Tsume was in a conundrum. If she went all the way to Konoha (unnecessary as far as Koyama's attention was concerned), she would delay her loop back to Jiraiya, who was now in the Land of Fang – Tsume would've marveled at the man's speed, if she hadn't also noticed that he was astride a toad. However, someone had to alert Shikake that Kakashi was nowhere near Konoha. From the smell of it, Shikake and other adults were blissfully unaware of Kakashi and Juubi's escape. Tsume figured that by the time she crossed the remaining forty-five kilometers to reach Konoha, Kakashi – aided by the speed of a demi-mortal stallion – would be close to a hundred kilometers away.
But if Tsume was between Konoha and the circus, and she was sure that Kakashi was making his way to the circus (the little brat probably thought that the circus would be too far away from Konoha by now to send Kakashi back, which meant that Kakashi could stay with Sakumo and the others for the remainder of Enkan's circuit), why was he going in the opposite direction?
Unless Kakashi was heading away from Tsume, thinking he could avoid her entirely. She knew he had to be able to smell her just as much as he knew she could smell him. The darn kid's olfaction was almost as strong as Tsume's, both at her maintenance and at her allowed max.
If that was the case, then time was of the essence. She would need to stop heading directly southeast to Konoha, and instead cut diagonally northeast to catch up to Kakashi, meeting him midway when he double backed towards the circus. As freakishly intelligent as Kakashi was, Tsume was fairly sure he wasn't ready to survive on his own. He was four freaking years old, after all. (She ignored the fact that Juubi was almost as old as Tsume, and was quite capable of protecting Kakashi from harm. Juubi thrived on danger, and would therefore go along on the adventure like a house on fire.)
"Oh, he is so grounded," she told Kuromaru with her hands on her hips.
"Shikake is bound to notice him missing," Kuromaru said.
"I know, but when? Will I be able to return Kakashi to Konoha, or am I stuck with him as a tagalong?"
"Well, if Shikake hasn't gotten to you after you meet up with Kakashi, you can bring him along and ask Jiraiya what you should do. That is your directive: go to Jiraiya. Sakumo and Orochimaru would probably understand why you deviated, thanks to Kakashi, but you're expected to take unexpected surprises in stride and use them to your advantage in missions. This would show Danzo that you're good at multitasking."
Oh, hey, that sounded brilliant! Cheered by Kuromaru's wisdom and imbued by his support, Tsume hitched up the waist band of her trousers, made sure that the uchiwa wrappings were secure at her ankles, and set off.
Since she didn't have to worry about stalling and appearing reluctant about returning to Konoha in shame, Tsume was able to travel more swiftly through the tree branches, many budding with fresh leaves, as her five ninken following like inescapable shadows. Her pack bounced against her lower back until she grew irritated with the bounce and made Ni carry it, instead.
Thirty kilometers later, Tsume remembered that she didn't eat any breakfast, or lunch, for that matter, as the sun started to set. Since Kakashi and Juubi had stopped moving and seemed to be settled for the night, she felt comfortable in taking a quick meal break. She frowned as she turned her attention to Konoha. She was only ten kilometers northeast of Konoha, while Kakashi was now sixty kilometers from Konoha, and he would keep moving, using Juubi's speed and stamina to his own advantage. Tsume simmered as she thought of the improbability of sneaking up on someone with an Inuzuka nose. She didn't know how to channel nature chakra (and the one time she had asked, was sternly told that even a moment of distraction would turn her to stone, so, uh, given how easily she was distracted, that was not an option in her lifetime), so the only way she was going to gain any ground was if she traveled at night, when Kakashi was asleep.
She sent Ichi and San off to raid a near-by hamlet of some supplies, since they could run faster than she could. Shikake still hadn't noticed. What was wrong with the adults? Tsume wondered. If Shikake was at the hospital, doing administration work, surgeries, or medical rounds, she could understand him not noticing, but he and Hikaru were sitting down for dinner (steamed cabbage rolls stuffed with pork and shrimp – her stomach rumbled as her mouth watered) and neither smelled alarmed or concerned. Ni and Shi found a stash of acorns forgotten from last autumn, and Tsume built a fire to leech the acorns in a bucket of boiling water. Kakashi was still awake, and acorns weren't a bad snack, so she set herself busy, having her ninken crack the shells with their teeth, careful not to ingest any of the acorns so no one could get sick from the toxic tannins. Acorns left over from last year were easier to crack open than a current year's crop, so the acorns were quickly shelled. Tsume sent Kuromaru to a near-by stream with the small, collapsible bucket.
After three rounds of boiling and leaching toxins from the acorns and losing half the acorns when she skimmed off and discarded those that floated, Ichi and San arrived. Ichi carried a basket filled with two fresh loaves of bread, a smoked ham, an opened jar of gooseberry preserves, two bulbs of garlic, and a small half-used sack of salt. She was delighted with the salt. "Good boy, Ichi! Good boy! You too, San!" She smothered them both with loves and scratches, before transferring the shelled acorns onto the baking sheet, and salted them liberally with the additional salt that had been presented to her.
(Tsume was pragmatic when it came to any mission that necessitated Team Five to set up camp; she always made sure she had a storage scroll with basic cookware. After all, she found her teammates better tolerated her on full stomachs whenever she messed up on a mission. And while she never brought along enough supplies to make a batch of cookies, at least she had the utensils just in case flour, sugar, butter, and chocolate chips were ever part of a supply raid. Sakumo didn't always let her cook, stating that the odor of her delicious food defeated the purpose of sneaking around, especially in enemy nations, but Tsume argued back that of course she wasn't going to waste her time cooking delicious food if she smelled anyone close by who would endanger them.)
As the enticing odor of roasted nuts filled the air, mingling with the smoke of burning oak and Shi's urine (poor thing), Tsume removed the spiral-bound notebook and clicky-clicky pen from her bag. She considered Minato's offer of answering her questions, and wondered if that meant he would tell her when she finally returned to the circus. She put the notebook back, and then pulled out Orochimaru's teal balls.
Play? Nii lifted his head and let his tail thump with eagerness.
"No, not play." Tsume shook her head. As she turned them over in her hands, a number glimmered on their surface in the firelight. 3. 2. 4. 1. Why would Orochimaru number them? Tsume tossed #1 in the air and caught it, rolling and squishing it through her fingers. The numbers were either meant to be identifiers for which one was which, or it was the order she was meant to follow. She still didn't trust him, but she had nothing better to do until Kakashi went to sleep.
After the acorns finished roasting, Tsume shared them, along with some generous slices of ham, with her ninken, supplemented their dinner with some dry kibble she had packed along in another storage scroll, enjoyed a thick slice of bread with a heaping slather of gooseberry jelly for dessert, and then put out the fire. After making sure her bucket was dried, the shelled and leached acorns were stored away in a clean pair of socks, and her baking sheet was swiped clean, Tsume settled against Kuromaru. "I'm going into this genjutsu," she told Kuromaru, staring at the glittering 1. "Disrupt me once you're sure that Kakashi is asleep."
oOoOoOo
"You did make good time to be here, especially with the recent Academy graduation." Orochimaru sat cross-legged in front of her, studying her face. His emotions were hard to detect, although she could smell the curiosity and a simmering, slow burn of hatred.
Wait a minute…
"I wish I didn't have to do this," Orochimaru said as Tsume looked around at the underground tunnel-room she was in. She was sitting on Orochimaru's bedding, and she tugged the blanket and sniffed it. Yup, it was definitely his odor. "But we're losing in Iwa. If we don't get more information, we'll lose the warfront here, and, ah… I need you to pay attention." Orochimaru grasped Tsume's chin and forced her to face him. "Are you listening?" Her face felt sore and bruised which, yeah, that's right, Grandmother had knocked her flying two days before they got to the campsite, after Tsume had complained about being tired from the brutal pace and wanted to rest. At least Grandma hadn't knocked out any of her teeth. "If we lose the warfront, it could allow Ame to regroup and strike at us again, and we don't have the forces to continue slogging through a standstill."
"And that would be bad," Tsume said, her face throbbing in pain from Orochimaru's grip.
He released her. "Did you learn the ANBU signs?"
Yes, she signed. I practiced a lot. Even more so with Sakumo, who decided that if Tsume was in for a penny, then everyone should be in for a pound, and taught the other two genin the ANBU sign language. ("It'll be obsolete next season; the Hokage is redoing it because of the war, but it's still useful for us when we need to communicate in the field and don't want anyone to overhear.")
"Good, good. Now, let me give you some details. This is not… you do not have to accept this assignment, regardless of what your grandmother may have said. It will be very risky; twelve kunoichi have already lost their lives – Uchiha, Yamanaka, Hyuuga. The best of the best. I've tried everything else that I could think of to obtain this information, sending people to different places. I've tried infiltration, snakes, buying informants and moles, everything. But the moment we got close, people – and snakes – are killed."
Tsume had been too busy focusing on herself in the real life of her past – the limits of her age, she supposed. This time around, with two years of living and fighting and Sakumo's gentle guidance at looking underneath the underneath, Tsume studied Orochimaru more closely, using her eyes to see what her nose couldn't capture. There was an uncomfortable tension in Orochimaru's body that his scent hadn't given away the last time.
"They kill anyone who asks questions regardless of how innocent those questions may appear to be. If they sense the person has the chakra of a ninja and aren't in the inner circles, that person winds up dead. I'm hoping it will be different for you, because you don't have to ask questions or poke around. You just have to keep your nose open… But you're so young – just a baby, really." He tugged one of her spiky locks of hair with a maudlin smirk. "And to think I was once your age."
As Orochimaru looked at her, Tsume knew in a flash that she didn't need to be assigned to the brothel. Her nose was good enough that she could sniff out the details from eight hundred kilometers away. It was probably not a good idea to let him know that her nose was that good, though. Even with one's allies, one still shouldn't give away information like it was free coin, Danzo once told her, that the true depth of her olfaction was an S-rank secret known to only a select few, and she couldn't assume that whatever happened in this genjutsu wouldn't, somehow, remain unknown to Orochimaru.
"I'm not scared," Tsume said, reaching out to touch him. He stared down at where she had placed her hand lightly against his. She wondered when the last time anyone touched Orochimaru, outside of spars; he always seemed so standoffish. "It needs to be done, right? For Konoha. I'll do whatever needs to be done."
Orochimaru was a tall, lean man, but there was something about him that changed the moment she rested her hand lightly on his. Her hand was small – she was only twelve years old, in this genjutsu, after all. His posture slumped, as if he was wilting, and he seemed hungry. A slow simmer of anger joined the burn of hatred. By now, Tsume recognized that the emotions were aimed inward, and not at her.
"There's a part of me that says I shouldn't be asking you to do this mission – that I shouldn't even consider anyone even close to your age."
"Well, what is it that you want me to do? I know I'm just a kid, but tell me what you need me and my nose to do, I'll tell you honestly if I can do it."
Orochimaru gently took her hand, so very little, into his own "Why not? There's much more at stake than just you." He straightened. There was a predatory gleam in his eye. "You should know more before you agree to this mission. I may be more ruthless than my teammates, but not so much that I do this without feeling some level of remorse. Your great-grandmother is going to sell you into sex slavery." Orochimaru paused as he studied her face.
Well, she certainly didn't want to go back to the brothel. Tsume hadn't reacted to Orochimaru's statement the last time, but now she felt a frown wrinkling her brow.
"You're going to become a child prostitute in a brothel that is frequented by the strongest, the most cruel shinobi leaders of Iwa. You won't have backup – once you're sold, you will have no way of contacting us. We will not even attempt to contact you for two months, minimum. You may not even survive the brutality as a prostitute, even without asking questions, because I will put a seal on you that will convert the sense of your chakra into desire. These will be harsh, cruel men who have no qualms brutalizing your body. It will be vicious, it will be painful, it will be lonely, and if you do survive – I'm not sure you'll want to. It will change you, but not for the better. Is this S-ranked mission something you are still willing to accept?"
She still wasn't sure why this, of all things, had to be the genjutsu that Orochimaru wanted her to practice. ("I want you to practice how to moderate your speech and emotional reactions.") Had he thought she made the wrong decision, or was he wanting her to see what life would've been like, if she had chosen differently? "Why do I have infiltrate a brothel?" Tsume asked. "I'm a tracker. I can't seduce anyone. I'm not scared, but is brutality even necessary?" She glared at him. "You don't scare me either, you know."
Orochimaru looked at her with something like hunger. "What must it be like, to never know the paralysis of fear? To never have your hand or your mind stayed from difficult choices and decisions? It seems that no matter how powerful a shinobi may be, there will always be that level of fear, to be frightened of death or failure. But to be powerful and to not experience fear – how liberating that must be."
"Yeah, well, I don't think it's appropriate to make me into a twelve year old sex doll for adult men. Are you out of your mind, Orochimaru? I'm not sure you thought this through very far."
Orochimaru's expression became thunderous, and then she was booted out of the genjutsu.
oOoOoOo
FAIL FAIL FAIL rang loudly through her mind. Kuromaru nudged her hair. "What're you doing back so soon? Kakashi's still awake." She quickly checked (yup, and still in the same spot, the little brat), and then settled back. Her grip on the teal ball tightened, and she flared her chakra to send herself spiraling back into it.
oOoOoOo
"You're going to become a child prostitute in a brothel that is frequented by the strongest, the most cruel shinobi leaders of Iwa. You won't have backup – once you're sold, you will have no way of contacting us. We will not even attempt to contact you for two months, minimum. You may not even survive the brutality as a prostitute alone, even without asking questions, because I will put a seal on you that will convert the sense of your chakra into desire. These will be harsh, cruel men who have no qualms brutalizing your body. It will be vicious, it will be painful, it will be lonely, and if you do survive – I'm not sure you'll want to. It will change you, but not for the better. Is this S-ranked mission something you are still willing to accept?"
Okay, so what she said up to this point appears to have been acceptable, but apparently being confrontational wasn't acceptable as far as the purpose of this exercise. Which made sense, because Orochimaru had said it was about moderating her reactions and speech. Tsume was grateful that the genjutsu didn't wind all the way back up to the beginning. If she had to return to the beginning every time she messed up, she would simply get too impatient to ever try these exercises again.
Tsume took a deep breath, and reworded her statement from earlier. "I'm a tracker. I'm twelve years old. I don't even know how to have sex. Why is it so important that I have to be a prostitute?"
"Because I need you close to these men, Tsume-san. I need your remarkable nose close enough to them to get the scents of where they've been, so you can share that information. I need you to find a pattern amongst them, of where different people are together in the same place, so we can triangulate their exact location, and close in on them all out at once. We don't have the numbers to scatter to all four corners searching for a random hope and a dream. This long draw will eventually kill us."
Tsume took another deep breath. She was honestly surprised at how limitless the world within this genjutsu seemed; it was rare for subtle scents to be present, especially for her own level of sensitivity. Lack of what would be ordinary scents for her was how she typically knew she was caught in a genjutsu. That, and at higher sensitivity she could smell the yin chakra of the person casting the genjutsu, threading throughout whatever the illusion was – whether visual, tactile, auditory, or else. Here, in whatever this world was, within the squishy teal-blue ball, Orochimaru's scent was limited to his present persona, and she couldn't detect any boundaries to the genjutsu. "Do you know where Jiraiya-sensei is right now?"
Orochimaru's expression morphed into something dark and still, like the unmoving shadow of a stone sentry. "Why are you asking me this?"
"Because I know where he's at, right now." Jiraiya wasn't channeling nature chakra, at least in the genjutsu. "He's twenty-seven kilometers east of us, right now, half-way between your camp and a forest of fungi. He's traveling with his team – Minato, Osamu, and Hotaru – and they've just mopped up an ambushing trio of Suna's lagging forces, although the Suna nin aren't puppeteers. Two of the Suna laggers are alive, the third is dying, because he fell on his own poisoned blade, and none of them have an antidote. The dying Suna is the oldest, and the other two, twin girls, they haven't even hit puberty, yet. Osamu is securing them with Sarutobi ropes, and Hotaru is probably going to drain them of chakra. Now, I know you want more details than just that, so let me tell you this." Tsume took another deep breath, and squeezed her eyes shut in performance. "In the girl's pocket, the girl wearing a green tunic, because the green dye is from the southern region of the Land of Hot Water, she has a silk bag dyed the same green color, and in that silk bag is a handful of sand from Suna."
Orochimaru studied Tsume for a long moment, considering her. He traced the tip of her nose, then snaked his finger down to her lips, and sliced the tip bloody on one of her fangs. He used the blood to summon a small snake – black, with twin red dots trailing down its spine. Wait – did snakes even have spines? "Go to Jiraiya, and ask him if there's a green-colored silk bag filled with sand from Suna, in the pocket of the girl wearing the green tunic."
The snake coiled in a loop, tongue darting out to taste the air. "Yesss, Orochimaru-sama." And then the snake poofed away when Orochimaru dismissed it. He settled back on his heels and considered Tsume.
"Do you fear death?" Orochimaru asked with a tilt of his head.
Her answer was immediate and honest. "No."
Orochimaru squeezed her hand tightly for a moment before saying, "I fear death. Death for me, death for those whom I love. But death is something that should be overcome, and you did so once already. Your mind was dead, but the Slug Princess brought it back to life. Ah, but not all of it; you never fully recovered the extensive damage to your amygdala. It would seem that which is dead will remain like that, in some part. Fascinating. Is there anything you can truly fear?"
Tsume wondered if she had ever felt fear. Kokoro had once told her that she seemed panicked, when Tsume was explaining her reckless flight after Danzo when he had gone to face forty-two Iwa nin all by himself. But that wasn't true; Tsume was still able to think clearly – well, as clearly as she ever could. She thought of some other times in her life, in the last two years, where it might've seemed to others that she was panicking. "I don't know. I can feel frantic, but that isn't the same as panic, right?" It didn't seem weird to her that Orochimaru feared death; lots of people did. It was a healthy, normal response of the living, Sakumo once told her.
With a look of wonder on his face, Orochimaru traced Tsume's nose again, this time with the hand that wasn't bloody.
With a poof, the little black snake suddenly appeared, draping itself around Orochimaru's right elbow. "The ssssand wasss presssent."
Orochimaru pulled his hand away from Tsume; she fought down the desire to smear her hands all over her face to remove the lingering scent of his touch. "In the green bag in the green tunic?"
"Yesss. Alssso, Jiraiya thinksss you're ssspying on him and sssaid, quote, it needsss to ssstop, you paranoid bassstard, unquote."
"That will be all, thank you, Hasu-kun." The snake hissed a moment, scales scraping as it coiled around Orochimaru's arm. It lifted its head to peer at Tsume, and stuck its tongue out at her, before disappearing. He clicked his tongue at gazed at her with wonder. "Well, well, well, this changes everything. What would you estimate your distance for olfaction to be?"
Tsume wouldn't at all be surprised if anything she said or did in the genjutsu somehow came back to Orochimaru; how else would he know if she failed or passed? Besides, he already knew how far away she would've been from Kushina in real life. Minato had said that she had tracked Kushina from over three hundred kilometers away, so she downplayed her skills. "I know I can do about two hundred kilometers when I've cranked up my sensitivity." Then, because she smelled Grandmother's approach, she said, "I don't have to be in the brothel itself, right? Can you just stick me in an inn next to it, instead? I can still be useful!"
His eyes glittered as his scent swelled with desire; hatred and anger collapsed and dissipated. "If you have a distance of two hundred kilometers, then I have a different plan for you. Tsume-san, the Hokage-sama believes the best success comes when you tailor the mission to the ninja's strength, and this original S-class mission? No, it will fit you poorly. This is a Black Ops – it doesn't exist. Therefore, there is no brothel, and there will be no inn. I have a different idea." He stood and approached the entrance of his underground room. "Shinzou-san," he called up, "please bring me Aburame Shiba and Hyuuga Hizashi – I know at least one is not currently in camp, so I expect you to bring them both to me as soon as possible. And then see yourself back to Rain, after you have rested. There is a change of plans, and I no longer require your particular assistance. Thank you for all that you have done."
He returned to Tsume, and applied pressure to her shoulder. "Lay down and rest. Having scrapped what I originally planned, I have much to work on, and you are still tired from your long trip." He pressed her down onto his bedding. Humming softly, he smoothed his blankets over her figure, his touch feather-light and impersonal.
Tsume's body was still exhausted and sore, exactly as it had been when she and Grandmother had first arrived at Orochimaru's camp, two years ago. She felt the edges of sleep stealing over her mind. "But what about the void?" she asked Orochimaru. She had always appreciated how he told her about the void, and didn't want to miss that opportunity.
Orochimaru recoiled from her, his pale face going gray with shock at her words.
And then Tsume was booted out of the genjutsu.
oOoOoOo
"Oh for…!" Tsume sat upright, head spinning once again as FAIL FAIL FAIL clanged in her head. She threw the squishy blue ball and didn't care where. It ricocheted off some tree trunk in the dark with a solid thwack, and then off her forehead. "Ooooowwwww!" It bounced to a solid stop next to her foot.
Growling, Tsume picked up the ball and shook it with pent-up aggression. "Stupid Orochimaru and his stupid balls!" She crossed her arms in front of herself. "And why isn't Kakashi asleep yet, and why hasn't Shikake noticed?" She tilted her head back and screamed her frustration. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE?"
Kuromaru nudged her leg. "You sound cranky. Did you get enough to eat?"
Tsume hung her head as Ichi and Shi considered her with irritation and disdain for her behavior. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just frustrated." She flipped the unsecured fold of her knapsack back, and as she stuffed the ball as deep down as it could go, her fingers brushed against Minato's notebook. On an impulse, she pulled it out, clicked her pen, and then carefully wrote – as nicely as she could shape the kanji, because it would be hard for Minato to answer any questions if he couldn't read them – Why are adults so dumb?
She stared at what she wrote for a long moment, firelight casting flickering shadows across the pristine white paper. The tip of her pen hovered as she debated whether she should cross it out. Before she could, ink began to bleed upon the papers. She nearly dropped her pen in surprise.
Was that a rhetorical question, or did you meet up with Jiraiya-sensei? If it's the latter, Osamu believes that Jiraiya-sensei is subconsciously overcompensating for Orochimaru-sensei's seriousness.
Tsume slammed the notebook shut and squinted at the fuuinjutsu seal array on the cover. Did he somehow put a bit of himself in the notebook the same way Orochimaru probably put himself into the teal balls? Was it some sort of special genjutsu paper? She flipped the notebook open and rapidly wrote, Are you writing back, or did you stick your personality in the pages?
After a pause, Minato's graceful writing bled into the pages, and the notebook warmed pleasantly in her grip. I'm writing back. It was Kushina's idea; we want to be there with you, even if we couldn't accompany you.
Tsume felt her heart melt into something soft and warm, like the inside of Shinchuu's butterscotch cookies. No wonder Kushina had left so quickly after their little squabble and ran to Minato! She quickly swiped the tears away. The memory of Grandmother's disdain and bitterness was alive and well after the two rounds she had with Orochimaru's genjutsu. ("Either you leave with me, or I bury you in an unmarked grave. One way or another, my clan will be rid of you, tonight.") The distant thought that her friends would love and miss her had been one of the few pieces of hope that she clung to, in those dark months in the brothel. Her friends, and Kakashi… Kakashi!
He still wasn't asleep!
Does Sakumo know about this communication?
We haven't told him, but we could, if there's something important you need us to pass on. This notebook communication is a new thing, and I wanted to work out the kinks before presenting it to any of the adults.
Ooooh, she could get a message to Sakumo in real-time and then, uh, and then… Then what? She would be forcing Sakumo to abandon his mission – run from Kushina, Aunt Natsumi, Danzo, and everyone else at the circus – skedaddle across half a country just to drag his errant son back to Konoha. Quite frankly, Tsume could just as easily do that without any assistance. What purpose would it serve to pull Sakumo away from the circus, other than to offer Tsume some comfort? This was going to be one of those life events that would be hilarious, in retrospect; at the moment, there wasn't any actual danger. She just needed to get through this adventure. And if she couldn't take care of herself – and her nephew – in the Calm, in their own home country, aided by a ferocious demi-summon of a stallion and five magnificent ninken, then Tsume was a really lousy Head of a kunoichi clan.
Are you in trouble? I would much rather help you than keep this a secret, and will tell Sakumo anything you need me to share.
She stared at Minato's words, and then answered. I can smell Kakashi being a brat, and Shikake isn't paying any attention. It was the truth. After a moment, she added, I'm doing okay, and I haven't gotten into any trouble yet. I had a lovely dinner of a stolen ham and roasted acorns. It was delicious.
We suffered through beans with molasses over rice. I had no idea such an atrocity could exist. It seriously looked like someone had diarrhea all over the rice, and smelled almost as badly. I think I would've preferred to eat raw acorns. Please hurry back before Kushina and I are forced to eat the elephants in lieu of ramen in order to escape certain death by starvation.
Tsume laughed at Minato's lurid description, half-shocked when he always seemed so proper with his speech. Hah hah! Please, tell me how you really feel about the food there.
Tsume, when I become an adult, I will marry you for your marvelous nose and even more marvelous cooking skills, and I will marry Kushina for her red hair and Fuuinjutsu skills, and together, we will take over the world with our redheaded warrior chef offspring, and everyone will delight in our delicious dictatorship.
Tsume snorted. If she upped her olfaction, she bet she'd get a whiff of Minato's cheerful sarcasm. At least, she hoped it was sarcasm, and not an actual confession on how he wanted to marry her and Kushina, because that would just be awkward. She loved Minato and Kushina, but wasn't sure she wanted to be married to either. (She briefly considered what her children would be like with Minato as her sire. It… it wasn't a bad idea, really.) But for now, she drew a sloppy picture of a bowl of ramen topped with narutomaki. Aunt Natsumi has some instant ramen packed away, if it comes down to a matter of choosing between the elephants, or starving to death. It's probably fifty years old, but it can't be any worse than diarrhea on a plate. Rest well, my friend. Her eyes stung as she considered how lucky she was to have a friend like Mooncalf.
Great, now I just have to wait for Aunt Natsumi to come out of her medically induced coma and the inevitable mass destruction to follow in order to eat anything decent around here. If I had known that the circus was going to be like this with you gone, I would've spit in Uta's eye just to get banned alongside you. Sleep tight, my friend.
Tsume sniffled as her eyes welled up with tears. That was kinda nice of Mooncalf, to cheerfully admit that he would take on the second last Living Senju just for Tsume's cooking. Gosh, she was going to make her new fourth best friend in the whole wide world a fresh batch of butterscotch cookies at the next opportunity. She gently closed the pages of her notebook, and hugged it close. She tried to sleep, but her mind was restless, thinking over her latest failure with Orochimaru's genjutsu. With a sigh, she placed the notebook back in the pack, and retrieved the #1 teal ball. She settled back against Kuromaru, who decided to groom her hair with long swipes of his tongue. His breath wasn't the greatest, but eh. She would just focus on the scent of his love for her.
"Break me out when Kakashi finally falls asleep." She was determined to see this through and not mess up again. ("I want you to practice how to moderate your speech and emotional reactions.")
oOoOoOo
Orochimaru stood, and approached the entrance of his underground room. "Shinzou-san," he called up, "please bring me Aburame Shiba and Hyuuga Hizashi – I know at least one is not currently in camp, so I expect you to bring him to me as soon as possible. And then see yourself back to Rain, after you have rested. There is a change of plans, and I no longer require your particular assistance. Thank you for all that you have done."
He returned to Tsume, and applied pressure to her shoulder. "Lay down and rest. Having scrapped what I originally planned, I have much to work on, and you are still tired from your long trip." He pressed her down onto his bedding. Humming softly, he smoothed his blankets over her figure, his touch feather-light and impersonal.
Tsume's body was still exhausted and sore. As Orochimaru lifted his hands free from her blanket, Tsume captured one, and squeezed it. "Thank you," she whispered. "Grandmother said if I didn't take this mission, she wouldn't bother taking me back home. She'd bury me in a shallow grave instead, and knowing her, she'd make me dig it first."
Orochimaru's scent was as flat as his eyes as he brushed a wild lock of hair off Tsume's forehead. "There will always be a shallow grave for us ninja. But with such rare, raw talent, you don't deserve to be thrown to the side, or into a shallow grave." He bent low and close, his lips almost brushing against the shell of her hair. "Tsume-san, I believe in you."
As he pulled away from her, Tsume's heart gave a dizzy lurch, and she realized, as sleep in the genjutsu tugged her downward, that she truly was a simpleton – she would eagerly cling to any decent person who made her feel valued and validated, whether it was physically or emotionally. She wondered where her life would've gone if this was what happened instead, two years ago, if Orochimaru had pulled her out of the brothel before even sending her into it, sheltered her from Grandmother's wrath and bitterness, and had shown her the consideration and care that she had so desperately craved.
oOoOoOo
Kuromaru nudged her out of the genjutsu with a gentle prod of his chakra disrupting Orochimaru's genjutsu. She came out of it feeling as rested as if she had truly slept and rested, even if it was just inside the illusionary past.
"He's asleep."
Tsume checked the position of the moon overheard, and tried to figure out, based on its position and the time of year, how late it was. After midnight was the best she could conclude. "All right, then let's get going." She wouldn't be able to move as fast in the dark, and she had fifty kilometers to cross. She would need to keep her strength and stamina, because once Kakashi woke up, no doubt he would be on the move, and rapidly at that.
"I hate to do this," she told Ichi as she secured her pack to Ni, and then mounted Ichi without a harness to hold on to, "but we all have to make do."
He heaved a great sigh, resigning himself to being a pack mule. Can I nip Kakashi when we finally meet up?
"I'll even let you drag him all the way back to Konoha by the scruff of his neck." As her ninken shot off in the dark, their eyesight more keen in the dim light of the half-moon overhead than her own, Tsume turned her attention back to Konoha. This close, it was easy to tell that Shikake was blissfully asleep, sharing his bed with his wife, who was also deeply asleep. She upped her sensitivity to see if she could find any reason for them being so unaware of Kakashi's absence, and there she found it: a small blip of his chakra, in the guest bedroom that Shikake had set him up in.
The little brat had left a bunshin behind! An ordinary bunshin wouldn't have fooled a med nin as skilled as Shikaku. Somehow, Tsume's four year old nephew had managed to learn how to perform kage bunshin, which Danzo had lectured Tsume and her teammates at great length on the danger of using, and Tsume and Kokoro had been forbidden to use it, since they had less than a tenth of Kushina's chakra level. Since Kakashi's chakra stores were rather pathetic, given that he was just on the older end of toddlerhood, the reduced scent of a kage bunshin wouldn't have triggered her when it just blended in with the lingering scent of his trail everywhere within Konoha. It was also probably a minor miracle that Kakashi wasn't dead. Then again, he had been able to successfully summon at the age of two…
"Okay, now we have to tell someone."
Not right now, you aren't, Ichi replied. You would be breaking protocol to alert a waystation in the middle of the night, since Kakashi's absence doesn't technically qualify as a security threat.
"Fine. Come dawn, we're telling the closest waystation we can find."