5.
--
It took Yoshio a moment to shake himself out of his daze of surprise. What was she saying to him? Inuzuka Kiba? "Yeah right…" he said, moving on.
"How do you know I'm wrong unless you hear me out?" she said.
"It can't be him," Yoshio stated calmly. Neji had said it was someone he'd never met, and he'd definitely met Kiba.
…Unless Neji's offhand comment had really been just that, Yoshio thought, pausing.
Unless what he meant was that he'd never known that he was his father when he met him…
This was getting ridiculous. Yoshio shook himself and started walking again. "It isn't him, and what are you doing here, anyway? I told you, this is none of your business."
"You say that a lot," she said and stood up, brushing her dress briefly before leaping to his side. She seemed determined to walk next to him and skipped forward a little to match his pace.
"It's a fact. This is none of your business."
"Don't you even want to hear me out?"
"Not really," he replied. He wondered why she was so obsessed with him all of a sudden. She wasn't going to be one of those kunoichi who fell for their genin teammates, was she? As if he didn't have enough to deal with.
"You don't even care who your father is?" she asked.
Something about the way she said it really irked him. "Look," he said. "This is my family stuff, okay? It's not that I don't like you, but it's personal. You're just my teammate. Don't you remember what they taught us at the Academy? Ninja shouldn't form close bonds with other ninja, especially their teammates. It can interfere with our missions."
"You don't really believe that, do you?"
"Of course I do."
"What about your mother's team?"
"They're different," he said, brushing off her argument without a pause.
"Look," she said irritably, "I promise I'm not trying to bond with you or anything. I just heard something and I thought you might want to know. If you want to keep being so pig-headed about everything, that's fine with me, and if I find proof that he's your father I'll just keep it to myself." Her voice had become shrill by the time she came to the last words.
Yoshio looked at her with surprise. He hadn't known her very long, but for as long as their acquaintance had gone on he'd never heard her talk to anyone like that. Akiko was slightly red in the face, and if he wasn't very mistaken her eyes were starting to get just a little bit wet. His inner shinobi pointed out that she wasn't going to get very far in the ranks if she was going to be as sensitive as that.
She took a deep breath and became a little calmer. "I'll stop bothering you if you hear me out," she said.
Yoshio clenched his teeth with annoyance and silently gave in.
--
The unwritten and unspoken protocol went like this: if you were going to get away with a relationship with your teammate and continue to do missions together, you couldn't so much as touch each other during a mission. It was common sense. You should avoid expressing any emotional connection with your teammates during a mission regardless of your relationship during down time, because for shinobi the danger that any personal connection would be used against you was always present. Additionally, topics of conversation should be limited to those concerning the mission and should be kept cryptic.
Tenten knew the rules, but she rarely followed them to the letter. Neji had stuck to them longer, but nowadays he was following her example. "What is it?" he asked her. They had stopped in the middle of the River Country forest to eat lunch and Lee was several yards away doing one-handed push-ups.
Tenten gnawed on a piece of jerky. "Something's definitely off," she said. "We haven't seen traces of a single person anywhere in this forest, and given that this is such a sensitive border, it's making me paranoid."
"It's normal for this part of the forest," Neji said. "It's traditionally labeled no-man's-land." What he said was strictly true. Historically, this area – without so much as a single decent bath to be had in it, Tenten reflected ruefully – had gone back and forth between Kaze and Ame over the years. Right now it was supposedly the domain of Kaze, and this mission had been officially cleared by Kazekage, but that didn't mean there shouldn't be Ame ninja at least on the periphery.
"Don't tell me you aren't as paranoid as I am," she said. "You've got to admit, it's weird."
"It is unusually quiet," he said, "but I am more worried about our target not making an appearance. I am beginning to doubt our intel. But that is not what I was asking about. You've barely said a word since we left the village. Are you mad at me?"
Tenten smiled to herself. Neji was, and always would be, about as subtle as a hammer in all matters personal. He didn't like half-truths or gentle lies or sidestepping of sensitive issues. "No, I'm not mad at you," she said, letting the inner smile creep out. "Can't a girl have any time to think by herself?"
"What is it?" he repeated, deactivating his Byakugan.
She took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. "How on earth do I explain to him how he got here? How do I even start to tell that story? I just don't know…"
Neji didn't say a word at first, and the only sounds were the birds in the trees and Lee breathily counting his pushups.
"You don't help, of course," Tenten said. "Thanks to you he's got this father image all built up… You know, sometimes I think he takes more after you than he does me," she added.
"What do you mean?"
"It sounds odd, but it's true. No, I'm not kidding. I started to notice it one day when Yoshio was little, five or six." Tenten ran a hand across the bottom of her sweaty forehead protector and took a swig from her water bottle before going on. "We were out on one of the training fields – Lee was trying to give him his first taijutsu lesson, remember? We were sitting down in the shade for a break and Lee goes off on one of his speeches on Youth with a capital Y. I just remember looking over at you two and… you had the exact same expression on your faces." She paused. "He picks up a lot from you."
"I spent a lot of time with him when he was young."
"I know. Trying to stay away from your wife. I remember."
He grimaced very slightly. Mentions of Neji's aborted marriage were probably the only thing that would get him to react like that. But before they could get into any pain-inducing memories of that fiasco, Lee finished his calisthenics and hopped over to them. "Yosh! I don't know about you two, but I am eager to be moving again!" he announced clearly.
But his right hand was in front of his stomach, communicating in one silent gesture one of the code signals they had developed years ago: we are being watched.
--
The mission that day was over much earlier than usual (owing to the fact that Rikyu had decided it was a competition with Yoshio to see who could paint faster), and to celebrate the fact that they'd taken care of a single task in mere hours rather than an entire day, Naruto gave them the rest of the day off. After Rikyu had made his usual stormy departure, Akiko turned to Yoshio expectantly. "So, want to go now?"
"What? Want to go where?"
"The Inuzuka farm, of course."
He stood there with his arms crossed and stared her down. Akiko looked annoyed. "Well, how else would we find out if he's your father?"
As much as he hated to concede a point to her, Yoshio didn't really have an answer for that.
"I heard one of my new neighbors talking about it yesterday. Lucky coincidence, I guess. She was gossiping about Inuzuka Kiba and his new girlfriend or something, and she said he'd gone out with every kunoichi in Konoha at least once. So I asked her if he'd ever gone out with your mother, and she said she was almost positive about it. And then I asked her if it was before or after you were born... well, she wasn't sure, but you get the idea."
Yoshio looked extremely skeptical. "She never talks about him at all. It doesn't make any sense. You can't just listen to a piece of gossip and think that…"
"It makes perfect sense! I can just picture it. They probably had a long, torrid affair, and then maybe she refused to join the Inuzuka clan or something and had a fight with him and he's an Inuzuka… you know, Inuzuka guys, they're not like normal men, she probably thought he'd be a bad influence on you… But she didn't want you to know you had a clan, so she… or maybe she just thought you wouldn't understand."
"This is a bad idea," Yoshio said with a sinking feeling. "We can't just walk up to him and ask him if he's my father."
"I can't think of a better way to get an answer," she said. She added, "I'll do all the talking if you want."
"What are you going to say?" he asked, perplexed.
She shrugged.
Yoshio thought that this was a ridiculous lack of strategy, especially from someone who was supposed to be a ninja, and had no doubt that this plan would fail terrifically and probably cause him a lot of embarrassment, but even so, when she walked away from him, he found himself following. They didn't say another word to each other all the way through Konoha. He nodded to a team of classmates they ran into when they crossed the main street and when he looked back in her direction he saw that she had pulled out another one of her little books and buried her face in it. For the first time he wondered how on earth she managed to walk and read at the same time without slowing down or bumping into everyone else on the street.
Just when he thought she'd forgotten about him and their "mission" completely, she quickly pocketed the book and looked up. "It's this way," she said, turning down a different street.
"Why do you know where the Inuzuka farm is?"
"How come you don't?" she asked, shrugging again. "I know where pretty much everything is in Konoha," she added in an off-handed way. "By the way, that's him."
He stopped short in surprise. They were just off the main road in a neighborhood near the open-air market where there were a few restaurants with outdoor tables. Akiko was looking toward one of these tables, where Inuzuka Kiba was seated between two kids. The girl was older, probably already in the Academy, the boy a few years younger. Both of them had the Inuzuka tattoos.
"See, those are the trademark Inuzuka tattoos. I read that they're supposed to represent the bloody fangs of this wolf demon that they use as their clan totem, and there's this whole story about…"
Yoshio raised an eyebrow at her.
"Don't look at me like that just because I'm better informed," Akiko grumbled. "Anyway, there he is. So let's go."
Yoshio felt apprehension seize him. "This is crazy," he said. "There's no proof."
"Well of course there isn't any proof. If there were proof you wouldn't need me to lead you here," she hissed. "You want to meet your father, don't you?"
Yoshio looked away when Kiba raised his head and almost looked at him, but he kept staring at the group out of the corner of his eye while the reality of the situation seemed to hit him in the face. Inuzuka Kiba seemed like a nice guy. He was joking around with the little girl, making her laugh while he ate his food. "If he were my father," Yoshio stated, "he definitely would have said something to me before now."
"Maybe your mother asked him not to. Who knows?"
"This is… weird." He paused. "This is a bad idea. There has to be another way to find out."
"One minute you're dying to know and the next you're too afraid to ask him," Akiko said, rolling her eyes.
"Come on, don't you think he would have said something? If he's my father, he must know it."
"Not necessarily," Akiko said in her naturally-I-know-more-than-you tone. "My book on the major Konoha clans says Inuzukas have a different family structure than anyone else in the shinobi nations. It's because their ancestors migrated from this really backwards country up north, and their clan heads were so against the idea of patriarchy that even though they had developed many of their fighting techniques in ninja style they totally were not interested in following any of the Kages, because the Kage tradition is based on a strict patriarchal structure, but then the First Hokage founded Konoha and told them that..."
"What does that have to do with Kiba being my father?" Yoshio interrupted her.
"Aren't you interested in your family history?"
Yoshio took a deep breath through his nose. "The point I'm trying to make is that I don't know yet if it is my family history."
"Well, sorry if you don't like him, but it makes sense. Your mother used to go out with Kiba, and clan traditions are only passed down through mothers in the Inuzuka so it would make sense that you don't have a dog or anything…" Suddenly Akiko giggled.
Yoshio narrowed his eyes at her. "What?"
"It's just… the idea of you, living like an Inuzuka. It's kind of funny."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You know, you're just so quiet and serious and…"
"Hey, Yoshio, is that you?"
Yoshio looked up suddenly. Kiba had spotted him.
--
She was seventeen years old and she lived alone. She didn't have a boyfriend. She never had boyfriends. She didn't have time for boyfriends - she was a jonin. A new jonin, at that, and a young jonin. And even though it was the middle of the afternoon and she should have been training or getting ready for her next assignment, she was stretched out on her bed and staring up at the ceiling.
Six hours ago, a medic-nin at the hospital, after having given her a thorough exam, had driven the nail into her own personal coffin by issuing the standard order to the Hokage that she wasn't allowed to take any missions until the matter was resolved.
That was a funny way to put it, Tenten had reflected.
She'd lain down as soon as she got home and hadn't moved since. She felt nausea start to creep up on her, and she fought it back, not wanting to move, trying to concentrate on emptying her mind of all its muddled thoughts. She was interrupted, however, by a knock at the door.
She swallowed hard to choke back the bile, rolled off the bed, and carefully straightened her clothing, and when she opened the front door she was faced with a cool and distant Neji.
She realized right away that this would be the first time he'd seen her since her mission with Kotaro. She could read him, she thought, as well as, if not better than, anyone in his family could, but she couldn't tell what was going on in his mind right now. His face was more perfectly blank than she had ever seen it before. "Just come in," she said, turning her back on him, too mentally tired to pick apart the riddle.
He did. He shut the door behind him. She went to the kitchen to make tea; after all, even warriors had manners. She brought him his cup and sat down with him in her tiny living room. There was a lamp and a couch and a chair there and little room for much else, because it was the home of someone who didn't bother with decorations. Someone whose entire life consisted of missions and training. Neji sipped his tea quietly and she sipped hers. The silence hung in the room like an unclean fog.
She hadn't told him yet, but it appeared that he had heard.
She trusted Kotaro and Kiba, but somehow the others on that mission team had found out. She barely knew them off duty. Apparently they either hadn't realized that it was a secret or had so little respect for her that her privacy was not valued. By the way other ninja looked at her in the street the day after their return, she was embarrassed to realize that half of Konoha already knew, and by nightfall that day she was sure the rest had been told. You couldn't kill good gossip like this. Team Gai, though young, was still one of the best units of their generation. In a ninja village, that's what made you popular.
"How long have you known?" he finally asked. She noticed with a sinking heart that he wasn't looking at her – he was staring directly into his tea. Nausea crept up on her again.
"I found out during the mission," she confessed.
He nodded as if he had expected it. When he turned his eyes to her, she felt her heart falling out through her stomach. He had the same kind of expression she had seen on Kotaro's face. Sadness. Disappointment. A look that said, I thought I knew you.
It was so obvious that he had expected more of her, and she had failed him.
She swallowed the rest of her tea in one gulp.
She stood up and took her empty glass to her tiny kitchen. It was too much for her to sit near him any longer.
"Who?" he asked, his voice deadly cold.
"That's none of your business," she answered curtly.
"I've already been accosted by five different people," he said. "I at least want to know who I can legitimately blame for this."
She looked back at him, curious against her will.
"Lee, Gai-sensei, Kotaro, my uncle, and the Hokage," he said. "All within the span of two days. I don't think any of them believed me."
She held his gaze for a few more moments before looking back down at her hands in the sink. So Gai and Lee had heard also. Wonderful. "I'm seeing the Hokage tomorrow morning," she said. "I'll make it clear to her at least that you have nothing to do with it."
She had started washing dishes. When she heard him stand up, she hoped he was heading for the door. He wasn't. He came to her side instead. "Tenten," he said, "it's not me that I'm worried about."
Anyone standing that close made her uncomfortable; that it was Neji didn't help. "Please just leave me alone," she blurted out, turning her head and locking gazes with him.
"I want to know who it is so that I can find him and kill him," Neji said, sounding reasonable but irate.
"I don't need your help and I don't need you to protect me and I certainly don't need you to defend my honor," she said.
He looked like he wanted to argue with her about this, but he didn't. Neji didn't say a word, and Tenten just looked away from him. She'd thought that she'd never feel as humiliated as she did during that mission with Kotaro. She knew now that she was wrong.
"Please leave," she said. She grabbed the empty cup out of his hands and started to wash it. After a minute or so, she saw him walk away in her peripheral vision and heard the door close. She was nearly certain she could sense his chakra just outside of it for several minutes afterwards.
When she was convinced that he was gone, she put the cups on the rack in the sink to dry, wiped off her hands, and walked back through her stark apartment into her bedroom, where she lay down on her bed again without disturbing the covers. She was hungry but didn't want to eat, and she was exhausted, but it would have been impossible to go to sleep.
She'd never wanted anything like this. She'd never wanted to be anything but a great kunoichi. And even if she had wanted something like this, she certainly hadn't wanted it to happen this way, so very unplanned.
Not that she'd ever stopped to consider who she would have wanted to get pregnant with. Not that the thought had ever crossed her mind.
And the worst part was that she couldn't just end it – now that everybody knew. Well, she could. Abortion wasn't illegal in Konoha. Still, in a ninja village whose strength was principally dependent on its numbers, it was definitely taboo. She could have an abortion. Everyone would know it, but she could still have an abortion. If she did, at least she wouldn't have to break up her own team for long – pregnant kunoichi weren't working kunoichi – and really, her teammates were the only ones that mattered to her.
She still wasn't certain about what she was going to do, or when. Just thinking about it made her nauseous again.
--
Yoshio found himself sitting at a table with Kiba, Akiko, and the two Inuzuka kids – Kiba having invited them to sit down under the pretense that they had ordered too much food or something. Someone had shoved a pair of chopsticks into his hand and Kiba had bought both him and Akiko cups of tea. Kiba had an easy, natural generosity and a genial sort of air about him – he flirted with the waitress and got her to bring extra plates, and the kids on either side of him didn't seem interested in anything but eating. The weird toothy smirk never fell from the man's face. Yoshio wasn't sure how he felt about the idea that this might be his father. It wasn't too terrible, actually – he could think of worse. (Lee, for instance.)
"How's your mom, Yoshio?" Kiba asked.
Akiko's chopsticks had been searching through her rice seeking any piece of food that hadn't been touched by ginger, but at Kiba's words she stopped abruptly. Yoshio could feel her attention shifting to him.
He felt uneasy. He didn't know why, but he really didn't like the fact that Kiba was asking him this. "She's on a mission. With Lee… and Neji," he said, accidentally emphasizing the latter name.
Kiba smiled amiably. "She teach you how to use nunchaku yet? She nearly killed me once with nunchaku." The boy to his right raised his bowl to his chin and started shoveling rice directly into his mouth. Kiba had to pat him on the back when he nearly choked on it. "Easy there, partner."
"Yeah, she's taught me nunchaku," Yoshio said as he stared at the boy and wondered if they were related.
He was at a loss for what to say next, and Kiba and the kids seemed to be busy eating. Kiba was as enthusiastic about it as the kids were, and he was getting speckles of curry on the table. Yoshio tried his best not to wrinkle his nose in disgust. "I recognize you from that night at the ramen stand," Kiba said to Akiko. "You clocked the guy next to you pretty good. Wasn't he your teammate?"
"Matsumoto Rikyu. Yes, he's on Naruto-sensei's team too. Inuzuka-san," Akiko said formally, placing her bowl on the table, and switching immediately to her bookworm attitude, "I've been doing some research on the different clans of Konoha, and since the Inuzuka are one of the most notable, I was wondering if you would mind if I asked you a couple things."
Kiba looked mildly stunned. "Um… I probably shouldn't be spilling secrets to outsiders, but I couldn't tell you anything you wouldn't see in a couple years anyway," he said, patting the girl beside him on the back. She was a few years younger than Yoshio and Akiko. She grinned sheepishly. "Kinue here's going to try for genin soon. Watch out – you might take the chunin exam with her someday."
Yoshio felt briefly embarrassed about the fact that this would probably never happen. At least not with his team.
"I read that women are always clan leaders in the Inuzuka and always the ones to pass down the family name. Is that true?" Akiko asked, templing her fingers as she leaned her elbows on the table.
"Weeeellll, yes and no," Kiba said. "It used to be that way, but now it's more who was born first. If my sister had been a boy she'd still be in charge after my mom steps down. Actually, if she'd been anything like me, they'd probably go with one of my cousins… But yeah, it doesn't matter if she ever gets married, her kids'll always be Inuzukas."
"But if the name is passed down through the women, what happens if you ever get married and have kids?"
Yoshio blushed for her. Akiko betrayed no emotion but curiousity.
Kiba stared at her for a second before laughing out loud. "Man, you're not shy, are you? Well, uh… Inuzuka men, they sometimes do that, but …"
"What?" Akiko prodded. Yoshio was now blushing so hard he actually felt like he was starting to sweat.
Kiba didn't look any more comfortable, but he seemed happy at the attention. "When an Inuzuka guy gets married… his kids could go either way, you know? They probably wouldn't grow up on the farm, though, so it'd be hard if they wanted to learn any of our traditions."
"What if an Inuzuka man had kids without getting married?"
Yoshio was so embarrassed by now it was all he could do to stay in his seat. He wasn't sure if he wanted to kick Akiko under the table for being so rude or get out of there as fast as he could, but he stayed where he was and kept eating instead, although his movements were rather robotic.
Kiba's grinned widened. "Yeah, that does happen from time to time. Those kids are almost never Inuzukas. Still, you can always tell where they came from." He winked at her.
"How can you tell?"
He laughed. "Easy. Hey Kenta, open your mouth."
The little boy next to him looked up from his dinner and did something disgusting. Kiba laughed again. "Okay, chew your food, swallow your food, then open your mouth."
He did, and then he pulled his lips back in a mock snarl and they could finally see what Kiba was talking about. Akiko stood up and leaned over the table to get a better view, but it was clear to Yoshio even where he sat.
"See? He can't be anyone but an Inuzuka with canines like that. They'll get even bigger as he gets older, too. At home we say that the Hyuuga have eyes, but the Inuzuka have teeth."
--
Tenten was starving on her way home from the Hokage's office. She'd been asked a lot of uncomfortable questions, but she'd gotten out with her career intact (so far), and now all she wanted was a good meal and a nap. The first place she walked by was the open-air market and she walked into it immediately with the intention of buying something for dinner.
Why for the love of all that was good did she have to run into Ino and her team? Did the universe have some sick sense of humor? She didn't want to face any of the Konoha Eleven, now or ever again. The only one of them she'd talked to since that mission with Kotaro was Neji. She was still working herself up to the confrontation with Lee. She could not deal with anyone else.
"Tenten!" Ino cried, spotting her.
Tenten swallowed the annoyed groan in her throat and quickly paid for the beef she was getting for her stir-fry tonight, hoping she could get away before Ino made her way through the crowd to her side. No such luck.
"Tenten!" Ino said again, following the words with an awkward pause. "Um… how are you?"
Not in the mood to deal with nosy kunoichi. That was what she wanted to say. Instead, she substituted, "Fine – how are you?"
"I heard you're expecting!" Ino said cheerily.
Tenten stared at her. Ino looked so innocent with her wide smile, as if she'd just pointed out some wonderful, happy occurence rather than the unpleasant slap in the face that this surprise actually was. How on earth was Tenten supposed to respond to that?
"Miss? Miss – your change."
She quickly shifted gears, directing her attention to the butcher, then looked at Ino again, feeling overwhelmed. "I guess you've heard…"
"I think it's wonderful! You're the first one from our group to… you know…"
Oh yes, she knew. She could feel her face reddening. "Well, I…"
"We were all so surprised when we heard! I mean, I never knew that you had a boyfriend or anything."
I don't, Tenten wanted to say. I don't have anyone. She opened her mouth but stopped herself in time. She was so emotionally on edge she felt like she could burst out crying right there on the spot in the middle of the market crowd. Could life get any more ridiculous? She wanted to melt into the ground.
Sakura appeared. Oh god, Tenten thought. Now there were two of them. How on earth was she going to get away from two of them?
"Ino, could I talk to you?" Sakura said, smiling very fakely.
"In a minute – so Tenten, do you have to stop taking missions right away? Are you still going to train?"
"I… uh, I'm…"
"Ino, seriously, can I talk to you right now?"
Sakura grabbed the other girl by the elbow and started to lead her away. "Well, I'll see you around, Tenten," Ino said. "Oh – if it's a girl, my mother says she has a heap of old baby clothes she wants to give you – so let us know, okay?"
"Miss – your change?"
Tenten turned her back on the vendor and walked away without the change. She could feel the gazes of everyone within hearing distance and she wanted nothing so much as to vanish on the spot. Just disappear, cease to be. What would it matter if she did? There was no family to mourn her – her parents were long dead – and pregnant she was no use to her team. Even after that, who knew? How long would she be off the lineup? She'd fall behind the others in her group, and then she'd always be behind, and then – was this the end of her career whether or not she had an abortion?
She was going to be sick.
No, she was hungry.
No, she was definitely going to be sick. Or cry.
She stumbled through the market thinking only of home. She wanted to get there now and shut the door and just be alone She could still feel the stares of all the other people on the street – the shinobi, the ones who'd heard the rumor. They were all staring at her, weren't they? She'd become one of those people who was talked about. She'd become gossip fodder. She felt nothing like a kunoichi anymore. She had used to be strong, independent – now what was she? It felt like everything was closing in on her. Her heart sped up accordingly.
"Hey – hey, are you okay?"
The edges of her vision clouded black. It was just as well – she was ready to let go of reality anyway. She heard the murmur of people but her vision was quickly fogging.
"Tenten – hey, you, can you get some water please? Tenten, here, sit down."
There was a hand on the small of her back leading her somewhere. Blindly, she followed it. She let whoever it was bring her somewhere close and sit her down on a bench, and then she let that person bend her foreward until her head was between her knees. She breathed more and more slowly, and the world began to realign itself. The audio was turned back on – she heard the mushed clamor of the market crowd and her vision opened up again – she could see the dirt floor below her very clearly. She slowly sat up, careful to control her breathing all the way.
"Here."
A cup of tea was held up to her face. She took it in her hands and sipped it carefully. She felt so weak. God, was this what it had come to? What had happened to the kunoichi? She was just another poor little woman now. Five years of field training and this is what I've become..
"How do you feel?"
"Better," she said and finally looked to the speaker. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a mouth that was at once feral and friendly – when he grinned his upper canine teeth poked out over his lower lip. "Kiba?" she said, surprised.
"You were really pale a minute ago. Your lips were blue. You want to go to the hospital?"
"No, I'm fine."
He looked like he wasn't buying it.
She felt the handle of the grocery bag around her wrist, still. She looked back to the dirt floor. Oh god, what now? She supposed Hinata and Shino would be next. Could she stand seeing them? What about Lee? When would he make an appearance at this horror show, she wondered?
"You sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" he asked.
"I just want to get away from all these people," she answered honestly.
A few moments later she felt the hand on the small of her back again, then the grocery bag lifted off her wrist, and then she was being led away. She opened and closed her eyes slowly while she concentrated on regulating her breathing, and she was dimly aware of the crowd receding. Then she was sitting again and had the chance to catch her breath.
When everything came into focus she saw that the scene in front of her was the lake in the park, and she was sitting on a bench, and human voices were far away if present at all. She breathed a few times, enjoying the silence, then shifted her attention to the boy beside her. "Where did you come from?" she asked.
"I was just buying lunch. Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine. I'll be fine," she said irritably, reflecting that she'd used that word so much in the past week that she went to it like an old habit.
"You don't look fine," he said bluntly. Tenten reflected that everything seemed like an arrogant joke from him because he was always wearing that grin. "Seriously – let me take you to the hospital."
"No. No hospitals," she said. No more attention, please.
"Okay, whatever you want."
She leaned back on the bench and closed her eyes. Her body felt heavy. Was she already starting to gain weight? She thought she had at least another month before her body started to go haywire. If she didn't have an abortion. Now it would be a royal mess. She wouldn't be able to train, her breasts would get huge and she wouldn't be able to use a bow… this was the beginning of the end.
"I wanted to apologize to you," Kiba said, derailing her train of thought completely.
She blinked at him. "What? What on earth for?"
"I should have known at the beginning of that mission, and I should have said something," he said. "I mean, I noticed the change in your scent, but I didn't know what it meant. Geez, my Mom chewed me out after we came back. That's something any Inuzuka should know."
Her cheeks reddened again when she realized what he was talking about and she quickly looked away. "I don't know why you should beat yourself up about it. I didn't even know."
He was quiet for a minute. "So this wasn't something you planned?"
She gave him a slow, sardonic look. "I'm seventeen. I'm a kunoichi."
"No, I guess not," he said, grinning with an air of extreme discomfort. "Well, hey – accidents happen."
She didn't deign to respond to this. She was busy raking her mind for ways to politely get rid of him.
"You know, my mother was only eighteen when she had my sister."
Oh god – was this conversation never going to end?
"We were talking about it last night," he explained sheepishly.
"You mean you were talking about me last night."
"Well…"
"It's okay. Who isn't?" She got to her feet abruptly, meaning to flee the scene, but as soon as she did the blood rushed out of her head again and she had to take a moment and focus on breathing.
"Hey."
She felt the hand on her back and the hand on her shoulder leading her to sit down again. She shrugged them off. "I don't need anyone to help me," she said. "Please – I know you're just trying to be nice, but I'm just trying to get home."
"At least let me walk you there?" he asked. "It's on my way, and Akamaru's back at the farm, and I get kinda lonely when I'm walking by myself. Consider it a favor to me."
She stared at him blankly for a few seconds. What was with this guy? She knew who he was, of course, as much as she knew any of the Rookie Nine, but she didn't think she'd ever actually said more than a few words to him outside of a mission. She pulled away from his grasp with an irritated sigh. She didn't care what his issues were that he was trying to project onto her, and she didn't need him, just like she didn't need Neji or anyone else, and furthermore she didn't want him to think she needed him. That was the last thing she needed: yet another person who thought she was helpless.
He followed her home like a stray puppy. He didn't even have the decency to look contrite about it when she glared at him as she fumbled with the key to her door. Even after she collapsed on her couch she could actually hear him in the kitchen getting her a glass of water. Could this guy not take a hint? How many times did she need to tell him she just wanted to be alone?
He sat down in the chair across from her couch – the uncomfortable cheap chair she'd saved from her parents' furniture – and sat with his elbows on his knees and rolled the glass of water between his hands. "My mother said that if you ever wanted to talk… eh, I don't really know what she meant," he added, brushing it off. "But if you did, you know where the farm is… don't you?"
What the hell was that supposed to mean? Tired and annoyed, she let him pretend she'd fallen asleep on the couch. Her eyes had been closed for several minutes. He couldn't smell sleep, could he?
And the idiot still didn't leave. He just sat there for minute after agonizing minute, and she had the distinct feeling that he was watching her the whole time. "Your team's really worried about you," he said softly. "Lee doesn't know what to do with himself. He's bugging the living hell out of everyone, trying to figure out who knocked you up."
After a few more minutes, she heard him set the glass of water on the coffee table and get off the chair. Then she heard her door close.
And then, for the first time she could remember since her mother died, curled up on her couch, she cried.
--
"I like him," Akiko said as they walked away. It was getting near sunset and the street was starting to clear out.
Yoshio was staring straight ahead, but he wasn't really seeing anything in front of him.
"I like the Inuzuka clan much better than the Hyuuga or the Akimichi. I don't think it's fair that they're not considered one of the noble clans."
"The Hyuuga are all real jerks," she added after he continued to ignore her, "like the Matsumoto with a bloodline limit. And the Akimichi just make me uncomfortable. I like the Inuzuka much better."
She'd given up on a conversation with him and her book was halfway out of her pocket when he blurted out the question that had been on his mind. He spoke it just loud enough for her to hear and no one else – not that there were too many people on the road that time of day, but this was not something he wanted overheard. She let go of the book almost immediately and, to her credit, didn't so much as crack a grin when she said, "Sure, but… the light's not very good now. We should go back to my place."
"How far away do you live?"
"Just a few blocks down."
She lived in a one-room apartment on the second floor of what looked, to Yoshio, like a seedy old building that someone had tried to fix up. Her two windows had a fantastic view of a brick wall ten feet away. She had a half-size fridge and a stove, but other than that she had no furniture. Apparently she slept on a bedroll. Her bathroom was tiny – barely enough room for a shower and a toilet – but the light above the sink was plenty bright. She stood next it with her hands on her hips. "Go on," she prodded.
Feeling unbelievably stupid about this, Yoshio opened his mouth.
Akiko leaned in close and instructed him to tilt his head back a little and open wider. Yoshio felt like he was at the dentist.
After a few moments she leaned back. "Nope. Not even a little bit."
He relaxed a little. "Are you sure?" he asked.
"Positive. Take a look for yourself."
He checked in the mirror. She was right. There was nothing even remotely canine about his canines.
Akiko smiled at him in the mirror. She looked completely different when she smiled. "You can rest assured your teeth are completely dull. I guess I was wrong," she said, her smile falling. "Um… sorry."
Yoshio glanced at her, then shrugged. "It's not your fault no one will tell me who my father is."
Akiko walked back into the main room of her apartment, over to where her "kitchen" was. "You're pretty obsessed with this whole thing, aren't you?"
"Wouldn't you be?"
"No. I don't know my father and it doesn't bother me. Want some milk?"
"What?"
"I asked you if you wanted milk…"
"No, I mean, you don't know who your father is?"
Akiko laughed weirdly as she poured herself a glass. "Well, I mean I think I know who probably he is, but I've only seen him once. I think he lives in Tanzaku city, still. Don't know though. My aunt hasn't heard from him in a long time, and she's the only one in the family who still talks to him."
Yoshio's brow crunched up. "Oh," he said.
She had a couple cushions on the floor around a small crate that she apparently used for a table, and she sat down on one of the cushions and sipped her milk. Yoshio felt a little odd just standing there, so he sat down as well.
"Your mother at least told you who he was though, right?" he asked.
"Not really. But I'm pretty sure it's him because he's the only guy she ever lived with."
"Can't you just ask her?"
For the first time, Yoshio saw his kunoichi teammate blush. "Um… She's not really around anymore."
"Oh… sorry," he said.
"She didn't die or anything," Akiko added quickly. "She's just, you know, not around."
Yoshio didn't like talking about personal stuff to begin with, so he let it stop there. He wasn't sure why he didn't just get up and leave. He didn't have any reason to be here anymore. Still, Akiko didn't seem to mind that he was still around. "You know… a lot of random stuff," he said awkwardly.
"I read a lot," she said, rather unnecessarily.
"So you can probably recognize all sorts of famous ninja."
"Yeah…"
"Even foreign ninja?"
--
Tenten and Lee stood back-to-back in the copse, keeping their eyes open while Neji did a long-distance scan. "Half a mile south, they're regrouping," he said after a minute. "The one with the katana is a healer. I give him thirty minutes for full chakra recovery after he's done with the other three."
"Shit," Tenten said out loud. She relaxed her stance and Lee relaxed his, and the three faced each other.
"We'll have to strike now, then," Lee said. "I have recovered to full strength. We must not wait."
Tenten didn't even have to look at Neji to know he was thinking the same thing she was: if Lee says he's back to full strength now, that means he'll actually be back to full strength in about three hours. Some things never changed.
Lee'd had to open his fourth gate, which wasn't cataclysmic, but considering this was probably only the first of many fights with the other team, it didn't bode well. He had a gash on his thigh as proof that they weren't dealing with a misplaced band of Ame chunin, either. Neither had Tenten or Neji gotten out of it totally unscathed. In fact, the other team seemed to be suspiciously well-informed on Team Gai's typical strategies and jutsu. It was almost as if they'd been chosen specifically to counter the strengths of Team Gai… which could only mean one thing.
This had clearly been an ambush. A well-planned one, at that.
What Lee had spotted back in the clearing was not the flash of a spyglass but the wink of a camera lens, Neji explained. He'd never seen a camera like it before. It seemed to be mounted in a tree about ten yards away, and it seemed to be battery-powered. They couldn't find out any more about it without getting any closer, and they couldn't get any closer without giving away the fact that they knew they were being watched. Instead they kept moving on their former trajectory, and Neji with his Byakugan found several more cameras throughout the forest. The fact that they were cameras rather than sentinels was inherently disturing, since Neji's technique worked best with chakra sources.
"We're outnumbered by one, and that one is a healer," Neji said aloud. "Even if he uses up all his chakra healing the others and is unable to fight, we're still at a severe disadvantage."
"I get the feeling that that's their strategy," Tenten said. "They don't seem to want to meet us head-on, but the fight was calculated to wear us out as much as possible. They're going to keep the pressure on until we're out of chakra."
"They must be trying to capture us," Lee said.
"I agree. This doesn't appear to be a death trap," Neji said.
Tenten could almost see the cogs turning in his mind, and she knew what conclusions he was drawing. Being on the same team for so long meant that their deductions followed roughly the same patterns. The opposing team was clearly tailored to counter Team Gai. Team Gai's original mission objective had been to capture a suspected spy on his way back to Ame, so it was only natural that Team Gai was chosen: they were the foremost team in Konoha right now for live captures, so any rich client who wanted his money's worth would be getting their services. Which meant that whoever had commissioned this mission was clearly part of the conspiracy.
The question of why us barely entered Tenten's mind. They were Konoha jonin – valuable, experienced jonin at that. Either someone wanted them out of the way, someone wanted them interrogated, or someone wanted to get their hands on a Hyuuga. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. Regardless, knowing their enemy's exact objective wasn't going to help the current situation.
Lee dropped his head. "We need to retreat, don't we," he said rather than asked.
"But they're cutting off our retreat!" Tenten hissed.
"He means we need to retreat north."
"Toward Ame?"
"Yes."
"But what if that is part of their plan – to drive us north? If they are from Ame, they might have reinforcements waiting," Tenten said worriedly.
"It's no use," Neji said. "If we try a lateral retreat, they'll overtake us before we've recovered. They obviously know the terrain much better than we do."
"Damn it, I just know they've got another team waiting, Neji, I just know it," Tenten said, gritting her teeth. "This is the perfect setup for a double ambush."
"It is better to avoid the danger we know is there than worry about the danger we imagine," Neji said.
Tenten huffed at him. She met Lee's gaze and saw that he was silently on her side, which was mollifying, but she also knew that Lee would agree to follow Neji's plan anyway, which was slightly infuriating.
The other option, she knew, was that they could split up. Sacrifice one member of the team so that the two others could return to Konoha and get reenforcements. But what if that was the enemy's objective? What if they only wanted one Konoha jonin for interrogation?
That was kind of beside the point, however. As a rule, Team Gai almost never split up. They each had excellent techniques, but their main strength was definitely in being greater than the sum of their parts.
"Fine. Then let's get moving already," Tenten said. "Lee, how's your leg?"
"As good as ever. A scratch like this will not slow me down."
Which probably meant that they'd better cut their usual pace in half if they didn't want to kill him with blood loss.
"Formation B. Due north. We do not split up for anything, agreed?" Neji asked.
Tenten and Lee assented, Tenten with an irritated glare, and they took off.
--
Yoshio and Akiko met the next morning in front of the Hokage's tower just before their team was supposed to meet. He dug the photo out of his pocket as soon as he saw her, and she stood up promptly and took if from his hand. "No way!" she cried, staring at it. "Which one?"
"The weird one with the facepaint."
"No way!" she shrieked.
Yoshio put a hand over his ear quickly and looked around to see if anyone had overheard. "So you know who he is?" he asked, forcing his voice to be as dull as possible.
"Well duh, Yoshio. How can you not know? He's around Konoha all the time to see his sister, and it's not like that's a face you could miss."
"I've never seen him before."
"Sheesh, the Kazekage's brother? You really think so?" She sighed deeply. "Oh well – in your case, the only solution might be to rule out every single other male ninja there is anyway. I'll see what else I can find out about him…"
Over the next few days she dug up a little bit of information on him, but all she did was bore Yoshio half to death with descriptions of the art of combat puppetry. He might have gotten sick of it and let it stop there if it hadn't been for a chance meeting later that week.
He was with Rikyu and Akiko, waiting for Naruto-sensei again, and he happened to see another team of genin walking toward the Hokage's tower. He recognized Taiki, a boy from his class he used to partner with for sparring exercises, and another classmate. Taiki nodded at him. Yoshio glanced at his teammates – Rikyu was brooding and sullen, and Akiko was already deeply buried in one of her books, so he walked over to Taiki. "Hey."
"Hey. Is that girl on your team?" Taiki asked, eyeing Akiko.
"Yeah," Yoshio said.
"Wow… sorry."
Yoshio shrugged, feeling weirdly defensive. "She's not that bad."
"I thought she couldn't even do easy taijutsu. Wonder how she graduated."
"How's your team?" Yoshio asked, eager to not be talking about his own anymore.
"They're good. Sensei says if we get another C-rank mission and do well, we could take the chunin exams in a few months." His face darkened. "We were going to have a mission to Suna tomorrow, but then Daijiro got a stupid cold…"
Yoshio's stomach froze. "Suna?"
"Yeah, some delivery or something. It's not really a C-rank mission, but at least it's an excuse to travel, right?"
Yoshio's mind was racing. "So if your team can't do it, who will?"
"I dunno, probably some older genin. It's just a delivery, it's not that big a deal…"
Akiko came to attention sharply when Yoshio announced his idea to Naruto-sensei. Rikyu looked torn, as if he couldn't decide whether it was the greatest idea ever or whether he was irked that it was Yoshio's. Naruto-sensei didn't looked convinced at first. "Eh… well, we could try. It would be different. You guys can't travel that fast yet but… maybe this would be a good way to learn! Yeah! Unless it's a C-rank mission… But we could go see Gaara! But it's going to take a long time. Ano, what do you think, Akiko?"
Akiko looked up, surprised. "What?"
"You want to go to Suna?"
Yoshio had been getting the feeling that Naruto-sensei was beginning to take Akiko's constant reading a little personally, and he seemed to like catching her off-guard like this.
Akiko shrugged. "Sure. This mission will pay more because it's outside Konoha, right?"
Yoshio raised his eyebrows at her.
"I'm saving up for a table," she explained.
Naruto-sensei made up some crazy argument for the Hokage's benefit – he wanted to test out their skills away from home, he would use it as a survival exercise, something like that – and the Hokage listened to him until her patience had run out. "Fine, fine, take it. But you'd better be back in less than two weeks, or your entire mission fee is forfeit!"
Once the mission was officially theirs, Rikyu was visibly excited. "Yeah! We're going to Suna!"
"Meet at the gate tomorrow morning at eight o'clock sharp!" Naruto-sensei said to them. "Bring… whatever you think you should! Your first lesson will be to see if you know how to pack for this kind of journey!"
"How long will it take to get there, sensei?" Akiko asked.
"Well, uh… we don't know yet. This is like a test, see? You don't know how long you'll be travelling, so you'll really have to think about what you'll bring, you know?"
"Yeah! Yeah! We're going to Suna! This is just like a C-rank mission! You guys better listen to me once we get on the road – it's dangerous out there! Hey sensei, can we work on taijutsu on the way?" Rikyu asked.
"Eh… if we have time," Naruto said. Yoshio thought his sensei looked like he was having some misgivings, but he didn't care. He was going to Suna – it was almost like it was meant to happen – and he felt like he was finally going to get some answers.
--
Author's Note. V-chan is the Beta Of Might. Many thanks! Also, I would like to say thank you to my reviewers. This story would have stopped months ago without your responses. I less than three you all!