Chapter 48
“Ma'am?” Ayumi called from the office doorway. “There's a messenger for you. From home.”
Usagi stood up from her desk, stretching. Perhaps her break time had come at last, and this was the Raikage giving permission for her home leave. She walked to the door, past Ayumi, to where a young messenger genin stood. He held out a small scroll, blushing when she took it. His job done, he fled. Usagi unrolled the paper and scanned it. Within seconds, she was storming off, tucking the scroll into her sleeve.
“Ayumi, you're in charge,” she said, not looking back. “Don't screw it up.”
Leaving her confused assistant behind, she stalked through the halls and up two flights of stairs, to the Hokage's office. As if on cue, the door opened, letting out a jounin Usagi didn't recognize. Ignoring protocol, she strode past him into the office and shut the door after herself. Tsunade looked up in surprise, anger blooming into her face.
“Sorry about that,” Usagi said, flashing her a half second smile. “Bit of a situation. Can I borrow some of your people?”
---
“Good to see you all,” Usagi said, surveying her team. “We'll be meeting up with someone outside the village and escorting them back here. As we don't have specific coordinates for meeting up with them, I have a scent for you to follow.”
The last part was directed at Shino, Kori, and Hachi. Tenten glanced at them, silently wondering why she had been chosen if she were the only non-tracker, and why they were working under a foreign kunoichi in the first place. The order had come from the Hokage herself, whatever it was. Usagi opened a bag and held out a ragged white scarf. Kori took it first, sniffing it and holding it close for his ferret to smell, then passing it to Shino. Several of his kikai crawled out from his sleeve and onto the fabric before returning.
As his insects returned, communing with him, he frowned in though, though his hood hid his expression. Something about it felt nearly familiar. Like a local name spoken in a foreign accent, almost. Ah. He raised his eyebrows, again unseen, but said nothing.
“Okay. Are you all ready to go?” Usagi asked. When they nodded, she turned around and led them away from the village.
---
Tenten hadn't known what to expect. It was a B-ranked mission, come directly from the Hokage, who had given them a rather rushed speech on international cooperation that had ended with the words 'don't fuck up all my hard work.' But instead of any sort of danger, they had faced ideal conditions. The weather was pleasant and looked to continue that way. No one had lost the scent. There hadn't been so much as a bandit attack. Somehow, the peace was making her nervous.
Now well outside the village, thanks to their uninterrupted pace, they broke camp to start their second day of travel. She half listened as Kori, who seemed to know the area best, talked about the woods and streams they would be passing through later. Shino, meanwhile, seemed even more alert than usual. She watched as he adjusted his hood, as if to hear through it better.
They left the clearing in which they had slept before the sun was fully up. The morning passed much as the previous day had done, with no incidents, allowing Tenten to think harder than she knew she should. Noon rolled around.
“We should stop to eat soon,” Kori said. “There's a stream ahead where we can refill our canteens. The water there is good.”
Not long after Kori spoke, Shino stopped dead. Tenten nearly ran into him, but stopped in time.
“What is it?” Tenten asked.
“There is a chakra signature ahead. I think it is our target,” he said.
They looked to Usagi for cues. Her expression remained the same, a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. She pushed ahead of them, and they followed. Within a few minutes, they had reached Kori's stream, hearing it before they saw it. Another sound mingled with the trickle of water, something human, like someone muttering to themselves.
Usagi broke through the trees first, but they were close after her. Tenten saw a man sitting by the stream, cooking a fish on a skewer over a small fire as he talked to himself.
“No, that doesn't rhyme,” he said, ignoring them. He was tall and dark, with several swords strapped to his back. She noticed a Kumo headband.
Tenten and the other Konoha shinobi stopped just past the tree line, but Usagi stalked toward the man, still wearing that same smile. She paused her stride only a moment, long enough to remove one of her high heeled sandals. When she was just a few feet away, the man finally acknowledged her.
“Oh, it's y-” he began, when she hit him with the shoe.
“You selfish-” She hit him again. “sack of-” And again, though she opted for a wordless yell, rather than any actual obscenity.
The three Leaf nin watched in horrified fascination. Tenten wondered if she should intervene, but worried about accidentally causing an international incident. Besides, for all that the man complained and swore as Usagi hit him, he seemed fine.
“What the hell are you doin', this vitriol you're spewin'-” the man began to say. “Ow! Cut it out, what's-Damn it, I'm trying to rap, I don't need another sl-OW! You got my ear that time!”
“You cut it out!” Usagi said, her smile gone. “We've been worried sick about you! The Raikage's had us looking everywhere, your students are freaking out... My husband, your friend, thinks you're dead and I can't even go home to comfort him because you have been out here camping instead of coming home! People died in that attack, you know! You missed the funeral while you were on your little vacation!”
She had stopped hitting him mid-rant, her hand dropped to her side, but she was breathing heavy, and several strands of hair had escaped their ties. Silence dropped over them as the man rubbed the ear she had hit.
“I'm sorry, don't worry,” he said, not looking at her. Tenten thought he might be rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses.
“That doesn't even rhyme,” Usagi said acidly, but she put her shoe back on. “I'll probably have to wait even longer before I go home because of this, you know. Now pack your things. We're going back to Konoha so I can send your brother a message.”
The man grumbled, but not loud enough to be intelligible. Usagi fixed her hair, then seemed to remember their audience. She turned to the others, once more smiling.
“May I introduce Killer Bee, jinchuriki of the Eight-tails, and brother to the Raikage?” she said brightly.
“Yo,” Bee said as he shoved various things into a rucksack.
“It's nice to meet you,” Tenten said, her voice weak.
---
“What's with that crowd?” Naruto asked, narrowing his eyes at the people gathering around the village entrance. “We're not under attack, are we?”
“Haven't you heard?” asked Yamato. “The Eight-tails jinchuriki is here.”
“What?” Naruto stared at him. “The hell is he doing here?”
“Usagi-san brought him back. He has been missing for some time, but she led a team that tracked him and found him nearby.”
“He's from Kumo?”
Yamato nodded. “And they'll probably be sending him home soon. Maybe you should speak to him before then. He's had a great deal of training at controlling Gyuki inside of him. He might have something to teach you.”
Naruto let out a yell and ran for the crowd, not bothering to say goodbye. Yamato sighed, but watched as the boy pushed through the crowd to speak to Bee.
---
“Kakashi.”
At the sound of his name, he turned around. Suisho stood behind him. She smiled when their eyes met.
“You're off on a mission?” she asked, glancing past him to the team of three waiting at the gates.
“Yeah. We'll be out for a few days.”
“Good luck. I'll let you get to it. I just saw you and wanted to let you know, my team's been appointed as the official ambassadors from Iwagakure.”
“Thanks. So you'll be here for a while?” he asked.
“The next year, if we don't screw it up.”
“Congratulations.” He smiled behind his mask.
“Thanks. I've got to get back to work, though, and I see you do, too.”
She winked at him and left. He turned back, and walked to where Sakura, Naruto, and Sumire stood, the former looking impatient. That was unfair, he thought. He was less than an hour late. More worrying was the naked curiosity on Sumire's face. He chose to ignore it for now.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Are you?” Sakura retorted irritably. “We already had to wait until all the repairs were done before we could leave.”
“So half an hour makes little difference,” he said.
“Let's go,” Naruto said, jogging in place.
They passed through the gates, and as they found their pace, Kakashi couldn't help but think Naruto was bound to be let down. They were following a vague rumor about a guy who looked like a guy who had been seen with Sasuke months ago. Well, at least they'd been able to narrow down the source of the rumor since the first report. A specific island rather than an entire region was nothing to sneeze at, he supposed. He still thought the girls had the right idea. Both seemed more determined than actually hopeful.
Part of him was glad it was a small group. Sai was off doing something secretive. He suspected it had to do with Danzou's death. Yamato, meanwhile, was arranging for Naruto to train with Killer Bee. If the mission didn't pan out, he'd at least have that to keep him busy when they got home.
---
The first leg of the trip was unusually quiet for a mission involving Naruto. He did keep up a stream of chatter from time to time, and Sumire, who knew him the least, was too polite to tell him to shut up. However, a certain air of grim determination had settled over the group. It seemed to come largely from Sakura, who spoke little except for mission details, and checked the map every time they stopped to rest.
Within a couple of days, they had reached the southeastern coast. The others stood on the pebbled beach, staring out across choppy waters as Kakashi negotiated passage on a sailboat. After some time, he motioned them over to where he stood with the owner, a grizzled old fisherman with a beard you could lose birds in. Without a word, Sakura handed Kakashi the money pouch.
“Takara-san here has been good enough to agree to take us where we need to go,” Kakashi said, his voice light and cheerful. “He goes by there every day, so he can pick us up whenever we're ready.”
The fisherman said something so garbled that they had no idea how Kakashi had communicated with him. He then climbed aboard and motioned for them to follow. Already aboard were a couple of young sailors dressed warmly against the sea air, their faces prematurely aged by sun and wind. Once everyone was aboard, the shinobi standing awkwardly among piles of nets, one of the sailors gave a whistle and they cast off.
For all that they moved faster than Sakura expected, the trip still took a long time. They passed an island covered in ruins, not far from the shore, then rounded the long peninsula to the south. It took a few hours before they were past it. As they reached the first of the islands making up the Land of Water, the air grew colder, humidity turning into mist that forced the boat to slow as they picked their way around islands and outcroppings.
Sakura drew her traveling cloak tighter around herself. She was trying to be cheerful, or at the very least not bring Naruto down, but everything about the trip seemed to make her more doubtful, more anxious. She tried to distract herself by checking the map again, but it was hard to read in the misty light, and the moisture in the air made it feel unpleasantly sticky.
Soon it began to get dark, and thoughts of shipwrecks joined the litany of possible outcomes that ran through Sakura's head. They did not run aground, however, and soon they spotted lights in the distance. The sailors seemed to perk up at this, and she breathed a little easier as they found the dock. She and the other chuunin stepped off the boat and waited while Kakashi spoke with the fisherman, paying him half his fee. Once he had joined them, the boat left again, drifting out to deeper waters. She could still see it in the distance, a few safety lights marking it as it fixed its position. Idly, she wondered what they were fishing for at night.
“Takara-san said we can sleep in his shed. That's it up there on the hill,” Kakashi said, nodding toward a distant blur at the end of a winding footpath. “Make yourselves comfortable while I go speak to our witness. I'll join you in a bit.”
Wordlessly, they trekked up the path to the shed. The inside smelled strongly of catches past, and there were a few small fish, strung up to dry, all along the ceiling. In silent accord, they tried to make themselves comfortable on piles of netting, and someone opened a window. At least it wouldn't smell stale and fishy.
Kakashi arrived after half an hour, smelling faintly of beer. Sakura raised an eyebrow at him.
“I met the man in a pub,” he said with a shrug. “I'm not drinking on duty, if that's what you're worried about.”
“What did he say?” asked Naruto.
Kakashi produced a piece of paper from a pouch. Sumire felt around the shed until she found a light. She turned it on. They blinked, half blind for a moment, then gathered around the paper. A crude drawing of a man graced it, his pointy teeth bared in challenge.
“That's it?” Sakura asked.
“I think it's pretty good, considering the artists was drunk,” said Kakashi. “He said he saw the man rummaging around in his neighbor's shed, and that he ran off to the woods further inland. It sounds like this wasn't the only sighting, but it was the most recent, from almost a week ago.”
“Do you think he's still here?” asked Sumire.
Kakashi shrugged. “Hard to say. No one admitted to giving him a ride off the island, but that doesn't mean he hasn't left. We'll just have to see for ourselves. Now try and get some sleep.”
---
“You really are annoying,” he said, turning around to look at her for the first time.
“Don't leave!” she cried. “If you do, I'll scream!”
A flash of motion, and he was behind her.
“Sakura... Thank you.”
A gasp. Nothingness. The darkness behind her eyes gave way to the darkness of the shed. The smell of fish. Naruto snoring faintly. Reality, not memory. After a moment, she realized she was shaking in the night air, and curled up tighter under her cloak. Her face felt cool, and she brushed it. Tears. She wiped them away, feeling vaguely ashamed.
“Are you okay?” Sumire whispered.
Sakura started at the sound of another voice, however soft it was. She nodded, then remembered she wouldn't be able to see.
“I'm fine,” she whispered back.
“A dream?”
“A recurring one. Of when he left.”
“You were the one who tried to stop him, weren't you?”
“Yes. He... he knocked me out and left me on a park bench.”
“Don't blame yourself too much. He was determined to leave...”
Sumire's voice echoed a lot of the things she had felt herself. The sort of bleak acceptance was certainly present, though Sakura didn't hear the resentment she knew was beginning to creep into her own voice.
“Try to go back to sleep,” Sumire said.
Sakura nodded, and did her best.
---
Light filtered into the shed, the drying fish casting strange shadows as they stirred in the breeze from the window. Sumire woke first, as the sunrise hit her eyes, and woke the others. They ate a breakfast of trail rations outside, where the fish smell was not so strong, then headed further up the hill, to where the forest began.
“That's odd,” Sumire said, frowning at the woods to either side of their little path.
“What is?” asked Naruto.
“See how the underbrush there is disturbed? It almost looks like something's been dragged through it, but I don't see any footprints to go with it.”
“Could they just have been covered up by the dragging?” asked Sakura.
“Maybe,” Sumire said, sounding doubtful. “You'd think we'd at least see some partials, though. The ground here's pretty soft.”
“Maybe it was a big snake or something,” Naruto said.
Silence settled over them as his words sank in.
“Orochimaru is dead, though. It could be a normal giant snake,” said Naruto.
“How would a snake that big survive on this little island?” asked Sumire. “It probably would have resorted to eating villagers ages ago.”
“You'd think they would have mentioned that,” Kakashi said lightly.
Sumire knelt down beside one of the disturbed areas. Her fingers ventured over the muddy ground, until she stood up, holding something.
“What is it?” Kakashi asked.
“A scale,” she said, holding it out for them to see. It was nearly twice the size of her thumbnail. Kakashi's hand drifted down to hover near his kunai pouch. The others followed suit before continuing on.
The day lit brighter as the sun climbed up the sky, though it grew harder to tell as they passed through the forest. The path wound through the trees, until it disappeared entirely, and they had to pick their way through stunted bushes and leafmould.
With no warning, Sumire stopped, holding up a hand for them to do the same. They did, eyes scanning the surrounding forest for signs of life.
“Look,” Sumire said.
Ahead, the forest had been cleared, a space of twenty feet across where the brush had been crushed down, the trees broken. Water spotted everything, rendering the ground muddy and treacherous. A larger puddle had formed at the far side, tinted a worrying shade of red.
“There are footprints, too,” Sakura said, nodding to a set that had been halfway obscured.
Sumire picked her way over to the puddle. She crouched down, doing her best to keep out of the mud, and sniffed. The frown she had worn for some time now deepened. As the others looked on in varying degrees of horror, she touched a hand to the red puddle, and then to her lips.
“Water, blood, and venom,” she said, standing.
“Wait, you just drank venom?” Naruto asked, staring. “Isn't that, y'know, dangerous?”
“Most venom needs to be injected directly into the bloodstream in order to be dangerous,” she said, wiping her hand on her pants. “I don't have any cuts in my mouth or any stomach ulcers. Even if that venom is dangerous to ingest, it was such a small amount that it shouldn't be noticeable.”
“The footprints are leading away,” Kakashi said, following them past Sumire.
“It's as good a lead as any,” said Sumire.
They followed the prints, Sumire keeping a close eye on them. They were warped, perhaps by the increasingly muddy ground, though the prints themselves seemed softer than anything around them, as if the person leaving them had been dripping wet. The trail led them through the woods and out, to the far shore of the island. There were no buildings, but a few mooring places for boats, only a couple of them currently occupied. None of the locals seemed to be there.
“I should not be surprised to find you here.”
They froze. Carefully, Naruto turned to the source of the oddly sibilant voice.
“Kabuto.”
The others turned as well. Kabuto smiled at them, his face ringed by tiny scales that merged into his skin, his eyes hidden behind the glare of his glasses. His body seemed overlarge, somehow, in the shapeless mass of his cloak.
“We do keep running into each other,” Kabuto said in what he seemed to think was a pleasant manner. “Though perhaps it's not such a coincidence?”
Sumire's fingers itched to attack, but she took her cue from Kakashi and stayed still. It was difficult, however, with her instincts screaming Kabuto's wrongness at her. He made no move toward or away from them, no reaching for weapons, nothing more than polite conversation, but standing here doing nothing felt wrong.
She had read the reports, once she knew she would be part of the plan to bring Sasuke home. Every scrap of information, however tangential it seemed. Apparently Kabuto had changed since their last update on him. His face had grown less human, more serpentine, and something about his proportions, from what little she could see, seemed off.
“Are you looking for Sasuke as well?” he asked, then laughed. “Of course you are, you always are. But are you looking here?”
He waited a moment for a response. When there was none, he did not seem to take it amiss.
“I wonder, are we following the same lead? We must be. This tiny island, charming though it is, has little else to offer. I did have some luck in tracking him down, you see, but he was so dreadfully uncooperative.”
“Is he alive?” asked Kakashi.
Kabuto shrugged, or at least his body moved under the cloak.
“I'll let you know if I find out for myself. Of course, I will have to keep him. There's so much to learn from someone like that, if he doesn't just slip out of your grasp. I do so hope I can find our mutual friend. I'm very interested in seeing what we all become, aren't you?”
Naruto opened his mouth to speak, but the words seemed to die in him. The light had shifted, a cloud passing out of the way, and they could see Kabuto's eyes behind his glasses. Darkness rimmed his left eye, now fully inhuman. The wrinkled scarring that had covered that side of his face had smoothed some, the tiny scales encroaching further than anywhere else. His right eye seemed to have lightened somewhat, a slash of a pupil just visible in the center.
“Well, I should be going if I'm going to find him before you,” Kabuto said, turning. “I'll let you know how it goes.”
They waited until he had gone. Naruto turned to Kakashi, his eyes wide.
“What...?”
“I think it would be dangerous to fight him,” Sumire interrupted. “We don't know what he can do, but he's obviously been experimenting on himself. You saw the damage back in the forest.”
“We can't just give up on this lead, though,” Naruto said.
“We'll keep searching,” Kakashi said. “But we give him a wide berth. Unfortunately, our target's probably either dead or long gone by now. If he survived the fight, he'd be an idiot if he didn't flee immediately.”
They agreed, though Naruto was obviously loathe to do so. They searched the shore, though the muddy footprints had disappeared in the sand and pebbles. When someone mentioned that they should have brought Kiba, Kakashi summoned his nin dogs for help. They searched until late afternoon, and nothing. Even the dogs reported no smells. One had followed the scent of the venom, bringing him dangerously close to Kabuto before Kakashi called him back.
It was dark by the time they returned to the village. People had gathered outside, their faces lit by lights from the pub windows. When the team came into view, they turned to them, scowling.
“What the hell are you doing here?” asked one of the locals. “I knew you were trouble, but Takara let you in so I didn't say anything. We should've put you back out to sea as soon as we saw you!”
“What's the matter?” asked Kakashi.
“Like you shinobi bastards don't know,” the man said, and spit to one side. “All you bring is trouble. We have outsiders for one day and two boats go missing. Not that you care, but those are our lifeblood! We might as well have lost a limb!”
“We didn't-” Naruto began.
Kakashi held up a hand, and he stopped. “We did not take your boats, but we regret the trouble our presence has brought you. We will, of course, pay for replacements.”
“You're damn right you will!”
Kakashi stepped closer, speaking in low tones to a couple of the village's fishermen. At a few of the gestures she saw, Sakura suspected they were inflating their prices, and that Kakashi knew, but was paying anyway to avoid further trouble. After a while, their business was concluded, though the men still looked at them with hate. Kakashi found Takara in the crowd, and after a quick chat, retreated back to their group.
“Takara-san will take us back in the morning, but we no longer have enough money for his fare,” Kakashi said with a sigh.
They all dug around in pockets, taking from their personal stashes of money. When that was not enough, Sumire surrendered a tiny vial from her kit to the cause.
“It's the antitoxin for an extremely deadly species of blowfish local to this area,” she said, her eyes lingering on the vial. “It's worth more than his entire boat.”
“If it will get us home, maybe the Hokage's office will reimburse you,” Kakashi said, leaving to conclude the negotiation.
In the end, Takara wouldn't take them back until morning. Even with the promise of the expensive antitoxin, he refused to skip out on his night's work. The four of them slept on the ground near the edge of the woods, no longer welcome in his shed, and took turns at keeping watch.