Disclaimer: Mustang belongs to Hiromu Arakawa. Or is that a different fandom?

This is for my Mercury (intoxicatedasphyxiation), who is the pro of all pro when it comes to pick ANBU animal motifs and code names.

IV

The gigantic hiragana A and N appearing just after they exited the forest had never been a more welcome sight to Ino. With Temari's weight pulling her down the entire journey, Ino was worn and tired. She refused all offers from her teammates to carry the body nonetheless, and bore the burden without complaint. Shikamaru made a few glances to her direction, but he did not make a remark on this newfound determination of hers. She was grateful for that. She could tell that he wanted to bring the body himself—that much was obvious from the way he longingly looked at the Suna woman before handing the body to Ino—but she needed this odd little form of retribution more than he did.

Kotetsu and Izumo, as usual—Ino wondered if they had ever left the gate—were standing guard. Kotetsu waved at them before pointing at Sakura, asking, "Who's that with the bad hair?"

Sakura made a rude hand gesture that did not escape anyone's attention.

Ino rolled her eyes. While poking fun at Sakura were usually part of her daily hobbies, her lethargy and exhaustion begged otherwise this day. The joke was an old one anyway. "I'll go ahead and drop her off at T&I," she said to Shikamaru. "I'll submit my report sometime this week."

"Bad mission?" Izumo wondered out loud.

Shikamaru shrugged. "Could be a lot worse," he said—although he did not sound like he meant it to Ino's trained ears—running his fingers through his disheveled ponytail. "We got a debriefing today," he told Ino then.

"Make it tomorrow," Ino snapped before hopping off towards the Intelligence Division building. The Godaime would probably chew Shikamaru's head off for that, but right now that was not what Ino cared about.

The Intelligence Division building was new, the old one having been destroyed when Pain invaded Konoha. Unlike the old one, this new building was only one-story tall and considerably smaller. The main part of the office was underground along with Konohagakure's prison. Ino knew this from his father, the rebuilding having been one of the things they talked about in dinners. Inoichi had hinted that the division was understaffed, too, but back then Ino pretended that she did not know what her father was getting at.

At the administrative desk was a bespectacled chuunin Ino knew as her father's subordinate. He seemed a little surprised that Ino was there, and nodded in acknowledgement. Gossip had it that the man once took a shine on Ino, but her superior father shot him down before he even made a move. Now the poor chuunin addressed Ino rather too formally, even if he was technically older than her.

"Ino-san," he greeted. "Can I help you with anything?"

"Um, Mozuku-san. I'm just dropping off a prisoner. Is my father around?"

Another man, his eyes covered by bandages and hitai-ate, appeared from the corridor by the administrative desk. "Inoichi-san is on duty," he told Ino. "I can deliver a message to him, if you want."

Ino shook her head. "That's okay. It's nothing too important." She tilted her head as she watched the shinobi. "Do I know you?"

"Yes, if you count seeing me when you were ten much of an introduction," he said, sounding rather amused.

"Ten?"

"Oh, this one chuunin exam where you kids had to cheat to pass." Putting an unlit cigarette between his lips, he grinned.

Ino frowned. "Sorry jii-san, can't remember." She did, though, because there was an exam proctor who caught a cheating genin back then, and she had wondered if the proctor could even see through the bandages and hitai-ate. It was satisfying, however, to see the end of his lips turn down slightly at the jibe. Just what she needed to lighten her mood: a new person to poke fun on.

From his body language, he was probably rolling his eyes although it was near impossible to tell. "Just give me the prisoner," he sighed, extending his arm.

She shrugged of Temari and passed her to the man. "Put her in high-security. She's still in stasis right now, but soon when she's back alive and kicking she won't be the happy kind of prisoner. Haruno Sakura should be here soon enough to check on her state."

"The one with the pink hair?" asked Mozuku. He looked rather hopeful when he said it, Ino noted. Interesting.

"That's the one," she affirmed, "Although for the mission she dyed it black. Don't mention it in front of her, she absolutely loathes it."

Inoichi showed up from the same corridor the shinobi with the bandages came from, looking rather perplexed at her daughter's rare appearance in the Intelligence Division. "Fancy seeing you here," he said, not even bothering to hide his surprise.

The two men vividly straightened up at the sight of the older Yamanaka. Ino grinned sheepishly and raised her hand in greeting. "Hi dad."

"I take it the mission failed?" he asked Ino, although not unkindly.

Ino flinched. "That obvious?"

"Well, it was not a capture mission," he glanced at Temari, whose limp body was now on the bandaged shinobi's shoulder, "and you returned a little too soon."

Although the mission was top-secret, Ino had expected his father to know what it entailed. He was, after all, a clan leader and thus member of the council. Smaller missions very rarely got discussed in council meetings and went directly to the mission assignment desk, but important S-rank missions either were the council's orders, or approved by it nonetheless before the hokage herself assigned it. Even the mission leader—and often, the team members, although not in this case—most likely got chosen by the council too. Ino shuffled her feet, feeling more or less embarrassed that her father knew exactly what mission they failed at, and the stakes that came with it.

"About that…" Ino said, rather uneasily. She glanced at the two other shinobi, who had been watching the exchange the whole time.

The shinobi with the bandages adjusted Temari's weight on his shoulder. "I should be putting her in her cell already," he said tactfully.

Mozuku only looked too happy with the chance of escape. "I'll help you unlock the cell. I'll see you around, Ino-san. Inoichi-san."

"Run along now," said Inoichi, and the man scurried off obediently, the bandaged one following him.

"High security, jii-san! That's Sabaku no Temari you're carrying!" called Ino to the shinobi's retreating back.

He turned. "You know, the name's Tonbo. And I am not a jii-san." The cigarette between his lips bobbed with every word, and Ino somehow could tell that he was not as annoyed as he tried to look.

Ino stuck her tongue out.

"I can see that, you know." He turned towards Inoichi and made what was supposed to be a bow with the weight of a full-grown woman threatening to slip off his shoulder. "Inoichi-san."

Inoichi nodded, and Tonbo left them. Rather bewildered, he looked at his daughter. "Did I miss something?"

Ino shrugged.

"Alright, what did you want to tell me?"

Ino knelt and bowed deeply into a perfect dogeza, her forehead touching the floor. After taking a deep breath, she firmly said, "Please let me apprentice in the Intelligence Division."

Although Shikamaru had dismissed the team and told them that the debriefing was to be done the next day, he still went to the hokage tower nonetheless. There were still dried blood staining his flak vest, and splatters of it on his face and neck. He had outright refused to bathe or at least wash off the stains. Let the world know that he had just killed a kid's father and failed his mission.

His pace was sluggish, even slower than when he last went to the tower to receive the mission just a week before.

Shikamaru knew that by now Ino was probably in the Intelligence Division building. He wondered if she also took her time there to talk to Inoichi. She probably did, since usually she avoided the task to drop prisoners—and consequently, the Intelligence Division—like her life depended on it. It was not much of a secret between their three clans that Inoichi once wanted his daughter to join the division, and that Ino's subtle refusal had disappointed him. Shikaku had even once asked, rather pointedly and not too subtly, why the girl had chosen to study medical ninjutsu.

Shikamaru just shrugged and said that he didn't understand her reasons either. It was less troublesome than actually trying to explain the whole childhood rivalry going on between Ino and Sakura when he could not really get it either.

He wondered if the outcome of this mission would have been different, had he given a different answer to his father.

Any shinobi jaded enough understood perfectly well how useless contemplating the past—and the different future that could have been—were. Shikamaru himself had found several years ago that dwelling upon the many what-ifs of a past event would only bring depression to the dweller, but there were just times that he could not control his musings.

Like now, for example.

The setting sun had casted a rich orange hue to the sky, and the clouds were near nonexistent today. And so instead of contemplating the many different shapes water vapor took in the sky, he continued thinking of the many different scenarios his life would go through had he made different choices. Would he have been in a better shape if he had declined the mission?

His teammates realized that he was cracking. They just did not understand why. It was not the murder of the Suna border patrol, although he let them think it was. The death was tragic and Shikamaru would have taken it back if he had been able to—again with the what-ifs—but it was not the only reason. It was merely the trigger, the last straw.

No, the bigger part of the reason why he now felt like shit was the prisoner they took home. He tried to convince himself that it was a purely objective reason—they had, had they not, kidnapped their one and only informant in Suna who also happened to be the Kazekage's sister and for all they know the whole village was lighting torches and ready to march into Konoha—but this deep unsettling bitterness that kept rising to his mouth was not objective.

In fact, if he told Ino he highly suspected that she would categorize it as the pain of a breaking heart.

No, he was definitely not telling Ino. Maybe Chouji, or maybe no one at all.

When he reached the tower and started walking up the winding staircase, he was still listing the alternate realities that could have happened, both the ideals and the ones less than desirable.

To his surprise, one of his teammate opened the door for him when he knocked the door. It just so turned out that Shikamaru was not the only one with the idea of reporting directly even before the team debriefing. He shouldn't be surprised. She was, after all, the Godaime's own apprentice.

Sakura stood, one hand still on the door handle, gesturing Shikamaru to come in. He stepped inside and she closed the door.

Tsunade sat behind the desk, her figure framed by towering paper stacks and scrolls. Her elbows rested on the table, fingertips touching, chocolate orbs fixed on Shikamaru. The gaze was boring into him, and somehow he felt oddly self-conscious about the blood splatters still on his skin and clothes, stamping the failure of the mission on him.

"Well?" barked Tsunade.

Shikamaru sighed, starting to regret the decision to come to this tower. He should have just gone home. And yet he started talking, explaining everything from the very beginning. He chose Ino because he needed her Yamanaka secret techniques to see inside Temari, because he was not sure yet if he should trust her. He recruited Neji to be the recon man in their team, and Sakura to be the team medic—although then she served a rather different role than what Shikamaru initially had in mind.

"I considered two possibilities: either she works for Kaze no Kuni or she stays loyal as our informant. I didn't see a third possibility coming up, that we couldn't even figure out where her loyalty lies."

"You brought Yamanaka Ino," the Godaime said, and Shikamaru visibly cringed.

"It was a wrong choice. I should have chosen someone truly experienced from T&I. She is half-baked in the Yamanaka arts of mind jutsu, but I was not fully aware of that."

The Godaime made some incoherent sound, signaling him to continue. Sakura was standing still, her posture rigid before her shishou.

Shikamaru continued, "I was biased because she was my teammate—and because she is a Yamanaka. That mistake and her incompetence cost us the mission and I am not proud of it."

"Sakura explained the events that happened during the mission, but she said you were the only one talking to Sabaku no Temari at the rendezvous point?" She pressed, and Sakura inched just a bit from Shikamaru, her eyes shifting away from between the hokage and the team captain, and ended up towards the window.

"I did. The rest of the team hid in the attic until I signaled them to approach." He did not mention what the conversation was filled with. Barely anything was relevant, anyway. With the current situation of Temari's true alliance being in the dark, her claim on the daimyo living close to the Kazekage might as well be a lure to a trap.

One hand pinching the bridge of her nose and the other groping underneath her desk before eventually pulling out a porcelain bottle of shochu, Tsunade growled, "What I mean, gaki," she spat the word before taking a deep gulp of the liquor, "is whether or not you have something to report regarding the half-hour of your little chat."

Try as he might and yet he could not evade that demand coming her way. "She made several claims," he carefully said, "whose nature is questionable."

Tsunade slammed the bottle on the table hard. Shochu spilled everywhere and Sakura jumped to help tidy up the mess before the older woman made a dismissive wave and Sakura was back on staring out the window again. "Are you hiding things from me, Shikamaru?"

"No, Hokage-sama."

"Then tell me what you two talked about during that rendezvous, because I swear I am starting to question if we sent the wrong person to Ibiki's playground." The Godaime was angry—Shikamaru could sense it. The woman was two seconds away from actually sending Shikamaru to be interrogated.

"There wasn't much…" Shikamaru insisted, but upon catching the Godaime's eyes he explained further, "the half an hour she spent dancing around the actual purpose of the rendezvous. At first she said she did not expect me to be sent to the mission. Every time I managed to make her reveal a sliver of information, she turns it against me or my incompetence. I humored her at the beginning. She's always like that, after all."

"That?"

"She plays mind games. She always does, outside mission situations. I know that when it came to business she used to act brisk and to the point, but not this time." Shikamaru wiped his face with one hand. "Anyway, she said the daimyo moved to stay in Suna due to Gaara's condition. She promised a way in through the security. The details to the strategy were to be discussed in a safe house she promised us, and that was when I put the kagemane on her and set Ino to do her job, just in case this safe house was a trap. And that's what led us to this situation in the present."

The woman was still watching him as though she expected him to continue, but he said no more and challenged her gaze. She finally reclined with a defeated sigh, her features worn and tired. "Sakura, leave us."

Sakura started, her gaze snapping from the window—it was dark already outside—and to her clearly distressed mentor. "Yes, shishou."

"Sakura," Shikamaru called, and she turned with a slightly perturbed expression as her exit from the office was delayed. "You need to check on the prisoner's condition tonight," he mumbled. She nodded and exited the room.

"Mustang," Tsunade called, and an ANBU officer dropped down from the ceiling panel above the office. His mask was the standard porcelain white, long rust-colored markings running down the sides. He stood straight, his posture not betraying any emotion and yet was the very picture of attentiveness.

Eyeing the ANBU warily, Shikamaru thought about the many rumors about the spooks. If to civilian the shinobi were considered powerful, yet dangerous and dark, the ANBU held more or less the same effect to normal shinobi.

"I've got an assignment to you," said the Godaime, looking at codename Mustang before turning to Shikamaru, "both of you."

The Intelligence Division staff who introduced himself as Mokuzu had escorted Sakura to Temari's cell before excusing himself. She did not miss the many times he opened his mouth as if to say something and then closing it again during their walk down to the dungeon. It probably was a comment about the hair. After Kotetsu made the comment about her hair, Sakura had promised herself to kill the next person who said anything about it—except she couldn't, because it was her shishou who did it and she actually complimented her for going all-out in being incognito.

Sakura decided that it was good that Mozuku acted as if there was absolutely nothing wrong with her.

But he must have noticed. He did, after all, recognize her and greeted her by name when she entered the building.

Deciding not to think too much about it, Sakura eyed the body on the cot propped up by a wall in the cell. If she had not been the one who chopped and dyed the hair and half-killed the woman herself, Sakura would not have guessed that the woman in that cot was Sabaku no Temari. This listless pale woman looked like a civilian, not a powerful jounin who could flatten half a forest with one swipe of her giant fan.

Temari hadn't brought her giant fan to the rendezvous point. The small iron fans strapped to Temari's arms under her kimono were in Shikamaru's possession. He took it from Sakura after she stripped it off Temari without much explanation, although Sakura suspected the reasons he had behind it were sentimental.

Sakura set her medical pack on the floor before opening it and taking out supplies. She barely needed to stock up before going to the cell, having used only two tubes of sedatives during the mission. With the skill of a professional, Sakura pulled the senbon one by one from Temari's neck, her hand steady as she did so. The wrong move and the wound might widen or worse, the senbon would prick a new hole. When dealing with the human neck and its structure, such mistakes could be terribly fatal. Blood started spilling out the wounds as soon as the senbon were out, but with a quick dab of antiseptic and chakra treatment, the wounds closed and the skin was restored. The small round marks of new skin on her neck were a little raw and pink but otherwise flawless.

Such a pity, considering Temari might soon get scarred anyway during her stay in these damp cells. That should not be Sakura's concern, though. Her role was to heal. She would leave the maiming to Ibiki-san and his division.

By the time Sakura was done with the examination, Temari's face had regained a bit more color and her pulse, albeit weak, had returned. She was still unconscious, but Sakura did not expect a person who had stayed in a stasis for a full day to immediately wake up anyway. She had done the most she could do as a medic until Temari woke up.

When she left the cell, an ANBU ninja was standing guard. His mask was plain, save for thick black markings under the eyes that made the impression of eye bags. The mask and the slight slouch he carried somehow making the shinobi look rather lethargic—not precisely how ANBU personnel appeared to the general society.

Sakura considered asking the ANBU if he could notify her when Temari regained consciousness, but then she decided against it. Temari might have been their responsibility for the duration of the mission, but not anymore. She was not a prisoner and the Intelligence Division would do its work from now on. Besides, Sakura was not sure she could stomach returning underground here again.

After one last glance towards the limp figure in the cell and the ANBU on guard, Sakura left.

I'm not sure...if I made it clear enough the whole situation about Temari being an informant since I think someone said they got confused. Basically no one knew yet if she were loyal to Kaze no Kuni or Konoha or whatever. That's why the mission to assassinate the daimyo was canceled. Too risky.

Do tell me what you think.