Chapter 18: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Shikaku hurried back home after he was sure that Jiraiya and Tsunade had completely left the area. He wasn't sure if Jiraiya was going to follow up on Tsunade's suggestion to take him to Wave or not but he sure as hell wanted to be home in case the guy showed up at his apartment tonight or tomorrow morning.
He hadn't been home long when he heard the door open and was somewhat pleasantly surprised to see his roommates return. He'd lost track of the number of days they were going to be out, focusing only on his dwindling time with Yoshino. He greeted them and caught up on what they had been doing the last few days.
"Man, Shikaku, isn't there a ninja delivery service or something? I feel like I ought to get my own set of those goofy goggles they wear, as many scrolls as we've been sent to courier back and forth," Chouza grouched.
"I mean, couldn't we at least track down some low-level missing-nin or something? I'm sick of being the damn mail man," Inoichi added.
Shikaku thought about telling them to come to Wave with him tomorrow but then quickly shut up. First of all, he didn't even know if Jiraiya would come through on what Tsunade had said clearly in ire. And second, whether or not Jiraiya did show up, Shikaku now knew he had the next two days off and he was going with or without the sannin. And definitely without his two best friends – this was one trip he could make on his own.
The next morning, a smiling Jiraiya arrived on his doorstep, entering and filling him in a bit on the necessary trip. Shikaku tried to act like he didn't know anything about it, not wanting to let slip that he'd overheard the entire conversation with Tsunade the night before.
A sleepy pair of roommates joined him in the kitchen as Jiraiya was outlining some of what they would be doing. "Why does Shikaku get all the cloak and dagger stuff?" grumbled Chouza. "Are we not ninja, too?"
Jiraiya just laughed and told them to come along.
"What? Why?" Shikaku sputtered, not wanting to tick off his friends but utterly amazed that he was going to be stuck with them when he might actually have a chance to slip away and see Yoshino this trip. Besides, hadn't Tsunade told Jiraiya to see to it that they did get together? Shit, any other time a road trip with his two friends would have been a great chance to relax, but just this once, please let them stay home.
"Sure, we'll put it on Tsunade's budget. Come on, the more feet on the ground, eyes open, mouths shut, the more we'll learn."
Shikaku's descent into self-pity was interrupted by a knock at the door. Inoichi went to open it and was greeted by one of the Academy instructors with a young boy in tow. "Inoichi Yamanaka?" the woman asked.
"Yes?" Inoichi asked looking puzzled.
"You've signed up as a Shinobi-senpai at the Academy, escorts for soon to be graduating academy students correct?"
"Umm, yes," Inoichi answered looking back over his shoulders, rolling his eyes at his friends and mouthing the words 'community service' to them.
"Well, then this is your student-intern kohai, Hatake Kakashi." The boy bowed and spoke quietly, "Pleased to meet you, senpai."
Inoichi stood dumbfounded looking at the little boy in front of him. "This kid is gonna graduate? When?"
"With the next graduating class, sir," the lady informed him.
"Oh, well, err, what do I do with him?" Inoichi asked.
"He is to accompany you on any missions within the city boundaries and also on any D-rank or C-rank missions elsewhere."
"Elsewhere? You mean if I go out of town, he comes too?"
"Yes sir, unless of course, you were to be called to a B-rank or higher mission."
Inoichi looked hopefully at Jiraiya who laughed once again. "Observation only, clearly only D or C rank. Let's bring him along, besides, kids are great babe-magnets. Look at those big dark eyes, they'll be flocking to him like bees to honey."
Mutely, Inoichi accepted the paperwork she handed him. "He's your charge for one week, sir. Thank you for signing up with the program. The Academy appreciates your support." And with that she vanished.
"Well shi-, I mean da- I mean heck, kohai, come on in and meet the team," Inoichi said awkwardly as he led the boy into the kitchen and fixed him a bowl of cereal.
Kakashi bowed politely as he was introduced to each one. Then the five males sat around the room regarding each other dubiously. Shikaku was just shaking his head – how was it possible that this was going to get any worse. Tsunade's hint of going to Wave with Jiraiya had literally been the first time that the thought had popped into his head. Once he'd paused to consider it last night he really hoped that Jiraiya did not come and make a mission out of it, leaving him two or three Tsunade-free days while she was out with Orochimaru to make the trip to see Yoshino by himself.
Now he had the old goat, his two bawdy roommates and a pup, a literal wet-behind-the-ears still in school pup tagging along. This was not going according to plan.
The trip outbound took longer than expected, another sore point for Shikaku. They had to travel at kid-speed and even though the boys had to admit that he was a fast little almost-genin, he was still a kid after all. They had to go slower and take more breaks.
Eventually they even had to make camp for the night. Again, definitely not part of Shikaku's game plan.
"Cute kid," Jiraiya said after returning from checking on the boy to make sure he was settled in for the night.
The four sat around a small campfire, since there was no need to hide their position. Officially they were not on a mission, as a matter of fact Jiraiya had even had them stop by the missions room to have Morino-san list them all as out on leave for a couple of days. They were ostensibly just four friends traveling to a resort town. With a kid in tow.
"So, what are we actually supposed to do here?" Chouza asked.
"Watch. Listen."
Shikaku lit a cigarette, "Yes but watch or listen for what?"
Jiraiya looked at Chouza and Inoichi. "Were you two able to buy? You've been where the last two weeks, at least to Rain once, Lightning once, right? Any buyers or sellers, there?"
Inoichi looked a little sheepish and then answered him, "Yeah, we could buy." Fishing around in a pocket of his jounin vest, he managed to come up with the necessary supplies to roll a joint. He lit it and then passed it on down to Jiraiya. "But it wasn't our regular guy."
"So what IS this all about?" Shikaku asked impatiently. He was tired of the snippets he was getting here and there. "This compartmentalization nonsense is bullshit. How do you expect me to formulate a reasonable hypothesis if you only give me 20% of the data? 30% of the data? It's frustrating as hell!"
"You know about the pills," Jiraiya said, leaning back and blowing smoke skyward. "You know somebody's got to be behind that. Somebody with the resources to actually make that come about."
"We covered that in our last bull session, " Shikaku cut him off sharply.
Jiraiya just cocked an eyebrow at him and passed the joint to Chouza. "Well, what you probably don't know smart-ass is that everywhere I've looked I keep coming up with two groups of people. ANBU between villages and Uchiha internal to Konoha. Uchihas are taking leadership roles, senior roles on more and more trade missions like the ones your little girlfriend is on. Missions where there is a lot of cargo transported between villages. Now those are usually not so high ranked nor so high paying. Why would our vaunted Uchihas want to volunteer so altruistically to do those tasks 'for the good of the village?' And how is it that even though statistically speaking, Nara-san," he sneered Shikaku's name, "members from Uchiha are taking more lower-paying jobs there certainly doesn't seem to be any loss of income to their clan?"
Shikaku started to speak but Jiraiya cut him off with a wave of his hand.
"And why is it that there's a sudden increase in the number of small time dealers being rounded up and squeezed out of business by ANBU? ANBU? Since when the fuck do they care about piddly-shit like a little grass back and forth between villages? Unless of course, they are co-opting the routes, replacing dealers with their own?"
"Now, everything I'm telling you, Nara-san, is publicly available, mission assignment reports, police reports, etc., if you'd just get up off your ass and look. You knew from the very first day of this mission that ANBU were involved, I told you so myself. Somebody is going to great lengths to set up a shadow distribution network and it's happening right in front of us. And if it's happening right in front of us, then it means that we're not the only ones to figure it out. So there's somebody high enough up to make sure that it does happen. Somebody who's got the clout and the balls to see that their 'project' continues to unfold even as more and more of it is revealed. Somebody maybe as high as an ANBU captain."
"Who's the ANBU captain, now?" Chouza butted in quickly, seeing the look in Shikaku's eye and not wanting to give him a chance to snap back at Jiraiya.
"Mugato Uchiha." Jiraiya exhaled, blowing a smoke-ring skyward. "Now, why would Konoha's ANBU captain be heading up a trade mission to WAVE? I wonder."
The four sat in silence, Chouza keeping an eye on Shikaku. Then Jiraiya added softly. "There is one more thing that's public knowledge. And that is why is their a statistically higher than average number of genjutsu users that have gone missing this last year?"
Inoichi shifted uncomfortably and Jiraiya continued softly, "The last two that went missing were Yamanaka, weren't they?"
"Yeah," Inoichi answered in a soft voice, "Cousins. Distant, I didn't know them that well, but…but you don't think they had anything to do with it, do you?"
"No. I know they didn't and…" Jiraiya paused before continuing, "and what's not public is that they aren't missing. Their bodies are in Rain. That's where Orochimaru and Tsunade have gone. We think…we think they must have been test subjects."
"So why did you come to us, to Shikaku that first night, anyway?" Chouza asked.
"I knew Shikaku was the one Tsunade would pick as her assistant. But I knew her opinion on this. She refuses to believe that it could be shinobi doing this to fellow shinobi. That they could be doing this to promote a low level of war that would essentially keep them, all of us as shinobi, in business. I wanted to make sure I gave you both sides of the story. You can't, of course, discount the possibility that she is right though and that I am a lunatic. "
"There are a couple of other people who know my view on this. You can trust them. Orochimaru. Morino at missions. And Tsunade. She may not agree with me but you can trust her. "
Shikaku finally spoke up, "Okay, I've got one question, too. Where's Minato? What's he doing in all of this?"
He didn't really expect an answer, what he wanted was to see the reaction. He got it. In the firelight Jiriaya's eyes went sharp then shuttered, his posture tensed then shoulders slumped as if in defeat. "He's on an assignment for the Hokage," Jiraiya muttered then lay on his bedroll, turned to his side and had nothing further to say.
Shikaku took the first watch that night. They didn't really expect any trouble. The night was clear, he sat a little bit apartment from he rest of the group and looked up at the stars. After all he'd learned tonight, after all he'd seen and heard between the three legendary sannin over the few weeks, one thing was abundantly clear to him.
Turning 30 must suck.