Note: A more plotty sort of chapter. More on Itachi's reaction and definitely more interaction between him and Hana to come.

As an aside, I don't think Tokuma or anybody we know started out as such levelheaded, sacrificial team players, which is why he's portrayed this way here.

The time/chronology of each section is a little convoluted. Please read carefully.

Shot 3. The most festive place on earth, with the cheeriest company. It's a learning curve.


Contrary to popular belief, it did not always rain around Amegakure. Ninety-five times out of a hundred, yes; not always. As a deliberate technique to discourage foreign aggressors, it was quite effective. Ninja from more hospitable places tended to stay indoors, even if the ceiling – here as well as in the last outpost – dripped horrifically.

They prepared separately for their first foray into Amegakure. Muta compared his notes with copies of old reports at the base. Hana spoke to the chief of staff and surreptitiously sent out her dogs to gather as much background information as possible, on both the situation on the border and the individuals who had spent the better part of the year there. After all, one couldn't be too careful about the company one kept.

Tokuma and Itachi sparred the afternoon before it all came together, reviewing purely genjutsu-based offensives and counterattacks at what appeared to be the suggestion of the former. Neither of them said anything about the instructiveness of that session when they turned up at eight for the final rundown of their strategy. According to the local team who had been studying the weather patterns and ambient chakra fluctuations, the next day would give them a full day's respite from the downpour, followed by three days of light rain broken up by a few hours of fog in the afternoon.

It wasn't as if they'd die instantly if a several droplets happened to land on their person, but Hana preferred not to test the quality of their equipment so soon after arriving at the outpost – particularly not the exploding tags, which came in handy in tricky situations. Given the weather forecast, they could probably manage it.

The trick was to not get caught out in the rain.


Update on Rat Infestation, 4244261.33 FA.9

Destination: Konohagakure

37th Dog from Post 26

...

Hana wrote in the date and then paused, tapping the pen against her chin. The single bulb swinging eerily overhead threw a small circle of light on the desk. The feeble glow ended at Hana's shoulder. Stronger light would not have revealed more than a couple more square meters of floor space and a mottled wall that opened into a narrow staircase. They had set up the passageway between two tiny buildings – the most stable-looking of the abandoned tenements – in the afternoon, and sadly, it was by far the best constructed part of the edifice.

From behind Hana issued a low growl and sounds of a light scuffle. "Shosa, Chusa, knock it off."

The Haimaru brothers broke apart and panted. Shosa's whine was muffled by his paw. Hana shook her head and tried to compose the next lines of her report. Waiting for her to complete it had made the dogs restless, but she had missed their company so much, it seemed a shame to dismiss them until the report was finished.

Given the distances between the outposts and Konoha, Hana and her team had decided to rotate among their contractual summons to avoid exhausting any one particular messenger, but Itachi's cats had already delivered the report one week ago. Taisa, the more even-tempered of the triplets, had been sent with a brief message to the other squad back in outpost 25; were he present, Chusa and Shosa would be less inclined to indulge in puppyish tussling.

Of course, having the Haimaru brothers around for the first time in weeks didn't bring the report any closer to completion.

...

At 0600, we set out to achieve the objective of establishing a temporary base of operations midway between 26 and Amegakure…


Through the years, a motley collection of villages had developed in the shadow of Amegakure, much like spores from a central fungal infestation. Perhaps that was an uncharitable comparison, but the first settlement that any of the four Konoha ANBU could deem remotely promising came after a series of irregularly spaced rain shelters trying to pass as habitable shacks. Somehow, enough of these structures had survived the frequent downpours in Village 1 to be built upon further. A vague sort of order had emerged from the haphazard jumble, until what could roughly qualify as streets – if you squinted – separated the crooked rows of hovels.

The first sign of life came in the form of a man pushing a wheelbarrow full of refuse to dump it off in a narrow alley. It didn't seem to bother him that it had already overflowed into the main street. The muddy ground had yet to fully solidify, forcing the man to stop periodically and yank his clogs free of the ground with a sickly squelch.

The four ANBU congregated in forty minutes behind an abandoned tenement that looked like it would tip over in the next gust of wind. (It didn't, but it was a close thing.)

My upper estimate of the population is two hundred, signed Tokuma. All civilians. He hadn't seen any individuals with the elevated chakra circulation that went with ninjutsu training. Muted chakra signatures would naturally not have passed direct scrutiny with the Byakugan.

Muta had conducted an area recon through his kikai bugs. I can confirm Tokuma's report; my bugs would have discovered those who escaped his notice. The village contains no secret caches of ninjutsu materials or equipment. It's possible that the settlement's proximity to the border discourages missing-nin from using it as their base of operations. Besides, if everything was as the Hokage had suspected, Amegakure itself was a well-fortified base of ops.

Hana looked at Itachi.

No trace of genjutsu, nor fuinjutsu – that I could discern.

ANBU didn't waste time on modesty, so Itachi was informing her that identifying sealing techniques wasn't his forte. In hindsight, Hana realized that she should have gone over their respective strengths and weaknesses more thoroughly from the start. Muta's, she knew reasonably well, but it wouldn't have hurt to ask even Tokuma directly.

Itachi continued. I found eight possibles, which I can cut down to four optimal in an additional fifteen minutes.

Muting one's chakra or using high level genjutsu still couldn't compare to disguise using the most basic techniques, which was why she had given Itachi the assignment of picking out several individuals whose identity they could feasibly borrow. Itachi could finish screening the unwitting candidates while they conducted a second sweep of the village. But first, Hana had to show them something that might alter their opinion on using the village as a midway base.

She pulled out the forehead protector she had found among the rubbish in the alley of trash, knowing the slashed-out leaf insignia would speak for itself.


Dog requests a comparative analysis on the enclosed forehead protector and the one retrieved prior to this mission in border region 415, which, according to E.3992 filed on June 30, cannot predate the first decade after the Third Secret World War, based on the particular weave of the fabric.

...

Taisa announced his return by putting his head in Hana's lap. As she stroked the short, rough fur along the top of his broad skull, the dog let out a low growl. "I'd like to crunch his spine in my teeth."

Hana glanced down at him. Despite the expressed wish to do violence, Taisa had spoken with his customary mild tone. Not urgent, then. "Whose?" She could think of a few individuals she would like to pulverize herself.

"That flea-bitten fur bag that's Uchiha's contract animal. Ran across him at the other outpost. He was stopping for treats."

Hana frowned at the paper. Should she rephrase it more concisely? "What was he doing there?" she asked.

Taisa flicked his ear irritably. "Getting copies of some of the reports at the other base. He claimed to be choosing them from the cabinets himself." The Haimaru brothers lacked the dexterity, if not the intelligence, for similar tasks.

"Huh." Itachi hadn't mentioned that he was taking the initiative in that area – nothing new, really, Hana thought, annoyed. Once again, she was left with the unenviable job of retroactively clearing it with their superiors and updating Koga's squad.

She set the pen down. Maybe, in her anxiety to perform well as acting captain, she was focusing too much on protocol. Hana couldn't imagine the likes of Copy Ninja Kakashi, for instance, getting bogged down by paperwork. Actually, I know he didn't care. She had served under his command a couple of times, and even remembered hearing Tenzou complain of picking up the slack on paperwork while he was Kakashi's lieutenant.

"Any word from Koga?"

Taisa padded over to his brothers, who had dozed off in a giant heap of softly snoring dog. "'All quiet.'"

She scanned over the parts she had written up and sighed. As of the last report, the Hokage had specifically asked for details on how the squad was functioning as a unit. Now, only the most difficult section remained: team dynamics.

This was going to take longer than she'd hoped.


As soon as he came in through the door, the Hyuuga whirled on Muta. "How can you say for certain that you covered everything I did not?" Tokuma demanded, apropos of nothing.

Hana hadn't told him beforehand that Muta's assignment would overlap with his. Was he angry about that? She opened her mouth to clarify what had seemed to her an obvious precaution to take, but Aburame beat her to it without looking up from his Bingo Book.

"One would think that a Hyuuga would be more than aware of the limitations of the Byakugan. I situated one of my kikai bugs on your blind spot."

"You what?" Tokuma started to claw frantically at the back of his head. "Get them out! Tell them to get out of my hair now!"

This was such an overreaction that Hana simply watched, nonplussed, until her sense kicked in. "Tokuma!" she said sharply. "Calm down."

Colorless eyes narrowed to slits through the mask. Tokuma's glare could have scalded the skin from her face. "I suppose his behavior is completely fine with you, captain. Or did you ask him to do it yourself?" Noticing a flicker of movement that was beyond Hana's field of vision, he snapped, "Stay out of this, Uchiha. We could all do without your high and mighty attempts to make us look foolish."

Itachi moved away from the crooked window where he had been checking the setup of exploding tag and garrote wire. "You certainly don't need any assistance in that area." The deadly stillness of his body and the crimson eyes belied his calm voice.

"Not helping, Itachi," said Hana, feeling an overwhelming irritation. Was this really how adult males interacted? She must have lucked out in her earlier teams.

Or her leadership was the root of the problem.

"No, Tokuma, I didn't ask Muta to plant his bugs on the back of your head. Muta, if any of them are still there, please remove them now." Aburame nodded without moving his eyes away from the page.

The way she saw it, Tokuma was offended by a decision that seemed to show low confidence in his abilities. Since he couldn't vent directly on the squad leader, he had shifted his anger to Muta, whose disrespect only exacerbated the bad feelings.

"Tokuma."

Although he followed her off to the side, he was still glaring. Icily. "Yes, captain?"

Hana drummed her fingers on the top of a dusty shelf. "Control your temper," she said at last. When he looked about to argue, she held up her hand. "I don't care what was said, nor by whom. Itachi didn't even say anything before you dragged him into it."

The Hyuuga's silence made her think that he was considering her words. It was a false hope. "What if I told you that the only reason you're captain, Inuzuka," he said in a low voice, "is because the Hokage didn't think I or Aburame would give a shit about whatever rubbish comes out of Itachi's mouth?"

Hana felt a sense of foreboding. "And?"

"What else?" The Hyuuga let out an unkind laugh. "We know now that he can get away with murder as long as we're under you. Or as long as you're under him…"

Anger struck so powerfully that Hana's hand was halfway to decking him in the face before she arrested its motion. She very nearly shouted at him anyway. But that would make her a hypocrite. "Is that what you say?"

He met her gaze. "Does it matter?" he asked coolly.

She looked at him until one of the rusted nails holding up the shelf suddenly gave way. The wooden board swung down with a loud creak. Her fingernails had left long gouge marks on its surface.

Tokuma had moved to the other connected room for the time being. Itachi was perched on a wretched-looking chair, cleaning his shuriken, while Muta was studiously ignoring everyone. Hana didn't miss how far apart they were all trying to sit, despite the cramped quarters.

She felt no desire to go after the Hyuuga, even though she knew their confrontation – and his implicit insubordination – couldn't be allowed to fester. Yet if Hana could dismiss the rest of what Tokuma had flung at her as rubbish, he did have some valid grounds for complaint – and it had to do with Itachi.


Like most of the other, sun-deprived inhabitants of the village, all four had ashen skin verging on translucent, blank dark eyes, and a rather grim twist to their mouths.

The first was the father of a family of four, including the man himself. "His wife and children will miss him,"Hana pointed out.

"Not if they think he's there,"replied Itachi.

Genjutsu was always an option, but…

Muta tilted his head. "Were we not going to use chakra-based techniques as little as possible?"

Hana could see where Itachi was coming from, though. Since it was so counterintuitive to choose an identity whose absence would be suspected by several other individuals, there might be some merit to using him. "Does he have any extended family?"

"They all died of illness two years ago, except for a grandmother on the mother's side. She has a childlike temperament and is widely considered demented. They keep her confined to her bed."

The man looked like he might possess a wiry strength, which meant that any muscle-straining feats – as long as they weren't excessive – would attract less attention than if their second candidate, a young girl around ten to eleven years old, did likewise.

The person whose shadow clone would replace the girl would guard the base from the outside when necessary, and continue their investigation of the settlements when not. After all, a street urchin rooting through the trash for food wouldn't surprise anyone.

The girl was so malnourished that even though Itachi told them she considered herself ten years old, she had the stature of a seven-year-old in Konoha. Hana felt a stir of pity, which Tokuma's comment interrupted.

"We should have brought a Yamanaka."

To which the Uchiha simply responded, without any attempt to sound less terse, "No."

Hana was sure the Hyuuga's eyebrows had shot up to his hairline behind the mask. "Problem, Itachi?"

"We are borrowing identities, not controlling their bodies."

"Either way, we're already putting them in danger," said Tokuma, sounding patronizing. "It doesn't really matter whether the real ones are unconscious in some underground room or doing the job."

Hana changed the subject before Itachi could respond in kind. "And the two others?"

The third and fourth were a childless, middle-aged couple by the name of Hajime and Yuriko. The husband had a wasting sickness which he had kept hidden from his wife, and he had an estimated two or three months of life remaining, though he didn't look it. Apparently, they had close ties to family living in Amegakure proper – relatives who, unlike them, were ninja.

That gave them a starting point to fabricate a pretext to approach Amegakure, or, alternately, acquire some pawns whose skills and presence in that village would not immediately provoke suspicion.

A plan was forming rapidly in Hana's mind. "Muta, because of your kikai, your chakra levels won't attract as much attention, and as I understand it, they also give you a certain advantage against genjutsu. Tokuma, what are Hajime and Yuriko's respective chakra levels?"

The Hyuuga activated his Byakugan. "Hajime has relatively high chakra reserves for a civilian. Yuriko's levels would compare negatively to that of a first-year academy student."

"Good. Then it makes the most sense if Muta assumes Hajime's identity and clones Yuriko with the kikai bugs."

"Understood," said Muta.

"Tokuma and Itachi –"

"That won't work."

All three of them stared at Itachi.

Hana warned herself not to take it as a personal slight. Itachi had a lot to contribute; that was why the Hokage had put him on this team. "Why do you think so?"

"To the people who live on the outskirts, such as this village, rain falls according to the whim of a god. But those who live closer to Amegakure understand it differently. They believe it only rains over this region whenever the god of Amegakure is absent from the village. In other words…"

Whoever controls and runs this village is back.

"We have a better chance during rainfall, when the genjutsu sealed to the walls of the village is at its weakest."

A biting wind rippled over Hana's bare arm. "How did you learn all of this, Itachi?"

She sensed Tokuma's ire before Itachi began to answer. "I did recon with one shadow clone in the settlements farther along and continued to Amegakure, where I first saw the fuinjutsu reinforcing its walls." Itachi's neutral expression gave no indication that he felt the displeasure of his small audience at all. "Amegakure's gates cannot be opened without the blood of a recognized resident. Moreover, once the guard inside its walls gives his consent, the guards of the other gates must suspend the barrier at the five other gates at the same time."

Maybe it had been a long time, but Itachi clearly lacked any concept of what it meant to act as part of a team. He had taken risks by himself to gain information that one of his teammates could have obtained in relatively less danger, and although he had results to show for that unilateral mission, it set a poor precedent.

Hana spared only a second for this thought; any longer, and any one of the rest of them might give voice to it. Now was not the time. "Good to know. If what you say is true, then establishing a base should continue to take priority. Tokuma, Itachi – secure the perimeter for five meters around these two buildings. Muta, come with me." His kikai bugs would assist in designing the connecting passageway they would make underground, which she planned to open up with a few earth-based ninjutsu.

It was trying work, given the unpleasant mixture of mud and bedrock they had to work with, but somehow, Hana looked forward to dealing with Itachi even less.

She decided to act after Tokuma had left to take the first watch. At her approach, Itachi raised his head and turned from the window.

His politeness was encouraging. Hana jerked her head towards the passageway and led him to the connected room, which contained a chair, a table that doubled as a desk, and a series of low shelves. It had probably once served as a storage room.

Itachi stood at one end of the desk, standing so that the light bulb barely illuminated the line of his jaw, but near enough so that it was difficult for Hana's eyes to adjust to the darkness. He probably had done that on purpose.

Hana had gone over several possible ways to broach the subject and concluded that there were no graceful alternatives. They were in an awkward position. Itachi had once been an ANBU captain, not just an acting squad leader. He must have come up with his own method of leading and a personal conception of how an ANBU team should function. And Hana had no access to that information.

So ask.

"Itachi, when you were captain, how much leeway did your team expect to have to achieve an objective?"

He appraised her with an inscrutable expression. Hana found herself tensing. Was she the captain, or was he? What sort of authority did she really have? How much did she even deserve?

"We had an understanding," said Itachi. "I trusted my team to handle their end in whatever way they saw fit."

You? Trust anyone else? Hana wanted to laugh. That wouldn't go over well. "I see." She counted to ten in her head. "I'm just trying to see why you went ahead and investigated Amegakure's defenses by yourself. I have to admit, you did a good job with that."

Itachi said nothing. He must have known what was coming.

"The main issue I have with your actions is that we didn't have an understanding." Hana looked at him levelly. "When you do things on your own without mentioning it to anyone else on this team, you end up making all of us less efficient, not more. I'm open to insight from everyone on this team. If you thought this was progressing too slowly, you could have said so. And I would have sent Muta to do what you just did, at much less risk." So many people, good genjutsu-users included, forgot about the dimension of smell. The shadows might hide his face, but Itachi's scent didn't lie. "You've exhausted yourself from maintaining shadow clones for the greater part of a day. You may be a high-level shinobi, but you have weaknesses, and one of them is stamina. What if we had needed you as a genjutsu-user later? How long would you be able to last after running yourself into the ground like this?"

The small room felt heavy with tension. Hana suppressed a sigh, trying to relax her muscles. She'd said her piece; whether or not it had reached Itachi at all remained to be seen. She softened her voice slightly. "Go get some rest. You'll take the last watch."


After he had left, she sat down at the desk and started on the report. When Chusa woke up and prodded her arm with his muzzle, she was still wracking her brains for an appropriate way to describe how dysfunctional their team actually was without sounding exasperated. Or disappointed. It wouldn't do to chide the Hokage himself. Especially since the incompetence is mine.

"I've been thinking about the four locals we found," she murmured to Chusa. "Itachi may be right. Using them might take too long." Not that the Uchiha had bothered to come out and say that. He had simply done as he'd been instructed and then conducted his own recon on the side.

What then? Deep in thought, she picked up the battered forehead protector on the desk and ran a finger over the long slash marring the leaf symbol. Her fingernail slotted nicely into the groove.

Wait a minute.

She took a kunai from her pouch and traced the slash lightly with the tip. Just as she had thought, the groove was more rounded than a slash made with a kunai. Metal erosion didn't explain the scooped-out edges.

Using the hem of her black uniform, Hana buffed the metal plate until it was as clean as it could get and held it close to her eyes.

She had begun to suspect that the scratch mark had been made with a chakra-enhanced nail instead. At the deepest part of the slash was a thinner groove no wider than a hair's breadth, cut with clinical precision. The other trash in the alley had prevented the mud from seeping into the narrower groove. Hana sniffed at it.

"Chusa, smell this."

The dog bent his head over the metal plate and took a pensive draught. "Someone's blood."

"Deliberately embedded in the metal, it seems." The fabric was fraying and felt almost as fine as silk in her hand. "There's a pail half full of water in the other room. Can you go get it?"

No matter how often one washed a frequently worn article, the scent of the person who used to wear it tended to linger. Hana rinsed and rubbed the cloth ends of the forehead protector in the rainwater collected in the bucket until the mud particles trapped in the weave were mostly gone.

It took another while for the cloth to dry to a manageable dampness, during which she bounced her theory off Chusa. "I don't think this forehead protector or the other one that was found earlier belonged to missing-nin from Konoha. Of course, I can't examine the other one, but if we find a third one of these, or even a fourth, in settlements successively closer to Amegakure itself, won't it seem to you more like a trail we're meant to follow?"

"Do you think someone is trapped in Amegakure?" asked Chusa.

"Possibly. But then, why Konoha forehead protectors?"

"It caught the Sandaime's attention."

"But it's not as if those things are just handed out to anyone. The only time it's separated from its wearer is if the wearer died or got a replacement – and even then, it's the cloth that gets replaced, not the metal." Where would someone have gotten so many of these? The last time Konoha had sent that many ninja to Rain had been at least thirty years ago. Any forehead protectors left over from that time should not have been so close to the top of the trash heap. Although, now that she thought of it this way, dating the forehead protectors to any particular decade would probably clarify a lot less than she'd previously hoped.

Chusa dragged the forehead protector from the desk with his teeth and put his nose against the fabric. After a moment, he looked up.

"The scent is different from the one who left blood in the metal. I've smelled something similar to it before. There's a common element… some relation or other."

"Where?"

Chusa licked his nose and sniffed the cloth again. "I'm not sure." He looked so sad about disappointing Hana that she scratched him behind the ears.

"Don't worry about it. You've done well. Maybe it'll come back to you."

The dog watched her edit the report, crossing out the lines that referred to the second forehead protector. She was going to hang on to it a little longer. "What will you do next?"

Hana finished rolling up the message and passed it to Chusa, who gripped it delicately with his teeth.

"We keep looking."

And hope this team doesn't eat itself alive in the next few weeks.