A/N. Sorry for getting this out so late. Real life hits harder than Truck-kun, unfortunately.

I made for Shiromaru's scent, Ayame and Aimi right beside me, setting a hurried pace. Aimi rubbed her eyes. They were still red. This life waits for no one, sadly.

"Orders from sensei?" She asked.

"Go after Shiromaru. He's gone to the Ninja Station to tell them all to: 'cease any and all action or communication, no matter the circumstance until further notice.' He didn't look very happy." Ayame answered.

"He thinks they're involved?"

"Yeah. He still has the hostages though, so he's not too worried."

"What are Hayama and Tetsuo doing?"

"Guarding Anko and getting Tsunade-sensei, wherever she is."

"Without me or Aimi there to help?" I asked.

"Hayama has more than one way of tracking somebody." Aimi answered. I wanted to ask more about that, but Shiromaru's scent was getting closer, so I focused on that instead.

It took a bit, but traversing through the increasingly more familiar streets we did eventually manage to locate him.

We found Shiro with his nose hovering on the ground right outside the residential district. He didn't seem to have lost the scent yet, just working out which way to go.

In an area as densely populated as a Hidden Village, many scents were competing and intertwining through each other, making a tracking operation so much harder. If we were out in the forest or plains, this process would go much faster.

"Good, you're here." He didn't look up at our entrance to the scene. "This one was fast. Barely caught a whiff before he took off, so you'll have to give me a minute."

"He around here?" I asked.

"Probably. If he went one direction or another I would have noticed. Either that, or he visits this place pretty often." His head shot up. "Nevermind, this way."

We followed him all the way out of the Village, stopping every once in a while to assure a change in direction was valid. Scent tracking was far from a precise skill. Really, it was a little like playing the guessing game and only knowing hints to the answers.

Past the plains we traversed a hilled area. It led to a small wooden house. A rickety thing, looking ready to blow over at the first sign of wind. We stopped walking about two kilometers out.

"He stopped here. Likely inside. How do you want to approach this? We want this guy alive." Shiro said.

"Do you think he knows we're here?" Aimi asked.

"No. His chakra is still suppressed, but not agitated. He's not running either." I said.

"So what's the plan then?" Shiro asked. "Start fighting?"

We all collectively looked at Ayame. "You remember how to do Caged Mouse?" The one from the genin battle? The question was directed at Aimi, who nodded. During our joint training sessions, Ayame introduced our battle formations to them, too. We didn't get much practice in them, so it wasn't perfect, but it would do in a pinch. At the same time…

"The house might have useful intelligence. If it goes up in smoke, it'll be a problem."

Ayame considered. "You'll be point-man then. Launch a lightning attack!"

The strongest Lightning Jutsu I knew was Depth Charge, and that's a C-rank technique. "Not strong enough. Do you know anything, Aimi?"

"I don't really do ninjutsu. Don't even know my nature." She shrugged.

Ayame tried to hide her incredulity, but failed miserably. "You don't know ninjutsu?! What are we gonna do!?"

"Well we have to decide on something!" Shiromaru started losing patience, which was justified. The longer we spent time ruminating, the more time the enemy had to find us out.

"I can still use the Juuken. That's practically made for non-lethal takedowns."

I raised an eyebrow. That puts her in a lot of danger. We don't know this guy's threat level. He could be a jounin for all we know. But, not like we had many options.

"Just let me be point-man. I'll immobilize him." She insisted.

Maybe, if we went and got Orochimaru to come fight him, but he might have fled or burned any evidence before he could get there. "Alright, fine. Be careful. Please."

She nodded. "Let's get started. Arata, you'll open with Great Breakthrough. Coax him out of the house. Shiro, you'll take north. Ayame, west. With any luck, he'll have no choice but to head straight for me."

"Hai."

"Got it."

"Let's do this!"

We spread out, each taking a cardinal direction around the house, careful not to alarm the target of our presence.

I snuck through the grass, feet gliding through the blades as quiet as I could make them, then settled. From the distance, Ayame called out:

"Now!"

"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!"

A strong gust of air slammed in the opposite direction of the wind, turning the grass and tilting the poorly made wooden house.

The target came outside of the building. Black clothes, with a black mask, not in an ANBU style. It was a cloth mask, hiding everything but his eyes, which had goggles over them.

He tried to head north, the opposite direction from me. A "Wind Style: Vacuum Bullets!" from Shiromaru quickly dissuaded him from that notion. He dodged around the circles, feeling for the displacement of air and jumping west, straight into Ayame.

"Fire Release: Ash Cloud Technique!" He didn't hesitate to steer clear of the ash coming out of Ayame's mouth, even if she didn't light it on fire for fear of catching the house.

I charged up a "Lightning Release: Charge Strike!" into both of my hands and let loose. One of the beams almost got him, and he began running east, still dodging Shiro's air bullets. This guy, whoever he was, was good. He might even be able to dodge Aimi's attack, he was that agile.

Aimi was hiding under genjutsu, while he was headed straight for her. From this distance, she couldn't miss.

"Eight Trigrams: Sixteen Palms!" She burst out of thin air, her path directly colliding with the target.

Her hands, glowing with chakra, headed for his chest and impacted. Struck. Twice. She turned. Four times. Rotated. Eight times. Blasted outwards. Sixteen times!

The chakra was so concentrated and thick you could see it in the air.

The target, as if let loose from a pocket where time stood still, was launched all the way back west where Ayame was. His body landed on the ground roughly and we all rushed to its location.

Just as we got there, the body poofed up in chakra smoke.

"A shadow clone!?" Shiromaru exclaimed.

"We've been fooled." Aimi muttered. Her Byakugan was on, scanning the surroundings.

"Were we chasing a shadow clone all along?" Ayame asked, her eyes darting around the perimeter.

"No. There's no way we wouldn't have noticed. He must have escaped some other way while we were busy attacking the clone. Plus, it would have run out of chakra long ago if it was." I refuted.

"Damn." Shiromaru said. "So what now?"

"If we were chasing the real thing, that means that this house does have some intelligence of value. Let's sort through that first and see what we can find." I said.

We walked over to the house, opening the door. The house wasn't really all that big. Just large enough to not be called a shack. It had a bathroom, a bedroom, a kitchen, and space for a table and drawer, but that was about it.

The house was certainly small, and so we had pretty much finished searching through it in about a minute.

"There's nothing here!" Ayame exclaimed, lifting up a cooking pot she was looking under.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that. Shiromaru?"

"Already on it." His nose was once again pressed to the ground, his eyes set in concentration.

"Say," Aimi started, her Byakugan still active and looking. "When he fled, common order of operations says that he would've burned the thing down to get rid of any evidence, right? There might not be anything here after all."

"Or, he was confident that we wouldn't be able to dig anything up. I mean, we're genin right? He probably figured that as long as he lost our tail he would've been homefree."

"He's underestimating us?!" Ayame screamed.

"I mean. We are genin on our first high-stakes mission. Kids, practically." Aimi stared outside the door.

"You might be, but Team Twelve is a little more special than that." Not just anyone could become a field medic (in training) in three months.

"Oh?" Aimi's voice did a slight lilt.

"See for yourself. You know Team Twelve isn't just a field medic squad." Aimi gave me a raised eyebrow. I answered by pointing over to Shiromaru, busy letting his nose cover every square inch of the place. What he was doing was kind of like heat mapping in a way. Figuring out where a person's been by the strength of their scent.

Now usually, trying to do this in something as lived in as a house would be pretty much impossible. It's been too drenched by the same types of smells for too long to parse through where the people that live there would have been or where they've spent the most time doing stuff. Kind of hard to catch more of a scent when there's only more of a scent.

But this house, despite the bed, didn't have all that much human presence. They likely only used this spot for one reason, and one reason only.

Shiro's head popped up, near one of the corners next to the drawer. There was nothing in the drawer, but maybe…

"Aimi, you can see things that are underground right?" He asked.

She tilted her head. "Kinda, but it's weird. It's fuzzy and strains my eyes a bit. It's a little like looking through the dark when there's no light."

"Try it right under here." He pointed his head towards the drawer.

"Huh. I'm impressed." Sure enough, there were scrolls underneath the drawer. "There's some sort of mechanism that we'll have to fiddle with, but it seems pretty straight forward." She got down and shoved the offending furniture out of the way. A wooden lever, combined with some sort of lock blocked the way.

Shiromaru shook his head. "Yeah fuck that. Ayame, your turn."

"Oooooo. I got it!" She skipped over.

"Wait, what's she gonna do?" Aimi asked.

"Just watch."

Ayame sat down and observed for a bit, and then took out a collection of metal tools from the seal inside of her sash. "Tetsuo's really good at finicky technical things like mechanisms and machines, so he knows how to make a bunch of traps and stuff. He taught me some of it before our exam when we were done and while Arata was still studying." Could have left that last part out! "Something simple like this is not a challenge!"

And she was right. The lock was open before we knew it and a slab of stone parted to reveal a bunch of scrolls. They were all under a locking seal, but we could circumvent those, even with our limited fuinjutsu knowledge. It's long and tedious work, however. And there was still another issue we needed to figure out.

"Ayame. See if you can't get Tetsuo or Orochimaru-sensei over here. We're going to need some major help unlocking these." I rolled one out, a six-sided oblong shape of lines staring back at me. "Shiro. See if you can't try to catch his scent again. If you find him resting somewhere, don't engage. Get someone else to help you subdue him."

"Got it." "Going now!"

And they were off.

"Huh. Infiltration, trap making, tracking and sealing. You got yourself quite a squad, there. But, I still think mine my squad better." Aimi shrugged.

Mmmm? "You wanna bet on that?"

"Considering who your sensei is, absolutely." Oh she did not just go there.

I cracked my knuckles. "You ready for this Aimi?"

"Wanna make a competition out of it?"

"Fastest to unlock the scrolls gets a prize."

"And what would that prize be?" She already looked eager to start going through them, fingers outstretched for grabbing.

"To be decided by the victor."

She smiled. "Oh I love that. But aren't you getting a little overconfident?" I shrugged.

"You need to actually be able to do better than me to talk like that, so I don't think so."

"Hah! Oh it's on." She darted for the scrolls.

"Hey! No one said we were starting already!" I pushed her aside and started grabbing some of my own. She pushed me right back.

"Hey!" She pushed me right back.

"Hey yourself!"

We glared at each other, both of our hands on the pile, legs coiled to pounce, at each other or the scrolls, it didn't matter.

And then, we burst out laughing.

After we got ourselves under control again, I found myself having rolled onto the other side of the room. Aimi stood up and grabbed two scrolls. Tossing me one.

"Hey umm.." She hesitated before going to the table and laying out the scroll. "I'm sorry. About the target I mean." Seriously?

"That wasn't your fault, you know." I stood up as well and lined mine up. "Your technique caught him. Well, the clone at least."

Her eyes wandered. "I should have seen him do it. I have the Byakugan."

Mmmm. Maybe so. "And I'm a sensor. So is Shiro for that matter, and we didn't notice. He was likely very experienced in covert ops. He could've been ANBU for all we know. Don't beat yourself up over it."

"Right. Of course." She let out a breath. "Let's just get started. Do you have brushes?"

I unbuttoned one of the pockets on my pants, revealing a tiny scroll, unsealing the contents. "And ink too. Douzo."

I handed her a brush and an inkpot. "Ah. Doumo."

We got to work.

"This is…" Well. Not what I expected.

After about half an hour of work, I unlocked one of the scrolls. For efficiency's sake, I probably should have moved on to another, but I couldn't restrain my curiosity and wound up reading.

It was a mission report. From about two years ago I think? About covering up another mission report. They kept the records here for proof for some reason. They were sparse on the details, using vague terms that didn't really elucidate what they were talking about very clearly.

Things like: target spotted on so-and-so hill. Used this strategy to block off their exit routes. Kept communication between the two parties this way. Contained target using… sealing? It looks like. Mmmm.

Now what kind of target needs to be sealed to be contained..

There were three possible answers I knew about. The first one, summons. You could hold them for a period of time technically in restraints. But they could just unsummon themselves to get out of it. Not very convenient. Therefore, sealing. Yet, why did they need two seal masters and two squads to contain a singular target?

Second, the Edo Tensei. Can't kill those. Can't exhaust them. They don't run out of chakra. So you seal them. Except in this time, the Edo Tensei hadn't been used since the Second's death. It's not likely someone else figured out how to do it in the time since without his notes on it. Only the Third would have the knowhow and resources to be able to pull it off, and I don't really see him using it anytime soon.

Third, and most obvious. A Tailed-Beast. It would explain why you would need this amount of manpower, competent manpower (considering the lengths and measures these people took) to successfully take one down, and even then it's not a sure bet.

They even had a casualty list. No names, just their job titles.

One of the sealmasters was listed among them, but it had an asterisk next to it. When I looked for what the asterisk was all about, it just had a footnote telling me to read another report.

Thanks, bud. That helps.

"What have you got so far? This stuff's pretty interesting. Even if not directly related to our mission."

"I got a second scroll is what I got." Aimi looked at me askance, some of the ink having coated her hands. She was working fast. "Unlock them first, then parse through the contents."

"Yes, ma'am. Will do."

"Don't call me ma'am. I'm younger than you." She pointed her brush at me.

"Huh. You have no idea." I shook my head.

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. I thought we were getting back to work?" I asked, my brow raised. She's getting testy. Can't say I blame her though.

"Yes. I have been. And you?" She reached for a third scroll. "Giving up already?"

I quickly grabbed the next scroll. "Never."

While I worked, I thought about the mission I just read about some more. So, they were likely targeting a Bijuu, and they were successful. In the area, most likely. I'd have to get a map to confirm it, but it should have been right here in Hot Springs.

So a successful Bijuu capture. That wasn't done in-house. This wasn't a Tailed Beast going out of control and then having to reseal it. That usually happens within the Village or on the battlefield, neither of which is listed in the report.

So that meant that this was a targeted operation, meant to steal a Bijuu.

Now, in the interest of transparency I did do some research into Tailed Beasts, for obvious reasons, and the only one I can think of that switched hands since Hashirama handed them out (dumbest political move in history I swear. In either world!) was the Nibi. Initially it was handed to Sand, getting two of them to make up for having weak ones. Just like Rock were given the Yonbi and Gobi at the same time. Though they offered substantially more money to get more tails than Sand did.

Cloud has the Nibi now, having taken it in the Last War. Is this Cloud's mission report? If so, why have the mission details been kept here in Hot Springs? What's the point of that?

I unlocked my second scroll. This one had nothing to do with the mission I just read. It was still in Hot Springs, but about something much more mundane. A regular asset report and not about anything exciting. Just wood and textiles. Moving through Hot Springs, not into.

What if.. What if these weren't Cloud reports, but Hot Springs ones? But they were the ones to take the Nibi. There's no way Hot Springs had the power or know-how to take a Tailed Beast and then sell it to Cloud.

So running under the impression that it's not Cloud's, and not Hot Springs, whose..?

Oh, I did not like that answer. Sadly, the third scroll I unlocked pretty much confirmed it.

Oh, nothing anyone who'd spare a glance at the documents would be able to guess or figure out. But I could.

It was hidden in the margins, in a comment regarding another bland mission report.

Just some random gibberish in another blacked out personnel report regarding vines, thorns, and a root.

Ne.

"Fucking hell. We'll need to kick this up the food chain. Aimi, grab everything, forget about unlocking it. We can't stay here for long. I'll track down Shiro and Ayame, tell them to stop everything they're doing."

Aimi looked at me confused. "Why? What happened?" I looked back at her. Yeah, there's no way I am going to involve her in any of this.

"Just do it. We're in real danger here! We gotta go!" I grabbed the scrolls and started rolling them back up again, hoping against hope the guy from before didn't come back with backup. Or caught Shiro's tail.

"I see." No you don't. Her expression turned blank. Alright, we're going then."

"Please. Thank you." She started rolling the scrolls back up again as well, collecting them in between her arms.

"Yeah.."

"Let's go."

If this shit ends up becoming a pattern I swear, murdering Danzo is getting gonna get pushed way up the priority list.