Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away. ~ Marcus Aurelius

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Awake!

I rolled off the bed, one hand grabbing my pouch and the other drawing a kunai. The blanket fluttered into the air. My feet hit the floor bare. My skin tingled where it had been touched, hyper aware.

Muta drew back, hands up and empty. His kikaichu buzzed, but it was agitation, not attack. "Tsume-senpai has sent for you."

I stared at him blankly. My eyes wandered from his face to the wall and the room around us. Oh. Right. Outpost. Mission. I sheathed the knife, putting my pouches on and slipping my feet into my shoes.

"Time's'it?" I asked through a yawn. I rolled my shoulders, stretched out the kinks in my back.

"Nearly nine," he answered.

And it had been, what, three? four? when we'd made it back to the outpost. That was almost a full night's sleep. Hah.

I washed away any lingering traces of sleep with my chakra. "Awesome," I mumbled and followed him out of the barracks back towards the main building. "I don't suppose there's any food?"

Nine was late. I'd probably missed whatever designated breakfast time. I had supplies, though. I'd manage.

But he nodded. "We set some aside for you. Kogeru cooked today, so it may even be edible."

There was a distant 'I heard that!' that came towards us. I smothered a grin. I had no idea who was ribbing who, but that was the kind of comradery I expected. "I'm sure it's fine," I demurred. "Thank you."

I inhaled it and then went to find Tsume. She was still talking to Hayama - and I doubted she had slept at all - but motioned me closer.

"We got a hawk from the border," she said shortly. "Tokuma made contact. He tracked the runner the whole way, but they had a fallback base with another two shinobi. He decided against making contact and alerted the patrols, but they managed to slip through. The decision was made not to follow them."

She shook her head, more in irritation than disagreement, hair flying about her face.

I absorbed that information. Maybe she was wondering if she should have sent one of us after him, after our own fight went so quickly? But such decisions were always heavily weighted and could look very different in hindsight. If she had, and then one of our prisoners had had a second wind… or if the other shinobi had been on our side of the map… there were ways it could have gone wrong with that, too.

"I see," I said. "Is there any more we can do?"

"No," Hayama answered for her. "You completed your mission admirably. More than admirably. The best you can do now is pass the information on to the Hokage."

"He's right," Tsume said. "This is no longer about tracking."

It was a whole lot more serious than that, now.

We headed back for Konoha, not quite at the pace we had started the mission with, but not dawdling either. At least Tsume seemed more talkative, now that the mission was out of the way. Friendlier – if blunt.

"I would have thought that Hatake put more emphasis on teamwork," she said, out of the blue.

"He does," I said, with a slight frown. I didn't like the implied criticism – of me or of Kakashi-sensei. "Teamwork is very important."

"It is, huh?" she said, dryly. "So how does that mesh with running ahead to engage an unknown opponent by yourself?"

I did frown that time. But maybe it was a test? 'Now explain your reasoning'. Fair enough. It wasn't like I'd never had to do that before.

"It was the objective most in line with my abilities- I was the person with the abilities most suited for that objective," I corrected, because there was a slight difference. Fighting was well within my abilities – even with Muta's jutsu hampering me – but the others would have had less luck with the bunker. They obviously had skills I didn't know about, but if they'd had an easy way to solve the situation they would have done it. "I had the ability to uncover the target without entering their field of advantage, quickly and while maintaining intel integrity. And there was only a single shinobi inside."

"And if that shinobi had been a Jounin?" she demanded. "What then?"

I paused. Weighed my response. "I still had a good set of advantages," I said. "There wasn't a lot of room for them to evade me and I had a good light source for my jutsu. There were only a few situations where I would have been in real trouble, say if they had used an earth jutsu to crush the walls together, and in that case I had an escape route."

Probably. Turning into shadows via the Gelel stone wasn't a thing I had used in actual combat yet, but it worked.

"Well, at least you put more thought into it than Kiba," she said finally.

"Thanks?" I said, a little uncertainly. I wasn't sure if that was damming with faint praise, or if I should be protesting on his behalf. Though, it put her annoyance in a different light, if she was reacting like I was Kiba.

Maybe I should be a little worried that I was doing a thing that Kiba might have done. Then again, I had battle strategies designed around 'what would Naruto do'. There wasn't much room to throw stones.

"Ah," she said with a sly smirk. "He's a good kid. Housetrained. Knows how to follow orders. Great with small animals."

"Yes?" I said, because that was. Um. A non sequitur. To put it kindly.

She gave a satisfied nod. "You'd be a good match. Who knows, your kids might even inherit some intelligence."

My feet carried me through the next three tree hops automatically, belying the way my brain had frozen in a kind of horror at the words. "Um," I squeaked, eyes going slightly too wide.

Oh, no. Nope. Even getting grilled over my fighting tactics was better than this.

"So what was your plan for dealing with the bunker?" I said desperately.

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"Good mission?" Izumo asked, as he took our ID cards. The orange of the setting sun would have been pretty, if it wasn't shining straight into my eyes.

I shrugged a shoulder. "Tracking mission, you know," I said. "Look for thing. Find thing. Success."

He laughed. "That's what we like to hear," he said handing my ID back.

Tsume nodded to him, and took off briskly to the tower. I trailed in her wake.

"Nice cover," she muttered.

I stared at her back blankly. Sure, she'd said not to tell anyone, but I hadn't exactly been lying either, had I? Technically speaking, our mission had gone perfectly. We'd just… found slightly more than expected.

At the tower, she didn't even bother with the mission desks, just charging straight up the stairs towards the Hokage's office. The door was closed, but the secretary waved us in.

We walked straight into a serious meeting. Dad was there, and the Head of the Intelligence Division and a handful of other important Jounin that I only vaguely recognized.

"Tsume," Tsunade said. "We've been waiting for you. Can you confirm the information we received from the Sangaku Outpost?"

"I can," she said, and launched into a detailed recounting of the mission, including a lot of details as supplied by the outpost commander that I hadn't previously been aware of.

I inched sideways while she was speaking until I was standing silently next to Dad. He put a hand on my shoulder, but otherwise didn't take any attention off of Tsume.

"There were no definitive signs of what village they belonged to," Tsume said. "But the bunker remains available for fine toothed analysis, and the prisoners were taken into custody."

Tsunade nodded. "We dispatched Inoichi as soon as we received the hawk," she said. "But the tactic is certainly familiar. We need to prepare ourselves. If Hidden Rock is taking advantage of our preoccupation with Hidden Cloud to dig themselves in behind our front lines…"

She trailed off.

It didn't need to be said that that wasn't good. They weren't just reacting to us being locked into a cold war with Hidden Cloud – they were preparing to escalate too. Putting pieces into play in order to be used later on. Maybe the rationale had been 'just in case' but from here… it rather looked like a cold attempt at starting early.

I didn't sigh, even though I wanted to.

I hadn't known anything about a war between nations, in that story Before. Everyone had been allies, at the end. And yet… neither had that story held Temujin's invasion and that had been a big thing too. Had things changed? Or had those events – these events – simply not been relevant to the story that had been told?

Or maybe this really was just business as usual, and only seemed worse because it was the first time I was seeing it? Maybe the relationship between the villages was a constant struggle of hidden antagonism, flaring and fading as time went on. Surely no one really wanted to go to war.

The meeting went on and on. I wasn't asked to contribute to anything, but I wasn't kicked out, either.

There were a lot of topics bandied about. Country wide searches for more bunkers. Border security. Intra-country security. Man power shortages. Supplies. Concern as to what this meant for our stalemate with Hidden Cloud.

For every question asked, it seemed twenty more sprang into being.

"Get the immediate responses in place," Tsunade said, once the talks just started to go in circles. "Tsume, liaise with Heihou. Come up with a list of potential other locations and prioritize searching them. Shikaku; the border rotations will need to be reworked."

"Yes," Dad sighed. "They will." He squeezed my shoulder and directed me towards the door. Apparently that had been a dismissal to action.

"A lot of excitement for your first mission as a Special Jounin," he commented.

I gave a half shrug. "The mission itself was okay," I said. "The outpost was nice." The mission objective had been accomplished. No one had gotten hurt. We hadn't had to run off in totally different directions for Reasons.

Anything that happened next was part of a different problem.

"Tell your mother not to wait up for me," he said as we reached his office.

I nodded. "Will do."

I left the tower, wandering out into the now dark streets. This was about the time I normally headed home from my shift in the Cryptanalysis Team anyway – the darkness was familiar here.

And then I stopped, because I'd heard a sound.

I looked around, couldn't see anything, but I was so sure I'd heard it. I spread my senses, focusing on chakra, and followed them out passed the Academy building to the training fields.

"Hello?" I called, tentatively, feeling a little foolish.

There was that sound again, and this time I was sure. It sounded like someone crying. For a second – just a second! – I contemplated just going home. But I couldn't. Even in contemplation I knew I couldn't. Maybe I could have when I'd first stopped, but it was too late for that now.

"Hey," I said, softer, approaching the trees so I could see.

She was tucked up beneath some bushes, against a tree trunk, like an injured animal that had hidden to lick its wounds in private. It was a feeling I could sympathise with. But that didn't necessarily mean it was a good strategy.

"Hey," I repeated, crouching down in front of her. "Hey, sweetheart, what's wrong?"

She was young, maybe eight, with wild black hair and a heavy, covering coat in a cheerful buttercup yellow. Even without the buzzing of kikaichu, I would have been able to tell she was an Aburame. Her arms were tucked in tight, clutching something to her chest.

She sniffed, breath hitching, and curled in tighter.

"It's late for you to be out here alone," I said, voice still soft. "People will be wondering where you are."

"I was 'posed to go to a sleepover," she mumbled, miserably. "But then they said I couldn't." Her chest heaved again, another sob, and it was a dry sounding thing. Like she'd been here for so long that she'd run out of energy for it.

Oh, ouch. Surely she hadn't been here since the Academy finished? Or kunoichi class, which was slightly better, but only slightly.

"That's sad," I said, sympathetically. "And you didn't want to go home?"

She twitched her leg. "I hurt my ankle."

Maybe 'said she couldn't' was an understatement.

I inspected it carefully, letting her know what I was doing. It was sprained, hot and swollen beneath her shoe, the ligaments stretched but not torn. I helped reduce the swelling with my chakra and soothed over the ligaments. I didn't want to do too much because there were… odd structures creeping up her leg, tunnels that buzzed with kikaichu. I'd never tried to heal an Aburame before and I didn't want to cause complications.

"Is your arm hurt too?" I asked, because she hadn't uncurled. Not even a little bit.

"They squished Mister Cranberry," she mumbled. And then extended her arms to reveal a red, furry tarantula cradled in her hands.

I didn't recoil. I couldn't. If this had been a little Inuzuka girl, crying over her puppy, I would have done everything I could to help. How could I do less, just because her pet was a spider? Less palatable to me, maybe, but she clearly loved it just as much.

It did look … squished. One leg was bent in a direction that I was pretty sure even spider legs didn't go.

I touched it gingerly, scanning with medical chakra but… yeah, no. I had no idea.

"Okay, honey," I said. "How about I help you back to your clan and they can have a spider doctor look at him? I'm sure he'll be just fine."

She sniffed again and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her jacket, but thankfully tucked her pet back against her chest.

"My name is Shikako," I said, retrieving her backpack and slinging it over my shoulder. "Shikako Nara."

She seemed like she recognized the name, which was good. There was trust, and then there was 'going somewhere with people you met in the dark of the night'. "You're Shino-nii's friend," she said.

I blinked in surprised. "That's right. What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Chiyako."

The name was vaguely familiar, in a very distant way. The Aburame weren't the most sociable of clans and I didn't really know many of them. Didn't know of many of them either, in the way you did with some clans. But I was aware the clan head had two kids and if she was calling Shino 'nii-san'… Huh.

I bowed. "Pleased to meet you."

It spurned a faint giggle out of her, anyway. I dithered for a second, deciding how to lift her. Piggyback – the normal carrying method – would have been fine except she was carrying a spider. And if her hands were around my neck than that meant it would be in my face. So … actually no.

I lifted her and settled her on my hip. Which meant she could hold onto it and keep it tucked in close to her chest and that was really the best we were going to get.

Then I set off towards the Aburame compound, trying to keep up a light hearted conversation with her.

"You smell like kikaichu," she said, face pressed awkwardly into my shoulder.

"Do I?" I asked.

And then she… vibrated, all the kikaichu in her body buzzing until I could feel it through her skin.

Unnatural, my mind insisted and I told it to shut the hell up. She was just a little girl.

"Mmhmm," she agreed. "Upset smells. Like fighting."

"Ah, I was on a mission," I said, and hoped that that explained it. We crossed the threshold to the Aburame compound and I hesitated, unsure which direction to actually take her. We did, sometimes, have dealings with the Aburame but they were seldom conducted here those that were usually involved the workshop and not the houses.

"That one," Chiyako said, pointing.

I shrugged and followed her directions. But there must have been some perimeter or warning or something because I wasn't even halfway there before the door opened and someone stepped out.

"Hi," I said, a little lamely. "Sorry to stop by so late." I shifted Chiyako on my hip, just a fraction.

Shibi came closer. "Chiyako-chan," he murmured and lifted her out of my arms. "What happened?"

I stepped back, job done, and intended to vanish into the night and go home. Somehow, instead, I found myself hustled inside and into a kitchen where a lady in a long housecoat poured me tea despite my protestations.

"Thank you, but its fine," I said again. "I-"

"Is something wrong?" Shino's monotone voice interrupted from the doorway.

I looked up. He was wearing his normal blue coat – over stripy blue pajama pants. Understandable. But incongruous, all the same. Shibi had vanished somewhere with Chiyako, hopefully to make sure she and the spider were okay.

"Why?" Shino continued. "Because it is unusual to have guests at this hour."

"I was just bringing Chiyako home," I explained. "She was upset. It seemed her sleepover didn't… go so well."

"I see," Shino said unhappily. He ducked his chin into the collar of his coat. "She was happy to be invited."

I nodded. There wasn't much I could say to that. 'Kids can be cruel' seemed trite, and he was just as likely to know it as I was.

His mother ushered the two of us – with tea – into the living room and started to fix up something for her daughter to eat.

I made another attempt at leaving. "It's late and I just got back from a mission…" I said leadingly. "I should really get going."

"Your mission was with an Aburame, wasn't it?" Shino said. "Why do I ask? Because you have lingering traces of kikaichu pheromones on you."

"Right, Chiyako said." I winced and made an aborted brushing motion with my hand. Like that would do anything. "Sorry. And yeah, it was. A Special Jounin named Muta."

"It was not a complaint," he said. "It is only concerning to encounter someone who appears distressed." He hesitated a second. "It would be as if seeing someone who covered in blood. You would ask if they were well."

And that didn't make is sound less disturbing at all. But maybe it explained why I had been herded inside. They might have been worried about their clan mate.

"No one was hurt," I assured him. "There was a little bit of fighting, but nothing too serious."

Shino nodded, gravely. "I'm pleased to hear that."

There was the sound of pattering footsteps, and Chiyako appeared. Her foot was bandaged but she didn't appear to be having any trouble walking on it, and she had changed into blue flannel pajamas with butterflies on them. Cute.

"You're still here!" She said, coming closer and thrusting her hands into my face. "Look! Dad fixed him!"

The spider waved it's little … feeler legs at me. I tried not to draw back in horror.

"That's… great," I said weakly. I cast a desperate glance at Shino.

He gallantly came to my rescue, scooping it out of her hands and away from me. "Allow me to hold him for you, Chiya-chan. Why? Because you must be hungry and Mother is making you dinner."

Chiyako slipped away into the kitchen.

"Thanks," I said in an undertone.

"I did promise," Shino said.

It startled a laugh out of me. "You did."

"Mum said I could eat out here," Chiyako said, returning and carrying a plate of food with her. She clambered up on the couch beside me, and I shifted to help her.

And as much as I wanted to go home, it wasn't exactly a hardship to make a kid feel better after a terrible day. It was late anyway, and she was yawning and leaning against my side before too long.

She yawned and rubbed her eyes with a closed fist. "Nee-chan, you can have this." She unwrapped something from around her wrist and looped it over mine. It was one of those knotted bracelets that I remembered making with Ino; friendship bracelets. "They're kikaichu," she said, pointing at the blobby spots on it. "I made it for Yumi but…"

"Thank you," I said. "I love it." The knots were neat and evenly spaced and she'd tied it on in a way that would release quickly if it was pulled, like a true ninja child.

I smoothed a hand over her hair. Poor kid.

It was a smaller tragedy, but a tragedy all the same.

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I hadn't arranged with Kakashi-sensei whether there would be training or not, but I suspected that 'I got back from a mission yesterday' wasn't a good reason to skip it. That was yesterday.

"I hear there were a lot of explosions yesterday," Kakashi-sensei said, eye curving in amusement.

"They weren't mine," I informed him, a little tartly. "And I had to stop things from being destroyed."

"We all sometimes have to work counter to our natures," he said, patting me on the shoulder. "I'm sure the future has much large scale destruction in store for you."

I rolled my eyes at him. "Thank you, sensei."

"I'll probably be off on a mission soon," Kakashi-sensei said, changing the topic. "Tsunade is making all the Jounin show face. So to speak."

It wouldn't necessarily matter what they were doing, so long as they were a visible reminder of the power that Konoha could command. It was one thing to try and sneak a squad into the country, quite another to do it when Kakashi Hatake was prowling the borders.

I nodded. "Stay safe."

"I'll get in touch when I'm back. There's still a lot more you need to learn. Don't slack off on your training while I'm gone!"

Afterwards, when I headed to sensory training, it turned out that Tonbo-sensei had much the same idea. Not that he was being sent off, as such, but that I wouldn't be training with him.

"From here on out it'll be mostly a matter of practicing," he said, crossing his arms. "According to Tsume, you exceeded all expectations in tracking chakra residue. I'm not sure how else to help you. If I'm honest, with most of the other recruits we just give them a training plan and send them back to their clans."

I had noticed that no one else was doing such concentrated sensory training. I'd partially attributed it to the rank up – they were making sure I was worth it.

"Thank you for all your help," I said genuinely, bowing. "I've learnt a lot."

But that meant… I had my days free again. And that was really great. I spent the first one doing absolutely nothing and went to my shift feeling happy and relaxed.

Aoba made a face at me. "That was cruel and unusual."

"What?" I looked over my shoulder, just in case I'd missed something. No. Nothing there.

"Gai," he repeated. "Cruel and unusual."

"You were following me," I said, frowning at him. I… still wasn't happy about that. I crossed my arms.

"Not meanly!" he insisted weakly. "It didn't deserve that."

He appeared to realize that that argument was impressing no one. He sighed. "Fine. But just so you know, I didn't do any of your paperwork while you were gone. Have fun."