1SC: Chapter 8. Whoop-dee doo.

Disclai... I'm not even gonna bother.

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Chapter 8

To Hidden Mist Island

"Have I mentioned I hate you, Tsuki?" Hiun asked.

"Thirty-seven times in the past hour." Shingetsu replied.

"Well I do."

"Thirty-eight then."

Hiun groaned. "We've checked three places and none of them are willing to let us rent a boat."

She smirked. "Wish Menrui was with us. That puppy-dog face of hers always works."

"Heh, yeah. Remember when she did a henge of Iruka-sensei and was mimicking him, and he walked up?"

"And all she had to do was the pout and he forgave her." They both laughed. "How did the rest of us get in trouble?"

"Oh, you know, scorching him with a fireball, nearly hitting him with a kunai, that stuff."

"Oh yeah, right. We thought he was Menrui in disguise still."

"Hey! Guys!" A voice from behind them called.

"Speak of the devil and she shall appear."

Menrui ran up, a panting Roba next to her. "Running... is so tiresome."

She hit him lightly, then turned back to the two girls. "I've got good news and bad news."

"Bad news first." Hiun answered automatically.

"We couldn't find anyone willing to rent us a boat, buuuuut..."

"But what?"

Roba straightened up. "We found out there's a barge leaving tomorrow afternoon to the Island Hidden in the Mist."

"Perfect, now we just need to find my annoying brother and your," Shingetsu turned to Hiun, "Annoying brothers, and then we can get some food."

xXx

Back in the hotel room, where everyone was eating ramen, another fight had started. "I say we just steal a boat." Kakushin muttered.

"We're not common criminals! We're Shinobi!" Hiun protested.

"We aren't anymore." Roba muttered.

"What do you mean?" Menrui asked, slurping up more noodles.

Roba looked at her, stirring his food with his chopsticks. "Think about it. We may be Genin, but we were still ninja. We're rouges. If we get caught... Tsunade-sama may have to kill us."

The room was silent as the extent of what they had done was starting to sink in. "We can't go home, can we?" Kiseichu asked quietly.

"Not unless you want to be placed under arrest at the gates."

Shingetsu got up to throw her bowl away. "We have to. Even if we don't find the antidote, we need to go back to... to say goodbye to our parents." Tears were obvious in her voice. 'Stop it Shin. A Shinobi doesn't cry.'

"Shingetsu?" Kakushin asked. "You okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine." She sat back down, her eyes wet but no tears were showing. "And use 'Tsuki' from now on. We need to get used to using our other names."

Hari set his bowl down. "Let's just not talk about it. We'll deal with the situation when it comes to us. For now, we need to plan out how to get a boat from Hidden Mist to Kage Ryu. If anyone's even heard of this place, they're more than likely Jonin. And if we ask one of them, we're busted."

"So what do you propose?" Hiun asked.

He looked up, his face serious. "I say that Karada's plan is the only thing we've got."

xXx

"Menrui -er, Soba-if you don't get up right now, we're leaving without you."

"Komori, you suck at doing this."

"You want to do it sis?"

"Sure. Watch." Hiun bent down and pulled the futon out from underneath Menrui. "Morning sunshine!"

Menrui glared at her, trying to untangle herself from her blanket. "I hate you."

"Love you too, get up, get dressed, we're leaving in like ten minutes." She ordered, shooing Kiseichu out of the room.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever."

xXx

"Would you hurry up?" Hari called from outside the boys room.

"Well, if I hadn't had to go wake up a certain bed head, I would've been done already!" Kiseichu muttered, walking out of the room. "Can we go before the boat leaves?"

xXx

Menrui leaned over the boat railing. "I love the ocean. It's so big!"

"That is why it's called the ocean." Roba muttered, sitting against the wall behind her.

She looked back at him. "You're no fun." He mumbled a 'whatever' under his breath before closing his eyes and falling asleep.

Kiseichu rolled his eyes. "Lazy ass." He tossed a shuriken up in the air like one would a ball. However, it was snatched away before it came back down.

Hari glared at his brother. "Stop being stupid. You think that anyone normal would be playing catch with a shuriken?" He hissed.

"Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed." He muttered. Hari glared at him again. Somehow, it wasn't as effective or scary as the Byakugan.

"Would you two cut it out?" Hiun hissed. "You," She turned to Kiseichu, "Stop playing with weapons and you," She turned to Hari, "Stop being so uptight."

Shingetsu looked up from the map. "Telling him to stop being uptight is like telling the sun not to rise and set. It just doesn't happen." Hari blushed a little and gave Kiseichu his shuriken back.

Kakushin groaned. If they were all going to act like this the whole trip to Hidden Mist, it was going to suck.

xXx

'Hidden Mist Island. One step closer.' Kakushin thought. "So, where to next?"

Shingetsu paused. "We'd better just find an inn for tonight. We'll start looking for a boat tomorrow morning."

Roba yawned. "Sounds like a plan to me. I'm tired."

"You're always tired." Menrui commented dryly. Watching the waves from the side of the boat had grown boring REALLY fast.

"Just stop arguing. You're giving me a headache." Hari muttered, brushing past them.

Hiun shook her head. "He's been like that the whole trip since SOMEONE," Here she looked pointedly at Hari. "Decided to try and throw kunai at the fish next to the boat."

Shingetsu gave Kiseichu a look. "Can we please just try to get along?" Menrui asked.

"Try, yes. Succeed, probably not." Kiseichu answered.

Menrui rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm not tired, so I'm going to look around. Uma, you wanna come with?"

Roba looked at her. "I just said I was tired." He complained, but followed after her anyway.

Kakushin glanced at Hiun. She was fuming. "Hey, Kiken, why don't we go look for boats?" He didn't give her a chance to respond and dragged her off in the opposite direction. Shingetsu glared at him. 'Great. He's leaving me with these two sourpusses.'

xXx

As they walked along, Menrui noticed Roba staring at her. "What?"

He blushed slightly. "Nothing. It's just..."

She stopped. "It's just what?"

"I thought you looked a little like my mom with your hair dyed blonde."

Her eyebrows rose. "I look like a forty-year-old?"

He blushed a deeper red. "No, that's not what I meant! I meant that you look... pretty." 'Gah, this is so troublesome.'

Menrui blushed slightly. "Oh." She started walking again. "Um... A-arigatou Roba-kun." She whispered.

A few minutes later, a gasp of surprise made Roba look up. "What?" Menrui pointed at the wall in front of them. He looked at it and let out a curse. "Come on, we have to tell everyone else." He tore down seven posters and grabbed Menrui's hand, pulling her back toward the inn.

xXx

"Roba, what's so important that you had to drag all of us back here to tell us?" Shingetsu asked.

"This." He threw the piece of paper down on the table.

"Oh no." Hiun muttered.

Kakushin slammed his fist on the table. "Damn it!"

Sitting in the middle of the table was a pile of wanted posters for Hyuuga Kiseichu, Hyuuga Hari, Hyuuga Hiun, Nara Roba, Uchiha Kakushin, Uchiha Shingetsu, and Uzumaki Menrui. Each poster had their picture from when they had just passed the Genin exam. "Tsunade must have sent out Shinobi to everywhere that we'd have to pass through as soon as she found out we were gone." Shingetsu muttered.

" 'Ba-chan's smart." Menrui muttered.

"She's also fast. She's probably already got ANBU after us." Hari muttered.

Kiseichu growled. "Now what do we do? If we've already got the best Shinobi in the village after us, we're screwed!"

"No, we're not." Shingetsu told him. "I don't know of any ANBU member that can walk on water long enough to make it all the way out here, much less to Kage Ryu. They'd run out of chakra. We still have a chance to beat them. We just have to move faster."

Kakushin looked at her suspiciously. "How much faster?"

"We have to leave tonight."

The room suddenly filled with protest. "Are you crazy, Shin? We haven't had enough time. We aren't prepared!" Hiun yelled.

"Shinobi think on their feet." She snapped back. "Look, we've had these rules drilled into our brains since we were little. Now how about instead of spouting them off we actually use them?"

They all looked at each other guiltily. "What's the plan?" Hari asked.

Shingetsu smiled, relieved. "All right. Nii-san, did you and Hiun- er, sorry- Kiken find any boat places?"

"Yeah. There's about ten along the pier. The second to last one on the left's the best choice. It's got around fifty boats. I doubt the owner would notice if one went missing."

Hiun gave a confirming nod. "We shouldn't have to much of a problem, except that the store next-door to him has three watch dogs."

Roba pulled a bottle of powder out of his bag. "This oughta kill their sense of smell for a while."

"What is it?"

"Chili pepper. Akamaru absolutely abhors the stuff. I've seen Kiba use it to keep him from getting out of the yard."

Kiseichu scoffed. "One problem genius. How do we get close enough to use it?"

The prodigy grinned. "Simple. Soba, you like dogs, right?"

Menrui nodded. "I absolutely love them. You know that."

"And you've never met a dog that's attacked you, right?"

"Yeah, why do you ask? Oh...oh!" The lightbulb in her head suddenly clicked on. "Nuh-uh, no way! I'm not gonna practically blind the poor dogs."

"Those 'poor dogs' have claws the size of my fist and teeth to match." Kakushin muttered. "They'd gladly rip us to shreds if they saw us."

"It won't do any permanent damage to them." Roba assured her. "Just a day or two, then they'll be fine."

She took the bottle. "Fine." She stood and walked out.

Shingetsu coughed. "Now, here's the plan..."

--

SC: And that's where I stop. I know, I know. I've been working on this for almost a month and it's this short. Well I'm sorry. I've redone parts of it four times, and I'm leaving for Michigan in three days and won't be back for a month.

Now, I know some of you just completely freaked out. Don't lie to the all-knowing authoress. Calm down, I'm uploading everything I've been working on so I'll have it when I go to Michigan. Anyway, R&R people!

Ja ne!

SC

'Menrui: Soba

Roba: Uma

Kakushin: Karada

Shingetsu:

Hari: Hotai

Hiun: Kiken

Kiseichu: Komori '