"Target in sight. Over."

"Copy. Moving into flanking position now. Attack on my mark. Over."

"Hey, what do we do if it climbs a tree? Over."

"…What? Over."

"What if the cat doesn't run left or right, but just runs straight up one of the trees? Over."

"Then you'll have to climb up after it. Over."

"Why me?! Over."

"Because you're the one who let it escape before, idiot! Over."

"You guys know you don't have to say 'over' every single time you speak, right?"

"Why not?"

"Over."

Kakashi ran a hand through his hair. "Because it's annoying."

They were currently doing one of the staple local D missions: catching Madam Shijimi's evil old cat Tora. It was mind-numbingly easy for a jounin like Kakashi, but either because his team was short by one, or distracted by the circumstances that led to their being short, they were having some problems.

The boys were finally closing in on their quarry, but Kakashi suspected it mostly a result of wearing the cat down after a full day of chasing it rather than any particular skill. Still, it had kept them all busy. They hadn't said her name at all today, though Kakashi knew they were all still thinking about her.

When this particular mission was complete and Madam Shijimi had been reunited with her fluffy little monster, it was getting on dark and Naruto suggested they all get ramen together. Sasuke made a show of rolling his eyes, but he didn't say no. He clearly still thought little of other people and even less of his team in particular, but the boy no longer went out of his way to avoid anyone. Naruto seemed to be making the most of this development, inviting the remains of Team 7 out for ramen so often that Kakashi had been forced to treat the boys to healthier places just to avoid getting sick.

Today, however, he had to decline. "I have an errand to run; but you and Sasuke should go." He handed them a few notes just to make sure they followed through. If his jonin friends noticed that Hatake Kakashi, famous cheapskate, was suddenly spending his own money so generously, they were good enough not to comment. They probably knew how terrified he felt every time the boys walked home, alone, to empty houses. If they got taken, he wouldn't even find out until the next morning.

That was another habit of his that had changed: he was no longer chronically late to everything, but arrived on time or even a little early just to make sure he'd know as soon as possible if anything had gone wrong. Some people, people who didn't understand, praised his new, responsible personality. As if it were the two children under his care that had made him a respectable ninja at last, and not the one who was missing that had made him a paranoid wreck. As if the other jounin weren't also keeping close watch over their genin, even the ones who already had families to notice if they never came home.

This evening, he was leaving the village for the first time since The Incident. Non-mission travel was technically allowed, but he made a point of informing the higher-ups and limiting it to an overnight trip anyway. People didn't like it when a living weapon suddenly got the urge to wander.

He was, officially, visiting a nearby hot spring town for R&R. The fact that he had never once requested R&R before had not drawn as much suspicion as he'd thought. According to Gai, most jounin tried to get away from their rookie teams for a bit. Going from gruelling solo missions to weeding gardens drives everyone stir-crazy before long.

Unofficially, he was seeing a man about a girl.

Jiraiya was, easily, the most impressive living ninja that Kakashi knew. He was also one of the most ridiculous.

"Nothing better than an onsen for my 'research,'" he grinned, touching a loving hand to the bamboo divider between the men's section and the women's. "Obviously, the nudity is appealing; but it's appealing because of all the barriers you have to get past before you can experience it."

"I don't think the barriers are designed to be gotten past, Jiraiya-sama," Kakashi mumbled, sinking deeper in the hot water until his words were almost turned to bubbles. He loved Jiraiya's books, where romance was easy and everyone who got peeped on secretly loved it. But real life was not so simple, and he'd prefer not to slip from 'arguable perv' to 'outright creep' just yet.

"Nonsense," Jiraiya sipped his warm saké. "Consider the context: men and women get naked and jump in a hot bath. Then we're plied with alcohol that goes straight to our heads because of the heat. The only divider between the men and the women, the naked, drunk men and women, is a flimsy row of bamboo that any self-respecting ninja could break with a sneeze. In conclusion? It's only there so that the ladies can pretend they aren't thinking about us, naked and warm and drunk, just as much as we're thinking about them. It's classic disavowal. It makes their desires acceptable, because they can pretend they're out of their control."

Kakashi pondered this logic, but it was difficult; the saké Jiraiya had insisted on giving him was dulling his overworked senses. He'd had the first few sips to be polite, but the ability to actually relax was seductive. He could stop for a while. He could close his eyes and trust that things would be unchanged when he opened them again. As a result, he was a lot drunker than he usually got even when he wasn't desperately seeking intel on a missing comrade. He forced the muzziness aside in the name of business.

"She's got pink hair, but they might have dyed it. Pink's too noticeable." He frowned to himself. "Silly to take someone with pink hair." Not if you planned to keep them, anyway. But that was a Bad thought, and Bad thoughts were best avoided when drunk.

"I saw the picture," Jiraiya said, speaking comfortably. He had assured Kakashi that they could speak openly here, and Kakashi figured if anyone knew the limits of privacy in an onsen, it was him.

"And I already explained why my request is off the books?"

"Don't worry kid; if every ninja got in trouble for having a working heart, half of us would be in jail. I know I would be." He smiled, laugh lines deepening on his aged face. "Did I ever tell you about the orphan kids from Hidden Rain that I ended up staying with during the war? One of them was a girl, and I reckon even now, I'd drop everything to help her if she was in trouble."

It was a big confession: Rain and Fire were as close to enemies as any nations ever admitted. A legendary shinobi training three foreign orphans was basically unheard of, though Kakashi privately thought it very noble of Jiraiya.

"Plus, I could tell even then that she'd be a gorgeous woman when she grew up," Jiraiya smacked his lips, ruining the moment immediately. "I bet I could still teach her something new, even now."

"Your student?" If he were sober, he'd never have called out a living legend like that, but as it was he couldn't help himself.

Jiraiya seemed unfazed. "You've read my books, kid. Dynamics can change over time. Innocent relationships can become charged once everyone grows up. Childhood friends can become sweethearts. Enemies can become lovers. And sometimes students can become mature, beautiful women that you want to get to know all over again."

"Maybe in fiction," Kakashi mumbled, blushing furiously and hating how obvious it was without his mask on. He'd only ever have the one female student if he could help it, and he was pretty sure the only emotion she'd ever elicit in him was fear.

ⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵ

One second she was talking to Karin after a friendly spar, comparing notes about chakra (Karin had a larger reserve, but had generously praised her possibly-superior control), and the next there was a lurching feeling in her stomach and she was face to face with-

"Who are-" her vision cut off, her brain shut down, and any images were carefully excised before they could be converted to memory.

And then she was back.

Instead of Karin, she was with Sensei of all people. His neutral, doctorly smile was gone, replaced with something close to a grimace. Combined with the weird non-light of Inside and his steel grey hair washing out his complexion, he looked almost sick.

"Sen-" she managed to say before doubling over in pain. She felt like someone had just kicked her in the stomach as hard as they could while wearing high heels. She wheezed pitifully, and Sensei's vague grimace became a focused frown of concern.

"Sit down," he ordered, helping her to the ground. She immediately curled into the foetal position, not even bothering to fight her tears of pain. Chakra flared at Sensei's hands like it had the last time she met him, only…how long ago? Time was terribly strange without sleep. She'd left him and the others, and started doing some gentler training with Karin. Then she'd woken up here.

"What happened?" she wheezed, and Sensei's chakra flowed, warm, into her abdomen. After a moment, the pain eased slightly, but Sensei's expression was back to grimace.

"I'm sorry; it's happened."

Her heart sank. "Medical?"

He nodded.

"So I'm…I can't…?"

"That's right," he confirmed, and even his soothing chakra couldn't ease the pain inside her. "It's done, I can tell."

"And you did it?"

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I never remember doing it, but I know my handiwork."

She wanted to hate him, but he was the only one there, and she wanted him to keep comforting her more.

"They take us both Outside," Sensei said, possibly feeling as awkward as she felt in that moment. "It's two simple surgeries: tubal ligation and endometrial ablation. One stops pregnancy, and one stops your period. With a chakra scalpel I don't need to cut your skin at all, so no risk of infection or scarring. You barely need surgical conditions at all, but I guess The Watcher wants to make sure I actually do it."

"Can't they tell?" She muttered, her anger finding a safe target at last. "Aren't they called The Watcher because they can see everything that happens in here?"

Sensei didn't answer, and after a minute she twisted to look up at him. He was making a chewing movement with his mouth, eyes narrowed in what might have been the first truly unguarded expression she had seen from him.

"Are you okay?" she asked, temporarily forgetting that she was meant to be the one who wasn't okay.

After a few moments, his mouth opened with a gasp and his expression cleared. "Yes. I just couldn't speak for a moment. That happens sometimes, when I try to say…certain things."

She thought about what they were just talking about. "Wait, so The Watcher can't see everything?"

Sensei opened his mouth but pointedly didn't try to say anything.

She grinned. "Okay, that's something. That's a clue, right?"

He shrugged, smiling at her in a way that suggested she was finally starting to ask the right questions.

She sat up. "They can't see everything, and when they take us out we can't remember anything, so we don't know what they look like or where they are. And they put a seal on you because you're special. Because you're the medical expert and they can't afford to get rid of you? No, that doesn't make sense. Because you know something important. About The Watcher."

Sensei raised his eyebrows.

"You know who The Watcher is."

"…"

"You know who The Watcher is."

"Konoha!" Karin's voice carried across the endless void plain despite the weird acoustics. "Hey!"

"You're lucky to have someone like Karin looking out for you," Sensei remarked. "She's a remarkable kunoichi. In another life, she might have been a powerful ally, or perhaps a formidable opponent."

She nodded, still thinking about the information Sensei had sort-of given her. "Yeah, she's teaching me how to defend myself better. She says my chakra control is pretty good." She couldn't help but mention that. It felt like seconds ago in her memory that Karin had commented on it, rubbing her jaw from a hit that she had managed to improvise by pushing chakra to her feet and boosting off.

"Really?" Sensei smiled. "Maybe you'd make a good medic, too."

"Maybe…" Medical jutsu was certainly useful in a place full of people who regularly fought one another, but she didn't want to end up stuck forever like Sensei.

"Think about it," Sensei said, as Karin reached their platform and gently pulled her to her feet. "I have a feeling it would suit you."

ⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵ

"Karin," she began, one day (everything was one unending day as far as anyone could tell). "How often do people get taken out?"

"It depends," Karin had told her. As you know, time passes differently in here. Your Medical took ages for us, but probably you were only Outside for an hour or so."

An hour of Outside. She wished she could remember even a second of it.

"But other than Medical, will I get taken out again?" Was there some way of knowing in advance that it was coming, so that she could be prepared? There was nothing else to do here but wait, so it wasn't a completely foolhardy plan as long as she didn't go mad from boredom in the meantime.

"The Watcher won't take you Outside if you can't fight, Konoha." Karin tugged one of her thin pink braids. "That's why we gotta go meet up with the others. They can teach you some stuff, keep you sharp."

In truth, she was a bit afraid of seeing the others now that she was, as Jun had put it, 'ready for fun.' She wasn't sure how long she'd been here, but she was probably still twelve. Even talking about sex was enough to make her violently cringe, but other than fighting techniques it was one of the few topics anyone else cared about. Even Karin had wandered off more than once and come back with a slightly different arrangement of clothes.

"And they definitely won't just attack me like last time?" she asked, choosing to voice her second-biggest concern instead.

"We'll all still fight, but it won't be like last time," Karin assured her. "Maybe once you're stronger you'll get ambushed more often, but it's not like anyone goes around beating up defenceless kids for fun."

"Could've fooled me," she grumbled, but it was half-hearted because she had to admit she was a lot stronger now than when she'd first arrived, even just from sparring with Karin.

Karin flicked her fondly in the forehead. "Don't be a brat. And don't forget your gear."

ⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵ

Cons of being trapped in a horrible nothing dimension:

-Time is passing differently on the outside, so I'll probably be an old woman when I next see Sasuke.

-People fight all the time

-The Watcher hasn't taken me back out yet, so I can't find out more about them

-I lost a kunai to Pinch, so I had to trade some of my hair to get it back. Now there's a weird short patch.

Pros of being trapped in a horrible nothing dimension:

-None

ⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵ

At one point Naomi, the woman with the red necklace, was taken out. Karin said she felt it, even though they were several clicks away. She became difficult to live with for a while; moody and withdrawn one moment, agitated and anxious the next.

"Go away, Konoha," she finally said, when the gentle attempts to get her to train, or visit the others, or do anything at all that wasn't staring at the base of a rock, suddenly got too much.

Going away was a complicated act Inside, because she couldn't navigate it like Karin and there was always a chance she'd never find anyone ever again. She decided to stack a cairn of loose rocks topside, so that she'd have half a chance of finding her way back. It meant the others would also have a better chance of finding Karin, but it wasn't a cache site so there was no risk of losing all their stuff. Besides, a fight might do her friend some good.

When Naomi came back, what felt like weeks later but might only have been a few hours Outside, with a bleeding arm and no memory of how it had happened, she created a small fireball that brought everyone running to her location. Everyone had watched Karin push the others aside, even Sensei, and place the soft flesh of her own arm against Naomi's mouth until she bit down hard. Only the youngest in their group seemed surprised; not by Karin's strange way of sharing chakra, which she herself had benefited from more than once, but the pained, almost desperate expression on Karin's face as she did it, and the way that Naomi gently kissed the bite mark she left behind.

Karin was like the older sister she'd never had, and Naomi had never warmed to her at all (she was starting to get an inkling why). Plus, they were both girls. But watching them still felt similar to her conversations with Sensei: like an important question was answering itself, offering up all the clues she needed if only she could look it in the eye.

She shivered, and when Karin and Naomi went off to some secret place together, she picked the opposite direction to run in. Karin would probably find her eventually, but until then she wanted to be alone with her new and terrifying feelings.