Chapter Seven

The Quiet Before the Storm

From the moment that Naruto had heaved Utakata's limp body out of the water of that wretched lake and hauled him off to the cabin site, Kakashi's brain had been thrown into overdrive. And the range of emotions was terrifying. However, by the time he dismissed Naruto and Sakura to their training in the forest Kakashi had resigned himself to the fact that these were the cards he had been dealt, and play he must, or the Will of Fire help them all.

"The next question is, of course, where do we contain the Slug once we've extracted it?" he asked no one in particular as he leaned back against an outer wall of the cabin. Neji and Tenten were sitting on the 'lawn' as Kiba had jokingly called it. They were all now preparing for battle - incase things went badly. Which, honestly, seemed all too likely. Tenten was sharpening her weapons. Lee was not far off terrorizing some poor tree with his kicks. Neji was meditating. Kiba had gone off to find 'a branch to chew so that the teeth'd stay sharp.' Whether the branch was for him or for Amakaru, no one had asked. However, they were all occupied. So, it was only Tenten that broke away from what she was doing to look up and give Kakashi her attention at this question. Neji continued to sit with eyes closed and legs crossed. However, Kakashi sensed that he now had his attention as well.

"What about the kettle idea Naruto was throwing around earlier?" Tenten offered. "It worked for Gaara's Bijuu, Shukaku. Why not Utakata's?"

"I'm afraid that the kettle wasn't entirely ordinary. Or rather, we can't assume that it was. The Hidden Leaf and Hidden Sand may be on friendly terms with each other now, but that does not mean that they are willing to open all of their books to us. They guard their secrets. And, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, no secret is better guarded than that which relates to the Jinchuuriki," Kakashi answered, his mind unintentionally meandering back to his little experience in the Hidden Mist. He suppressed a shudder, and plowed forward. "Though the Hidden Sand boasts to have suppressed the One Tailed Beast into a mere kettle, I'm afraid we can't take their word that there wasn't more to the procedure. We simply don't know enough about transferences into inanimate objects. Also, even if we knew Gaara could hand over the information despite the objections of his councilors, we're a little short on time now."

There was a heavy silence after this. Everyone would have been all too happy if the solution to at least one of their problems could have been as simple as a piece of crockery. Tenten exhaled heavily through her cheeks and busied herself with her weapons again, thinking hard. Kakashi turned to leave them. He'd hoped that perhaps the students would see their way through to an answer the teacher had not. He would have to come up with something after all. Only, he was drawing a blank, and time was running out.

"…Then what about an animate object?"

"Sorry?" Kakashi said, turning back to look at Neji who, having at last opened his opaque eyes, now fixed them in turn on Kakashi.

"An animate object," Neji repeated. With no elaboration whatsoever. Fantastic.

Kakashi's forehead creased. "Neji, if you're suggesting that we find the Bijuu another host, only to hand him over to the Akatsuki a few hours later, I don't see that happening."

Neji did not stiffen with his usual pride or aloofness. In fact, he actually seemed to be struggling with whatever it was he was thinking. "Yes and no," he answered with unfaltering ambiguity. Then, just as abruptly he hurried on, though that may have been partially to alleviate the look of absolute alarm that spread over Tenten's face as she incredulously looked up from her weapons again. "…In the aftermath of Sasuke's desertion, I was cut through my left flank by Kidomaru with a javelin-like weapon. It was a severe enough wound that there was a large hole left in my body. The javelin took quite a bit with it. It came very close to my heart, and tore through much of my shoulder muscles…"

"Yes?" Kakashi couldn't see where this was going.

"The medic nins stitched me up so seamlessly, that not only do I still now have the function of my left arm, but there is hardly even a scar on the place of the injury. Nie seamless."

"And?"

Neji swallowed, almost imperceptibly. "If they can grow bone, tendon and muscle in a matter of hours, why not a body?"

For the second time that day Kakashi was glad his mask concealed the dropped jaw he was now sporting. "You want to breed a Jinchuriki?" The statement sounded even more lunacies when he said it out loud.

Kakashi's incredulity seemed to have finally pricked at Neji's pride, and he rose to defend his argument. "Not a person, obviously," he snapped back, one Jounin to another. "Just a body. Meat, organs, flesh, all hanging together. I'm not suggesting we create life. Just something that can contain the creature until we deposit it." He looked from Kakashi to Tenten and back to Kakashi. "You yourself said that we can only hold the beast if we know what we're sealing it into. Well, a body is as well practiced a vessel as it gets."

And once again, silence. Kakashi held Neji's gaze a moment longer, and then looked away. "Sai!" he called up at the roof of the cabin.

"Yessir." Sai's head poked over the edge of the roof, where he'd been sitting while he made his own preparations, drawing up an army of reserves into his giant scrolls. He'd heard everything, of course. "Go and get Sakura for me, will you? I need her to make some final touches to the ritual site, where Yamato's working. I'll meet you both there."

"Yessir," Sai answered, rolling up his scroll with whatever lethal weapon he had been drawing on it for later, and launching off into the trees.

Kakashi turned away from Neji and Tenten. He could feel Neji's gaze boring a hole into the back of his head. Almost despite himself he made some sort of acknowledgment to them. "I will consult Sakura on this." And with that he too darted off, making his way to the glade they had chosen for the ritual.

...

Sakura blinked at him. "You want to do what?" she said in shock as the two stood by the platform that she was currently using as a desk.

"Of course," Kakashi cut in quickly, "I thought it was a useless idea. And even if it could work, the ethical distortions are positively hair-raising. But I'm truly grasping for anything at this point, so I had to run it by you nonetheless."

"No-" Sakura cut in. "No, that's not the problem. I mean, what I'm trying to say," she elaborated as Kakashi gave her a slightly alarmed look, "is that it is possible to make a body without making a person. At least technically. We grow limbs and organs all the time. A difficult procedure, but a common one. I don't see why, in theory, we couldn't do it here… only stitch all of the limbs and organs together."

"But wouldn't the body be alive?" Kakashi asked.

Sakura shrugged with all of the professional certainty of her work. "Well, yes, technically. In the way that a limb or an organ is alive when we grow them. But not alive like a person, no. A sack of flesh and bones, all pumping together. However, if we do manage to get the Slug into this makeshift body we'd then have to hand it over to the Akatuski very soon after. The medics in the Hidden Leaf only make such extensions as they're needed. We can't exactly store them – limbs and organs that is. Neji was already on the brink of death when Shizune operated on him. We wouldn't want our makeshift body to die, and for the Bijuu to then run rampent. The Akatuski wouldn't take that very well, I don't suppose."

For a few moments Kakashi just stared in awe at his former student. "Right," he said promptly after. "Sakura, I want you to send a letter back to Konoha. Get together a band of your most trusted medics, and get them out here, double time."

"Y-yessir, Kakashi-sensei. But if I may ask, why not write to the Hokage? I'm sure she has greater resources than I do."

Kakashi quirked an eyebrow. "And you think she'd approve of what we're doing? Gift-wrapping the Slug for the enemy? No. And I'm afraid that, at this point, we've gone a little too far to turn back."

Sakura swallowed. She could see his point. "I'll get Ino here immediately."

...

Half the day was gone. Tensions were rising. More and more often members of the team found themselves looking to the skies to see whether or not there was an approaching ninja in the trees. Kiba had positively chewed a stick to shreds. It had been hours since Sai had called Sakura back from her training with Naruto and Utakuta had come and gone and made whatever corrections to the dome that needed to be made.

...And then they came.

Sakura could have kissed Ino when she saw that streak of blond catch the late afternoon sun. With eight consecutive thumps, Yamanaka Ino and the other seven ninjas with her landed hard in the clearing, and rose to their full highs as one.

Ino and Sakura had... a difficult relationship. It was one that involved the best of friendships, boys, and betrayals. Ino had taken up medical practice so as not to fall behind Sakura in any way. Sakura herself had actually trained her. The two were forever in rivalry with one another. During their first Chunnin Exam they had actually simultaneously knocked each other out, so ardent was each not to allow the other to get ahead. Of the two Ino was certainly the more esthetically beautiful. With a muscular yet still feminine figure, perfect proportions to her face, a mane of blond hair and shocking blue eyes, it was sometimes all Sakura could do to reminder herself that she, Sakura, was still the superior medic. However, Ino was, admittedly, not far behind. And now, when Sakura needed someone she trusted so badly, she called on Ino.

"'Sup, Forehead-Girl?" Ino smirked at Sakura, casually throwing out the usual insult that she had for Sakura, knowing as she did how self-conscious the later was about her own physique. Sakura felt a blood-vessel burst. All too easily, as usual.

"You wanna start something, Ino-Pig?" she said, closing the distance, but for a necessary fist, which she held up between them threateningly.

Ino smirked. "Bring it."

"Sakura-san, please, don't fight." Sakura's attention was taken from Ino to one of the others who had arrived with her – a girl who now stood on her direct right. She had violet hair and the opaque eyes of her clan and family: the heir to the Hyūga household, and Neji's younger cousin, Hyūga Hinata.

"Ah…Hinata. What are you doing here?" Sakura blinked.

"You didn't write much, but you said to get ninjas whom we could trust," Ino interjected. "I figured Hinata's as trustworthy as it gets. She may not be a complete medic like you, but she's studied the ninjutsu, and she's very good, as you know. Isn't that right, Hinata?" Ino turned back to flash a smile at her shy friend.

Hinata bowed her head slightly, "I am honored to be held in such regard. Please, Sakura-san, you said that time was of the essence. What will you have us do?"

Sakura closed her eyes, and composed herself. "Right," she said stepping back from her companions. "Let's get you debriefed and on to work. We've got a bit of a crisis on our hands and we're short on time."

Just like that Ino straightened up, her team mimicking her motion. They were ninjas. They came to attention at the word 'debriefing.'

"Shoot," she said. "We did get here as fast as possible."

Sakura sighed. "I'm gonna warn you now. The situation... it's not exactly normal."

...

Naruto closed his eyes... and concentrated. Sakura had gone off with Sai to touch up the ritual site. He was getting in some last minute practice. It wouldn't be long now. He knew he couldn't train for the extraction. He didn't have the ninjutisu. However, what he had to practice was to clear his mind... to allow Sakura's chakra to flow over his own, and direct him... to sense his own Bijuu chakra, so that he would be more attuned to sense Utakata's when the time came...

He inhaled deeply, and allowed his mind to ease through the rustling of the tee tops about him, and the sound of the forest at large.

A water droplet clanged against a metal pipe. Naruto's eyes flew open.

"It'll never work," a very old, familiar voice growled. Naruto was no longer in the forest. He was in a large, seemingly underground piping system. He himself now stood on the floor of a giant horizontal pipe, his feet suddenly up to the ankles in water. And there, with only the great gate that had always been there between them, and had always been held shut by the paper "SEAL" placed upon it, just twenty feet from him now, was his Bijuu. The Nine-Tailed Fox. Kyuubi.

Naruto sensed his presence in the semi-darkness more than he saw it. The Nine-Tails seemed to snort in the shadows. "How do you plan to control his Bijuu when you can't even control me." It was one of the things that always got to Naruto most... He knew that this was not a real place, but one that had been formed by the power that the Fourth Hokage had used to bind the Kyuubi to him... He knew that... but it still always got to him.

The smell of the place always got to him. ...It was so real.

"Shut up," Naruto growled, and turned away from the fellow resident of his body. His feet sloshed as they moved through the water. "I'll prove you wrong," he said, his voice echoing off the high walls of pipe-work. "I always do."

"Huh. Always, except when it truly counts," growled the giant fox. Perhaps it was Naruto's imagination, but he always imagined that he could hear those nine tails swishing around in the stagnant air, somewhere in the blackness beyond that gate. "Why fool yourself? You couldn't save Sasuke. And you won't save this one either. You poor, delusional, pitiful-"

"Naruto?" Sakura landed behind him, and Naruto snapped back around. She gasped.

Gone was the dimly lit piping, gone was the water, and gone was the fox. Except for...

The red chakra that had begun to swell around him died, but Naruto could see by the look on Sakura's face that his eyes were still red, and his pupils slitted. He looked away, and blinked it out.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "Went a little too deep."

"Naruto... maybe we shouldn't do this. Maybe we should stop. If it's really this dangerous... You know I don't want to lose y-"

"Was there something you needed, Sakura-chan?" Naruto continued to look down at the ground.

"...I came to go over our routine one last time. ...The dome's ready."

Naruto stayed silent. After a moment he looked back up at her. "Then let's do that then," he said, confidant that his eyes were once again a clear blue.

...

No part of Ino could believe that she was actually doing this. Not only was she aiding the Akatsuki capture of a Bijuu, but she was doing it because Sakura had asked her to. Sakura. Not some hot-shot boy who could at least give her something for her troubles. (Not that she'd even have done it then.) No. Sakura. And all that fat-forehead could give her in return was a guaranteed suspension from her team at best and expulsion from the ninja ranks at worst. One way or another, they were all going to end up in front of Tsunade, and thinking about that alone made death seem like a surprisingly nice option.

Meanwhile, in front of her Yamato was pulling another dome into the sky. He wasn't making this one of ironwood, as its purpose was not to restrain a Bijuu. No, this dome would require attention to detail over sheer mass and endurance. Now, it was true that upon realizing that he was going to have to build a second dome for the creation of a 'vegetable Jinchuuriki,' the poor man almost passed out on the spot. However, with Ino now supervising, he was working as fast as though his life depended. Which, to be fair, it did.

Yamato clasped his hands together, conjuring in his mind the diagram that Ino had drawn up for him from her own medic studies. A four pointed star into which the medic nins would then lock their chakra with a green seal, and at the center of which they would conduct their task. Yamato was literally creating a make-shift operating table. Nothing could be out of place. Sheets of sweat were pooling off of him. It wasn't the amount. He could create an entire ravine in an afternoon if he put his mind to it. No. It was the detail. The detail, which he knew, could make or break them all in this mad plan of theirs.

"I really hope this works!" he growled into his woodwork which cracked and snapped through the air like thunderclaps as he pushed this second dome further into the sky.

"Come on, Captain Yamato!" Ino called out, interrupting his thought, half with encouragement and half with urgency. "We've got to have this thing up by sundown! They're gonna need the body ready and on hand when they pull that Bijuu out!" She couldn't really believe what she was yelling. It all sounded like some bad scifi-ninja-novel. Like something Jiraiya would write. Except there were no hot orgies at the end of this adventure. We are all so dead, she concluded, peering up at the setting sun.

...

"Niisan…" Neji, who had been standing at the edge of the clearing, surveying the rising scene, turned at the sound of that voice.

His eyes widened in mild surprise, "Lady Hinata?"

She smiled, and walked up to stand beside him. She too turned her eyes to survey the scene before them. "I just wanted to come and say hello. I arrived only recently with the medic team led by Ino. While I know that the stakes are very high, it is good to be on a mission with all of my friends."

"Ino had no business dragging you into this," Neji cut in, looking away from her. "You are the heir of our clan, and you are not a fully trained medic. This is not a mission, but a fool's errand, and you ought to have stayed home."

Imperceptibly, Hinata's shoulders sunk. Or rather, imperceptible to all by the Byakugan eyes. …If there was a dignified way to kick oneself Neji would have done it right now. He had always been very harsh on Hinata. In their childhood, it had been because she was from the main house and he had been from a branch family. It had been a rebellion against his fate, to which he felt shackled. Naruto…had cured him of that notion. Now, however, sometimes he went to the other extreme. He would be harsh, when what he intended to be was concerned. "That being said," he continued falteringly, "I am sure that you are prepared for the task ahead."

"…I think so." Hinata answered haltingly, not meeting his eye. "Kakashi-sensei told me that it was your ingenuity that offered the solution to the problem of where to transfer the Bijuu." A smile quirked her lips. "I actually overheard him saying to Sakura that, as you are a Jounin and a Hyūga, you hardly need his validation, but that he was very impressed and pleased. He said it was like having a Nara here."

Well, if Neji hadn't felt like an ass before, he certainly did now. If he didn't know Hinata to be absolutely incapable of something so duplicitous, he would have sworn that she could be this charming and obliging on purpose, just to stir his guilt.

"High praise indeed, from Konoha's own Copy Ninja," he answered curtly. An awkward silence fell upon them. Neji swallowed, "Have you seen Naruto yet?" he offered up, turning to look at her again.

Hinata balked and looked at him with alarm, a steady blush pluming across her face. Finally, Neji thought, he'd done something right. "N- n- no! Sakura-san said that he was still training in the woods. She was about to go and send him to get Sir Utakata. I-I haven't gotten the chance…" she trailed off, blinking at her cousin a thousand blinks a second.

"Well," Neji shrugged nonchalantly, "as I'm sure you'll perform your task admirably, I see no reason why you won't see him after this is all over."

Hinata's mouth parted in an open smile, "Th-thank you, niisan." She looked back to the field, still smiling. "Ah, Ino is calling to me," she said. And, sure enough, the Yamanaka girl was waiving inexhaustibly in their general direction. "I must go. Best of luck, niisan."

"And to you," Neji called after her, smiling a little himself. Thank god, at least he'd ended that on a high note.

Darkness was truly falling now. Neji surveyed the scene as the new dome slowly rose into the air. With the darkness fell his momentary elation. It was getting cold. The night that they all dreaded so much… was coming. He wondered if this was what Utakata had felt earlier in the day... to see a part of his past rising into the skyline. No. Neji could never imagine what Utakata felt here and now. He had lost everything in the structure that had been erected on his instruction. Neji had his own battles that he had fought throughout his life. But the dome that was now being raised on his, Neji's, recommendation... it had been one such station that had saved his life.

Still... it sent chills down his spine. Everything... all of this... He almost flinched when a hand clamped down on his shoulder. Almost. He turned his head slightly. "...Lee."

"...You know Neji, I have no idea what you, or Utakata for that matter, are going through right now," Lee said, his huge eyes taking in the scene before them. "However, I do know that none of us are ready for it. We are all handling it in our own way, but none of us are comfortable with what is happening. …And that is why we much do our best."

The two stood there, together, side by side, with Lee's hand clasped on Neji's shoulder. And, as they had their entire lives, they cut a strange pair at the edge of the clearing. But a pair they were. Somehow, though Neji doubted he would ever admit it, Lee had a way of steadying him with that bombastic, disconcerting nature of his. He looked to his friend, and Lee tore his eyes away from the domes and met Neji's. "That is why we must be 'stronger than we were yesterday,'" he said, giving Neji's shoulder a final shake and repeating to him the words that he had once coined on their Gaara Rescue mission. Such a short and long time ago, all in one.

Neji smirked. "You always were an inexcusable sap."

Lee shrugged, smiling sheepishly, "It is part of the charms of youth, I suppose."

...

Both domes stood stark against the dying day. Sakura suppressed a shiver as the sun went down, and the air about her cooled. They looked so strangely beautiful in these few moments. Their round shapes catching the light of sun and clouds as one, like two momentary canvasses... All around the valley teams were erecting man-size torches. Two more at the entrance of each dome. But they seemed to cast more shadows than light. It was coming. The night was coming, and there was nothing that they could do to stop it. Almost twelve hours of one of their precious days was already spent. Time wasn't waiting.

Out of the corner of her eye Sakura saw as three figures immerged from the tree-line, and stepped into the flickering torchlight. Without hesitation, she took off across the field. "Kakashi-sensei," she said, skidding to a halt by his side. "They're here."

Kakashi, whose full attention had been on the domes, looked over in the direction that Sakura indicated. There, slowly making their way toward them, Hotaru and Naruto supported Utakata on either side. And just like that the sun slipped below the horizon, and they all knew that the quiet was over. Now came the storm.

It was time.