It was unanimously decided that none of them were fit to interrogate a foreign Shinobi at the moment. "We'll meet you here again at noon in three days' time," Mangetsu decided. "That should give us plenty of time to recuperate."
Rei had taken The Bastard down from its bracket and tested its weight. It was surprisingly light for its length, and her hands almost fit the grooves in the grip. Once she had amassed enough money from missions, she was going to have a back-scabbard made for it.
Mangetsu and Kisame parted ways with the small squad outside of the Intelligence Building, saying nothing but nodding a farewell. Niko Sensei and Koichi were coherent, but lethargic, and Koichi stumbled going up the steps to the safe house. Rei caught his arm and fit it around her shoulder, supporting his weight. "This is embarrassing," he mumbled.
"Nobody's going to see you but us," she countered.
When they descended the stairs into the common area, Kohana looked up from a notebook she'd been scribbling in and rushed to their sides, taking over care of her son as Niko Sensei departed for his own room.
The plan to meet again in three days was changed when Niko Sensei and Koichi were still bedridden the morning they were supposed to meet Kisame and Mangetsu again. One of the nobles who had witnessed Utakata's Sealing had training as a medic and had come to check on them when they couldn't get out of bed after two days.
"This is common with cases of extreme chakra depletion, unfortunately," she had said. "It's not unusual to be nearly comatose for days, if not weeks, while your body recovers its chakra and rebuilds damaged tissues and network lines."
Niko Sensei wasn't white as the walls of his room anymore, but he could barely lift his head from his pillow when Kohana led Rei in to speak to him. Her steps stuttered when she saw a catheter bag draped over a metal stand near his feet, then steadied as she determined to look at his face and his face only.
He genuinely looked like he was a patient in a hospital, complete with the intravenous tubes running into his arms. She had done that to him.
"Don't make that face," he said, smiling weakly. "I need a favor. Check on Leo for me? He's fine on his own, but I don't usually go more than a day without seeing him."
"Yeah, of course."
"Take him with you when you go meet Kisame and Mangetsu. And Utakata. He got back this morning and the Headmaster asked him to meet you here before lunch."
"Oh. Alright."
They fell into silence for a moment, and Niko Sensei expended far too much energy lifting his hand and motioning for Rei to come closer to his side. "Hey, you know you did great, right?"
She tried to smile in confirmation.
"Rei, this is amazing," he continued. "Koichi and I will be fine in a few days. This is exactly what the foundation needed to see. You've impressed them."
"Okay."
His eyebrows creased and he frowned. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
He obviously didn't buy that, and she knew it wasn't true, but she didn't have the words to verbalize what was wrong. Everything about this was wrong. She'd hurt her best friend and her teacher. Hurt them badly. And apparently that was a good thing. She had this power that was more potent than even she had known, and she didn't know how to control it. She couldn't seem to dispel the chakra she'd taken in, even though she'd done it before. Everyone seemed to be relying on her as some kind of cornerstone for this whole organization. She was only thirteen.
"Come see me tonight, okay?" Niko Sensei squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. It was easier to remember that he meant her no harm, but she did her best to keep her mind away from those first weeks in the barracks. Separating the Niko she thought she knew then to the one she knew now was a complicated ball of memory and logic that she couldn't untangle. "I want to know how your first session with Kisame goes."
Headmaster Iwa had suggested that she stop by her own apartment today as well. "We want to keep you safe above all, Rei," he had said. "But we need to keep our members moving. It'll eventually be noticed that you're here and who you're meeting with if we don't get you into another home soon. All of us have permanent lodgings around the village that we frequent and change around for exactly this purpose. Would you be comfortable starting to transition back to your own place?"
Rei's feelings were so muted at the moment that she didn't know how to answer him, but she nodded her head and agreed to go back today, just to get reacquainted with it. She strapped her sword to her back with a borrowed scabbard that the Headmaster had found for her and ensured that her apartment key was safe in the right breast pocket of her flak jacket. There was no one to accompany her up the stairs today, and she stepped into the bleak December fog alone.
If anyone messes with me, I can just suck them dry, I guess. It was supposed to be a self-deprecating thought, but she prepared to lower her barriers, just in case.
She had no intention of waiting for Utakata. His specialty was surveillance; he'd find her. After a brief glance around that didn't reveal his presence, she inhaled, set her eyebrows and lips in a determined, hard expression, and began the short walk into town.
As she passed the Academy, she waved at the handful of students doing pain training in the fenced-in courtyard. Tanoka waved back, only to shriek shortly when another student Rei didn't know smacked her across the face with enough to power to bloody her mouth.
Rei wouldn't watch anymore. They'd be healed as soon as the training session ended, broken bones and all, but the endurance tactics and emotional scarring would remain. Almost unconsciously, she raised her right hand to touch the raised skin behind her left shoulder. She supposed the medics had been amused that Shima had chosen to carve a glaring capital "B" into Rei's back. They'd closed the wound but left the scar.
She glanced at the sky, measuring the time. She had a solid couple of hours before she needed to meet Mangetsu and Kisame. There wouldn't be a better time to check out her apartment.
She remembered the way. It had been months, but the tiny apartment with broken everything and dust everywhere was the first place to really be hers. An old man appeared to be sleeping against a trash can outside the building, a thin blanket peppered with snow covering his emaciated body. He didn't move, not even to breathe.
Rei's fingers tightened against the frail metal railing as she ascended the rickety outdoor stairs and she bit her bottom lip hard. He could have used my apartment last night, she told herself. He didn't have to die.
It took three tries to steady her hand enough to fit her key into the door. The little room was exactly how she'd left it, dust and cobwebs and all. The only real difference was the presence of an especially pungent odor coming from the refrigerator.
She shut the door behind her and let a random burst of inspiration wash over her. First, install a new doorknob and deadbolt lock with stronger screws. Then, get a clean mattress and pillows and blankets. Check to make sure the bathroom and kitchen things were in working order. Get cleaning supplies. Move her clothes and things from the safe house here.
A smile tweaked at her lips. Home.
She was making her way to the old refrigerator and working up the courage to open it when there was a polite knock on her door. She didn't even need to pull down the wall around her chakra this time; when she turned her eyes to the door and focused, she could see the faint familiar blue, sparking chakra remnants that always exuded from Utakata wafting under the door and through the cracks at the hinges.
The look she imagined on his face was exactly the one he wore when she opened the door and invited him in. It lasted only a fraction of a second, but it was clearly one of disgust. Then it disappeared.
"So I guess this is 'Home Sweet Home'?"
"I'll give you half of my next mission's pay if you open the fridge and throw out whatever is making this place smell like a dead animal."
Utakata raised his one visible eyebrow. "Living in the safehouse has spoiled you." He was brave enough to crack the fridge. "Yeah, it's going to take some industrial level cleaner to take care of that."
Rei's smile was larger now. Her muted emotions from the morning were flaring to life, and she crossed her arms. "I need to go to the store anyway."
She locked her apartment behind her and shoved her hands in her pockets, out of the cold, subconsciously scanning her surroundings as she walked with her squadmate towards the general store near the Academy.
"So…" Utakata intoned as they passed the frozen man out front. "I hear that you and Koichi got to meet the new Swordsman."
Rei nodded. "I got a sword out of it."
"That one?" He indicated The Bastard, still strapped to Rei's back.
"Mhm. Kisame is going to train me himself."
"Wow." They fell into silence for several minutes, and Rei tried not to feel self-conscious, but she was completely aware of her breathing, of the way her boots crunched in the snow, of the way she kept sneaking glances at Utakata out of the corner of her eye. Her face reddened, burned, and she dipped her head to let her hair swing forward and hide it.
"What did your mother want?" she asked, clearing her throat, willing her blush away.
It took a moment for him to answer, and when he did, her face had hopefully returned to its normal coloring. She looked up when he said, "She's heard the rumors."
Rei's heard picked up tempo, beating in double time. "Rumors about what?"
They both scanned their surroundings continually, habitually. His voice lowered. "The missing Tailed Beast."
Rei exhaled hard. "That's it?"
"Not quite." The store loomed ahead of them, the owner visible through the front glass window at the checkout counter. The man who had a habit of turning the other way when children were assaulted across the street. "There's a plan in place to find it, and when they do, because they will—" He reached out and gripped her bicep hard. "They want to use it as a weapon."
His eyes…both of them were hard as stone. "Why is that a big deal? It would be good protection for the village, right?"
His fingers loosened. They'd stopped walking, and Rei could feel the store owner looking their way. "For some. Not for you."
"I can't say anything else here." He looked pointedly at the man walking their way down the street. "Later."
His words bounced around Rei's head as she blindly chose bottles of cleaning solution from the store shelves, not even glancing at the labels. "Does Headmaster Iwa know?" she whispered.
Utakata nodded with the smallest of motions. "He has his own plan."