Tetsuo ran, trailing behind Kakashi. With each mile, it became slightly easier to move as the drug that had knocked him, Kakashi, and the entire town of Saida out and killed a couple infants and toddlers cleared from his system. While he knew that Naruto had been alright and had not been writing under duress, and that his teammates had still been alive the night before, he still worried. The people that Naruto and his teammates had left with were Missing-nin, and he had seen the state of the bodies they had left behind. Both Naruto and Sasuke were exceedingly valuable, and the Missing-nin could try to sell them if they decided they could get more out of them that way than whatever they thought their assistance was worth.
With each passing minute, the worry he felt for his students grew greater. While Hot Water Country was small and narrow, there were a million places to hide, and it was entirely possible that Naruto's companions had turned on him just a little further up the trail, and used a different trick to cover their tracks afterwards, a trick that would confound even Kakashi's dogs.
The group that Naruto was traveling with outnumbered them, and there was no telling what level of skill they had, as they had taken out both civilians and shinobi who had looked to be at least Chunin level alike. It was also entirely possible that, rather than planning on double-crossing and selling Naruto and Sasuke, they were using Naruto to reel Kakashi in in order to kill him and take his Sharingan and the bounty that was on his head. If they chose to do so, they would have the advantage, both in numbers, and in the fact that Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura had just become liabilities. Liabilities that could be used or sold after he and Kakashi were defeated, if they weren't killed during the struggle that was.
There was another worry about what would happen if Naruto were put up for sale as well, a worry about what he would have to do if he was placed in that position. If it came down to it, he would have to do what it took to make sure that Konoha's enemies didn't get their hands on the Kyuubi, no matter how much it would kill him to do so.
"So, what's going on?" Sakura asked Naruto, who was snacking on some cooked fish as he studied a map that Renji had unrolled before them, as she was handed breakfast by the boy Haku who looked to be a couple years older than her.
"Some retired ninja who fancies himself to be a crime boss has been running some sort of kidnapping for ransom ring, and he took the wrong kid this time." Naruto replied as he pointed to a spot on the map and signed something to Renji who frowned and signed something back. "They made the usual threat to kill the kid if the guy went running to one of the ninja villages. Rather than paying up like everyone else did however, this guy hired a group of Missing-Nin, and payed a little extra for them to make an example of the stupid kidnappers. We got dragged into it when the bunch of morons who took us got a little greedy, and decided to do business with a wealthy merchant who had gone to Saida for the festival. The munchkins in Haku's sleeping bag were the reason for the mass drugging."
Missing-nin? MISSING-NIN?! Naruto had them doing business with Missing-nin?! If they survived this, they could get arrested for dealing with Missing-nin, or worse! Every last one of them were criminals and traitors to their villages, and dealing with them rather than turning them in made you the same.
"Naruto, are you crazy?!" she yelled, about to launch into an explanation of why what they were doing was so far beyond wrong that it wasn't even funny.
"Yes." Naruto replied, "Bu,t that doesn't change the fact that they were our best chance of survival at the time, and still are at the moment. As long as we hold up our end of the bargain, everything should be fine."
She almost said something else, something to explain to the boy who was being far too trusting that everything wasn't fine, and wouldn't be, but something about the look in the boy's eyes stopped her. It was then that she knew that Naruto knew exactly how much trouble they were in, and that he was doing his best to hold everything together in order to keep them alive long enough for help to arrive. He was going along with this in order to keep these people who were basically their captors placated. As long as they were placated, they were less likely to be violent.
She'd heard about something like this back in the Academy when they had briefly discussed what you should do if you were captured by the enemy in her Kunoichi classes, but this was the first time she had seen it in action. By offering the sort of service that made them useful, but didn't harm Konoha, Naruto was protecting them from being used in another, less pleasant, manner. As long as the enemy, who was apparently in some sort of bind because they were short on manpower, saw them as being something approaching comrades, they would be far less likely to treat them as prisoners. Naruto was counting on that, and he needed her to go along with it long enough for them to be able to properly plan their escape.
"I hope you know what you're doing." she finally said before turning to the breakfast that Haku had provided her with and started eating.
"Your friend is very brave." Haku said as he handed the dark haired boy his breakfast.
He had marked the dark haired boy who wore the mark of the now defunct Uchiha clan as the biggest threat of the three. Naruto, whom he'd recognized from that time he'd met him in Kiri, understood the situation he was in full well, and was determined to do what it took to get his team out of it alive. The pink haired girl was weak, and seemed to be content to follow Naruto's lead for now. The dark haired boy however was a different story. He had kept silent practically the entire time he'd been here and, considering how carefully he kept his expressions and body language under control, there was no way of knowing exactly what he was thinking. If the dark haired boy acted, Naruto, who was the strongest of the three by far, and an almost completely unknown element who was capable of creating shadow clones at a rate that would kill an ordinary ninja several times over, would be forced to protect his teammate. In that situation, just about anything could happen, and any one of them could be killed.
The boy just grunted in response to his statement and practically snatched the food he was giving him out of his hand, clearly still not in the mood for conversation. Gozu and Meizu had tried to engage him earlier only to receive a cold shoulder in return.
He sighed and turned to leave and eat his own breakfast before the children woke up. At some point during the night, they had gone from unconsciousness to sleep, and it was only a matter of time before they did.
"He's not my friend." the dark haired boy said behind him.
"What?" he asked, sure that he'd misheard the boy.
"He's not my friend." the dark haired boy repeated.
"Strange." he said eventually. "I apparently incorrectly assumed that he was."
"Why?" the dark haired boy asked sarcastically. "Because we come from the same village we must be friends?"
"No," he replied, amazed that Naruto was trying to protect such a boy. "I had assumed that he was your friend because he put his own life up as collateral in case you or the other one betrayed us."
The boy seemed rather surprised at this, his cold and arrogant mask breaking for once, if only briefly.
"You mean he didn't tell you?" he said, slightly surprised that Naruto hadn't done so, considering the fact that the dark haired boy was the one who was most likely to turn on them, and therefore his biggest liability.
The boy just grunted in response and turned away, indicating the conversation was over.
Sighing, he got up and went over to get his own breakfast, wondering once more why Naruto protected the other boy who apparently wasn't appreciative of what he'd done for him. Even Zabuza-sama, who had repeatedly told him and the others that they were just tools to further his plans, had shown appreciation for what he and the others did for him at times.
As the feminine looking boy left, Sasuke found his mind reeling. If what the boy had said was true, the Uzumaki had offered up his own life for a chance to rescue him. Sure, as a result of that rescue, they were little more than prisoners but, they were alive, out of the clutches of their kidnappers, and had a chance at surviving the situation they were in without him being sold off to the highest bidder as long as the group they were with saw him as a potentially valuable asset to the team. Something that the Uzumaki had been making an effort at doing while he had rather unwisely alienated himself from the group.
He could see and hear the Uzumaki helping plan the attack that the group was going to carry out against the criminals who had kidnapped him, criminals who employed an unknown number of ninja with an unknown level of skill. For some reason, he was engaging Sakura in the discussion, getting her to parrot lines from useless passages of the Academy texts which she pretty much had memorized. He kept bringing him and his skill in Taijutsu and Ninjutsu up, as well as the fact that Kakashi and Tetsuo were due to arrive at any minute, and that they would be helping with the attack, in order to keep these facts fresh in the missing-nin's minds.
This little show seemed to be keeping Gozu, Meizu, Renji, and Mai entertained, and he noticed a slight relaxing of their guard around his teammates, especially around the Uzumaki whom two of them had already fought alongside and started to see as a comrade. If he didn't find a way to be seen as a comrade or at least not a threat, they wouldn't relax their guard around him like they did the others, and that would further reduce his chances of escape.
That, and if he wasn't seen as useful to the team, they would be more than likely to cut him loose in a way that would benefit them. Missing-nin tended to travel light because they had to, and any dead weight would be gotten rid of quickly. If he didn't want to be seen as being dead weight, he would have to be seen as being useful as something other than potential breeding stock, despite the fact that he was disinclined to cooperate with people who were basically his captors.
He cast his eye around for anything he could use, especially after he'd established himself as being decidedly unfriendly and, worst of all, uncooperative. His eyes landed on the rather bruised prisoner who was restrained at the back of the cave. He felt a smirk begin to form as he realized that he could kill two birds with one stone if he played his cards right, and get his revenge on the man.
Wiping the smirk off of his face, he got up and walked over to the leader of the group who was sitting leaned against the wall with his massive sword at his side, watching everything that was going on in an almost bored fashion.
"What do you want kid?" the man asked when he reached him.
"I was wondering if I could help you interrogate the prisoner." he replied.
"And what would you know about interrogating prisoners?" the man asked, raising a non-existent brow.
"My father might've mentioned a few methods." he said, brutally suppressing the stab of pain he'd felt at the mere mention of his father.
"And, what would your father have known about interrogating prisoners?" the man asked.
He gave the man a look that practically said "Are you kidding me?", despite the fact that he wasn't as confident as he was trying to appear, and the fact that thinking about his father in anything other than general terms was hurting.
"My father was the chief of the Konoha Military Police Force before he died." he replied in what he hoped was an almost offhand manner that didn't betray his emotions because, showing weakness in front of this man would be the worst thing he could do.
"I'll think about it kid." the man said, chuckling as he reached out to touch him.
He dodged, only to find the man standing behind him. As he moved to back away, the man reached over and ruffled his hair as if he were a small and adorable child, rather than a ninja. He clenched his fists and walked off when the man moved aside to let him pass, trying not to react to what had just happened. The last time anyone had done that to him, it had been one of his uncles who was actually a close cousin on the day IT had happened.
Edited 10-6-12