Against the World

"Sometimes you actually get a mission to do the right thing, and yet what they ask of you for it..."

-x-

"We've finally finished compiling the information regarding Base 121, including speaking with former intelligence officers who were stationed there on the last two rotations, combing over over the reports, and intensively debriefing Yamanaka Aiko, sir. Here is the final report," a woman who clearly belonged to the Yamanaka clan said, handing over a file.

The Hokage accepted it, he opened it and casually flipped through it. "The highlights, if you will."

"As far as we've been able to determine, scouting parties and patrols into Frost discovered unusual activity from Cloud. It was hypothesized they had established a new base there in the last six to eight months, but it wasn't seen as particularly important as Cloud tends to move their bases around fairly frequently and didn't pose a major threat to any of our interests in the area. One—and only one—of the intelligence officers was able to confirm that there should have been updates on the situation in every report, including information on the precise location, but we only found brief mention of it in the report from just before the imposter replaced Hayashi."

Dan stroked his chin. "Presumably not a base then. The information from the interrogation indicated there may be a strategic asset in the area, this would line up with that."

"Yes," the woman confirmed. "Yamanaka Aiko did have knowledge of the presumed base, as did two of the seven intelligence officers who have rotated out in the last six months, though the details on the precise location of the base are lost. The others were unaware as their focus was on other targets. They've all compiled reports on what they remember, it's in the file. However, we have no definitive answer as to what exactly the strategic asset may be. It will require further investigation. We've mind-walked all seven of the intelligence officers and found no evidence of treason, but I recommend we remain cautious and continue to monitor them."

"I'll have a look later and decide how to proceed. Moving on, is your report on your secondary objective ready yet?"

"I have not finished writing it yet, as the situation with Cloud took precedence, but I can provide a verbal summary at this time."

"Please do."

"Firstly, I was able to successfully keep my secondary mission from Aiko-kun."

"Excellent, while not disastrous if she knew, it could be a minor inconvenience or affect the integrity of the information."

The woman inclined her head. "Indeed. From what I've been able to determine, Hoshino Sekai is progressing within acceptable parameters. Her attachment to her team continues to grow stronger—though I caution that their loyalty to her grows in turn, and we must be cautious about Aiko-kun passing information to her. She also demonstrated significant attachment to Uchiha Itachi, and responded well when he reprimanded her, her behaviour improving. She respects him enough to listen. She maintained an acceptable standard of decorum even when faced with mild hostility from those around her.

"One should note that she has made an increased effort in connecting with the survivors after the attack—superficially, but she did not completely disregard them like she does most others."

Dan hummed. "Decent progress overall. I think it's time we set up a test—for the both of them."

-x-

Twenty Six

Genjutsu was not something that could be practised alone. It unfortunately required people to cast it on. The problem was that while Itachi and Shisui were available to help train me, they didn't have the time to spend ages being subject to genjutusu. Similarly, neither did my teammates. They had their own intensive training schedules to follow.

I discussed the problem with Kushina-sensei, who must have passed it on to Kairi-sensei, because soon after I was given permission to practice my genjutsu on prisoners before they were executed. We apparently had a steady stream of them coming into the village. It wasn't something most people would be permitted to do, but given I was technically certified as an interrogator even if it wasn't my primary classification, I was given the privilege.

As prisoners, their chakra was sealed, which meant they couldn't break any of my genjutsu. This was a downside in terms of making my genjutsu more difficult to break, however it was perfect for learning and fine tuning new genjutsu and practising layering genjutsu.

Both Itachi and Shisui were incredibly impressed when they learned that I had layered seven genjutsu and that was how my team took down the laser guy from Cloud. I thought they would be less impressed when they found out it took me several tries, but no. Regardless of how long it took me, they still found it incredibly impressive I managed to do it in the heat of combat, especially when in practice I'd never tried more than four layers.

They gave me a lot of advice about how to build up speed when layering and how to get better at it. They recommended I practice layering two genjutsu of varying ranks until I could do it with the ease of casting a single genjutsu, and then practice doing it in spars. After that, add a layer and repeat.

It sounded simple, but in practice it would take a long time.

I spent hours upon hours practising it on prisoners, but after a solid month of daily practice I was able to layer two genjutsu of varying ranks on prisoners with the ease of casting just one.

I also learned a few new genjutsu from Itachi and Shisui in that time period that the prisoners had the pleasure of being guinea pigs for.

When I wasn't practising genjutsu I was physically training. Kushina-sensei was holding off on new seal work for now in favour of improving my hand to hand combat, stamina and speed.

I was already fast for a chuunin, but one could never be fast enough. Given the new target on my back speed would help keep me alive. Speed to dodge, speed to run, speed to get in close and attack before they could stop me.

I wore weights at all times. It had the benefit of helping both my speed and stamina.

For hand to hand, Kushina-sensei and I focused on what I could do to quickly take out an opponent both with and without a kunai in hand.

I was strong for my size and stature, surprisingly so, which was an advantage. While I couldn't enhance my strength the way Sakura and Tsunade-sensei could, I had managed to pick up the standard chakra reinforcement that most jounin could do and used it to great effect.

However, for now we were focusing on using my strength defensively and strategically. I would not be taking down my opponents with punches like Sakura did. Instead, I'd focus on using it block strikes, knock my opponents back, and to create openings to go for soft spots.

I sparred mostly with Kushina-sensei's shadow clones. Unlike most people, her clones were capable of taking some pretty hard hits before dispelling. A consequence of her special chakra, apparently. They only dispelled when I landed a disabling or killing blow.

We briefly considered training me with a sword to give me extra reach to compensate for the size difference, but ultimately concluded that it wasn't worth the time it would take to learn to use it effectively when it didn't compliment my fighting style. I'd already spent years learning how to get in close without getting hurt, I would have to learn an entirely new style and breaking habits was hard.

Besides, if I couldn't get in close then I had my chains. We spent more time working with those as well.

When Kushina-sensei was busy, her husband or Kakashi-senpai would take over supervising my physical training and sparring. It was rare that all three were unavailable.

On the days when Kakashi-senpai took over, we'd go back to his place after for dinner, and I would spend time with the dogs, who were always happy to see me and get some pets in. He gave me permission to stop by and visit his ninken even if he was out of the village, but I only took him up on it twice. Despite living there for awhile to look after him, it felt strange to go there alone, even with permission, despite his assurances and the assurances of his pack that I was welcome.

When it came time to practice my genjutsu on multiple targets and work on making it more difficult to break, we had to find someone for me to practice on beyond the prisoners.

In the end, I got stuck working with genin teams. Ew.

It was considered a win/win situation by the village. A lot of jounin didn't have the skill with genjutsu to teach their brats to break out of anything but the simplest illusions, so I was both teaching and training.

I hated working with the genin brats. A lot of them had trouble recognizing genjutsu and several struggled to break them, especially in the heat of a spar. It was good practice for catching multiple people in a genjutsu while fighting, but it wasn't very good for knowing how difficult it was to break my genjutsu.

Fortunately, their jounin sensei also agreed to participate, and they were generally able to give me a better metric, especially the sensei of The Nuisance's team, as she was an Uchiha.

As an Uchiha, she could have trained her brats in recognizing and dispelling genjutsu herself and spared me interacting with The Nuisance, Itachi's little brother, and some Tominaga girl whose name escaped me, but apparently Itachi asked her to let me do it.

He absolutely did it to be petty and annoy me, he knew how much I disliked The Nuisance. He even confirmed it when I confronted him after the first session with that team, though apparently he had other reasons as well.

Namely, he wanted me to put his brother in his place. His brother knew he tutored me in genjutsu and had complained that since I didn't have a sharingan it was a waste of time and Itachi should have spent the time training him instead. He wanted me to prove my skill with genjutsu, and once he told me that I took special pleasure in humiliating the kid by catching him in illusions he couldn't break. He might have been able to with a sharingan, but he hadn't activated it yet, if he ever would.

The training with the genin teams, while annoying, did prove to be fruitful. Both Itachi and Shisui noted improvement in my genjutsu every time I sparred with them.

Since we were all busy with our individual training, Team Four only met up for team training once a week, in order to keep each other updated on our growth and work on our teamwork. Whenever Kairi-sensei was leading a session, we worked on our stealth as well. She was pleased that we had kept up our practice with it while she had been in her coma.

After each team session we took a few hours to grab a meal together and just hang out. We often ended up at my place, for even though it was small, I was the only one who lived alone. Sakura once suggested soaking at the public bath together, but when I told her about the peeping problem she promptly decided she wouldn't be returning there at all.

After a few months, Kushina-sensei started me back on more seal theory. It would cut into my genjutsu time, but by that point I was comfortable layering two genjutsu when sparring which was significant progress. Adding to that would still take a lot of time and training, but I couldn't afford to neglect sealing any longer, and what sensei would be teaching me would be incredibly useful.

We were finally starting on barrier seals.

The freeze tag seal I created myself way back in the day was actually a very simple barrier seal, though one that wasn't particularly impressive. It created a small, invisible barrier of chakra around the target to hold them in place. I ended up mostly discontinuing them because they were too easy to break out of—they were easily disrupted by pushing your chakra outside of your body and I never looked into improving them, too focused on the new things Kushina-sensei taught me.

Sensei made frequent use of barrier seals in combat. They were useful for blocking attacks, cutting off escapes and trapping enemies, and aided in her manoeuvrability. She was able to make barriers in mid air for her to jump off of to get a height advantage, or to launch herself off of and change direction midair with incredible speed. She was able to use them at a moment's notice with chakra seals, making them seem to appear from thin air.

I'd never actually seen it before when we sparred, but she brought in Kakashi-senpai for a combat demonstration and the results were impressive. She was everywhere. Kakashi-senpai used a wide array of ninjutsu and her barriers absorbed or deflected each and every one of them.

It was incredibly impressive.

After the demonstration, I was dragged to sensei's office for a lecture, which continued in our next session. Barrier seals were complicated, and according to Kushina-sensei it was a small miracle I'd managed to make even a very basic, weak one before she properly started teaching me.

Recalling the battles in Hot Water, I couldn't help but think how helpful it would have been to be able to erect barrier seals around Sakura to protect her while she healed allies instead of having to fend off attackers ourselves.

The downside was that they could be very chakra intensive. Fortunately, it was a flat cost. The chakra ratio didn't matter. It wouldn't cost me any more or less chakra than it cost sensei, though she had the benefit of having insane reserves which let her use them to the extent she did.

There were some work arounds for the chakra cost, fortunately, but they were extremely complicated and it would take awhile before I got to that point.

The easiest was to create a barrier that absorbed chakra. Any time someone touched it it would leach their chakra, and when ninjutsu or genjutsu tried to pass through it, it would absorb it as fuel. The downside to this was that it cost as much as a regular barrier to maintain, and if there was nothing to absorb the full cost was still on the user for as long as it was active.

The second option was a slight variation of the first, to foist the chakra cost off onto someone else. This could be done various ways, including with linked seals. It was a simple concept, apply a seal to the power source and link it to the barrier seal. In some situations enemies could be used as the chakra source, but it was also a viable option to use allies as well. Sakura, for example, once she filled and activated her yin seal, would likely be a good option. Of course, only with her knowledge and permission. It was bad form to drain an ally's chakra without it.

Using linked seals for this came with the draw back that you would need to create a new set of seals every time you wanted to create a new barrier. Or that's what sensei initially said during her lecture, however I remembered my discussion with Minato-san about his hiraishin and how he found a work around to needing to close the link before activating seals and asked if that could be used in this situation.

Kushina-sensei had been stunned, unaware that Minato-san had shared that with me, but then she burst into laughter and lifted me up, twirling me around.

It would definitely work she said, and it was a particularly brilliant idea. She'd personally never thought of it because she rarely used seals in such a way. In general, she had so much chakra that transferring the cost to another person wasn't necessary, and for her seals where she wanted to transfer the cost to someone else for other reasons, it was never in a way where the drawback of linked seals impaired her.

The final option to reduce chakra cost was to create a barrier fuelled by natural energy. Natural energy, which when harnessed by humans was often called nature chakra, was all around us. Plants and vegetation emitted large amounts of it, but it was present in the air even in places like the Red Plateau, though the overall level of saturation was much lower there.

Barriers fuelled by natural energy had almost no drain on the user but were extremely complicated to set up, and even easier to mess up. And mistakes with them could be fatal. I wouldn't be learning how to make them for a few more years, according to sensei.

The village's barriers, which would be raised if the village was under assault, were of this sort, Kushina-sensei informed me. Chakra was also constantly fed into them, as the more already in the seal the longer they could last before drawing on natural energy to sustain themselves. Even drawing on natural energy, the barriers could only be sustained for so long before they drew up all the natural energy in the area and fell.

Once satisfied that I had a solid theoretical background, Sensei decided that instead of just teaching me a basic barrier seal, we would start with improving my freeze tag seals.

The first thing we did was make it so they weren't so easy to dispel. No longer would foreign chakra interfere with the seal. Sensei made me figure out how to do this mostly by myself, though she was willing to answer questions as long as they weren't just spoon feeding me the solution. It took me a few attempts, but eventually I got it.

The second change we made was make the barrier itself stronger. My original barrier was enough to restrict movement, but it could be broken through with enough force.

The final change was the most difficult. We made the seal absorb chakra. Kushina helped a lot with this part, forgoing making me figure it out myself.With this, instead of the duration being limited by how much chakra I feed into the seal, the duration will be limited by the chakra of the target. The downside was that it had the potential to suck the target dry and kill them. If I planned to use it for extended periods of time and didn't want to kill someone, I would have to closely monitor things to prevent it.

It was a good tool to have in my repertoire for if I wanted a nonlethal take down, and would end up coming in handy on my next mission.

-x-

It was October before I was allowed to do a mission again, and when I found out what it was I desperately wished I could say no.

But ninja don't get to say no, not without good reason and "I don't want to" unfortunately doesn't cut it. Nor did "but I'll miss my teammate's birthday!" Such things were given little consideration here.

(I quickly acquired a gift and left it with Sakura to give to Aiko in my place. With her work at the hospital it was unlikely she would be away on Aiko's birthday.)

The mission was in The Capital and I was going undercover with Kairi-sensei, without the rest of my team. Instead, a man I'd never met before would be joining us. His name was Hara Keiji. He was to pose as my father while Kairi-sensei posed as my mother, and I posed as a seven year old girl.

Keiji had light blue hair and yellow-ish eyes, a bit more green than mine, but close enough that one could believe I inherited my eyes from him.

All three of us ended up dying our hair black and Kairi-sensei did something to help hide her scars, I wasn't quite sure what. It wasn't just regular makeup and it wasn't a jutsu either. She also wore a glass eye and a pair of glasses. I used a spray to cover my seals, including the one on my thigh. The spray matched my skintone perfectly and required a special soap to remove. It would limit my access to the seals, as accessing them would require me to reapply the spray after.

For the mission, I was lent a trunk full of upscale clothing, to match a girl of my alleged status.

We ran until we were only fifty kilometres from The Capital, where we met up with a genin team. They had a horse drawn carriage waiting for us and would be posing as our escort to The Capital.

Once in the cart we began our final preparations. I carefully selected an outfit from the trunk that was suitable and Kairi-sensei weaved my hair into an elegant but practical braid.

We arrived in The Capital some hours later and headed straight for the Daimyo's compound. We were met at the outer gates by guards. We showed our falsified documents and legitimate letter of invitation and were allowed in, minus our genin guards who were dismissed, their mission complete.

The palace itself was at the centre of the compound, gated off behind another wall, the security over there much tighter.

We were escorted by the guard to a guest house on the edge of the property, where we were met with another team of guards, though they were not for us.

"Oh, Cousin Sora! I've missed you so!" a rather plump woman screeched as she ran up to Kairi-sensei and engulfed her in a warm hug. Kairi-sensei returned it. When she pulled back she turned to me and knelt down. "Oh, Mirai-chan!" she squealed, pinching my cheeks. "It's so wonderful to see you again! I haven't seen you since you were a baby! You've grown so much."

I looked down, like I was shy, and slid closer to Kairi-sensei.

"Oh, of course, you don't remember me, I'm sorry dear," she apologized, standing up straight again. She turned to Keiji. "Wonderful to see you again Ken, I hope you've been treating my cousin right!" she said with a laugh, but there was a hint of steel in her eyes, like it was a threat.

The woman ushered us into the guest house and instructed the guards to bring our things. They obeyed without question. They tried to linger inside, but the woman told them to leave and wait outside.

"But Madam Shijimi!" one of the guards protested. "It's for your own protection."

Madam Shijimi huffed. "You've already searched the house and deemed it safe, it's only the servants inside. You can guard me from outdoors just fine. This is my cousin. I'm perfectly safe with Sora and her family. I face much more danger when I make my visits back home."

"But in these trying times—" the guard tried again, but was silenced by a glare.

"You'll wait for me outside, that is final. Know your place, guard."

Cowed, the guard bowed in difference. "As you wish, Madam."

Once the four of us were alone, we settled into the sitting room.

"Well now, I think it's about time to get down to business," Madam Shijimi said. "Thank you for coming. I tried to order an official mission, but my dear husband won't take the issue seriously, even now that upper class girls are being targeted."

"You did your best, Sumire," Kairi-sensei consoled her. It took me a moment to understand why she was calling Madam Shijimi by another name, but then I remembered that the Daimyo had the archaic tradition of giving his wives new names upon marriage. Sumire must be the woman's actual name. It wasn't in the brief. I disapproved of renaming a woman like that, so I made an effort to commit her real name to memory. "It's the daimyo's idiotic insistence on not allowing ninja to operate in The Capital without permission. As if that stops us."

Sumire laughed. "Truly, every single person currently in this house is a ninja, and he has no idea, the fool."

Indeed, Sumire—or Madam Shijimi as was her official title—was the second wife of the Fire Daimyo, and she was a special jounin sent to infiltrate The Capital.

About fifteen years ago the Fire Daimyo announced his intent to find a second wife. (And he has since taken a third and fourth.) Women from all over the Land of Fire were sent to The Capital in an attempt to catch his eye. Leaf, of course, sent a handful of women of our own, all ninja, all infiltration specialists, though they posed as civilians. With some subtle sabotage, Leaf was able to ensure that one of their agents was chosen.

(Since we had already established a presence through the second wife, when he announced his intent to take a third and then fourth wife, Leaf only sent genuine candidates from civilian families and discreetly sabotaged certain candidates.)

Since then, she has been coming back to Leaf roughly once every month or two and stays for a week to "visit family" and act as an ambassador for the Fire Daimyo.

As the second wife, she was replaceable and of lower rank than the first wife, so usually the travel was permitted despite the risk for the perceived benefit of making her presence known in the village. Her job was essentially to be seen and to remind the village to stay on the good side of the Fire Daimyo because his reach extended to the Village Hidden in Leaves.

She used this as an opportunity to report in with intel and keep up with her physical training.

Beyond Sumire, Leaf infiltrated The Capital in various other ways. There were ninja posing as merchants, as peasants, and of course, as servants in various households. Over the years Sumire had carefully curated her staff so that they were all Leaf ninja.

The "servants" she assigned us for the duration of our stay would work with us for the assignment.

"Is the girl truly prepared for this mission?" Sumire asked bluntly. "I wasn't expecting one so young."

"Sekai is a chuunin, she can handle it," Kairi-sensei assured her, then paused a moment. "She's not too young looking, is she?"

"No, she's perfect," Sumire said bluntly. "I was just expecting someone under a transformation or a young teenager who could pass as a few years younger, not an actual child. I didn't realize we had someone suitable."

"We felt that it was less risky to use Sekai. She appears to be the right age, and has both the combat skills to protect herself and fairly intensive training with infiltration, though not a specialist. We don't know anything about the perp, he may be able to detect transformations."

"A wise decision. Very well, let me tell you the details, I wasn't able to smuggle all of it back to the village when I made the mission request, since my darling husband insists it's grown too dangerous to travel..."

I listened intently as Sumire filled us in.

Starting a year ago, young girls started to go missing. At first it was peasant girls and no one really looked for them or even cared, beyond those immediately affected. Their bodies turned up some time later, showing evidence of being... well, violated. It was unclear if it was pre- or postmortem. Then girls from the merchant class went missing, and about a week later their bodies turned up in the same condition. There was more attention paid at this point and several families pooled their resources together to cover the cost of a mission and petitioned the Daimyo for permission to hire Leaf ninja to investigate, but he refused. Sumire attempted to convince him, but he felt that the local authorities could handle it, ninja did not need to be brought in.

Local authorities clearly could not handle it. Or perhaps simply wouldn't. It was unclear which.

The perpetrator had since escalated to upper class girls. Not quite nobles, but noble adjacent.

That was where I came in. As the "cousin" of the Daimyo's second wife I was disconnected enough from the Daimyo that I wouldn't be too protected and wasn't technically a noble, but my status was higher than any of the other girls who went missing. I would make a tempting target.

I appeared to be the best age for it as well. The victims ranged from ages six to eleven, but most were on the lower end.

All of the girls had black hair, which was the main reason my hair was dyed, not just so I would share a superficial resemblance with Kairi-sensei and Sumire.

Sumire's network in The Capital had compiled information on any other similarities and trends between the girls and we would carefully comb over it all to create the ideal persona (but not too ideal) before presenting me in public.

The disappearances and murders were happening about twice a month, which shocked me. I hadn't realized it was so frequent, and to think, the Daimyo still didn't care to do anything about it. That was over twenty girls.

The last girl was found a week ago, so they were expecting him to strike soon.

They didn't know much about the perpetrator for certain, but they had some guesses.

It was unclear if he had any ninja training, but if he did, they put him as a C-ranked threat at the most—I would be able to handle him on my own.

Ninja training or not, he had the skills to break into civilian dwellings—at least four girls appeared to be taken from their bedrooms, possibly more. The circumstances surrounding some of the disappearances were unclear.

He showed a pattern of escalation, he was pushing boundaries. He wanted to see how far he could go, who else he could take without consequence.

He seemed to be working alone or with a small team at most.

They didn't have a match to the DNA on the recovered semen, but each sample was from the same man.

The chances of an actual trafficking ring being involved were low. While there was a market for, well, this, it was too sloppy. Organized trafficking rings wouldn't just leave the bodies out to be found, they would dispose of them themselves to reduce the chances of being caught.

This man was flaunting his actions in comparison.

With the details in place, we started discussing our plan.

Obviously, I was bait. Our stay was indefinite. At minimum a month, but we'd stay up to four. By that point if I didn't catch the perpetrator's eye, I probably wouldn't. As much as I wanted to catch the culprit and stop him, part of me desperately hoped I didn't catch his eye and he became someone else's problem.

While in The Capital, I would attend parties and "explore" the city with my parents and a single guard, and overall just try to be as visible as possible. If he didn't strike within the first month, I would "slip away" from my parents and the guard and "get lost."

If I was taken, I was to go along with it only up to a point. I was not to let myself be raped, however if possible it was advised that I catch him in a genjutsu to make him believe things were going as planned to buy time. That would have the unfortunate consequence of being aware of what he wanted to do to me through the connection, and I rather wished I didn't have to.

Sumire's ninneko, Tora, would be in the guest house with us at all times and would alert Kairi-sensei as soon as I was taken so she could track me.

How we dealt with the perpetrator would depend on his station. If he was a nobody we would simply interrogate him and see who else was involved, if anyone, and then kill him and dispose of the body. If he wasn't a nobody... well, then it got a little complicated.

-x-

The first party was the most grand that would be held during my stay—the Daimyo's Autumn Garden Party. The weather in Fire Country was mild enough that even in October, an outdoor party was feasible, even for the delicate nobles.

For it, Sumire gifted me a beautiful kimono that she said was mine to keep beyond the mission. I wasn't sure what I'd do with it, it was grand enough that I had to have the help of two servants to put it on and I couldn't imagine I'd ever have occasion to wear something so grand any time in the future. The kimono was sized so that I would have room to grow several inches and it would still fit, but even assuming it would fit me for the next two or three years... I doubted I'd wear it again.

I appreciated it though. Like the clothes I was lent for the mission, it was designed to hide small weapons in the lining. I used it to hide a few rolled up freeze tags.

In addition to the already generous gift of the kimono, Sumire also gave me a set of hairpins that had a retractable blade. These I could see myself using again in the future and would never outgrow.

The garden party itself was incredibly boring, but I played my part so well even Dollface wouldn't have been able to complain. I was shy and demure, I didn't speak much, but I graceful and humble. We gave off the impression that I was brought to The Capitol to introduce me to the upper class in hopes of catching a noble's eye and arranging a beneficial betrothal.

I was with Kairi-sensei and my False Father the entire time. Sumire made some time for us, but as the Daimyo's second wife she wasn't able to stay with us the whole time.

She introduced us to her husband and few other important nobles, but after that she deferred to one of her "dear friends" (who was actually another infiltration specialist who had married some minor noble I immediately forgot the name of, though his face and position were committed to memory just in case) to be our social guide for the night.

We flitted around the party, being as visible as possible without drawing a suspicious amount of attention. If the perpetrator was at the party, he would have seen me.

The day after the party we went over all the men who attended and discussed the appropriate way to handle things in the case that one of them was who we were looking for.

Two days later our little pretend family went out and explored the city. We explored the market and bought some new clothes and accessories that would be passed on to the infiltration department for future use once we returned to the village.

We found a park and I asked if I could go play, but Kairi-sensei refused, telling me that I would get my clothes dirty and it was unbecoming of a girl of my station. I let my shoulders slump in disappointment, but obeyed. As we walked passed, I looked back longingly.

We were laying the ground work for me to "run off" on my own at some point, and giving a hint at where I'd go. There was no way to tell if we were being observed or not, but we would repeat this a few times just in case.

Over the next two months, our days were spent at parties, gatherings, or being tourists. Our evenings were spent pouring over the information that the spy network turned up regarding the case.

A little over a week since we arrived a new body was found. They kept coming like clockwork. With every body that arrived new information surfaced and we began to narrow down our profile and eliminate suspects.

As time went on, I started to grow complacent and believe that I hadn't caught the culprit's eye after all.

I was, of course, wrong.

-x-

Notes: So it's been a year. Sorry, not sorry. I've been working on another project as you can probably tell if you check my profile. But I'm not abandoning this, so don't worry. And since it left off on a cliffhanger, I'll be working on the next chapter before I go back to any of my other projects. Can't leave you waiting on a cliffie for too long.

Important! In 3 months I will delete Against the World from . It will remain on AO3. At this point the version of FFN is just not something I want left up and it's too much work to go back and edit it, the system for doing that is really not worth the effort. It's also just a pain to cross post.

Once again, I'm despairing at how I've been all over the place with Sekai's genjutsu abilities. Back reading... Well, I'm going to say that casting genjutsu against prisoners and civilians is completely different than casting them on able bodied/minded ninja and/or in the middle of combat.

Recall that Sekai used her "freeze tag" seal against Tsunade early on, but then we never heard of it again. This is because I forgot about it and didn't think to use it, so I made up a reason why we never saw it again :)

Madam Shijimi is a canon character—Tora's owner! I've given my own twist on her though, as you can tell.

Some background info explaining things that didn't make it into the fic directly, but y'all might wonder about:

-Itachi is also being kept in the village to train, he recently got bumped up to S-rank in the bingo book and while he is S-rank, they know he hasn't reached his full potential yet and training sabbaticals are important for his growth. It doubles as a well deserved break from missions after the literal hell he just dealt with.

-Shisui comes and goes. He's running assassinations to bring in income to the village rn.

-The village is deliberately staggering sending out Kushina, Minato, and Kakashi so there is almost always someone present to help train Sekai.

-Aiko and Sakura are doing their own training, working on the things mentioned in the previous chapter.