Title: Dreaming of Sunshine

Summary: Life as a ninja. It starts with confusion and terror and doesn't get any better from there. OC Self-insert.

AN: I was away for a few weeks on holiday; it was lovely! – thanks to all those who asked!

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Chapter 120

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Nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else. ~ George Halas

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"What was your original mission again?" Tsunade asked, squinting at me. At least she'd waited until the whole sordid tale had been told – twice even, because she'd stopped me part way into it in order to drag Kakashi-sensei into the meeting – before making sarcastic remarks.

"Search and rescue for a missing child," I said, then added pointedly, "who had in fact been kidnapped by these ninja."

She huffed, with a kind of disbelieving air, but it wasn't like I'd gone out of my way for this.

The levity was brief, anyway.

"I'm putting this under War Operations," she said, flicking a hand towards Kakashi. "No matter who's responsible, there's no denying that it's a deliberate attempt to weaken Konoha. We'll get an autopsy done of the bodies and see if we can narrow it down, but I want you to come up with a list of candidates."

Kakashi-sensei shrugged, wryly. "Everyone?" he suggested.

She treated that with the attention it deserved and ignored it completely. "Find out how they got away with it, what we can do to stop it happening again and, if necessary, whether it's a tactic we should be considering."

No easy task. Sneaking an ANBU team through the border was doable. Probably. I wasn't an expert, but 'stealth' was kinda their jam. Stopping an ANBU team getting through the border was a much taller order. And protecting a massive number of civilian targets? Even taller.

Kakashi-sensei went still. He still looked laconic – hands in his pockets, slouched casually – but there was a tension to it now. "Easier just to burn it," he said. "If it comes down to that."

"And then everyone starves," Tsunade finished, like they weren't just discussing torching food supplies. Or maybe exactly like they were discussing it.

I glanced at Kiba, who looked just as out of his depth as I felt.

"Aoba can coordinate the record search," Tsunade picked up briskly. "Start with food, but widen it to general supplies after that. They'll probably also try to target our weapons trade, if they haven't already."

"Yes, Hokage-sama," Aoba said, not looking entirely thrilled at the task, but with the resignation of someone who knew it needed to get done.

The Hokage tapped her fingers on her desk, staring into the distance like she was contemplating options. "If we're lucky, the team you encountered wouldn't be expected to be returning with the hostages just yet. If we're not, they may already know that the operation has been blown. In that case, any further hostages may be in danger. Kiba, could you pick up the scent trail again?"

"Yes," Kiba said, immediate and sure. He grinned. "You want me to track them back?"

"No," she said. "I want an elite covert tracking squad to track them back. In the interests of saving time, I want you to show them where to start. You will go, you will show them where, then you will return. Understood?"

His grin faded a bit. "Understood, Hokage-sama."

"Good. Shikako, I want you to work with Shizune on finishing that seal. As soon as possible."

It took me a second to wrap my brain around the order – not because I didn't know what she meant, but I didn't understand why. But obviously, Kisuke would be the best choice for covertly searching enemy territory. They'd never see him, never know he was there.

"Um," I said, not because I wanted to protest but because there was a reason that our progress on the seal had stalled. We were stuck. "I'm going to need those notes."

I was treated to a laser-eyed stare. It was intensely uncomfortable.

"Very well," she said. "I'll authorize Shizune to access them."

If they were going to send him now, then there wasn't any time for me to make adjustments. But maybe Tsunade was just anticipating that she would need him again, very shortly in the future.

Still. It was a little disappointing to not be included with the actual retrieval part of the mission. I could understand why, objectively, you wouldn't want to send a Special Jounin and a Chunin to do an ANBU's job but… we'd been the ones who found it and worked it out.

"You can always help with the paperwork," Aoba commented, under his breath.

"This seal is very important," I said solemnly. I wasn't that disappointed.

And yeah, I was pretty eager to get my hands on those notes. I'd hand over a hundred interesting missions to ANBU if it meant I got to study them. Even limited access to anything about Edo Tensei was priceless. No one else knew just how much.

I was scheduled in to look at them the next day, and since it was late and no one else had anything for me to do… I went home.

I scavenged some food for dinner out of the fridge and settled into the lounge where dad and Shikamaru were playing shogi. Shikamaru was wearing the Shadow Hand, using it to carefully but dexterously pick up the small wood shogi pieces and move them. I tried not to feel too pleased about it.

"Did your mission go well?" Shikamaru asked, with a kind of forced neutrality and levity.

"Exceptionally," I answered. Then waved my chopsticks in dads direction. "Sorry about that."

"I haven't been called in, so I assume it's not an emergency," he said, with a touch of resignation.

"Nah," I said, shrugging a shoulder. "I'm sure you'll hear all about it tomorrow, anyway."

"Something to look forward to," he said dryly.

"What happened?" Shikamaru interrupted. "What went wrong?"

"Nothing went wrong," I said, though that was a matter of interpretation. "It was a search and rescue. We searched. We rescued. There was just… some additional stuff."

Actually, that was pretty much the theme of my Sensor Squad missions. Complete but extra.

I wasn't exactly sure I could talk about it anyway. Certainly the 'extra' was classified, just because it wasn't finished. Also ANBU were involved. That tended to mean classified.

Shikamaru gave me a searching look, full of hesitancy. "You seem happy about it."

"Well, yeah," I said, a little surprised. "We saved a couple of kids. Nobody got hurt. It was a good mission."

A long one, maybe, but one long day wasn't the same as weeks of them in a row. And it was a different kind of tired, when you knew you were accomplishing something.

"How were things here?" I asked, instead of following that thought.

"It's fine but Kofuku-oba wants you back in R&D," Shikamaru said. As if I had been gone longer than a day.

"Mmm," I said, vaguely. "Can't. Have to do some sealwork for Tsunade."

There was silence and the click-clack of shogi pieces on the board.

"Have you thought about trying to teach some of the researchers about fuuinjutsu?" Dad asked, casually but carefully.

I blinked at him. "Uh. I don't actually know that much about it," I said. "I mostly just make it up as I go along."

But I could see why he was suggesting it – if they were going to have a hand in regulating seals and such, then it would be better if they actually knew what they were working with. And also… there'd be much less pressure on me to go and do it for them.

I chewed on my lip, thoughtfully. "I did mean to submit some stuff to the clan archives. I could clean it up a little and give it to you." It was nowhere near good but I could strip out the worst of the egregious errors.

"That would be a good start," Dad acknowledged. "But its difficult subject matter to learn without a teacher, isn't it?"

It wasn't like I'd never complained about that. And I'd only started getting really good at seals after Jiraiya had given me pointers. And I'd stumbled across access to information most people didn't have access to, as well.

"It's not that easy," I deflected, though it was a weak defense. "I could talk about it for a whole week and only cover exploding notes."

His lips quirked into a smirk. "Then start there."

It wasn't that I didn't want to… but yeah, I didn't want to. Teaching – actual, dedicated teaching and not just throwing off-hand advice when I felt like it or poking people in particular directions and watching them go – was a serious investment of time, effort and frustration.

I made a face.

"Who you teach is up to you," Dad added, like that was sweetening the pot. It was, a bit, but if anyone really wanted to learn then I was probably too much of a pushover to turn them away. "I can put together a list of those interested."

I put my bowl down and collapsed backwards onto the floor so I could stare up at the ceiling. "Ugh," I said, trying to sum up my feelings on the matter concisely.

I was probably going to end up doing it, I admitted. Because the clan and duty and it really was a great skill that a lot of people would like to learn.

Dad padded away to the downstairs office and came back with a scroll that he dropped unceremoniously on my chest.

I unrolled it and squinted at it. "This is just the clan register," I complained. "Dad. Did you go and get this just so you could make a joke?"

He looked highly amused, so 'yes'. He was the worst. "It's not a joke," he said, instead. "Anyone on the list. The choice is yours."

"Ugh," I said, resigned to the fact that my brain was already ticking over ways to make it work. I didn't miss the fact that he'd moved from 'please do it' to 'how you do it is up to you'. We'd apparently already boarded this rollercoaster ride. "Let me think about it."

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There was a line in a Discworld book I'd read once, about people believing in lies and concepts that existed without physical basis – the idea that if you ground down the universe to its tiniest parts, you wouldn't find a single ounce of justice, not a molecule of mercy, no hard evidence that either existed.

Souls were supposed to be like that too.

A thing of faith or belief. You could know and trust in them but you couldn't prove them. Couldn't quantify them, couldn't measure them, couldn't really know.

And yet.

Yet. Here in these notes, in Orochimaru's surprisingly messy handwriting, was proof.

(I didn't know why I'd thought he should have tidy handwriting. I hadn't thought about it consciously. It was just… surprising, that it was messy. That was all. )

A mathematical formula for a soul; for containing a soul. I'd known it had to exist, in some way, shape or form, given the whole Edo Tensei thing. And yet.

"Well," I said, blandly, tapping my pen against the page. "There it is."

I slid it towards Shizune, who flicked her eyes over it and hummed with only vague interest. 'Oh, yes. What a normal thing to find. Carry on, then.' Like this was something perfectly normal-

-well. Again. It was what we'd been looking for. Maybe I was the one overreacting for being weirded out. This was a world where we could turn the power of our thoughts into actionable energy. We were looking into this seal on behalf of a ghost.

Maybe there was no great philosophical debate to be had here. Maybe souls were just a form of energy that everyone had. Something to be studied and contained and manipulated.

I shouldn't be freaking out.

As Nara, I already knew how to manipulate my own spiritual energy-

(But that was different. That was a way to change yourself from the inside. Like studying. Like New Years resolutions. You thought, so you did, so you were.)

"Is that the same as the Soul-Body Separation Seal?" Shizune asked, interrupting my looping train of thought. "Will it help?"

"Mostly, yeah," I said, tapping my pen against the table, unfocused. "And the parts that aren't will benefit if we can make them closer to it. But the really important part is that it has a termination condition – a couple of them, actually. We'd still have to manage to give ownership of the jutsu back to Kisuke, which might be tricky, but it's a whole lot more possible."

There were still distance issue – Edo Tensei itself got around them by affixing the seal to the bodies but the issue here was that there was no body to affix to.

Shizune nodded and went back to her own paperwork. This time around, she'd brought a whole stack of things with her and only really collaborated when I needed to ask specific questions. And there weren't many of those that she could really answer, anymore. She was supervising, and supervising Orochimaru's notes more than she was supervising me at that.

I copied down the seals diligently onto note paper, making plenty of annotations and digressions to cover the fact that I was copying it out twice. One set would be the official notes for the seal – the other I'd hopefully whisk off into hammerspace when Shizune's attention was diverted.

It was probably against the spirit of my orders, if not necessarily the letter.

Scratch that – it definitely was. But it wasn't really an opportunity that I could let go past.

Although I could hope that we'd never get as far as having to fight an Edo Tensei army, I'd feel a whole lot better if I could work on a counter for it.

When you put it in those terms, making slightly illegal copies of horribly immoral research notes was a no-brainer.

Didn't mean I would be in any less trouble if I got caught, though.

Those two things alone – Shadow Hand and Edo Tensei - kept me busy. No matter how much work I put into them, it seemed like people wanted more. I could have worked on them for years and no one would have been happy.

Thankfully, once the main chunk of work was done, Kakashi-sensei was my savior.

"Jiraiya suggested you spend some time at the Fire Temple," he said, casually, tossing me a mission scroll.

I peeked at it, seeing a simple delivery mission to the place in question. "He did," I admitted. "Thank you." Somehow, it had always ended up further and further down my list of things to do, no matter how big a deal Sage mode was, or how useful barrier sealing could be.

Sensei shrugged, like it wasn't a big deal. "Special Jounin are expected to take training trips," he said. "Chunin too, but they can still find teachers in Konoha."

Once you were a Special Jounin, it went unsaid, you were probably the leader in your field of specialization. Meaning, you'd probably exhausted what Konoha could provide, if it was something obscure. Even if it wasn't, a solid chunk of training time would probably not go amiss.

"Asuma usually requests the missions to the Fire Temple," Sensei went on, a crinkle of amusement around his eye. "I think one of his buddies from the Guardian Ninja lives there. He's pretty annoyed at me."

He said it like that was a bonus. To him it probably was.

"I'm glad you're willing to risk the wrath of Asuma-sensei for my sake," I said, overly solemn. "I hope he doesn't manage to convince Kurenai-sensei to help him get revenge."

That didn't make him look any more worried about it all, but that was Kakashi-sensei for you.

It wasn't an urgent mission, so I didn't need to leave immediately, but sooner was better than later. Still, there was plenty to do in preparation. I needed to get permission for said training trip and – if I was very lucky – put the rest of Kakashi-sensei's implied information to use.

I.e. That Asuma-sensei was both in the village and had contacts in the Fire Temple that he was on good terms with.

Which would make the whole thing a whole lot easier, if I could get someone to vouch for me with the monks. They were probably less suspicious than ninja, on the whole, but that didn't mean they wouldn't be suspicious at all.

And also to break the news to my family that I was going to be gone for at least a month. Yeah. I could see that going over not well. But… it had been more than a month – nearly two, in fact! – since we'd got back from the Land of Moon. There had to be a point where it was okay for me to start getting back into the swing of ninja life. And it was a training trip. It wasn't like it was going to be dangerous.