Chapter Eighteen: For Freedom, For Homeland

"Nana, today I want you to come with me," Kabuto called out at her before she could rush past him. She stopped in her tracks and turned to him with her eyebrows cocked up.

"Owh?" she replied. Ever since she became a member of the orphanage staff a month ago it had been a wish to follow Kabuto to the ninja headquarters. He had given her no indication she would be invited before. It was a break-through in her mission to get closer to Kabuto. The past months that had proofed harder than she anticipated, since Kabuto was actually almost always away the majority of day. One time he even left for a week.

"What do you need me to do, Kabuto-san?" she asked curiously.

"Today I'll have to collect a bunch of files to review for the upcoming Chuunin exams. I thought you might appreciate a look around the ninja headquarters in exchange for carrying them," he drawled pushing his glasses further up his nose. He curled his lips up in a smile. Nana snorted and shrugged, even though her inner-self was cheering at the prospect. She didn't want him to understand how glad she was he asked her.

"I guess that isn't a bad deal. Can we also stop at the hardware store on the way back?"

"Ooh? You've already used up all the gears you bought last time?"

Since she got her first week pay she visited the traditional Tabigarasu tech-shop to buy components for crafting. Nana liked working on technical gadgets in her spare time. Often she lost track of the hours and worked till deep in the night under the light of a candle. Using her fire control to blaze the metals together, fiddling to get all the wires attached.

"Yes, I want to buy a laser sensor, and after that my spider drone is complete!" she replied.

"I'm looking forward to see it in action," Kabuto told her. Kabuto was good with technique as well, and had often come up with his own inventions. He had the keen eye to appreciate true craftmanship and was curious to see what the girl was capable of.

"Let's go," he commanded and they both walked out of the orphanage to town. Wherever Kabuto went, he got with reverence. Not just because his intimidating appearance demanded a level of respect, but also because people genuinely seemed to appreciate him. After they spotted and greeted Kabuto they turned to the petite brown-haired girl following him. Nana could see the shock in their eyes when they realized she was a gypsy. Most of them did turn to greet her as well. Half-heartedly and hesitantly, yes, but Nana could feel her own esteem grow simply residing in Kabuto's shadow. Gloating she returned the greeting, chirping an extra sugar-coated 'good morning'. Kabuto noticed it, but let her have her fun.

"We've arrived!" he exclaimed, suddenly stopping to a halt. In front of them was an average sized terraced house. The neighboring houses were quaintly decorated with flower pots hanging from the balconies and striped curtains. There was nothing truly magnificent about the setting and she could hardly believe the ninja headquarters could be behind these walls. The only thing that gave the headquarters away was the rusty iron double door and the two ANBU guards standing on each side of it. As they kept watching people walked in and out.

'What's up with this place,' she was thinking, but decided to keep her mouth shut for now and see what would happen. A pale slender hand slid from Kabuto's dark cloak and pushed the doors open. They stood in a broad and dark corridor that ended in a rock stairs descending to unknown depths. Hollow footsteps echoed up from below. The space was lit with gas lamps hanging from the ceiling. As they approached the stairs and walked down, Nana noticed the swirly patterns carved in the stone walls. although the pattern stretched out across the entirety of the walls, the lines never followed the same pattern.

'It's an ancient Tabigarasu decoration!' she realized in awe. Nana wanted to stop and admire, but a nudge and a hiss of Kabuto's tail told her to stop stalling.

"Your people build a network of tunnels under the city. Some served as escape routes... others led to underground chambers. The complexity of the tunnels and the hidden treasures that could be excavated within them served Lord Orochimaru when we first took residence here," Kabuto explained. "Since then we've discovered multiple underground strongholds scattered across the Land of Sound. Some of them are destroyed, but most of them simply abandoned. This network is called The Octave. It's a reference to both its eight cornered shape and to the special sound techniques developed by Hidden Sound ninja. Currently we're heading to the Council room."

"Is Orochimaru still here?" Nana shuddered, unable to mask the hatred she felt at speaking that name. He sniffed and smirked.

"No, Lord Orochimaru has not been sighted for two years. He has nothing to seek here anymore anyway, unless its trouble he wants. The Hidden Sound doesn't have a Kage at the moment like the other villages. Instead its ruled by Council of Delegates, one from each great nation and three local representatives. I'm one of them."

She nodded her head up and down slowly and tried to get a peek inside the rooms they passed. Kabuto walked too briskly to take her time however. They came upon a T-junction that ended in a broad hallway. It could easily fit two elephants standing alongside of each other.

"This is the octagon corridor," he explained and crossed the hall. Instead of gas lamps they used electricity here and the hall was brightly lit. A few yards on their right a group of three ninja were breaking open the floor with Earth Style ninjutsu. Nana turned her brown doe-eyes to Kabuto questioningly.

"An excavation, another secret chamber... who knows what lies inside," he shrugged. They entered through another set of iron double doors and walked into the center of the Hidden Sound. Surprisingly the room had windows that showed the panorama of Otogakure, even though they were deep underground. Nana blinked and noticed they were actually huge high-definition TV-screens.

"Camera's are set up in different areas of town," Kabuto explained. One of the TV's showed the image of the sloping rice paddies she had used to walk down to town.

'I hope nobody caught that on tape,' she anxiously thought, 'what if Sumairi and Snake are also visible?' If so Kabuto made no sign of knowing.

"So you are here, Shikamaru?" Kabuto greeted someone who fashioned his hair in a bristly ponytail resembling a pineapple. He had an extremely bored look on his face.

"Oi, Kabuto-san..." he replied with half a smile and one hand on his hips, "how've you been? Dammit you still look the same."

"I shed skin every now and then," Kabuto conceded.

"Tsk, too much information," Shikamaru replied with a humorless laugh. "I know it's a pain, but Naruto wants to have the list of candidates for the upcoming Chuunin exams. It seems with his own wedding attached to the event, everything has to be scheduled even tighter than normally. I even have to collect the list personally. Our messenger birds go missing at times."

"You've come a day too early then I'm afraid," Kabuto drawled with a chuckle, his face contorted in an unpleasant smile. Nana watched him from the side with a face that spelled are you kidding me?

'He really does enjoy other people's misfortunes...'

"What a drag," Shikamaru sighed, unfazed by Kabuto's expression, "but it can't be helped." Only then did he start to pay attention to the girl close to Kabuto.

"And who's that? Your new protegé?" he asked, sounding sarcastic. He looked Nana up and down with a small laugh on his lips. She frowned in return.

'What's with everyone? They all take me lightly. Everyone in this town, except at the orphanage. Don't frikkin' underestimate me!'

Kabuto opened his mouth to react but before he could say anything Nana stepped in front of him.

"You think I can't be? Is that it?" she glowered heatedly.

'A moment ago she almost looked like a cute girl. Her small posture is deceiving. Those bossy eyes remind me of Temari when she's about to throw a fit. Dammit, women are scary,' Shikamaru thought, looking at Nana with lazy eyes.

"Heh, good luck to you then. I'm just surprised because I remember Kabuto saying he'd never take a student again."

"Oh..." Nana mumbled, relaxing. She misunderstood what Shikamaru thought completely. Embarrassed she realized she was the one making assumptions.

"That's true..." Kabuto replied throwing Nana a glance. The snake peaked at her from under his cloak with a slithering tongue. He wondered if he was supposed to take a hint.

"Whatever..." Shikamaru said noticing something was off between the two, but considering it too much of a hassle to ask further. "Since I'll be here another day, how about a drink this evening?"

"Alright, why not?" Kabuto agreed, "I'll meet you at the pub at ten. Should give me enough time to ready the candidate list for you."

"Don't keep me waiting," Shikamaru smirked and walked past Kabuto and Nana with his hands in his pocket. She turned around to watch him leave. What a bored guy, but still he seemed cool in his own way.

Since it was a warm evening Shikamaru was sitting outside on the terrace of the pub. There were plenty of people visiting the pub that evening. Most of them were inside. The sounds of clinking glasses and animated chatter melted into a buzz on the background as he calmly waited for the Kabuto to appear. He ordered salted snacks for himself and drank a cola. A few men were smoking cigarettes just outside. He always hated the smell. It irritated his nose and eyes. He figured he was too lazy to move to a different table, so he condemned himself to smelling it. He peered up to the sky and watched the few scattered clouds drift over. A chair scraped and Kabuto seated himself next to him.

"A cola?" he asked with mild surprise. "I thought you wanted to go for a drink."

"Tsk. As long as I'm not in Konoha, I'm still on duty. And as bothersome as it is... no alcohol on duty," Shikamaru replied tiresomely.

"How responsible of you," Kabuto smiled. "Well I hope you don't mind, I'm going for a pint."

"Heh, suit yourself," Shikamaru replied with a lopsided grin.

Kabuto turned around and signalled the waitress. Again, Shikamaru's eye was distracted by something circling in the sky. It shortly cast a shadow across the rising moon. A bird? It glided through the air with stretched wings. Moving out of sight, and coming back again. It was flying so high that it was hard to discern what type of bird it was.

'Judging by the breadth of the wings, it's a bird of prey. The only nocturnal birds are owls and a few hawks. But they don't typically hunt above cities... and we're surrounded by nature,' Shikamaru was thinking. He took another sip of his cola. 'Uncle enjoys birdwatching in the Nara woods. It's tiring, but he told me a lot about the different species of nocturnal birds when we went there collecting deer antlers. Seems that comes in handy now...'

With a jerk Shikamaru stood up from his seat, knocking the glass on its side. The cola dripped down the edge of the table while the glass rolled off and shattered on the ground.

"That's no bird... its tail feathers ain't right!" he growled, eyes fixed on the object above. "Kabuto! Do you have something like spyware patrolling the city from above?"

"No, we don't," Kabuto affirmed. He also got up, looking ready to fight. "We have camera's set up around town, but they don't reach that high... what a clever way to bypass our security..."

Kabuto grabbed a set of shuriken from his coat and threw it up into the sky. A spark marked they collided with the bird-like object. It wavered and shook in the air, but regained its stability.

"Whoever is controlling that thing noticed we spotted it! It's moving away!" Kabuto growled.

"Help me out, Kabuto-san!" Shikamaru called. He quickly clasped his hands together into the seal of the rat.

"Shadow Sewing jutsu!" he exclaimed.

His own shadow elongated, blacker than the darkest night, and rocketed like forked lightning into the air. Kabuto moved his hand forward and five snakes slithered out from under his sleeve, spiralling together. They wrapped around Shikamaru and lifted him up. Kabuto drew him backwards and propelled him into the air. With his hands still clasped together Shikamaru closed in on the object, his shadows speeding forward twice as fast now. He could see better. It looked more like a miniature plane than a bird on second thought. It didn't look combat ready. It was a spying drone like he had seen none before. The drone suddenly picked up speed fast, he could hear the rushing of the wind. It was moving the other way! Shikamaru clenched his teeth together and forced extra chakra into his ninjutsu. The black pointy shadows reached the plane's wing and wrapped around it, dragging it down. The motor was shrieking from the strain. Half the wing snapped off and was caught in his shadow. Shikamaru had reached the highest point of his flight. He was hanging in air for a split second before he started coming down. Now he had his own fall to worry about as the plane shakily tried to hold steady. The drone started gliding down pulling to the left, and Shikamaru knew that whoever was controlling that plane from afar was calling it back now. Kabuto caught Shikamaru in a net of live snakes. Shikamaru didn't have much time to think about how nasty that was. Without having to share a word about their plan the two ninja jumped up the roof of the bar, in pursuit of the plane. The people inside, half drunk, stumbled outside to see what all the ruckus was about. But before they had an inkling the ninja were already gone. They ran while jumping from rooftop to rooftop, nearing the edge of the forest. The plane was losing altitude and soon reached the tree tops. With the rustling of leafs it crashed into a branch, dropped a yard, and continued on unstably.

"We're close," Kabuto warned. His yellow slit eyes were wide with the thrill of battle. He grinned maliciously at the foresight of choking whoever was on the other end of that plane. Shikamaru had a face of steel concentration. The drone disappeared out of sight behind the thicket, but they didn't need directions anymore. Suddenly they appeared before the controller of the drone. A man was holding the plane in his hands. When he saw Kabuto and Shikamaru he let it drop to the ground and jumped backward. A light beeped on the plane that lay between them.

"He rigged it!" Shikamaru exclaimed anxiously. A second later the drone exploded and left nothing but a pit and a scorching mark on the ground. Chunks of metal and smouldering plastic scattered around.

A man with a dark olive skin tone and wispy warm brown hair glared at them. He was one of the Tabigarasu, one of the gypsies that Nana belonged to. Those characteristic features left no doubt. Kabuto squinted his eyes. Snakes rolled out of his sleeves as if in slow motion. Their enemy was inching his fingers towards the gun strapped to his upper leg. They glared at each other like cowboys, electricity shooting from their eyes clouded by their brows. Kabuto widened his smile, exposing his glistening fangs. Within an instant needle like shadows shot up from the ground under the man's feet, cutting through the flesh like blades and restraining him. During the time Kabuto and the man had a contest of wills Shikamaru prepared his next move. The man stumbled and was about to fall. He screamed at them to die.
"For freedom! For homeland!" he hollered and grabbed his gun in mid-air, pulling the trigger instantaneously. A red laser shot out, swiping down in a diagonal line and cutting everything in its path. The tree behind them groaned with a thunder, gravity tugging it down now it was. In the same moment Kabuto felt the searing hot concentrated beam of energy was about to hit his skin. He vanished, using a snake clone. A pile of silvery grey snakes swapped with his place, catching the full blow of the laser. Chunks of steaming snake halves sloshed on the ground in a splash of blood and with the smell of burned flesh. Shikamaru ducked and evaded, his shadow twirling around the man's body to restrict his movements. Kabuto appeared behind the man, the large snake from under his mantle exposed the gaping hole of its mouth stretched open widest. It wedged its fangs deeply into the mans shoulder, spitting a sedative into his veins. The man gurgled and pulled something from his pocket, shooting his hand up to touch the snake's head. A second later the drug took effect and his arm slung back, hanging limp next to his body. A bleeping circular object was left where he touched Kabuto's snake.

'A sticky bomb,' Kabuto realized. He didn't know how much force it contained. Thinking about Deidara's C4 techniques a small thing could contain large blasting power. He was right behind the man. He had no choice but to discard part of his snake tail and take distance. Shikamaru huffed in surprise. The man looked him straight in the eye and a tear was rolling down his cheek. Eyes filled with a mix of sadness, determination and resent. Shikamaru could tell this man saw his life flash before him. The emotion on his face hit him.

The snake head exploded and a rain of blood fell on them. The man dropped down to the ground with a thud. He exploded his own head right off as well. He avoided capture for interrogation. There wasn't much left of him to uncover his identity now either.

'Could he have been one of the villagers?' Kabuto wondered. 'No, it wouldn't make sense that he spied on the village in that case. Plus, every Tabigarasu in the village has been screened by ANBU. This was someone from the wilderness.'

He summoned another snake that began to devour the remains. Shikamaru watched with a grimace of disgust. Kabuto's snake wasn't going to digest this victim. It would be conserved for examination within its belly. Kabuto recalled what the man shouted. For freedom, for homeland. He watched Shikamaru standing opposite of him and could tell from his face that his superb brain had already made several connections.

Based on the other information of guerrilla attacks that had hit across the whole ninja world, Shikamaru was starting to get the picture. He peered past the trees if he could spot movement. Had this man operated alone? He read the reports of the joined mission between the Sand and the Leaf, when they discovered the girl Ayumi. He had also heard of the attack at Sunagakure's gates. The enemy seemed to favour explosives and high-tech weaponry in all occasions. The enemy always showed they were prepared to commit suicide to avoid being caught. The enemy had little limits to succeed at whatever their aim was. Well, their aim was freedom. Their homeland. This one guy did spell it out quite clearly. No one knew exactly how many Tabigarasu still roamed the lands. In the past it was common knowledge they tracked in caravans across the territories of all the nations. Shunned wherever they went, they avoided ninja in general, eventually disappearing from sight. He felt sorry for their history. He did have to admit they had reason to be bitter after Orochimaru drove them from their lands... Now a different generation build lives in the Land of Sound it wasn't so easy to simply tell them to leave so the Tabigarasu could take up their old home. That would create resentment among a new generation and the cycle wouldn't come to an end. The ninja world did compensate the losses of the wars. This was a matter of high politics Shikamaru thought too tedious to get into. If his theory was correct, and these gypsies lived across all the lands, hidden away, it would give reason to believe attacks seperated by a thousand miles were actually conducted by the same people. If so the chance they were random attacks by singular terrorists drastically dropped. Gathering intel was a sign of organized assault. If the attacks were coordinated, there must also be a central base from where such attacks are prepared.

"This is something the Hokage needs to know," Shikamaru stated softly, as if the night could carry his words to unwanted ears. ANBU guards ran towards them.

"Kabuto-sama!" they exclaimed nervously. They noticed the hole in the ground and the scorched dead snakes. "What happened?"

"I'll debrief everyone tomorrow," Kabuto told them coldly, "for now I want extra security every night around the village. And keep your eyes on the sky too."

He thought about the plane that the gypsy man used. Didn't Nana say she was making a spider drone? How intelligent these people were with technics... For a moment his mind filled with distrust towards the young girl. But then he admonished himself to stay calm. She had been in the orphanage the whole time, right under his nose and that of others he trusted. Nana had nothing to do with this attack. That didn't erase all suspicions however. She herself was a gypsy from the wilderness. How would she react knowing a Tabigarasu attacked Otogakure? Could she be a spy? These people looked willing to go at great lengths. They were preparing for something. Was the attack from outside a cover for a threat on the inside? Kabuto had been a spy long enough to know that wasn't an unusual tactic. Kabuto wanted to think Nana can be trusted. He liked her fire, her will to push on despite the loathing she received and certainly burdened her. Kabuto would heed the old saying: keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer. He didn't know which of the two Nana would turn out to be. But he would make her his apprentice. She had fiercely defended herself to Shikamaru about being his protegé, so she should be happy. Kabuto would keep Nana by his side, knowing he always possessed the power to kill her. Yet he hoped that would never be necessary. He hoped his hunch was wrong and she proofed to be an ally in these times of unrest.

Time will tell...

A/N: a whole chapter devoted to Kabuto, Shikamaru and Nana. I hope you're not too dissapointed there was no Gaara in this chappie. I always intended this story to have several layers. I'm working towards something to unfold the plot. Nana will be in a tight spot. She has been told to infiltrate by her father, with whom her relationship is poor. She feels loyalty towards her own people however. Since they have become homeless, they moved from place to place seeking to rebuild something. Yet all the other lands were of course claimed by people who don't want to give them up. Sharing these hardships brought them closer. The Tabigarasu have a different culture and it generally unsettles people to take in poor foreigners whose lifestyle seems distant to that of oneselve. People sometimes forget the human lives and suffering. People fear differences they don't understand. Nana has reason therefore to carry hatred towards the ninja world. Especially in wartime its a common strategy to dehumanize your opponent so its easier to fight them. But Kabuto has been good for her. Living among the ninja, she is bound to see that they too are humans capable of compassion, kindness. Can she be heartless to live up to Heero's expectations? That shall be Nana's struggle. I hope it's interesting. She has an important role to play...

Hopefully I can update soon again! :3 The story moved a month in time. Ayumi must've trained hard and Naruto's wedding is inching closer...

Thanks for reading! :)