What I've Done
Date: July 6th, 13 aNb
Days Until Final Stage: 26
Time: 3:41 PM
Amaya Satou was in the middle of her full service beauty regimen's second hour in the private suite afforded her as the princess of the Satou clan when her door was literally blown open. This startled the four women in the middle of giving her graceful limbs a straight razor shaving to remove any hair that had deigned to grow in the past week. Luckily for them, their instinctual direction for surprise was away from their client.
"Out. All of you." A familiar woman's voice growled.
The seduction kunoichi sighed without moving as her terrified care team ran out the door. This was hardly the first time since she'd known the slightly older blonde kunoichi that was Temari Kazekage had whipped out her "Because I'm the Kazekage's daughter" dick of ultimate Suna authority. "Temari-chan, I know you love projecting the butch she-bitch image, but you know I'd lend my body maintenance team without a second thought. They know to be discreet… or else."
"Did you know?!"
Frowning, Satou lifted a once chilled, now nearly room temperature cucumber slice from her right eye. There was anger in Temari's features, but fear as well… And not the usual "it's the night of the full moon when my Jinchuuriki younger brother is at his craziest" fear…
This was the "has everyone lost their fucking minds?!" fear; something that Temari Kazekage only showed on the rarest of occasions.
The touch of mania in her voice caused Satou to pull her yukata closed and tie it off. "Temari-chan, honesty set to on, I 'know' a lot of things… I'm a spy with a particularly useful gift for getting information from my targets. You'll have to be… Shit!"
Amaya rolled off the folding spa treatment table as Temari swung her massive tessen, unleashing a wind slash that cut the table into three wildly unequal pieces. "DID. YOU. KNOW?!" She demanded, barely holding it together and proving madness wasn't limited to just the youngest of the Kazekage's children.
"I still had an hour and a half to go, you cunt! My care team will be mailing you a bill…" Temari Kazekage raised her massive fan again. Amaya immediately raised her hands in a defensive gesture; while her chakra's natural element was Wind, Satou clanswomen not from the Onna-bugeisha Forces almost exclusively relied on Genjutsu and pheromones. Neither of which would help when Temari's dander was up. "Waitwaitwait..! For fucks' sake, I was trying to ask you what you were talking about!"
"Did you know about the plan for the Finals?!"
Amaya's face screwed up in confusion, causing the other cucumber slice to fall to the ground. "Beyond sitting back and watching you and your little brothers wreck these Leaf pricks in them, I'm not aware of any 'plan.'"
Temari stared long and hard at the other kunoichi, but after a few tense minutes the Suna princess sighed. "Thank the sands… I was worried I was the only rational person left…"
Amaya looked at her destroyed massage table. "I think you and I have two different definitions of 'rational…'"
The blonde chuckled as she pushed the door closed and wedged her massive Tessen in place to hold it shut. "I need a fuckin' drink… Something hard."
"You're in the right place, Temari-chan." Satou replied, gesturing to the hospitality station. "I've got blue agave tequila from the southwestern desert and whiskey imported from the Land of Earth which has to get smuggled in one of the tangerine diplomatic pouches since it's illegal here in the Land of Fire." The older girl made a beeline to the alcohol and poured a triple shot of the whisky; gunning it down and pouring another.
"Holy crap, girl… That's not the watered down shit I have at home for tolerance training; that's the good 'backrooms negotiations' stuff!" Satou warned as she helped herself to a less generous shot of the tequila - Amaya preferred sweet over smoky, but she wasn't in the mood to mix something herself.
"I'll be fine... Don't forget the older of my two younger brothers is constantly messing around with poisons and toxins, so I'm constantly taking Granny Chiyo's potions to boost my already substantial resistance to stuff like this..." She held up the second shot as a reference point.
'Temari and I are almost equal in the Village's social structure between her being Kazekage Rasa's daughter and me being the granddaughter of his political competitor on the Advisory Council, so we've always had a shorthand to cut through the usual bullshit, which is why I took her busting in with better grace than normal, but this FEELS different than that.' Satou thought to herself as she took a savoring sip of her own drink. "What's wrong?"
"I think Father's lost his damned mind." Kazekage replied as she polished off a second shot before pouring a third. "And despite our VERY different specialities, we've always had similar opinions."
Amaya frowned; Temari was clearly looking to get shit faced. "More so than he was when he put Shukaku in your unborn brother?"
"THAT was a military necessity; we'd been without a Jinchuuriki since before the Sandaime Kazekage disappeared when I was two and Obaasan Chiyo said a test on Gaara showed that he the highest affinity for the One Tail that she'd seen in years. We had no way of knowing just how crazy he'd be after being born…" Temari pointed out. "Even if it did cost us Mother…"
Kazekage bit back tears; it had been thirteen years since Karura had died and Temari alone had even dim memories of her. The third shot vanished; receiving the same fate as the previous two and preceding the fourth that she poured once her glass was empty. "Can I confide in you, one '8' to another?" The blonde kunoichi slurred.
"I like to think I'm no less than a '10,' but go on…"
Temari looked around. "Nowwon kin hear us, r'ght?" The booze was finally starting to hit her.
Amaya made a gesture, creating a spoofing Genjutsu that would negate audio and visual recording outside the two meter bubble centered between them. "Not anymore." The woman in black and pink said confidently.
Temari set the still full tumbler of whiskey on the cart. "It's WAR, Amaya-chan!" She gasped, grabbing the lapels of Amaya's exposed cleavage robe with both hands, as her fear sobered her enough to make her voice clear again. "Sand and Sound; we're teaming up to attack - to Crush - Konoha during the Finals! They even timed it so that it'll be right in the middle of the next full moon cycle so Shukaku's at his strongest and will cause damage equivalent to the Leaf like when their last Jinchuuriki lost control of the Kyuubi a few months after Gaara was born!"
Amaya frowned. "If you hadn't been stone cold sober when you arrived, I'd say you've been drinking! My girls were ordered to gather general information about the Village, stuff that's good for corporate espionage, not combat!"
"Sound has a deep cover mole in the Village; he was given the orders to gather the military data since his cover lets him do that. The stuff you got is probably to help plan demoralizing attacks on the Village while Gaara lets Shukaku run wild!" She waved her hand. "The spy is supposed to meet us in the abandoned district on the western side of the Village that they've cordoned off for us to keep Gaara under wraps during the full moon phase. He'll be there after moonrise tonight to turn over the data so Baki-sensei can send it home in the diplomatic pouch tomorrow!"
Amaya shook her head in confusion. She was having a hard time believing all of this. "Okay, okay… I get why WE'D want to see Konoha eliminated, our stupid Lord Daimyo keeps farming work that SHOULD be coming to us out to the Leaf, but why is the Sound joining us?"
Kazekage shook her head. "They're not joining us, we're joining THEM; the leader of Otogakure is some Konoha rogue-nin named Orochimaru. He works out of the Land of Rice Paddies."
The Satou shuddered; detailed history lessons from the end of the Warring States era through the current era were a mandatory part of the Geisha Corp curriculum. Suddenly the cryptic conversation between Aya-baasan and the other members of the Executrix made sense! "Eww… That white skinned dude with a snake fetish that was one of the Konoha Sannin during the Second and Third Wars?!" Temari shrugged; her training had focused on honing her into a weapon for the future, so she only had a basic understanding of history at best. "GROSS!"
"Baki-sensei only told us now because he doesn't want us training and gearing up for preferably non-lethal matches in a month; he wants us prepping for combat…" Temari sobered further. "Father… Father is going to be unlocking the Sasori arsenal and distributing his remaining poisons to the senior members of the Puppetry Corps! INCLUDING KANKURO!"
'FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK!' Amaya began screaming internally. 'Most of Sasori of the Red Sand's poisons have no cure and are considered by other nations to be war crimes when used! This shit is really happening!'
So many of Amaya's preconceptions regarding Konoha had been dashed over the past two weeks… Most of the residents were noncombatants and even the majority of the ninja lacked the desperate edge most of the residents of Suna possessed. But no notions had been dashed as much as…
"Inugami!" She inhaled sharply.
He'd shown her kindness. His mother and sister had done the same. They weren't the monsters Aya-baasan had spent Amaya's entire childhood drumming in the belief that they were monsters of the worst sort.
Her breathing stopped as she realized something that stunned the hell out of her…
That, despite all her years of training to be a cold-hearted spy and all around bitch, she still had a conscience of all things!
Amaya had already decided that losing their son and brother to her would be bad enough; that she would inform the Executrix that Sho was an orphan and then keep him to herself as opposed to sharing him… But if war was coming to Konoha, they wouldn't be safe…
And she would be partially responsible.
And by her suckable tits, she didn't like the hole she suddenly felt in the pit of her stomach.
Temari Kazekage gave her social peer an odd look. "'Moonlight Slayer' Kurando Inugami from the Target Compendium? Head of Konoha's Corpse Squad?"
'What the hell is it with these Henryuuki and their lurid nicknames?' Satou demanded of herself.
After being told that the Decimator was long dead by her own granddaughter, the first thing Amaya had done - even before checking in at the Embassy - was to find her grave, with the full intent to piss on it and snap a photo for Aya-baasan. Instead of a gravestone surrounded by grass, however, Satou was surprised to discover that the Inugami family - along with a number of the major clans - had a mausoleum; a GUARDED mausoleum.
With a low dosage of Ignore pheromone, the guards hadn't stopped her from entering.
The Inugami mausoleum was large enough to house eight bays, but only two were currently marked. One for a Kiheita Inugami, listing a date of death four years prior to the Decimation - during the early stages of the Second Great Ninja War, which tracked with what Karin Inugami had inferred about the cause of Saki's act of revenge - with indicators that he was a ronin samurai, of all things, a husband, a father, and "Honorable to a Fault." The other was for the bitch herself, Saki Inugami, showing a date of death seven years ago and listing a stunning number of titles and accolades: Doctor. Mother. Grandmother. Jonin. Commandant of the Medical Corps. And, most disturbing of all, "Empress of Flames."
At first she'd thought it was a reference to the Decimation, but after talking with some of the old biddies in the 50+ crowd - the lonely kind that would gab for hours as long as you kept them plied with tea and snacks - Satou learned that her husband Kiheita had called the bitch that affectionately from before they came to live in Konoha when Saki was 16 or 17.
"They actually call it the Jutsu Research Department here," Amaya clarified, just one of many pieces of intel she'd gathered in the past week when her true mission had begun in earnest. "I was sent here with an additional mission for the Clan…"
Temari snorted. "Color me unsurprised." She said wryly, contemplating her fourth poured shot for a moment before quickly ending its existence.
"And what you just told me means I have to talk to my target now or I might never get a chance to." Satou opened her robe. "Do you think this would work to properly showcase what I have to offer or does it scream 'slut?'"
A slight flush colored Temari's face. "I think I'm either too drunk or not drunk enough to answer that… Maybe just ask yourself, does that make you resemble Ayumi or Azumi more?"
"Good point…" She checked herself in the mirror. "Definitely Ayumi… I should look for something else."
"You do that…" The blonde agreed, the slur returning. "I'ma pass out." Kazekage breathed as her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she collapsed.
"Can't say I didn't warn you…" Satou chuckled as she shed her yukata and then the minimally covering lingerie she'd worn for the final phase of her interrupted care regiment: a VIO wax. She grabbed a new selection dyed the same icy blue of her eyes and threw it on before re-donning her robe.
As she headed to the exit, she stopped short. "Awwwww… Fuck."
She'd forgotten Temari had wedged her giant Tessen in the door frame. Her 150 kilo combat fan; a weapon Amaya couldn't lift even on her best day. She sighed and stepped out on the small balcony. "Well, I'm already going to have to swallow all my pride anyways… Might as well start now."
She began to drop down from the fourth of four stories, the lower half of her robe bellowing open to give anyone looking up a free look. Fortunately, there were only a handful of people on the ground when she landed and all of them seemed to be focused on their tasks rather than looking up.
"Wow, pulling out the fancy panties, huh?" A familiar voice said with a mocking catcall. "Trying to get between me and one of my trophies? I wonder which one..?"
'FUCK!!!' Amaya cursed internally as she turned to face her first cousin's brown eyes with a scowl. He was sitting at the small cafe that was attached to the embassy building for informal meetings, an empty chair pulled out beside him. "Don't you have anything better to do with yourself than to bust my clit?"
"Not really. I finally got a chance to check out their Combat Simulation Facility today, but non-lethal combat gets boring after an hour or two. Hell, I'm only sitting out here because the walls are so fucking thin in this place that I've been hearing the Clan bitches in the adjoining rooms whining about having been clam-jammed for the last two weeks because of those pheromone detectors they made you lot wear… It was either come outside or jam an ice pick in my ears. I elected for the fresh air." He crossed his arms. "Going to pine over Inugami some more?"
"Why do you even care?" Satou grumped, almost reaching for her pheromones to shut him up before she remembered his thrice-cursed full immunity that came from being a Satou-blooded male.
"Oh, I've got a bet with that kid that your wannabe fuckboy assigned to draw your blood earlier. The consensus is he's going to shut you down, but we're wagering on how you react when he does." He smirked. "I won't tell you my bet because I know you breathe spite as readily as you do air. I did get pretty good odds, though. Depending on your mood, maybe I'll buy you a mocktail when you get back." Suzuki gave her a sarcastic double thumbs up. "Good luck, man-eater."
"Fuck off and die, Cousin!" She shouted as she stormed off. "I'll leave you to the company of your imaginary friend, since that's all you have!"
Kane chuckled as he looked at the "empty" chair. "Get a good look at her coming down, Jeitsy-san?"
The failed Genin rematerialized as he dropped his Hide in Plain Sight jutsu, a trickle of blood oozing down his nose. "Was she wearing..?" Suzuki gave the Leaf bookie an exaggerated grin as he began bobbing his head. Hiro Jeitsy sighed. "First Motoko-chan and now your hot cousin! Sho could have a full-on harem by the end of the year at this rate!" The medic sighed in frustration. "Why do chicks always get mesmerized by assholes?!"
Suzuki shrugged. "Must be a Land of Fire thing. I'm one of the biggest assholes in Suna and my dance card hasn't been punched once…" He raised his cherry flavored mocktail and clinked glasses. "Anyways, back to your questions about Team Baki so you can calibrate your odds-taking for the Finals…"
* * *
Time: 3:45 PM
Miho Hyuuga, with Nakahito Haruno in tow a few meters behind, came to an abrupt halt outside the double doors of the high security wardroom, her heart sinking to actually see the bodies of men that she'd occasionally led not that long ago. It was one thing to see them dead through the Byakugan's X-ray mode, but quite another to lay eyes on them. Kakashi Hatake was kneeling by a broken window looking at a familiarly dressed body. "Senpai, I've ordered the barrier team to activate a full lockdown of the city. No one's getting in or out without a current Jonin-level authorization code."
"Good job, Miho-chan." Hatake praised her quick thinking as he glanced up to see the slightest of red sheen in the sky - the only visible clue that the barrier had been shifted from passive sensing to active blocking. "Although I have a feeling leaving the Village was not in his plans…"
"Holy shit…" Nakahito breathed in disbelief as he peeked into the room.
This was the Genin's first time to see an unprocessed body so shortly after death; he and Kimiko hadn't gotten a chance to see the Amegakure Jonin Sho had killed in Mizumiyo Palace before their teammate had put him in that black scroll.
"Hey, Sasuke?! Are you..?" Miho-sensei's arm blocked his path as he attempted to go check on his former classmate. "Sensei?"
"This is a crime scene now, 'Hito." Hyuuga breathed gravely. "Anyone who can dispatch 8 ANBU that are Chuunin and Tokubetsu Jonin without making so much as a whisper could easily have left booby traps on the body; or have you forgotten Akira Muto so quickly?"
Nakahito remembered instinctively wrapping his arms around Kimiko and putting his body between hers and the flash of the explosion; even though they were halfway across the ballroom at the time. "Sorry, Sensei."
"There aren't any traps… Just a widening mystery." Kakashi said as he turned the head of the body he was inspecting towards the other two. The body's face was swollen, distorted, and beginning to rapidly blacken as SOMETHING consumed the body in real time. Haruno immediately pivoted and proceeded to vomit in the hallway.
Miho rubbed his back with one hand; she'd seen far worse over the years. "A mystery? And why do you think he's not leaving?"
The copy ninja nodded. "It took me a good three minutes to sprint up the stairs and down the hall after you warned me of the threat to my student. If he was giving off a strong enough bloodlust that you could sense it on the main floor, why is my student uninjured? In that kind of time, he could have slit Sasuke's throat or stolen his Sharingan eyes. Instead he took out the guards and then waited for me to arrive; I recognized him as the Chuunin candidate that dropped out before the prelims…" He sighed, looking down with his one exposed eye. "But it was a fake - one of the dead ANBU wearing his face and manipulated using the Dead Soul jutsu… Not that you can tell now."
The vomiting Genin rapped on the door he was holding on to for dear life to get the attention of both Jonin. "Sho's…" Haruno rasped as he pointed at the corpse, another surge of puke splattering the floor and his feet. "Aniki!"
"Ohhhh… fu~ck…" Miho Hyuuga moaned, already seeing the path this was going to go. They would need irrefutable, ironclad proof to convince Inugami that his best friend wasn't what he seemed. "'Hito, are you sure?!"
The fire specialist nodded as he finally picked himself up, wiping his mouth with the back of his jacket. "100 percent plus, Sensei! He was wearing that outfit when Motoko-chan sensed that threat in his aura from him when he looked at Team 7 before the Written Exam. And Sho was confused when one of the transit medics told him that Yakushi dropped out of the running before the prelims." Hyuuga frowned at him in confusion. "I could see it in his face. He's a lot easier to read since…"
'Since that altercation with Motoko-chan five days ago. Knowing Sho, he's probably done something absurd to that alternative personality Hata mentioned in her messenger clone and it's having physiological effects. Pushing Sho's Motoko button is the one thing that guarantees a response: good, bad, or other.' The female Jonin thought to herself.
Kakashi Hatake glanced at Nakahito and leaned his head back slightly.
'There is something he doesn't want Haruno to hear…' She thought, turning to her Genin. She pointed to the cameras in the room. "Hito, find the room that controls the cameras in here. See if there's a recording of what happened." Haruno nodded queasily, glad to be allowed to put some space between himself and this horrific scene, before he dashed off.
Hyuuga looked at her ANBU Senpai. "It'll probably be a bust; Sho Inugami is one of the most fiendishly smart people I've ever met… And he's only 15. If Kabuto is a spy, he's smart enough to know how to fly under Sho's extremely sensitive radar. A person like that doesn't leave evidence behind that he doesn't want to be found."
"It's worse than that, Miho-chan…" Kakashi breathed, shuddering with fear. "Orochimaru himself - not a clone, not a proxy, the Snake himself - was here, in the Village, in the Forest of Death Tower!" Sweat just from the memory dripped into his good eye. "I threatened him with my Chidori… And he actually seemed amused by the notion!" He nudged the corpse that had been disguised as Kabuto. "And he admitted to being one of the Traitor's puppets… He wants me distracted and chasing him instead of focusing on training Sasuke how to get the most out of his Sharingan. That's why I think he's not trying to leave the Village."
A man coughed, drawing the two Jonins' attention to a man with a do-rag forehead protector, scraggly brown hair sticking out of it, and the sunken eyes of someone with a chronic illness. Behind him were 15 ANBU operatives, including a woman in a cat mask with red stripes and long purple hair that hung down to the bottom of her flak jacket.
"I'll take point in hunting the spy, Hatake-san." Hayate Gekko, the Tokubetsu Jonin in charge of the third stage of the Exams, announced. "He managed to make it to my Stage without catching my attention and it is my duty to make sure the nine candidates get the training they need to represent their Villages properly in the Finals." His words, which had started strong, were practically a wheeze that became a fresh cough by the end. The female ANBU put her hand on his shoulder, her body language suggesting she was worried, but he waved his hand in a gesture that he was fine.
The ANBU other than the cat-faced woman began to collect the bodies of the fallen. "JRD?" One of them asked grimly.
"Director Inugami's eyes only. Tell him Min's student needs him to do a deep dive; he'll know what I mean." Kakashi agreed, getting a nod of confirmation before turning his attention back to the proctor. "Thank you for the offer; I humbly accept, Gekko-san. With Sasuke being paired against the ninja that critically injured Guy's student, I have to focus on helping him unlock a second elemental release so he has a chance against those fluid-like sand control techniques of his opponent. He's already awoken Fire… With Lightning he'll be able to counter both the Wind and Earth aspects of Gaara's power."
Hyuuga felt her heart stop again, recognizing it for what it was. "Fluidic sand control?! They sent their Jinchuuriki to the Exams?!" Kakashi and Hayate nodded. "Oh, that's just peachy!" She turned to where Nakahito had returned. "And?"
"Found the control room, but it seems to have lost power, so the door is sealed until they can get Village maintenance in to figure it out. We knocked on the door, but the guard isn't responding." Haruno quickly summarized.
The Jonin kunoichi looked through the floors. "I see a man in a room with monitors… Looks like he's under a Genjutsu." She looked at Hayate. "You track down Kabuto. I'll head up the evidence gathering so when you catch him we can bury him in the RNL for the rest of his life." She paused. "We should preemptively transfer Yakushi's teammates to the high risk med bays until we can be sure THEY aren't spies, too."
"Good call, Miho-chan." Kakashi agreed. "Why plant one spy when you can plant three at the same time?" Kakashi gestured to the blown out window as someone collected what was left of the body dressed in Kabuto's clothing. "Gekko-san, your trail's starting point awaits."
Hayate did a quick set of seals as he moved by the window. "Hiden Art: Chakra Bloodhound!" He was perfectly still for a few moments.
"What's he doing, Sensei?" Haruno asked, confused, but his Jonin shrugged; equally befuddled - she hadn't really worked with Hayate Gekko before.
"Hayate is descended from the Inuzaka Clan, many, many times removed." The woman in the cat mask explained. "While he doesn't have the stamina or the bestial senses of his ancestors, he IS able to track the most miniscule traces of a person's chakra, no matter how a person tries to mask it." She glanced at the wall clock as the swordsman dove through the window to chase his target. "It's 4 PM now; the longest anyone's ever eluded Hayate is 6 hours. It'll all be over before midnight; that's for certain…" The ANBU kunoichi said confidently.
* * *
Time: 4:00 PM
Sakura Haruno looked drastically different from her appearance five days prior. Her pink hair that had previously hung down her back below the slight swell of her bust was now cropped in a pixie-like cut at her jawline. She had followed Kakashi-sensei to the hospital, wanting to make sure Sasuke was okay after everything that had happened in the Forest and Orochimaru - THE Orochimaru!
Haruno, familiar with history, knew the unredacted version of the events that led the third member of the legendary Sannin to go rogue; specifically that he was irritated that Sandaime-sama had selected Lord Jiraiya's prize student, Minato Namikaze, as the Fourth Hokage, only to take the title back after the Yondaime's death when saving the Village from the Nine Tails. If the encounter hadn't been so emotionally traumatizing, it would have been inspiring to encounter such a legendary figure…
'If, you know, he wasn't a rogue-nin and hadn't bitten Sasuke-kun on the neck and gave him that evil marking!' The pink haired kunoichi admitted to herself.
Upon trying to check in, however, Sakura had been informed that by order of the Exams Triage Lead, only Kakashi-sensei was allowed to see Uchiha. Haruno had demanded to know who was in charge, intending to give him or her a piece of her mind.
'Of course, it WOULD have to be Sho Inugami that's in charge!' She thought savagely as she stormed in the direction of OR3, where he was last reported to have checked in.
As Sakura rounded the corner, the pink-haired kunoichi stopped short when she saw Kimiko Itou and Tenten, the weapons kunoichi who had lost in the fight after Ino and herself, both women worriedly looked at the door. Haruno felt a gut punch hit her as she realized where Inugami was… On the other side of the operating room doors; assisting the doctors working on Lee-kun!
As she approached, Itou glanced at the sound of footsteps and froze. "Sakura-chan!" The brown-haired girl, who'd never been one of her friends as much as she was civil, rushed her to give her a hug. "Hito's been so worried about you!" The red clad kunoichi felt the water specialist's hand shift across her back. "Oh my Goddess, what happened to your hair?!" She looked at Tenten. "I thought you said only Ino cut her hair in their fight!"
The oldest of the three kunoichi looked confused. "Her hair used to be longer? I only ever saw her with short hair when we were looking for Lee…"
Sakura grimaced slightly. "That Sound Village bitch Shikamaru beat in the prelims got the drop on me after the one with the bandaged face defeated Lee by doing something to his ears. I could have stabbed her in any number of points on her arm or legs to free myself, but she made a too-good point that I'd been spending too much time on my beauty regimen and not enough on training, so off it went… I'm still trying to get used to it being short again, but I think I'll try it for a bit."
The door behind them opened and Inugami emerged. He blinked at seeing Sakura. "Welcome back, Pinkie. I heard you and Ino beat each other senseless… That must have been…" He paused to pick an appropriate description. "...cathartic."
"That's one word for it, yes." Sakura agreed with a slight beam of pride.
Tenten looked at the medic-nin. "What's Lee's condition?"
Inugami grimaced and shook his head. "It's not good. We've managed to install pins and plates that will EVENTUALLY allow the bones of his left arm and leg that were shattered to regrow, but even with medical jutsu, he's looking at months of recovery; maybe years."
"But what about your recovery trick, Sho? The one that helped you the times Hito stabbed your hand and when you took that tanto for Oji…" She coughed, hoping neither Sakura or Tenten had heard her slip up. "Lord Mizuzaki?"
The white haired teen shook his head. "Yin Healing: Wound Destruction is the name of my 'trick' as you call it; a jutsu Aniki and I have been developing for months. You need to have learned Yin Release to use it."
Sakura looked pained, remembering Guy's words during the fight with Gaara. "And Lee has no aptitude for Ninjutsu… He's a pure Taijutsu specialist."
"That actually helps make all his other injuries make sense…" Sho mused. "Lots of healed breaks… Probably the only reason his injuries aren't worse than they are."
"So he's going to be okay?" Kimiko and Sakura asked at the same time.
"He'll survive... But the real question is going to be 'Will he want to?'" Sho answered grimly.
"Why wouldn't..?" Sakura began before stopping. "You weren't done with the bad news."
"Pinkie? I just finished giving the three of you the GOOD news." All three kunoichi were visibly shaken by this matter-of-fact statement. "Lee's bones weren't just crushed, they were pulverized. There were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of bone fragments, all of them smaller than a grain of sand, that we were able to remove." He let off an exhausted sounding sigh. "Either from another attack or because the fragments from his left side got into his bloodstream, there are dozens of bone shards between the vertebrae of his spine. Based on the current capabilities of Mystical Medicine, they're inoperable. Hell, I don't know if even Lady Tsunade - a prodigy that BUILT our current understanding of Mystical Medicine - could fix this; one slip, one misplaced tug and the shards could pierce his spine."
"And if that happens?" Tenten asked, dreading the answer.
"Best case? He'd be paralyzed for life. Worse case? That life would only last for four minutes; until his body runs out of oxygen after the nerve between his brain and lungs is cut. And worst still, any physical shock could dislodge one of the shards." There was a sudden heaviness in his bearing. "Barring Aniki and I figuring out how to change Wound Destruction from an internal process by the user to an incitable process in someone else - where the constant healing would keep the bone fragments from being able to move at all during the extraction surgery - Rock Lee's career as a ninja is over for anything more strenuous than burning garbage or painting fences; the bottom of the D rank mission barrel."
"No, no, Lee can't go out like this..!" Kimiko protested, grasping for a straw of hope. "What about what you did for Kanna, Sho?!"
"Princess Kanna's injuries, while nearly fatal, were two orders of magnitude less complex than your quirky friend's condition, Kimi. What I did for her would, if anything, make Lee's situation worse." He put his hands on her shoulders, his bi-color gaze looking deeply into hers. "Now, I'm not saying we're throwing in the towel on him; when Aniki comes back from whatever he's doing, I'm going to make this our next research priority. Wound Destruction WILL be the key to helping Lee survive the surgery intact, my every instinct as a third generation medic tells me this. But I'm saying that it will take time; several weeks, if not months." He let off a soft chuckle. "Knowing him, Aniki will already have a dozen theories about how to take YHWD to the next level."
Itou pushed her way closer to Inugami, his arms wrapping around her in a mirror of what she'd done for him that morning as she cried into his shoulder. "Thank you, Sho…"
Inugami heard a number of heavy sounding footfalls approach and depart in front of him, probably a team carrying heavy equipment or bodies at a quickened pace as he curiously felt his exhaustion melt away.
It was amazing the boost of confidence that giving a friend some peace of mind could do to one's tired mind and body.
"You're very welcome, Kimiko."
* * *
Time: 4:30 PM
"And I think… that's…" Miho Hyuuga muttered aloud to herself as she directed a low power current into the seemingly dead keypad until it finally booted up. "That's got it! Now…" She typed in a key sequence but got a negative beep. "Damn… Whatever fried this thing also erased the ANBU emergency override access code. I guess we'll have no choice but to take the door off its hinges or guess the hard-coded default."
"Sensei? I might be misremembering from when my parents were still alive, but these kinds of keypads are usually good for like ten years, right?"
Miho nodded. "About that, why?" Haruno quickly hit four buttons and the light turned green and the door popped open before the keypad lost power again. "How did you do that?!"
"Zero-Four-One-Three." Nakahito said with a grin as he pulled a paper tag with a self-adhering back from his tool bag and slapped it in place across the strike plate to keep the latch from re-engaging. Miho gave him a slightly confused look; not making the connection. "Come on, Sensei; Sho's grandmother probably still ran the Hospital when this thing was installed... The hard-coded default was obviously going to be either Sho's or Karin-chan's birthdates; I had a 50/50 shot of being right."
"Makes sense…" Miho ruefully chuckled slightly as she reached inside and flipped the light switch. Family had been everything to Saki Inugami, from what The Jonin could remember. The fluorescent light in the security room flickered for a second and then popped with a minor explosion of sparks as the damaged hardware overloaded. "Wow, someone EMP'd this room back to the Stone Age…" She sighed as she pushed the door open until she could wedge a kunai into a gap between the hinge and the frame; allowing as much light into the small room as possible.
Haruno slowly moved up to check the guard lying silently in the rolling office chair, worried he was about to see another dead body, when suddenly the man let a snore rip. "Well, whoever fried the room decided not to kill the guard, at least…" Then he hit his forehead with the palm of his hand. "Duh, Haruno; Sensei said there was a Genjutsu involved." He raised his hands to prepare to release the guard.
Hyuuga put her hand in his to stop him. "Hold on, Nakahito; a Genjutsu specialist like Kurenai-chan can get more out of a person actively under a spell like this than one after it ends. It's why that Sand team we ran into Kawa City had to jump through those hoops to sneak the Desert Rose and her Satou Genin into Mizumiyo Palace. Had she interacted with Kodansyo while he was still under the Genjutsu, she would have had a lot more to work with than she did when they came in with Daimyo Kosha."
"You can say that again!" A female voice clucked in amusement from behind them. Miho and Nakahito turned to see Amaya Satou standing just outside the doorway behind them. "Sorry; didn't mean to eavesdrop… I was looking for Inugami-san - he is seriously hard to track down - and I heard you mention Kari-sensei's nom de guerre and myself."
Miho's pearlescent eyes narrowed oh-so-slightly at the Suna spy. It was never a good thing for ninja from two different Villages to meet up one-on-one - even in the marginally permissible interaction circumstances the Exams allowed. It was less so when one of those ninja was a known infiltration and information extraction specialist. When the one she wanted to talk with was the child of two of the three most important people in the Village's biological intelligence-gathering apparatus?
'Not on my fuckin' watch.' Hyuuga thought to herself, feeling the same protective instinct for Haruno, Inugami and Itou that she felt for Hinata-chan and Neji-kun.
Amaya noticed the look and plucked the pheromone detector from off the top of her cleavage. "Easy, easy… See, I'm still on my leash; all of my clan sisters are…" She set the pendant back down.
The veins around the Jonin's eyes became more pronounced as she activated her Kekkei Genkai. Noting this, Satou straightened her spine to give the other kunoichi an unobstructed view of her heart as she focused on doing something that went against her every instinct and ounce of her training…
To tell the absolute truth.
"I promise, I don't mean any harm to him; on my life, I swear it." She licked her lips, feeling nervous. "Nor do I have any personal interest in him related to his parents' positions at what your Village calls the JRD."
Hyuuga's wine-colored lips parted slightly in genuine surprise; the girl's heart rate was elevated, but her pulse was steady - an indicator of the truth of there ever was one - throughout her statement. "Then why are you looking for my student?"
'Because I want to fuck him as hard as his grandmother fucked my Clan nearly twenty-five years ago… Because I want him to forget that orange cunt that got between us in Mizumiyo, but has since clearly broken his heart despite the show she put on before me and his sister… Because he made me feel something I've never felt before and I want to know what it is…'
The thoughts filled her mind faster than she could even try to form the words to express them.
Finally, the Suna teen sighed, clearly seeing the Jonin as the gatekeeper to her prey that she was. "Because he shielded me from Muto's booby trap before I could even begin to realize the danger I was in… I never got to thank him properly for that, what with everything that happened afterwards. And since Sensei insisted we leave immediately after our client was exonerated before, I wanted to do so before my Exam visa expires tomorrow."
After she quickly checked the Hospital for Inugami's location, Hyuuga's veins reverted to normal as she found herself believing the foreign girl wasn't playing the typical game of espionage... Whatever she was after, whether it was just genuinely wanting to express gratitude or something else, Miho knew she could trust Sho to handle himself around this situation.
"One of the kunoichi from my students' Academy year was grievously injured during the Exams. Sho is currently on the second floor getting her situated now that her initial treatment has been completed. From what I can tell, he is currently in the middle of a more thorough examination than he could perform earlier when her injuries were still life-threatening. After that, he'll have to wrap up his duties and file the assorted reports for today; you're probably looking at another two, three hours before he'll be available to talk."
Satou deflated a little. The more mission-driven part of her wanted to confront Inugami now. The emotionally stunted part of her - the side who fantasized about the Leaf ninja in ways that made even her blush at the inventive carnal acts they would perform once he was hers - moaned at the delay. Finally she nodded in acknowledgement, remembering how Inugami had said those injured were more important than talking with her. "If I have to wait, I'll wait. This is a hospital, I'm sure there's a waiting room or two with some reading material worth perusing..."
The Suna teen turned to walk away.
"One second, Satou-san…" Hyuuga called before she could take more than a step or two. Amaya leaned back to look through the propped open door. "I'll ask Sho to talk to you at his earliest opportunity if you could quickly check this guard and see if you can give us any hints about who did this to him."
"I'm always up for a little quid pro quo…" The yukata wrapped girl agreed readily, stepping back into the room and approaching the guard. She gently rested her hands on either side of his head. "Oh, Temple of Nirvana! Someone definitely didn't want this fellow waking up before the morning on his own… I used a lesser level for crowd control in Mizumiyo when Muto tripped that barrier that killed him. As for who…"
The kunoichi fell silent as she recognized the psychic imprint of the caster; the Otogakure spy that was close friends with her prey!
'I've got to throw them off his scent so they don't interfere with that meeting Temari-chan mentioned…'
And then a solution to her other problem hit her!
Satou made a hemming and hawing noise, like she was having a difficult time parsing the caster's identity. "I can't be sure… It feels distorted, like someone covered their tracks. But it reminds me of the traces left by those Rain ninja in Mizumiyo."
'Shit, did they escape?!' Miho suddenly worried, spinning around and reawakening her Byakugan. She found the three Amegakure ninja, still unconscious, in their beds; right where she'd left them.
'Is she lying or did Kabuto have some kind of trick still up his sleeve to misdirect us..?' The Hyuuga Jonin thought to herself, masking any external expression.
The nearly 23 year old - her birthday was in ten days' time - turned back to the Sand ninja. "Well, thank you for trying at least; at least now I know the guard is at least having peaceful rest until we can have one of our people that specialize in Genjutsu analysis take a look at him. I'll talk to Inugami as soon as we're done in here." Picking up on the cue that she was dismissed, Satou bowed and saw herself out.
Haruno felt a trickle of sweat down his back. The clear honey trap kunoichi WAS good looking - that much was undeniable - but he'd kept his focus on thoughts of Kanna and, just as it had helped with his anger, this time it helped with the feelings of lust. "Are you really going to talk to Sho about her, Sensei?"
Miho Hyuuga gave a brief nod as she picked up what was left of the EMP: charred debris, metallic slag, and shredded components. "I promised her I would and honor requires I keep that promise. If her intentions are honorable, there's nothing to fear. If they aren't…" Her lips pulled slightly to the right. "Well, Sho-kun isn't one to be easily fooled."
'Not unless he wants to be, at least…' The Jonin thought; the EMP had destroyed all but any physical evidence left behind. The case against Kabuto Yakushi was still painfully thin; bad enough that she began to doubt that this would be blowing over anytime soon.