Teamwork! Teamwork!
A hand grabs her arm.
Startled she tries to grope for a chakra signature, something to confirm her suspicions, but there's nothing.
Before she can decide to break the hand – just in case – there's a tap in the crook of her elbow; a signal. Tap … tap –tap.
There's a moment of silence and stillness.
"I-I think …. there's someone in here," a familiar voice breathes against her ear. "No chakra!"
Hisana's so relieved, her knees buckle. She catches herself, before she can tumble both of them to the floor, but it's a near thing.
"What are you doing here?" she hisses.
"Fetching you," he answers, voice high in surprise. "What else should I be doing?"
"Getting out maybe? What happened to you? Where did Sensei take you?"
"Nowhere," he confesses sheepishly. "He left me right by the door. But I couldn't just walk out and leave you guys here; don't you know it only takes fifteen minutes of sensory deprivation to cause hallucinations?"
She didn't. But that would explain the paranoia. It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you, something sing-songs inside her head, but she squashes it down.
"So there's probably nobody else down here but us," she suggests.
"No, no! There's this strange feeling of being watched. And I heard the footsteps, I'm sure of it …"
"Was that before or after those fifteen minutes were up for you?"
Mitsuharu makes a frustrated noise.
"Does it even matter? I still wouldn't risk loudly bumbling around down here."
It's the first time she's heard him getting annoyed; the darkness is doing things to him too.
"Did you see Sora-san on your way here? Sensei left him before me, but he took a route off to the other side. You should have run into each other."
There's a sound as if her teammate is shaking his head.
"No. Maybe he's already outside?"
"What if he isn't?"
There's no helping it, they have to look for him.
They switch off every hour, one of them leading, the other one being pulled behind. It's easier in some ways, now that she's not alone anymore, but also harder in others. The hallucinations have gotten less, but in the few instances they appear, she's all the more convinced they're real.
Mitsuharu has them too, but he's far more resolute in ignoring them than her. The only sign of stress is the shaking she sometimes feels from him. But he refuses to sleep and after a while he's more of a wrack than her, bodily exhaustion just as devastating as mental one.
Ironically that's the point at which Hisana finally gathers herself. With someone else's worries to take care of it's easier to push back her own and do what has to be done.
She's never seen herself as a care-taker; she's only the younger sibling, the selfish one that needs care rather than giving it. Everything she's done in the past few years – taking care of Sasuke and pushing team 7 onto each other – they were all things that had to be done. Yes, she enjoyed most of it, but the initial motivator was selfishness.
Even now she keeps them around for selfish reasons; they're family and she's possessive of them. She has no such connection with Mitsuharu – yet – but his weakness puts her into a familiar role and gives her back a few inches of ground beneath her feet.
"Come on," she repeats patiently for the fifth time. "I will keep watch, you need to sleep. It's a closed room, we checked twice. Nobody's in here and nobody can get inside without stepping right into my wire trap."
She's no good at traps and they both know it; traps are Sora's job. But it's a simple one that she couldn't possibly mess up and her mental faculties are still in better working order than Mitsuharu's.
"Sleep," she orders, finally throwing her teammate's blanket over his head.
"Oh," he says. "Oh, this is actually better."
It takes five minutes until his breathing evens out.
Food, sleep, walking. Food, sleep, walking.
They detect Sora's chakra signature somewhere down a small hallway. It's only a quick flare up and then it's gone. They look at each other and then scramble to get closer to it.
"There's no door here," Hisana growls in frustration. "This makes no sense; there must be other connections between the various rooms."
They can't split up down a hallway; they'd never find each other again. But Mitsuharu pulls a rope from his backpack.
"Hold on to that. Let's listen at the walls and see where exactly he is."
She taps onto every door first, but there's no reaction. There's a tug on the rope though, so hear teammate's apparently had more luck.
"Here," he whispers, "listen to this."
He taps onto the wall and a muted knock answers.
Tap-tap … tap. – 'Sora'
It's their missing teammate. She listens to Haru tapping back his own name. There's a moment of silence before the next message comes back.
'Help. Not alone.'
Next to her Haru releases a shuddering breath. This can't be true. They are alone down here, who the hell else would be prowling this dark, dank place like an animal if they don't have to?
"It's the hallucinations," Haru repeats, and she's not sure to whom he's speaking – her or himself. "He's been alone longer than us. It was a rat that startled him."
That must be it, she thinks. She really has no idea how long they've been down here, but adding together all her lucid spells it should be around 50 hours. It feels longer that. For a little more than half of it she's been alone; Sora for all of it – there's no telling in what state he would be in. The paranoia must have eaten him alive.
"Come," she whispers. "He's between these two rooms; in fifteen minute we'll get to him."
'Don't move.'
'Understood.'
They crack open the right door and split up to feel along the walls. Hisana's hand closes around something like a doorframe. It's broken and splintered; a wood chip digs into her finger and stays there. She tugs at her end of the rope and a few seconds later Mitsuharu's hand clamps down on her shoulder.
"I can feel it too," he whispers. "Can't you?"
She thinks she can – she doesn't. There's no presence, no chakra, no sound as far as she can tell. But there's something.
"I don't care," she hisses, finally hitting her breaking point. "If there's someone, we stand a better chance together. And if this someone was any damn good at their job, they would have already found and killed us."
It's true. All fear aside, this theoretical person seems to have skills superior to their own and appears to have been tailing them in the dark for at least 50 hours now. There might even be multiple of them, if not at least two of them hallucinated all of it. Clones, she remembers dimly, they could be using clones.
No, that would be suggesting a degree of organization that doesn't fit with the very important detail that they haven't been caught yet. There is nobody following them – nobody could possibly be this skilled and organized while completely screwing it up.
She pulls Haru along with her as they stumble into another adjourned room. It should be sharing a wall with the hallway – the left one.
"Sora?"
There's no answer.
"T-there's something," she hears her teammate whisper. "It's … a metal closet. And it's locked."
A soft tapping noise is coming from it. Hisana's heart drops down into the pit of her stomach. 50 hours in a closet; they needed to get him out of there. She fumbles for her lockpicks, but her teammate is quicker. There's a click and the door bursts open. Sora tumbles out of it, right into her.
"Go!" he hisses furiously, "Go, go, go – we have to leave!"
"Sora-san, Sora-san calm down!
She tries to wrestle him onto the floor, but he's bigger than her and hysterical.
"Stop it!" Haru hisses. "Sora, calm down."
"You don't understand," he gasped, "I haven't been here the whole time! I just took a look inside and someone locked it behind me!"
"What?" she whispered, grip going lax on his arm.
"That was only two, maybe three hours ago!"
They stumble back into the hallway, all three of them holding hands like the children they are. Sora is leading, frantically trying to find the way back into the hallway that he came from.
"There's just one more door that way – it has to be that one. Hisana-chan, give me some light!"
"Katon: Gokakyu no Jutsu!"
They chase the fireball down the corridor, all caution about being seen thrown overboard.
"Left! Hisana-chan!"
"Katon!"
Red hot panic is creeping up her spine; there's definitely something chasing them now, she can feel it. Behind her Mitsuharu yelps and speeds up. He overtakes her and suddenly she's pulled along by two pairs of longer legs.
"Hisana-chan!"
Both of her hands are occupied; without thinking she spits out a stream of scorching chakra that shoots out between her teammates like a golf ball sized bullet. There's a big metal door ahead. Sora latches onto it, pulling with all the strength born of desperation and fear. It cracks open and then there's light.
They stumble out into the open, scrambling for purchase on the moss and climb up into the woods. Once they get the proper footing, they fall into battle formation, waiting with bated breath for the enemy to appear.
Kohaku-sensei steps out from the bunker, straight faced and perfectly put together.
"W-what?" she stutters out. "Sensei?"
Behind her Haru sags to the floor.
"You were following us," Sora states, aghast.
"Correct," Sensei admits. "To monitor how you would react to stress. I did not expect such an … extreme reaction."
"We thought we were going to die," Hisana stresses.
"On my watch?" Sensei asks, and there is genuine bewilderment in his voice."Letting my genin squad die on my watch would mean demotion."
"Demotion," Hisana repeats weakly. "Of course. Wouldn't want to get demoted."
Sora screams in a mix of frustration and excess adrenaline. Then she's suddenly dragged down to the floor, huddled against her team. Sora is shaking, as if coming down from a high. Haru is sniveling quietly; the aftermath of a short cry.
Hisana herself lets her head sink against the grass and just breathes in the smell of the woods. It's clean and warm, the complete opposite of the bunker.
"I … apologize," Kohaku-sensei says to her dim surprise. "I intended to add a certain urgency to your mission. You were only supposed to realize that you were being hunted after reuniting. The fact that you did notice means that I … might have overdone it a bit."
Hisana turns her face towards him; his mouth is pressed into a thin line. Disapproval. This time directed at himself, rather than them. Only now she sees that his shirt is distinctly ruffled, and there's a smudge of dirt on his jaw.
"What was it?" she rasps. "What we felt. This … terror."
"Killing intent. A low level, usually used to scare civilians into compliance. An underhanded but popular tactic to avoid the usual, official channels. I did not calculate the impact it might have in extended social isolation."
She doesn't even care anymore. 'A mean fucker, that one,' she remembers Genma saying. No, she thinks. Not mean. Just … stunted.
She takes another look at her teacher's face and suddenly sees the connection to Kakashi she's been unconsciously looking for the whole time – the connection all child prodigies share.
A little boy training alone.
'Look at him' – 'Prodigy' – 'Don't you want to make your father proud?'
Better. Faster. More.
'I don't want to play with you' – 'There's no time to play, don't you want to make your clan proud?'
'You're special'
'You don't fail'
'Why did you fail?'
Isolation does strange things to children.
She doesn't have the strength to be sad for him. Later, when she's slept and hugged Sasuke and thanked god that her cousin would never know this abyss that swallows children like him whole. Maybe then she would find it in her to forgive him. Right now she just wants to go home. No, there's still almost an hour to walk. She'd rather sleep right here in the woods.
They do sleep in the woods.
Kohaku-sensei has proper food and tea stored away under a root of the mammoth tree.
They eat and drink in silence and then curl up to sleep right where they're sitting.
Hisana's only halfway gone, when she hears the boys talking in low voices next to her.
"What did Sensei do with you?" Sora asks curiously.
"Nothing."
"What nothing? Where were you?
"By the door."
"You came back? Why would you do that?"
"What else was I supposed to do? Just walk out and leave you there? The dark makes people crazy; I couldn't just leave you there."
Sora hums in agreement.
"Good of you," he says. "Real good of you."
They make it back early the next day. Their internal clocks are all kinds of messed up, but nerves didn't allow anyone proper sleep that night. So when their teacher wakes just before dawn, all three of them sit up wide awake.
The march back to Konoha seems to be over in the blink of an eye; Hisana suspects she might have sleep walked part of it. When they approach the gates, she straightens her back and purposefully puts the swagger back into her walk. It's hard. She doesn't feel like swaggering at all.
But if Genma is one of the guards posted, she doesn't want to give him any reason to go off on her again. Now that she's slept and calmed down a little, she's suddenly found the capacity to be angry at him again.
But the guards are other familiar faces: two dark haired men, one with a bandage across his nose and a soul patch, the other with a bandana styled hitai-ate. She doesn't remember their names but she does recognize them from the original Chuunin Exams.
They sign their names into a little black book and make another of their awkward stops right past the gates. As their teacher bids a hasty good-bye, they linger, undecided.
She feels uncomfortable to leave her team now. Both boys seem equally torn between staying and going running to their families.
"Guys," Sora says and throws his arms out dramatically. "I- …"
He slumps, seemingly running out of steam. Hisana snorts and reaches out to punch him in the shoulder.
"Catch you tomorrow," she decides and playfully hip checks Haru on her way. She only gets a few feet further until she hears the boys start to laugh.