What a strange hunter is man; it is slow, clumsy, with dull teeth and weak claws. But with deaf ears and blind eyes, the human mind is flexible beyond compare, and can warp and stretch itself around any living creature and seep into the tiniest keyhole.

Zelda hunted, and as she closed her eyes, she became her own prey.

"She's hiding in the bush," she said. "She knows she's being hunted, but she doesn't yet know that she is found."

"Right," Naruto said. "So we'll flush her out, bag her, and end this mission."

She shook her head, her eyes still closed. "She'll run into the street. She's small enough to run between people's legs while we'll knock them over. We'll lose her and have to track her down once more."

Tora wasn't a kitten, and this wasn't the first time she had been hunted. The Hokage had told them that much personally. They had accepted dozens of D rank missions, but this was the first one that the Hokage had administered to them himself.

Their task did not require great skill, but it had political weight, and politics required perfection. Failure wasn't an option, and injuring their target would be even worse. A human target could be threatened into submission, but a cat would not understand their warnings. Only a trap would suffice.

Sasuke gave a slight smirk. "Literally herding cats."

Zelda glanced at him. "You have experience with cats?"

He shrugged. "A bit. They run when they're scared, but you can never predict where. Bait works better."

"Ooh!" Naruto said. "Use one of your genjutsu things! Make her chase an imaginary mouse! Or I guess we could drop by the market and get a fish."

"Tora would not accept a fish from the hand of an enemy," she said. The cat had been raised in a palace. Tora was tired of fine dishes and boundless comforts. She yearned for freedom, the freedom to live, to run ... to hunt. "A genjutsu could work, but I have no experience deceiving the senses of cats. Naruto, I'll need shadow clones in key positions to chase her if she flees. Pursue, but do not engage. Sasuke, if it does work, I'll lure Tora down the street into Niwaki park."

Sasuke nodded. "Keep the illusion monochrome. They can see gray and blue, but only a few can see yellow, and none of the cats I've spoken to can recognize the color red."

Naruto stared at him. "You can talk to cats?"

"Not important."

"You can talk to cats?"

"Forget I said anything."

"He's right, Naruto," Zelda said. "Time will not wait for us forever."

He scowled and formed shadow clones to perch on nearby rooftops. "When this is over, I'm going to want the whole story."

WWW

"And that's about it," Sasuke said as they returned to the Hokage's tower.

"Huh," Naruto said. "So you just attach this device and it casts a genjutsu on you to translate meows and stuff? What sort of device is it? Ooh, does it look like little kitty ears?"

"No. That would be idiotic and no self-respecting shinobi would ever be caught dead in something like that."

Sasuke carried Tora in his arms. She writhed and snapped at him, but with her paws wrapped up in cloth, her attempts of spite and escape were futile.

"It sounds like an old relic of my people," Zelda said. "The Mask of Truth. Anyone who wore it could speak to the beasts of the field, the trees of the forest, even the stones of the earth."

"Yeah," Sasuke said. "That's what kind of device it was. A mask."

"Huh," Naruto said. "Was it a cat mask? Like the kind the ANBU wear?"

"Sure."

Naruto turned to Zelda. "And you could talk to rocks with it? What would rocks have to say?"

Zelda thought back to the stories she had heard Impa tell her. "You would have to grant the stone an eye before it could tell you what it had seen. I do not know the jutsu to grant them sight, but Kakariko was once lined with gossip stones, keeping constant, silent vigil."

"Huh. Sounds kinda creepy."

"I suppose."

Zelda stopped in front of a doorway. On the other side, both the Hokage and their client, the Daimyo's wife, waited for them.

She turned to her teammates. "Do either of you have experience speaking to someone of high status?"

"Status?" Naruto repeated. "Like, alive versus dead? All the time."

"Someone of high rank or authority."

"Oh. Yeah, I talk to the Hokage all the time. I even taught his bratty grandkid some of my special techniques."

Zelda considered what sort of special techniques Naruto could have taught the boy, and decided not to delve into the matter. "The Hokage tolerates familiarity. Perhaps he even invites it, but you must always allow the person of higher rank to set the tone of the meeting. Err on the side of formality whenever possible." She didn't know where the Daimyo's wife stood on the hierarchy, but she'd treat her as she would a queen for the time being.

Naruto narrowed his eyes. "Why? He's just the Hokage. What's the big deal?"

"Because this isn't just a mission anymore," she explained. "It's politics. Any team could complete the missions we've been given, but here we can prove that we can not just serve him, but represent him." The relationship between the Hokage of the Hidden Leaf and the Daimyo of the Land of Fire was a complicated one, far more nuanced than military power versus civil power. Konoha was largely autonomous, but remained independent by not overstepping extremely vague boundaries. "If we can prove that, then the Hokage may grant us greater responsibilities than yard work and babysitting."

That got his attention as she knew it would. His eyes flashed, then narrowed. "Wait, hold on. Is this suddenly a popularity contest? Like, the prettiest ninjas get the coolest missions?"

"The most professional ninjas get the best missions, and presentation breaks ties where performance is the same. To act professional, act somber and stoic. People expect that from our field of work."

Naruto glanced at Sasuke. "So ... act like him? No problem. I've been doing Sasuke impressions for years."

Sasuke turned to him. "You've been doing what?"

Naruto formed a transformation jutsu and ended up looking exactly like Sasuke, except for an expression of tragic melodrama on his face. "No one will ever understand the torment I feel, the torment of being successful at everything I attempt, the torment of being ever plagued by fangirls everywhere I go. My misery and isolation weighs like mountains upon my soul."

Sasuke seemed more disgusted than insulted. "I sound nothing like that."

"You sound exactly like that."

"Could you do that seriously?" Zelda asked before they could get too distracted. "And with your own face?"

"Sure, no problem." He forced a grimace, stretching and twisting his face, and when his face snapped back, it was somber. "How's this?" he asked, his voice monotone.

"It should work," Zelda said, and she slid open the door.

The Hokage sat at a desk on the other side of the room, his wide-brimmed hat shrouding his face and a long pipe held in his teeth. He wore no crown and held no throne because neither were needed. A king's ostentations served to remind others of his political, and sometimes even mythic power, but the trappings of the Hokage were austere, the false humility of a man whose power and experience were matched by none in the country and few in the world.

In contrast, a large woman in an expensive kimono charged at them like a bull. "My baby girl!" the Daiymo's wife shouted. She snatched the cat from Sasuke's arms and began smothering it in a hug. "You brought her back to me! And you got her little sockiepoos!"

Zelda took a knee and bowed her head, and her teammates followed suit. "Your cat, your Ladyship, delivered as promised." The woman didn't seem to demand formality, but Zelda wouldn't have felt comfortable being more familiar.

The point was moot, however, as the woman ignored them entirely. "We need to get you home and get you a bath and get you fed, you must be starving ..." The Daimyo's wife walked out the door, followed by her attendants, without even a word of thanks.

Which was fine. A ninja was supposed to be unnoticed, and the Hokage at least appreciated their service. "Good work," he said, holding his pipe in his hand. The three of them rose as he reached for a scroll. "Though a simple mission, you completed it perfectly. Your next mission ..." He looked at the scroll to read the cover, shot Naruto a glance, then continued. "... is babysitting for the Ishikawa household this evening from six to ..." He stopped mid-sentence and glared at them. "Alright, Naruto, what are you doing?"

"What do you mean, Lord Hokage?" Naruto stood with his back straight, his unblinking eyes staring ahead.

"That! You've never used a title of respect before in your life."

"I'm choosing to be professional, Lord Hokage, in order to prove that I can handle more challenging missions."

The Hokage gave Naruto a hard look, then his gaze shifted to Kakashi. Zelda couldn't see her sensei standing behind her, but she suspected that he was struggling not to laugh. "If I give you a more challenging mission, will you stop?"

"Y-yes."

"Fine. Let's see what we have in the C ranks for you."

Naruto's eyes bulged. "Really? Finally! Thanks, old man, you won't regret this!"

The Hokage took a long drag on his pipe as his fingers traced the edges of the C rank scrolls. "Too late."

Naruto turned to Zelda and grinned. "I can't believe your plan worked! I never would have thought of that."

Zelda kept her eyes straight ahead and her expression blank as the Hokage glanced up at her. The Hokage was both a good man and a good ruler, but the idea of someone—anyone—in power looking at her and seeing something of value unnerved her. It made her want to hide, and anonymity was her sanctuary.

"Does your team have a specialty, Kakashi?"

"Hm, they're pretty well rounded," he said. "But I've seen them doing bodyguard exercises, so I guess there's that."

You saw that? That had only happened once, and Zelda hadn't sensed anyone watching them at all. Perhaps it was arrogant to believe that she should have been able to notice someone of Kakashi's level when he didn't want her to, but that was her specialty. And the paradox of stealth was that the more someone tried to be silent and unseen the easier it was to sense their intent. The only way someone could be perfectly unnoticeable would be to be casually silent, and indifferent to what they saw.

Which ... was something Kakashi would likely be a natural at. Huh.

"Bodyguarding? Yes, I think I have one here." The Hokage tossed Kakashi a scroll, and he caught it very casually, barely looking up from his book.

WWW

Every year academy students went on a three day camping trip into the forest to learn wilderness survival skills. If someone couldn't catch their own food, they had to make do with rations pills which filled neither the stomach nor the soul. If they couldn't start a fire or set up a tent, they had to sleep in the cold. There was no risk of danger on these trips, but a near certainty of discomfort.

Zelda remembered sharing a three person tent with Ino, who had welcomed her into her circle of friends, and Hinata, who despite coming from a powerful and esteemed household, suffered from a timidity that others might have mistaken for weakness.

Now, a few years older, Zelda shared a three person tent with two boys, an act that proved to be far less awkward and uncomfortable than she once might have expected. They had grown comfortable sleeping over at each other's homes during Sasuke's brief bout of homelessness, and she knew she could trust these two, awake or not.

Zelda went to sleep, and as she slept, she dreamed.

A sword as long as she was tall sliced through the mist and cut her in half in less time than it would take to blink. She woke up in a cold sweat, her heart racing, and saw a man crouching over her, a respirator over his face. She opened her mouth to scream, but he reached out with a spiked gauntlet and crushed her throat.

She awoke a second time and stared wide eyed into the darkness until her breathing slowed. Dreams, yes, but not just dreams.

Zelda climbed out of her sleeping bag and crept out of the tent into the open air. The night was cold and clear, no moon but countless stars. And quiet. She could hear branches swaying in the distance, pushed by a gentle breeze.

An enemy could be quieter than that, but not easily.

Kakashi's tent stood undisturbed. He shared it with their client, Tazuna the bridge builder. A surly, leather skinned old man, he had been contemptuous toward the team from the beginning. But there was a fear beneath his scorn that Zelda hadn't understood.

Sasuke emerged from the tent and glanced at her. "Can't sleep?"

"I needed some fresh air."

"Hm." There was no reprimand in his voice. The slowest member of the group was Tazuna by a wide margin, and Sasuke didn't expect anything more dangerous than a splinter until they reached the bridge builder's village.

"We'll meet death along this road," she whispered.

He studied her carefully. "What makes you say that?"

Bad dreams. She considered saying that, but decided not to. Naruto might take her at her word, but Sasuke was more skeptical.

"You've known catastrophe before," she said.

Sasuke didn't answer, but it wasn't a question.

"How many signs did you see? How many warnings did you ignore that you now regret? Fate is far too cruel to take anyone wholly by surprise. There's always a cause to blame yourself forever after."

He fell silent again. "You think that something like that is going to happen here?"

She shook her head. "No, but something dangerous all the same."

"Dangerous? Like what? Bandits? Street gangs? I could deal with that kind of threat alone. Hell, Naruto could handle this alone. The only reason all three of us are here is to keep an eye on the bridge builder and because we need to sleep some of the time."

"Yes," Zelda agreed. "That is the expected threat."

Sasuke glared at her for a moment and then rolled his eyes. "If you stay up all night worrying about everything, you won't even be able to handle a bandit."

He had a point. Zelda stayed up a bit longer all the same.

WWW

"Do you have a deadline, Mr. Tazuna?"

Zelda stirred a pot of rice porridge over the morning campfire. It was her turn to cook, and while she was far from a master chef, there was a certain soothing peace to the craft.

Tazuna shook out the last drop of sake from his flask in disappointment before answering. "My deadline's when I die. Hopefully I've got a few more years left in me. That will depend on whether you brats are as good as you say you are, or if you're as bad as you act like you are."

Naruto turned on him. "You got something to say, old man?"

"Oh, Naruto," she said. "I left a small salt packet in my pack. Could you get it for me?"

"Sure, no problem. Don't want the mush tasting like mush." He disappeared into the tent.

Tazuna smirked at him as he left. The man was acerbic toward all of them, but he seemed intent on antagonizing Naruto specifically.

"Good." Zelda continued where she had left off. "Because I would like to proceed at a slower pace."

Tazuna raised an eyebrow. "Can't keep up, Princess?"

Zelda tried to mask her irritation. Why do people keep calling me that? She wasn't even dressed formally, and was wearing her Sheikah garb. "I can, but you understand that we genin are still learning, and we have had scant experience with survival missions. If we were to be traveling through dangerous territory, we would keep a watch rotation, and I would like to practice that."

He blinked slowly. Despite his near constant consumption of alcohol, Tazuna never appeared drunk, just slightly hungover. "You want to practice ... keeping watch?"

Sasuke glanced at her, but said nothing. Kakashi was reading his book, and if he paid them any attention at all he showed no sign.

"Yes. It would cut down on our travel time by about two hours a day. More, if we set up traps beforehand."

"Traps, huh?"

Zelda nodded. "A well crafted trap can end a fight before it begins. Perhaps unnecessary against your average bandit, but a useful skill to practice."

For a moment, she caught a glint of craftiness in the man's eye, then one of guilt, and finally his face became a mask of contempt. "Look. All I can say is that I have no confidence in your abilities whatsoever, so if you want to spend an extra day on the road to not get me killed, I'm all for it."

He knew. There was more danger than he had warned them about, and he knew it, playing the part of the curmudgeonly drunkard to hide his worry and his guilt. But why?

Naruto returned from the tent and set her backpack down by her feet. "So I looked through your stuff for the salt, but all I found was your underwear so I'm gonna just let you look for it instead."

Zelda pursed her lips, took a breath, then said, "Thank you. That will be all."

WWW

Zelda awoke with a start. Another night, another dream, another bloody death. The defensive traps and watch order she had, to be honest, bullied her team into accepting hadn't helped her feel any safer.

But the point wasn't to make her feel safe, it was to make her become safe. And she still wasn't.

She crawled out of the tent without waking Sasuke and went outside.

They had set up camp in a small copse of elms. Elms grew wide with low branches, providing good cover for wary travelers. She supposed that was why Konoha used the elm leaf as its symbol. Oaks were strong, maples were sweet, but among the elms one could hide in their sleep.

Naruto was keeping watch, sitting with his back to a trunk. Or at least he would have been, had his eyes been open. She shook his shoulder gently and he stirred.

"I'm awake, I'm awake." He looked up at her as she sat down next to him. "Oh, hey Zelda. Your turn already?" He rubbed his eyes. "No wait, that can't be right. You went first, didn't you? So it's Sasuke's turn."

Kakashi supervised the trap setting, but he didn't participate in the watches. He had said that the three of them "needed the practice," an excuse that fooled no one.

"No, your watch continues." Zelda pointed up at the sky. "It will end when the tip of the scorpion's tail is where the ox's hoof is now.

Naruto followed her finger up to the constellations. "Right, so ... that's ..."

"You have another hour."

"Right."

There was no moon out tonight to track the time. The night would have been too dark to see through, but a spattering of fireflies added their light to the stars. Castletown didn't have fireflies, but Kakariko did, and so did the Land of Fire.

"So what are you doing up, then?"

"Couldn't sleep."

"You can't? But it's so easy! All you have to do is close your eyes and lie down. I don't even need to do the second part when I'm really tired. Unless I'm nervous about something. I couldn't sleep at all before the genin exam. Are you nervous?"

"A bit." Even when he was awake, Naruto wasn't the most observant sentry. He'd be able to spot an untrained bandit, but it wasn't bandits who hunted her in her dreams. These nightmares were trained, experienced, and sought her blood. She could feel it, their bloodlust, their killing intent, filling the air like a toxic fume, and ...

And she was no longer dreaming.

She leaned over as nonchalantly as she could and whispered, "Shadow clones."

"What?"

"Now! Do it!"

Without further questions, he formed a quick series of hand seals, but not quick enough. Two figures appeared from the shadows on opposite sides of the road and began sprinting toward them. Black shadows, cloaked, clawed gauntlets. She had dreamed of these two, and others.

But their path led them through a trap, a trip wire that, when pulled, would launch a spray of shuriken at them. Zelda covered Naruto's eyes with one hand and with the other she pulled out a flash bomb.

The light shone on the attackers just as they triggered the trap, just as Naruto's clones appeared, but when she could see again they were rising from the grass, pulling shuriken from their flesh like thorns.

"Ha!" Naruto taunted, rising to his feet. "I don't know who you are, but if you know what's good for you you better—"

"Run!" Zelda grabbed Naruto by the wrist and pulled him away from the fight. His clones would slow down their attackers long enough to—

A new figure appeared, and a sword as big as he was sliced through ten shadow clones in one swing, then another ten and a tree. He appeared next to them, faster than Zelda's eye could track, sword raised, and ...

And turned to water, splashing over the grass.

"Water clones," Kakashi said, standing in his place. "It's too early for this."

"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto exclaimed.

"Hey, kids." Kakashi sounded as though his biggest concern was being woken up. "Naruto, make some Tazuna decoys in case they're after him, and Zelda?" He turned away and peered into the darkness. "Do something clever."

Something clever. The only clever thing she could think of was to run away. Every fiber of her being wanted to flee, but could she get far enough? Because if she couldn't, then running would only leave her to face the nightmares alone.

She split the difference and fell back, hoping that Naruto and Kakashi would provide a line of defense as she found a place to hide. Only there wasn't a line of defense, there was only a handful of people stabbing at each other in the dark, there was—

A spiked chain coiled around her leg like a whip, tripping her, but Sasuke appeared before her attackers could finish her off. He pinned the chain to a tree root and engaged the two shinobi in close quarters combat as she disentangled herself. The barbs did not cut deep, but they burned her flesh as she pulled them out.

The two attackers were dressed alike, nearly identical save that one had two horns jutting from his forehead protector while the other had but one. Rogue ninja formerly of the Hidden Mist, as the gashes across their brows indicated. They likely had been working together longer than her own team had even existed. Despite this, one of the shinobi split off from the fight to go after her.

Why? Why not focus on Sasuke as one where their teamwork would benefit them the most?

Zelda dropped her second flash bomb, her last flash bomb, blinding him for half a second, and ran.

She ran because she couldn't fight him. She ran because she was prey and she had always been prey. She could hope to survive long enough for Kakashi or Sasuke or Naruto to come to her aid. She could hope to lose him and support her teammates through genjutsu. And when hope was gone, there was the last resort that all prey had in the end.

He caught up with her quickly. He hadn't been taken by surprise as before, and he moved faster with his shuriken wounds than Zelda could with her wounded leg.

Her time up, Zelda spun around, kunai in hand, and faced him.

"Your name, blackguard," she demanded, hoping that he would be vain enough to give it to her or cruel enough to toy with her. She glanced to the side, hoping to find something she could use, but she had left her teammates behind when she fled and would have to face this nightmare alone.

He cocked his head, surprised at first, and then amused. "Meizu, of the Demon Brothers. You can give that name to the Shinigami when I'm done with you."

"Demon Brothers?" Zelda repeated. Her spells and genjutsu were both too slow, her taijutsu too weak. Her only strength was her mind, and as she spoke she willed her mind to become that of her own hunter. "How many demons have you met?"

His respirator covered his mouth, but he seemed to smile. "Just one."

Same. But she had stalled long enough to find something she could use. It wasn't her first choice—more like her last—but it was the best she had.

And it would work. Someone whose eyes glinted like his as he smiled at someone he was about to kill would follow her straight to hell.

She darted to the side, her wounded leg burning in pain, praying to be fast enough. She both was and was not, because just as she felt a clawed gauntlet tear through her back, she fell and her hand grasped a thin wire between two trees, nearly invisible in the night. The trap sprung, launching half a dozen shuriken right at her opponent. He stumbled, distracted by the pain long enough for Zelda to throw her kunai at him, catching him in the throat.

Thus fell Meizu of the Demon Brothers, missing nin of the Hidden Mist, choking on his own blood.

When is the prey not prey? When I am bait.

Zelda tried to rise, but she lacked the strength. The wounds on her back weren't deep, but they burned, burned hotter and fiercer than the wounds on her leg. It spread through her like wildfire, and she knew it for the poison that it was.

"Zelda? Zelda!"

She stared up at the night sky, and under the pale light of the stars Zelda of Hyrule, Princess of Destiny and Bearer of the Triforce of Wisdom, closed her eyes.

WWW

A/n I meant to publish this a while ago, but the website was down for ... several days. If I publish something somewhere like Spacebattles but not here, that's why.

I toyed with the idea of giving the team a completely different first serious mission, and since they got the bridge builder assignment mostly by random it could have worked. But since there are so many different ways this mission could have worked out I decided to just explore one of those instead. The first difference, as you may have noticed, was to have Zabuza attack with the Demon Brothers instead of choosing to split the party and fight the heroes in small, manageable groups. I'm ... not sure what the advantage of that was in canon.

This chapter was edited by Exiled, and was brought to you through the support of my Patrons, Exiled, Prime 2.0, Sphinxes, Kelsey Bull, Hubris Prime, Apofatix, Janember, Yotam Bonneh, Svistka, Lady Charon, LordXamon, Victoria Carey, and Bridie. Thank you everyone for supporting me and my writing.