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:

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Chapter 119

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Action is the foundational key to all success. ~ Pablo Picasso

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"Okay, this was where her bag was sitting," Kiba said, pointing at a particular spot on the ground.

I eyeballed it. Imagined the scenario. A young girl – girls? – coming into the clearing, slinging their bags off and onto the ground. There was a tree there to prop it up against, out of the way to the side. Yeah. Made sense.

It was dark now, but we both had LED seals to brighten up the places we were looking. It didn't make much difference to Kiba but I didn't want to miss any visual clues, either.

"There've been a lot of people through here," Kiba went on. "All the searchers, I guess. The scent trails are a mess."

Akamaru prowled around on the ground, nose low in the grass. Kiba seemed to be shifting back and forth, looking for scent pockets or something.

I made a non-committal noise. You couldn't exactly expect people not to search, even if it messed up all the evidence and our ability to track. There was nothing here that I could use – the physical signs were well and truly masked, and there was no chakra nearby.

"There were five… no, six kids with her. They all smell similar. I think they must live together? Not family, though. It's a different kind of similar. Picking up scent from the same surroundings. I think they might be street kids."

"A child gang?" I asked, looking critically back the way we'd come. The town was probably big enough to have problems with homelessness. Kan had called them 'disadvantaged' which might have just been a polite euphemism, or she might not have known the full extent.

"Probably, yeah," Kiba said. He paced the edges of the clearing. "She wasn't with them when they arrived or when they left." He went around again.

I waited.

"She came in this way," he said. "I can scent her bag with her. Had a lot of food in it; it left a pretty strong mark."

"But which way did she leave?" I asked, because that was the important thing, and that was what he wasn't saying.

He went around again, then shook his head. "I'll spiral out further, see if I can pick it up."

Akamaru barked, pawing at a spot on the ground. Close to the tree line, but not that close. A couple of large steps away.

"Bad news?" I asked, voice calm. There was nothing to worry about yet.

"Trail goes dead," Kiba said shortly. "Right there."

I double checked my scent blocking so that I didn't add more problems to the pile and approached. I ran my hands through the grass but there was nothing there – no hastily dropped hair pin, no note, no clue. I hadn't really expected anything, but it was best to be thorough.

Then I closed my eyes and concentrated.

Was it wishful thinking or did I really feel it? Had there been chakra used here – carefully but deliberately – hours and hours ago, or was it just a fluctuation in the natural energy?

"Be careful," I said, though I couldn't say for certain if it had been or not. The possibility of it was enough to raise flags. "Potential shinobi interference."

No one had said the word 'kidnapping' up until now. No one had even suggested it. But that didn't mean it wasn't a possibility.

Kiba nodded and thankfully didn't ask if I was sure. "If it was anything like a replacement, then I'll be able to pick it up again," he said confidently. "And most people slip with scent masking sooner or later."

I nodded and ran through our options. "Point me in the direction of the kids," I said. "They might know something."

"Akamaru'll lead you to them," he said.

We split up. Akamaru led me on a fairly winding path, and stopped at a building that could be kindly described as ramshackle. I stepped over the piles of junk barring the way and peered inside. At first glance, there was nothing. Then I managed to pick out a shape here, a corner of a blanket there, and see the children who were reduced to hiding in such a place.

I bit my lip. Because, yeah, these poor kids. On the other, that was not why I was here at all and Makoto Kan might be in a whole lot more trouble. And really, it was a whole lot easier to find a lost child than to fix the socio-economic problems that left a whole group of children homeless.

I stepped soundlessly into the room, locating what looked like the oldest child. Presumably the one 'in charge'.

There was no good way to do this, really. Anyone would be frightened to be woken by a stranger in the middle of the night but I didn't actually want to wake all the kids. That kind of chaos would only slow things down.

So I shook him awake and clamped a hand over his mouth when he drew in a startled breath to scream.

As predicted, it hardly helped matters.

"Don't shout," I said, voice low and calm. "I need to ask you what happened to Makoto Kan."

I sat back, slowly withdrawing my hand.

He swallowed. "Who are you?" His voice shook with fear, but his eyes darted around. Panicked, yes, but canny.

He was maybe ten. Maybe twelve. Not so much younger than us, really.

"A ninja from Konoha," I said, though I suspected it meant very little to him at all. "I'm looking for Makoto. I know she was with you this afternoon. What happened to her?"

He shook his head, a rapid twitching thing. "I dunno," he said. "I don't know nuffing about that."

"She's in trouble, isn't she?" I asked, voice calm and sympathetic. I tried to keep any hint of judgement or responsibility out of it.

"We didn't do nothing!" He insisted, quickly. "She was just… gone."

I nodded. "Okay. What happened?"

He hesitated for a long second and I waited it out. Patience. Patience. "She brought us food," he said, drawing up his knees and wrapping his arms around them. "She does that all the time. She's allowed."

He looked defiant, like I was going to protest. "She brought you food," I echoed, prompting the story onwards. "And then?"

"We were going to go down to the river to swim," he said. "She was with us! But she never made it to the river. We waited and waited for ages but she never showed up. We went looking for her but we couldn't find her and then all the adults came and they couldn't find her either-"

He cut himself off, looking miserable.

I sat back. It was nothing more than we'd expected, but it was still confirmation. 'Lost' had been upgraded to 'taken'. A bunch of civilian children weren't the greatest of witnesses – and I knew first hand you could take someone from a group of ninja and still not be seen – but they'd been there.

"I see," I said and pushed myself to my feet.

There was a shuffling in the darkness. A small pale face pushed itself out from behind a pile of rusted metal. "Are you talking about Makoto-chan?" she whispered, voice hushed. "She went missing just like nee-chan."

"Just like nee-chan?" I repeated. What was the saying? 'Twice is enemy action'? Whatever it was, it was suspicious.

The little girl nodded vigorously. "She went missing too!"

"No one cares, Emi," the boy said, sinking his chin down onto his knees. "Makoto's got her mum making people look for her. No one is going to look for kids like us."

And that was… well. True. I couldn't say that.

"When did your sister go missing?" I asked, crouching down again near Emi. "Recently?"

"Seventeen days ago," Emi said, with the certainty and tone of someone who had counted all of them.

Maybe related. Maybe not. If Makoto had been taken because her mother was an Ambassador, then there was no reason to suspect that this had anything to do with it. If Makoto had been taken just because she was here, at the wrong place at the wrong time… That was a different story.

"I'll keep an eye out for her," I said, but it was mostly an empty promise. I stood and fished my storage scroll out of my backpack, and released a stack of rations. Not all of them – I still had a weeks supply left, which would keep me going even if this mission stretched out. "Here. It's not much…"

It wasn't much. It was a small thing that cost me little but it was nothing that would change their situation in the long term, either. They needed more help than that, more than just food. But that wasn't my mission, wasn't my problem right now.

I gave an awkward shrug and walked away, mind already slipping back to focus on the task at hand.

I slipped through the town, returning to Kiba. "Find anything?" I asked finding him in the forest well away from the field where Makoto had gone missing.

He flashed a feral looking grin my way. "Yep," he said with satisfaction. "I found her trail."

I nodded. "Find anyone else's trail?"

The grin faded a tiny fraction. "Maybe," he said cagily. "I'm not going to say there wasn't anyone else…"

But he couldn't confirm there was, either. Too old or too faint or just too damn good to leave much of a mark behind. The blank spot in the trail was suspicious in itself, wasn't it? Then again, a scent trail was hardly like a paved walkway – it wasn't permanent or fixed, it could blow away in the wind or vanish.

Still. We had a trail now.

I nodded. "Well," I said, "I guess we should follow it and find out."

The trail wound through the trees with a kind of surety. It looped, but it didn't double back. It kept a north-easterly direction, driving us steadily closer and closer towards the border with Land of Hot Springs. Toward Land of Lightning.

That might have been coincidence. It might not. I didn't much like it either way.

We were travelling fast and the trail got warmer and warmer as we closed in. By that point, we were both certain there was at least one ninja involved, if not more.

"Hold up," Kiba said suddenly.

I obligingly slammed to a halt. There was no panic in his tone, nothing that indicated ambush or problem. My own chakra sense told me nothing of the sort, either. So I wasn't worried. But this was his show and I was following his lead. If he said 'hold', I held.

He twisted in place, moved back and forth, nose titled up to catch the breeze. Akamaru nosed at the ground, still following the trail we were chasing.

"The trail is still solid," Kiba said, finally. "We can keep following it. But I'm getting sent from the breeze – I'm pretty sure they're camped upwind of us."

"Pretty sure," I repeated, not quite a question. We were potentially hours behind Makoto and her kidnapper, and following directly in their footsteps wouldn't help us. It was the slow and steady path, sure to take us to them – but take us there in time? That was unknown. If they were heading across the border, if they headed into Lightning Country… we might not be able to follow. If we could save time with a shortcut, it would only be to our benefit. But cutting away risked losing the trail.

"Pretty sure," Kiba affirmed. "Your call, team leader."

His tone of voice was, perhaps, not entirely kind. I stifled a grimace. Yeah, my call. I hated making calls like this. Hated it even more when it wasn't our lives in the balance, but a blameless little girl.

"Do it," I said. "Find us the camp."

We sprung off, turning into the breeze. Anxiety churned in my guts as I hoped I'd made the right call. There was no way to tell yet.

The longer we ran for, the tighter the knot twisted. How far could they be? Kiba had seemed so sure.

And then people pinged on the very edge of my range. Oh, there had been people, as we'd run. Even rural areas weren't deserted. We'd passed houses and waypoints. But not like this. This was ninja.

I re-angled us, homing in on them. Kiba had done well to get us this close but now it was my game.

"Two adult shinobi," I murmured, quietly. I reduced my pace, gave us more time to plan. "Two civilian children."

"Two?" Kiba asked, darting a look at me. "More than we expected."

Since we'd only expected one. Meant this was bigger than we'd thought. In what way, I didn't know just yet.

I nodded in acknowledgement. "How's your stealth?"

He looked away. "Okay."

Fair enough. "I'll get closer, see if I can work out what they're up to," I said. "Keep sharp, okay? They took her a long way just to make camp. And they weren't dragging the other kids with them this whole time. There's probably more ninja around."

"If they're here I'll find 'em," he promised.

I nodded sharply. Then I checked my scent suppression, pulled my chakra in good and tight, and slunk carefully towards the enemy camp.

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Once I was into position and overlooking the shinobi camp, there were two problems.

Firstly, the shinobi in question were wearing blank featureless masks. ANBU. Not Konoha, obviously, but the point of ANBU was that they weren't all that easy to identify. If I had to pick, I would have said they were from Hidden Cloud, from the asymmetrical line of their vests, but they could have just as easily been Hidden Rock. Or not from one of the big five at all.

Secondly and most importantly… neither of the two children was Makoto.

Shit. We screwed up.

The two kids were huddled together, unhurt but tired and scared. They weren't tied up, but that almost didn't matter – there was no way they could hope to escape anyway.

Who they were and why they were here… I didn't have a clue. The obvious assumption was that they were still kidnapping victims, in which case we should probably help them. It was the only explanation, though, as to why they might be here with an ANBU guard. Sadly, said ANBU weren't expositing at each other to allow me to overhear and find out. Because they were professionals.

I stayed crouched in the treetops a little longer, aware that the clock had started ticking down again. I was chewing frantically through my options. Makoto was our priority and we'd screwed up and lost her. We'd have to backtrack, try and find the trail again, try and catch up an even greater distance.

I began to back away and then froze again. There was an incoming ninja approaching the camp. The two ANBU exchanged handsigns – unfamiliar to me – but seemed to be expecting it. For good reason; the new comer was wearing the same uniform.

They were carrying another child over their shoulder. And this time, I did recognize the small dark-haired girl.

Makoto.

She looked slightly different from the picture we'd been shown, and her face was blotchy from crying, but she didn't appear to be hurt.

The surge of relief I felt was unsurprising. We were in the right place after all. What was going on, I still didn't know, but we hadn't lost her.

Now we just had to get her back. And that didn't make me feel a great deal of relief. There were three ANBU down there, skills and motives unknown. We had to protect and rescue three very helpless hostages.

'Nightmare' didn't quite cover it.

I waited until the ANBU seemed marginally occupied and retreated backwards with as much stealth as I could muster and carefully avoided all the layered traps around the camp. Kiba was well away from the camp, downwind and out of sensor range.

"You want to play the good news, bad news game?" I asked.

"That's real inspiring," he said dryly. "Okay. Good news?"

"Makoto is there," I said promptly. "Now ask me for the bad news."

"I dunno," he said. "I feel like that's enough to be getting on with. Are we going to get her back or what?"

Akamaru barked.

"Bad news," I went on. "Is that there's also three ANBU and two other hostages."

"Yeah," Kiba said, and tapped his nose. "I knew there was more than one…" he trailed off and shifted awkwardly. "So. Real question. Can you take them?"

I experienced a jolt of actual terror at the question. Oh no. Kiba actually thought I could do it. He was seriously considering that in a matchup of 'Shikako vs three ANBU' I would come out ahead. Not just ahead but comfortably enough that it wasn't our last choice.

I blew out a breath. "Collateral damage, remember?" I said, even though that wasn't quite an answer.

I wasn't exactly filled with joy at the prospect. Any fight was a risk, and multiple opponents with unknown skills was riskier than most.

I had fought groups of people on my own before, but it had not been nearly so intentional. Well, mostly. Then again, it wasn't like we had a lot of choice right now either. It wasn't like we had any backup coming.

We could try just taking the kids and running – thus avoiding the 'fight' portion of the evening – but that hadn't worked out too well for us last time and they knew where we lived. Or the kids lived. Whatever.

Getting the ANBU out of the way seemed… necessary.

"It'll be sunrise soon," I said slowly, squinting at the trees. "That'll help. I could probably tag them with Shadow Possession…" Kiba would have to stay back because his stealth wasn't good enough to get close without being noticed. Then he'd have to deal with getting through all the traps in a hurry, which would be dangerous and give away his position.

I squinted thoughtfully at him. "How's your aim in Fang Over Fang? For throwing stuff, I mean, not for yourself."

He blinked, blank faced. "I … don't normally throw things," he settled on.

"Scrap that idea then," I murmured, though it was about what I expected. I had a barrier seal with me, so we could set up protection around the kids. It'd have to be implemented though and fast. I hadn't wanted to split my attention between trapping the ANBU and setting it up, but it looked like I would probably have to. "It was a long shot, anyway."

And then, suddenly, everything was go.

I slipped back towards the camp, undoing as many traps as I could to give him a clear run for it (and setting a few of my own, just in case). It wasn't actually much – evading traps was one thing, undoing them was quite another and not something I'd focused on learning.

Kiba followed a little closer, but stayed far enough to be undetected by the ANBU. Hopefully. We were relying on having the element of surprise and taking them all out at once and that would be ruined if we didn't, actually, have the element of surprise.

Unfortunately, when I got to the camp, they seemed to be packing up.

Not good.

It would be much harder to ambush them on the move.

Safer, maybe, because they wouldn't be so defended and they would be hampered by carrying the children, but it would be harder for us to choose a choke point when we didn't know where they were going and more dangerous for the children.

Before they leave, then.

I waited, watching the sun creep slowly over the horizon. A little bit of sun was all I needed.

There was no perfect moment and I was aware of the clock ticking down. The three ANBU were spread out around the camp, not nicely grouped together as a target. The three kids were huddled together, which was the only bright spot.

It'll have to do.

My shadow crept quietly down the tree trunks and across the ground, a dark snake barely noticeable in the dawn light. Grass didn't rustle in its passing, there was no sign or signal and none of the ANBU were looking down.

Somehow, I still only managed to catch two of them.

The third vanished from my hold the instant the jutsu took shape, intangible like smoke and then gone. It felt like closing my fist over empty air, expecting to grab something and finding nothing.

Shit.

I set off the signal – an exploding note in one of the more dangerous perimeter traps – and threw my four scrolls around the kids.

"Sealing Style; Four Corner Barrier Seal!"

Kiba and Akamaru crashed out of the forest in a twin Tunneling Fang, two spirals of destruction crashing into the clearing and wiping out my captives. I let them go at the last second, as the impact of the attack started to shudder through the connection.

Only one of them went down. Akamaru rebounded off the other, ricocheting at an ugly angle and into the ground with a startled yelp.

Double shit.

Some kind of defensive technique? A barrier? There was a sheen of chakra, but I didn't have time to contemplate it – I needed to catch the third ANBU, the one who had escaped my Shadow Possession. His chakra was jumping around, here then here then there, impossibly fast. Teleportation? Body Flicker?

The jumps were fast but small.

And moving away from the camp, like he was fleeing.

Or like a trap.

I twisted, pivoting on the spot and bringing my kunai up to block the sword aimed at my neck. For a split second, I stared into that blank featureless mask and was afraid. It was creepy – no wonder these things were given to black ops. The eye holes were just black voids, no eyes, nothing to say there was a person behind it at all.

Then I kicked out and booted him in the stomach, foot charged to deliver a Touch Blast and make sure it took. Only it didn't, but only because my entire foot went through him.

Illusion or incorporeality?

No. Too fast – he was gone again. It was no genjutsu, that much I could tell. The sword I was blocking had been real enough. It had had weight and power. He'd flickered away, that was it. I was kicking an afterimage, too late to be of use. His chakra signal and position bounced around, rapid fire bursts. But I was starting to see a pattern now – it was like body flicker. Short, fast, straight-line bursts.

But he hadn't stuck around to fight at speed, if he could keep that up in a taijutsu match then there would have been a follow up slash that I'd have had more trouble avoiding.

So fast, unpredictable jabs. And he'd gone after me – not the kids in their barrier, not Kiba and Akamaru who were fighting their own opponent. Me.

A plan slid into place. I charged chakra into the stone on my chest, pulled it out and held it. I felt cold, instantly and suddenly, the world layered in shades of grey and shadow. But I held onto an impression of myself, not quite a transformation but close, the kind that let water clones look real until they were disrupted, so that I didn't look any different from the outside.

Then I shouted 'Kiba' and jumped down to join in his fight.

It was folly to ignore an opponent. Complete foolishness to turn your back on one.

So I really did deserve the sword that slid neatly through my back.

Too neatly to be passing through flesh and blood.I was made entirely of shadow. I clamped down, pinning the sword in place and sprang shadow stitching tendrils out from around it – sharp spikes that lengthened and aimed for weak points – throat, eyes, wrists, elbows.

He dropped.

I reversed their momentum, flipping them through my torso and out the front, to tangle the second ANBU. The ones that tried to stab were deflected but those that wound around and restrained were not. Definitely a jutsu. Redirecting kinetic force?

He backpedaled, away from me, but Kiba was there and spat one of his tangled hairball things straight into his face.

The hairball thing - Keukegen, I remembered – squelched onto the mask, stretching and sucking around the edges like it was trying to smother him. Good plan. My tendrils crept up, around his neck and tightened. And then they pulled sharply to the side.

There was a crack. He stopped fighting.

"That was probably-" Kiba said and the stopped. He stared at me in horror. At my front. Oh, right.

"Uh," I said, and pulled the sword out through my chest, handle and all. It felt… strange. I let the technique go, changing back from shadow to mortal flesh and blood. "How are the kids?"

I sealed the bodies into a scroll – both to make sure they were actually dead and to remove the dead bodies from terrified civilian children – and cancelled the protective barrier seal.

Kiba's horror transmuted into something a bit like sheepishness as he inhaled deeply. "You want the good news or the bad news?" he asked.

Oh, great.

"What is it?" I asked, quietly. Now we had to actually interact with the kids and it seemed a good idea to try to seem not-menacing. Given I had just killed people, it might not have worked.

"That's not Makoto Kan," Kiba said.

The words took a second to penetrate. "What do you mean 'that's not Makoto Kan'?" I asked, dully. I felt like I should have expressed surprise because… it sure looked like the girl we were supposed to be finding.

And more importantly, if this wasn't her…then where was she?

"I haven't exactly got around to asking yet," Kiba said wryly. "I'm just telling you that this isn't the same girl."

I sighed and crouched down, ruffling Akamaru's ears with one hand. "Hey kids," I said, voice soft. "My name is Shikako Nara. I'm a ninja from Konoha. We're here to help you, but we need you to tell us what happened, okay?"

Not-Makoto burst into tears and buried her face into her hands. The older of the other two children raised her chin bravely, though. "They kidnapped us!"

I nodded, encouragingly.

"They wanted my dad to give them food," the boy said. "That's why they took me away."

"Your dad is a merchant?" I asked. It was a start to unravelling this puzzle. Because this was much more than just one child being taken. Obviously.

"A rice farmer," he corrected. "We have the biggest rice farm in Fire Country!"

His name was Nori and the girl was Reiko. Not-Makoto turned out to be named Shinju. Reiko was also the daughter of a rice farmer, and Shinju's parents owned an orchard. Apart from the similarities, it really didn't add up to a lot for me.

"Okay," I said slowly. "Did you see another girl? One who looked like Shinju?"

Shinju sniffed. "When they took me away," she said and her voice broke. I patted her shoulder awkwardly. "She was there."

"So no one knows they're missing," Kiba rumbled.

It fit – in a really convoluted sort of way. Or, no. If I twisted my head to look at it from the other direction, as if I was planning the mission and not trying to sort it out from this angle, it made sense.

You needed resources from people (presumably) that they weren't willing to give you. Holding hostages probably wasn't the first answer but it was a pretty time honoured sort of solution. But then you needed to make sure no one noticed that you had taken hostages and hired ninja on your ass (i.e. us) so you went and stuck a similar looking kid in their place. They'd probably been threatened not to hire ninja, but it only took a family friend noticing that your child was gone to work out that something was happening.

Which meant Makoto had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time – they hadn't been aiming for the daughter of an ambassador, they'd been aiming for a street kid.

No, that's still convoluted as fucking hell.

"Okay, well," I said, with very little idea of where we were going to go from there. "Let's get you home, then."

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It wasn't actually difficult to do all the child swapping.

Or. Well. It was but we managed. We had no idea if the farms were actually being watched or not and even if I could have snuck past observers there was no way to take the kids with us. Walking in as ninja wasn't a great plan, so it took some creative transformation jutsu and sweet talking to get us where we needed to be.

But Shinju's parents were really, really happy to see her again and did spill out the rest of the story. Or as much as they knew.

They had current contracts to supply various places in Land of Fire, which included Konoha, and had been approached by people wishing to transfer those contracts, in part or in full. They'd declined, and then found their daughter missing, a shell shocked replacement and threats.

We swapped out Makoto and took her home. I summoned Heijomaru to help carry the kids because three of them between the two of us wasn't going to be easy. He took the summons with good grace and not for the first time I thought that I had really, really lucked out with my contract.

The other two didn't live so close, so I made the executive decision to take them back to Konoha and then organize their return from there. It made more sense, especially if we had to also return their 'replacements' home as well, which was another step.

"Okay," Izumo said, when we showed up at the gates. "So we can sign them in with a temporary pass, but they'll need supervision. And you'll need to work something out after that expires."

"Yeah, thanks," I agreed, scribbling on the paper where he pointed. "It shouldn't take long."

"What's the plan?" Kiba asked, holding one kid with each hand so they didn't wander off.

"I want to grab some paperwork quickly," I said. "Get their parents names. Find out how much they supply us with. That sort of thing."

"There are people in the tower who do that," he said, not protesting as much as confused. "You know, as their jobs. We can just hand it over."

"Yeah," I said patiently. "And those people are me. Look. I just… want to make sure. Can you watch them for a bit? Maybe get some food?"

We had fed them on the way, but it had clearly been a long day for them. It had been a long day for us, too, and I could understand why Kiba wanted to be finished with it.

"Alright, alright," he said. "Don't take too long, okay?"

I didn't plan on it. I just wanted to make sure all the i's were dotted and all the t's were crossed. And I was pretty sure that since ANBU were involved, we were never going to hear about this again once it was out of our hands.

Luckily I had so much experience in navigating the tower paperwork system, because I managed to track down invoices from the relevant farms. Or at least, track down someone who could track them down.

We found Nori's easily enough but not Reiko's.

"Hmm, it's not here… oh, right. It'll be with the negotiators. They defaulted or withdrew or something like that," he said, shrugging.

"That happen a lot?" I asked, casually.

"Sometimes. Places go under. There's a bad harvest – I think it must be a bad year this year. We've had a few. Which sucks, because we're supposed to be increasing our orders so we can start stockpiling. We've had to go looking for new suppliers, which is not an easy task, let me tell you!"

A few? It niggled.

"Do you have a list?" I asked. "Of recent changes?"

"No," he shook his head. "Or, well, I guess we could compare total purchases and work out which ones have decreased… What did you say this was for, again?"

"Intel summary," I said, smiling easily. "Like you said, we're supposed to be starting to stockpile."

I swung by missions desk, booked a briefing room and asked them to dispatch a runner to collect Kiba and the 'clients'. Then I hit up Intel to find Aoba.

"I'd like a second opinion, Aoba-sempai," I said carefully. "So that I'm not blowing this out of proportion."

I didn't think I was, but I had no evidence to it being more than what we'd seen. And I didn't want it to be dismissed out of hand just because I was occasionally slightly paranoid.

"Sure," he said, shifting his glasses. "What's up?"

I waited until we were in the briefing room before I started. The comparison of purchases that I'd managed to get quickly was just a bunch of photocopied pages with highlights, so it was messy and a little hard to follow.

"Okay, so," I started, pressing my hands flat on the table. "During my last mission we ran into a non-Konoha ANBU team that had kidnapped three children. They were the children of nearby farms – ones that supply Konoha. We were able to determine that they were being held hostage in order to force the farms to stop selling to us."

Aoba opened his mouth then closed it again. Then said, "you found an ANBU team? No wait. Never mind. What's the problem?"

I pushed forward the papers. "These three are the farms," I said. "Only one of them had time to contact Konoha about the situation" -which meant Reiko had been kidnapped for close to a week at the least- "but when I compared previous volumes of purchases to what we're currently getting, there are at least fifteen other dramatic decreases. It strikes me as slightly suspicious in light of the fact that there is known enemy action in this area."

Aoba nodded, looking over the papers. "Not all of these will be related," he cautioned. "But it's a good call to reassess them. I'll assign someone to go over the records and look for discrepancies. And send people out to investigate."

I nodded back. "They were replacing the kidnapped children with lookalikes so that it wasn't noticeable that they were missing," I said. "I'm not sure if there were people in place to watch them, but the parents were warned against contacting shinobi."

"Do you know where they were taking the hostages?" Aoba asked, leaning forward. "That's probably more important at this stage."

I shook my head and shrugged. "I don't even know where they're from," I said. "But I did retrieve the bodies so, uh, I guess you can identify them?" Then I frowned. "I mean, I'd guess they were taking them out of the country. If they were planning on keeping them long term, it would be safer. Other than that…"

I shrugged again.

Aoba sighed and sat back in his chair. "Well, I guess we better kick it up the chain. Let's go see the Hokage."