less talk, more story. X3 Enjoy, my awesome faithful readers, for all meh hard work ish for you. :3

11. Obsession

Just to be on the safe side of things, Zabuza decided to avoid all and any villages for the time being. The woods in the area were vast and dense, and would provide great shelter. As for his new employers… well, if they'd lasted that long without his assistance, they could certainly wait a little longer. Zabuza just wasn't in the mood for any further grand risks and Hunter-nin episodes.

In the meantime, the man had decided that he would continue training his apprentices. They had plenty of spare time on their hands while they were waiting out any more possible searches; and Zabuza wasn't going to allow his trainees to just waste away the precious days. Tools had to be polished and sharpened regularly in order to stay in top shape. And Zabuza was good at sharpening.

And Loki was not good with the stupid tingly feeling. After the day they had fought the Hunter-nin it just wouldn't go away. It penetrated her thoughts, conquering her mind; but not in that loud, crashing manner that the wolf-feeling had always used to take over. It was a gradual and invading way, rather like water trickling into an underground cavern. The process was slow and steady, but eventually the cavern would fill up.

It was like a disease. And it was already getting out of hand, because Loki was having quite a bit of trouble trying to keep these ridiculous new thoughts under control. That infuriated her. It had never happened before. She had always been the master of her mind… well, more or less. But this was just…

…Sometimes Loki managed not to think about Zabuza for one whole hour straight, which always took a lot of restraint and self-control. However, even while her mind might not have been strictly on the subject of the eyebrowless male, the wolf-girl often found her fascinated gaze lingering over his oiled muscles on its own accord. And mysteriously enough, no matter what direction Loki took whenever she went out for walks on her free time, the roads always seemed to lead to wherever Zabuza was at the moment; and the girl just couldn't help but steal occasional glimpses of him doing one-handed push-ups from the bushes in secret. It was most embarrassing. Loki didn't know what to do with herself.

She even tried swapping headbands with Zabuza again, with a secret little hope that the man's forehead protector and her thoughts of him were somehow interconnected and would go away once she traded back. Thus, after one of the particularly successful practices (and when the ninja was in a more or less contented mood), Loki approached him and said that she was really sorry for the interruption and didn't want to seem ungrateful, but she felt very uncomfortable about wearing his headband, because it was, um, err, well, his. And she would be very much obliged if he let her have the other headband back, because she didn't feel quite right about taking his stuff. And um. And er. And she blushed, and felt like a complete idiot for what felt like the fiftieth time during that day.

Zabuza, who had been resting in the shadow cast by a large oak tree not far off, gave her an odd look. Then, deciding that there was nothing wrong with the girl wanting to return something that didn't belong to her, the Jounin untied the blue strip he had been wearing around his head and outstretched a receiving hand in Loki's direction.

"You're weird, you know that?" Zabuza asked the rhetorical question as the headbands switched hands.

He then watched a furiously-blushing Loki retreat into the safety of the bushes nearby, and wondered if she'd been out in the sun for too long.

Meanwhile, Haku had things of his own to think about. There was a thought that just wouldn't leave him alone. It was always there, on the threshold of his understanding, and it kept knocking quietly but persistently on the door of his mind. And because Haku was the sort that liked his thoughts sorted out, he dedicated his free time (which there wasn't a lot of, by the way) to trying to figure this one out. He had a feeling that it was somehow important.

It was a memory of something that had happened. It had happened not so long ago, in fact. A small thing. Haku kept re-playing all of the most recent events over and over in his head trying to find that one small thing as he tagged along after Loki on one of her usual mysterious exploration tours.

Loki. Yes, it was about her. It was something she'd said earlier. Back in the tavern, when she had attacked that man, she'd said something, now what was it again? Ah, yes. Something about a 'damn filthy human'. He completely agreed with her on the 'damn' and 'filthy' parts, of course, but why had she used the word 'human'? There was a great big colourful variety of juicy swearwords that would sound so nicely at the end of a phrase (not that Haku would know), but Loki had picked 'human'. Why 'human'? He had never heard people addressing other people as 'humans' before. It was true. They could call each other pigs, dogs, tin-heads and even saucy lily-livered pantaloons, but never humans (even if it was the most technically correct name to use). It was very strange. It was very unnatural. It was a very weird thing to say indeed.

It was definitely something to wander about. And so Haku wandered.

In the meantime, the training was going well.

There was a small pond near the three renegades' current campsite. Haku often spent many an hour there, perfecting his older techniques and inventing new ones: faster, deadlier and even more horribly creative ways of killing people with water. Oh, he didn't take joy in the violence itself; it was just when he found himself around large bodies of water, Haku simply couldn't help himself. It was like giving a pyromaniac a box of matches. Whenever the kid got near a lake, a pond or simply a large puddle of water, something inside his head just went 'click', and Haku went all… inventive. There was no telling of what he would come up with next.

It was at times like this that even Zabuza preferred to leave his apprentice alone and concentrate on other things instead. And now, with the appearance of Loki on his team, Momochi was left with absolutely no reason to complain about the lack of such things.

And Loki couldn't remember ever enjoying her training as much as she did these days. The girl wanted to give it her all now that she had Zabuza's full attention, and she was ready to practice day and night just to get another smile or praise out of the man. Loki was trying to convince herself that she was only doing it because she wanted recognition; because she was expected to do great and she simply didn't want to let Zabuza down. And that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the stupid tingly feeling, which was being very difficult in these matters. Loki had to work twice as hard now just to keep her thoughts off Zabuza's very prominently masculine features (facial features, of course. Not what you thought).

All in all, it was good for her training. Now that all one hundred percent of Loki's pure furious concentration went into mastering new Taijutsu techniques, Zabuza was finding it harder and harder to keep coming out on top in their every combat. Loki's Taijutsu was becoming a fearsome thing indeed.

The girl was also beginning to gain control over her chakra, at long last. She still felt very insecure in these unfamiliar grounds: her performance was sloppy, her stance was completely off and she kept screwing up even on the simplest hand-sign sequences, but it was a start nevertheless. Zabuza would have also found it a very entertaining show to watch if he hadn't been the one getting hit with random flying-by log fragments when one of Loki's miserable attempts at the Replacement Jutsu went wrong yet again. Being Loki's Ninjutsu instructor wasn't a very funny thing to be doing at all.

Hell, at least she was being obedient this time.

On one of their training sessions, Zabuza tried teaching Loki a simple chakra-controlling exercise. Well, it was simple for him, in any case. It was an exercise every ninja had to master at some point during his lifetime before continuing on to much more difficult and exciting moves. It involved climbing a tree using one's feet only, and it was something very painful to execute if your chakra-control was almost inexistent. Therefore it wasn't very surprising that after about an hour of fruitless attempts of getting to the nearby oak's lowest branch, Loki had to take a break and was now sitting dejectedly in the tree's shadow, clutching her head.

Zabuza was looming over the girl, glaring menacingly.

"You aren't concentrating hard enough! How difficult is it to learn such a simple drill?" the man was yelling, having just as much control over his temper as Loki had over her chakra.

Loki flushed and descended even further into her gloom. It was bad enough to find out that she was worse than humans at something after all, let alone have Zabuza be angry with her. But she couldn't just give in. She'd show him up yet. She was a werewolf, dammit! It was amazing how that thought always gave her an energy boost to go on.

Loki sprang up to her feet, last tinges of her headache dispersing like smoke in the wind. What was happening to her? She used to be able to go on for hours, bashing battle-machines back at the Centre without as much as breaking a sweat, and now she couldn't even take something as insignificant as falling on her head only a couple hundred of times. Now, she had to take a break like a sissy whiny little human girl. Where had all her infamous endurance gone? No, she'd been hanging around in human company for way too long. Their lack of stamina and constant need for rest were contagious like a disease.

The proud wolf-girl had to brace herself. She could do it. She took a few steps backwards from the spot where she had just been sitting, and focused. Zabuza also stepped back, folding his arms on his chest and glaring, as usual.

Everything went very still. A bird chirruped. A bumblebee flew by. A gentle breeze whooshed in the grass. Haku's rabbit gnawed on a celery stalk somewhere in the nearby bushes. Loki breathed in. Loki breathed out.

"Think on starting anytime this year?" Zabuza asked, losing even more patience, if that was still possible.

Loki's muscles drew tight. She felt something like a weak current of warmth fill up the bottoms of her heels. She sure hoped she wasn't imagining it. Finally, unable to wait any longer, the girl rushed towards the tree like an unwound spring. She darted up the rough-barked trunk at a running start, but soon the momentum was lost and the pull of gravity won yet another battle against Loki's chakra.

"Again! Again!" barked Zabuza, but there was no need for further prodding. Loki was already in the very heat of defending the pride of her heritage. Her head close to exploding from all the pain, she was stubbornly getting up to her feet.

The wolf-girl tried "again and again", each time summoning her chakra more and more urgently and running like hell. Finally, on the third try, she felt slight tingling in her feet as they made contact with the tree's bark. The faint warmth turned into much stronger heat as Loki scurried upwards, her legs a blur. She could even smell it now – a thin, but very pleasant reddish-golden trail of scent. The scent of chakra.

Loki was so overwhelmed by her success that in all the excitement she forgot to hold her concentration and slipped, falling onto her shoulders into yet another painfully awkward position. She had barely made it past the tree's first branch. The scent of her chakra was already dissipating into the atmosphere.

Zabuza helped Loki into a standing position by pulling on her arm.

"Finally, some progress here!" he grinned through his bandages. "Good luck getting to the top of the tree, now!"

And Momochi sat down a few feet away, smirking, and prepared to watch the show. Teaching Loki chakra control was turning out to be quite fun after all, given that no flying-by log fragments were involved.

Meanwhile, Loki looked the large oak up and down, and got a sudden and irresistible urge to punch her trainer. She tried again but did worse this time, the trail of chakra scent down to a slim golden thread. Loki was hopeless. It was so embarrassing. Why, why couldn't she get the hang of this?

All right, it had to be this time. Loki caught a glimpse of Zabuza becoming more interested in a large black beetle climbing up his knee rather than watching his inept student fail yet again. Oh no you don't, she thought angrily. This time I'll do it right and you will praise me, you sure as hell will!

Loki focused, fists clenched and face screwed up in livid concentration. Her eyes narrowed, becoming slits of angry green. She could do this. She could do this. Come on, come on!

In the end, complete and utter determination did its job. Concentrating until her temples hurt, Loki finally began to feel the chakra build up in her feet, the scrawny golden thread of scent slowly turning into a powerful gust of energy. A few more minutes trickled away into eternity, and then… that was it. The girl was ready… or so she hoped.

Zabuza looked up as he sensed a sudden surge of chakra, and turned to see the girl running higher and higher up the tree-trunk. She was already past the first branch, and the second, and the fifth, but she kept going on.

The Jounin got up to his feet and came to stand under the oak to get a better view. To say the least, he was pleasantly surprised. That was an unexpected development… Who would've thought? The girl turned out to have a lot of potential, after all. And he had known it all along, of course. He knew the whole time that under his guidance and strict, methodical instruction Loki would turn into an amazing chakra-user to someday make him proud…

Zabuza wondered if she was actually going to reach the top of the tree all in one go…

…But apparently Loki's chakra control just wasn't meant to be. She was halfway through to the top when she suddenly felt Zabuza staring at her back; and the tingly feeling, muffled by days and days of patient work and intentional not thinking about the way Zabuza's eyes gleamed in the firelight, chose the worst time imaginable to shatter its already rather weak shackles and break out free. All the concentration was lost as blood rushed to the girl's cheeks; the chakra flow ceased as the thought process took a different course, and… Loki plunged tumbling backwards out of the sombre green heights.

Zabuza broke Loki's fall by grabbing her shoulders just before she crashed onto his head, unable to retaliate, and both of them toppled over onto the grass, rolling in a huddle of arms, legs, oak twigs and bandages. After they had finally come to a stop amidst a cluster of raspberry bushes, it took them a couple of moments to recover from the shock.

Loki was the first one to come to her senses; but her first daze was quickly replaced by a second one as she found both her shoulders gripped protectively by Zabuza's powerful hands and her face pressed tightly against the man's chest. Her nose took in his scent, and there was a short, pleasant moment of bliss before Loki's mind fully absorbed the entire picture. The girl's first impulse was to scream and pull away, but the intoxicating feeling of Zabuza's body so close to her had rendered the girl powerless, making her limbs numb and her back convulsing under a wave of sudden, powerful tingles. So she just lay motionless where she was, and there was another blissful moment of personal heaven.

Unfortunately, it only lasted a couple of seconds. Much too soon, Zabuza opened his eyes and pushed Loki away, glaring.

"You really suck at this, you know," he grunted, sitting up and rubbing his temple.

And the blissful cloud of paradise vanished in a blink. Loki came back to Earth with an unpleasant 'bump'.

Oh, for gods' sakes, she thought grumpily a few minutes later, as they headed back to their spacious but badly-constructed willow-branch shelter for a spot of water. What stupid thoughts. Zabuza was only attempting to stop her from falling, or rather trying to avoid getting a concussion. It was an instinctive movement. Stupid feelings. He was a damn human. She couldn't go around developing feelings for humans. Loki slammed a fist into the ground as she kneeled beside the water canteen. No. She will win.

She ran out of the shack and in the direction of the pond, stuck her head into the cold, refreshing water and held it there for so long that Haku came running to her from the other side of the lagoon where he had been practicing, frightened that the girl would drown herself.

Meanwhile, Zabuza was getting restless. On one hand, he realized that the Hunter Ninja's disappearance would by now already be noted by the Water Country's general military corps, and thus there were bound to be more Hunters on his trail this very moment. On the other hand, if he hung around being cautious in the woods for too long, his potential employers would quickly find him a replacement. There were plenty of other assassins roaming the lands of this corrupted country. Zabuza might have been the finest, but he was certainly not the only one.

He had to do something. Except that there wasn't much he could do.

After some careful thinking, a little plotting and a lot of weighing of cons and pros, Zabuza finally came up with what seemed like a suitable plan. Since they were constantly on the move anyway, they might as well advance towards their next destination, the Unseen Village of Twin Rivers, without much diversion. This village was where Zabuza's employers were currently residing. Or that was where he had been told to come, in any case. So that was where he would go.

Of course, there were bound to be other villages and towns on the way. And where there were towns, there were Hunter-nin. However, Zabuza had that point covered as well. The Hunters, the ANBU and all those other ranks, classes and divisions of ninja warriors knew him well enough in the face, but he doubted that any of them would remember the scrawny, pale-faced little kid that never talked a lot and tagged along with him everywhere. And they had never met Loki at all, so there was no way they would possibly suspect…

…Oh, yes. It was flawless and so perfectly simple, just like everything else ingenious.

Zabuza was going to send Haku and Loki on spying missions. The kids would go out of the forest, pretending to be picking flowers, frolicking around in the sun or whatever it was that their sick, inventive little minds could come up with. They would scan the nearby area for Hunter-nin and then, if the surroundings proved Hunter-free, they would all move further on their way. If there were annoying scavengers around, well… they would either fight or pick another way, depending on the urgency of the situation and the enemy's skill level.

For some reason, Zabuza remembered his disastrous attempt at the assassination of the Mizukage. He had been badly wounded after all those battles, and Haku had needed to go out and search for medications or healing herbs to help the man's mending. The boy had had to disguise himself somehow, and that was when the whole idea of him dressing up as a girl came into play. Of course, who would suspect a quiet, feeble-looking village girl in a pink kimono and a basket of flowers to be a deadly, highly-dangerous male ex-Hunter-nin sneaking around undercover? Haku had hated it, as Zabuza recalled now with a faint smirk, but he had gone along with it anyway, because it was the only risk-free way. And people always, always fell for it…

With the presence of Loki on their team, however, there would no longer be any need for Haku to dress as a girl, of course. That was just too bad. Seeing the boy grimace in disgust as he was putting on lip-gloss or eye-liner was too good of a show to be discontinued. Zabuza wasn't much of a joker himself, but he sure as hell enjoyed a good laugh. He sighed. Oh well. The little bugger would be delighted, though, the man knew.

Haku was very happy indeed. When the new plan was announced, he seemed to radiate joy and sunshine, and felt like hugging both Loki and the rabbit to near death at the bright new prospect of a make-up-less and dress-free future. It seemed almost too good to be true. No more face-putty! No more girly acting! And he could finally cut his hair! …Well, on second thought, perhaps the hair could stay. Haku was just too used to it by now to bother doing something about it. Besides, it wasn't like there was anyone around to tease him about it, anyway.

…Unfortunately, all good things have to end. And so did Haku's newfound freedom. It was most disappointing to find out that Loki and kimonos just… didn't go together.

The first time Zabuza saw the girl dressed up in Haku's old pink outfit with flowers, he just couldn't help himself but laugh out loud. It wasn't that Loki wasn't womanly enough to wear a kimono; it was just that she looked so… so… out of place in it. It was difficult to explain how exactly, but it was just so obvious that she had never worn a kimono or any other kind of dress at all in her entire lifetime. Loki had quite a good figure for a thirteen-year-old, exercising as much as she had; but she had always seemed so inexplicably wild, like a savage beast or some sort of forest warrior. She looked more like the type to be found swinging from branch to branch on a liana, with a knife in her teeth or a battle-cry, rather than going around in a pretty dress, picking flowers and appearing weak. It was like putting a frilly pink bowtie on a scruffy, grumpy-looking wolf dog, and calling it Cutesy.

In other words, Loki looked so awkward and… odd in a girl's kimono that she'd certainly attract plenty of attention in a village. She could go on scouting missions in the forest, where no one was around to see her; but whenever the need to explore a nearby town arose, Haku (with much disgust and inner resentment) had to take on the job.

It rather saddened and amused Zabuza at the same time to know that even now that they had an actual girl on their team, Haku's acting skills were still required.

Meanwhile, Loki had cautiously entertained the idea of doing some independent spying disguised as a wolf. It was an interesting thought; in her animal form, Loki would look just like any ordinary large dog and cause little suspicion on the streets or in the forest; while her human companions didn't necessarily have to know what kind of camouflage she used when she was… away. It also provided her with a good excuse to search for any traces of her clan, as a matter of fact, and a long time for doing that.

However, Loki eventually dismissed the idea. Whenever Haku was away scouting, Zabuza wouldn't let her out of his sight; moreover, there was the slim chance of either him or Haku stumbling onto her transforming. Divulging the secret of her heritage to the two ninja was out of question, and Loki couldn't take chances with that. Besides, as ashamed as she was of admitting it to herself, Loki was now a lot more keen on spending more time hanging around Zabuza rather than pointlessly roaming the neighbourhood.

Little did she know that things weren't going to go quite the way she had been intending them to. Fate had decided that it was time for a… change.

End Chapter! Loki's getting obsessed with Zabuza, but she's in complete denial. x3 And no, she won't become a great and powerful chakra-user, because I don't like making my characters those good-at-everything,-strong-smart-and-beautiful perfect types. Come on, they have to be losers at something, no? x3

And DON'T ask about saucy lily-livered pantaloons. Just… don't.