November's Skies Look Like Smoke

:: ::

C didn't know what he was doing, standing in the hall of this floor of the prisoner's block like this.

The thick metal of a door stood between him and the cell he stared at, but the key was in the tips of his fingers and the guards knew better than to stop him if he chose to do something unexpected. He was both a personal support of the Yondaime Raikage and a high-level medic operating at Cirrus Central Hospital—the largest medical center for shinobi and shinobi-related research.

It was a pride of his, being able to offer his services. Not many Kumo-nin became medics and even then, most of those who did gravitated towards the field instead of allowing themselves to be sequestered in their village's high peaks. He understood the feeling. Truly, he did. There was a certain thrill of staying alive to heal in the midst of battle instead of watching comrade after comrade get wheeled into a white room and never knowing if it would be your own fault if they couldn't be saved.

But.

That didn't erase the issue of the slowly declining number of available medics at all their facilities. The civilian doctors did their jobs well, but there would always be cases they could never have a hope of taking on themselves.

Kumo needed medics.

And there was one on the other side of that thick metal door using chakra he wasn't supposed to have access to and wasting it on healing cuts and breaks and strains he inflicted on himself.

Self-education, Mabui described it as.

C tapped a finger against his thigh. Another. Again.

He turned and walked out of the hall.

:: ::

"What do you mean you're putting off the surgery? He doesn't have three more days!"

"There's no one who can take it!"

"What about Q?"

"He hasn't had any doss in five days—"

"—where the hell's Airashi—"

"Kak! We just got a squad in from—"

C's pen almost shattered in his grip as he braced himself on one of the admin counters, six or seven files under his hands. The common behind him wasn't new—far from it. Medics couldn't operate on a 24/7 basis and that was what Cirrus needed, especially with their dwindled numbers and the fact that the entire staff was stretched too thin.

The smaller specialty clinics like Cumulus Memorial or Nimbus Point tried their best to accommodate extra patients when they could and Stratus Medical Center was a civilian-only facility, leaving the medics with no other option but to buck up until they passed out from chakra exhaustion.

He rubbed at his eyes and the bags he was sure were purpling under them.

He thought about the ragged staff, the patients, the sleep he hadn't gotten in almost fifty-two hours.

He thought about a thick metal door.

He gritted his teeth and leaned forward over the files. Two of them needed paperwork done for surgeries and the others needed their daily checks to be cleared and handed off to the nurses.

What he tried not to think about was how much lighter the medic workload would be if there was another trained body in the hospital.

:: ::

The guard who marked his arms told him the ink was made out of a small tree native only to Wind and Lightning Country. Ground and crushed and mixed into a rich brown paste, the brush dipped into it wound around his forearms three times: twice by the wrists and once near the elbow. Each band was broad, maybe three or so centimeters wide, and burned with the chakra that traveled from hand to hilt to bristle to skin.

The ink was a stain, the guard had said. Without chakra application, it'd fade in a few weeks and it made for a lot of design and tradition among the Sunese. But its permanence marked its prisoners with its earthy color tethering them far away from the clouds.

The guard chuckled a bit, then. Just a bit of Kumor superstition.

Shino thought the bands would look nicer if he'd chosen to wear them.

The metal cuffs covered most of the first band and the second and third were littered with all sorts of scars from the cuts he tore himself and healed with all the chakra he could pull from his restraints. The collars from Nezu and Co. were harsher and left him wheezing and struggling to focus, but these ones only left him winded and tired and before he knew it, he'd be waking up some time later with new scars and the same locked door across his cell.

"But we don't have to fight anyone here," he murmured to himself. "We don't have to kill. We don't have to watch our backs." He shifted, and his bare feet skimmed along the hard floor. The plain black pants they issued him caught a bit of dust at the bottom hem, and the matching shirt was thick enough to keep the concrete's cool touch off his back. "We're still alive. They're still alive. Are... they still alive?" He shook his head and dragged his knees to his chest. "They are. They'll survive. They will. Why? It's... It's what we do best. Always."

His kikai hummed in assurance.

But he didn't know how long he could keep believing it himself.

Just as he wrapped his arms around his waist and settled himself against a corner—if it was night or day he wouldn't know—and his eyes were slipping closed, a thrum echoed in his ears and the door swung open.

It wasn't the Raikage this time.

It was the blonde medic.

Though he wasn't as blank-faced as all the other times he'd seen him. His arms were crossed and his shoulders weren't as rigid as they usually were, and the frown that marred his face was nothing like the simple flat line that normally met him.

"Can you stand?" the medic asked.

Shino answered by pushing himself up to his feet, only swaying once and catching himself on the wall before he could tip over. The other granted him a once over before motioning for him to step out of the cell and to follow him down the hallway.

He did so with no reluctance. His back straightened, his shoulders pulled back, and he set his eye straight ahead of him. His arms were nothing but criss-crosses of burgundy scabs and there was a dug-out valley that peeked up the collar of his shirt, pink and half-healed. Not a sound spilled out his mouth as they passed the wary, yet curious guards and walked down the spiraling flights into what Shino assumed was the prison's Confiscation Repository.

The medic picked up a tattered green jacket, inspected the sleeves for a few beats, then shoved it the boy's direction.

"Wear it," he ordered.

Shino did. But only for the ends of the sleeves to stop half a palm-length away from his wrists and for the back to stretch taut over his shoulders, and it suddenly dawned on him how long he'd been staring at plain gray walls since Kumo, since the Coliseum—

Since Sai.

Shino's whole world blurred and refocused in what to him felt like merely a second, but it must have been a long enough time for the medic to have left and come back with another jacket. He, again, said nothing as he shucked off his tea green coat for one the same Kumo-gray color the guards wore.

The sleeves brushed against the beginnings of his thumb, covering both the cuffs and the bands.

"Is this protocol for your prisoners?"

The medic, who'd taken his wrists to push up the sleeves and wrap bandages around his forearms barely glanced upward at the query. "Protocol for?"

"For pre-execution."

The bandaging on his left arm was pulled a little too tight.

Black eyes snapped up to his, fire sparked in its dark depths as the medic finished wrapping his arms and straightened. "Why is that your expectation?"

"Why would it not be?" Shino replied. His arms fell to his side. "Your Border Patrol didn't kill us when they found us. You have everything that was once in our possession. You've learned you can't glean important information because of the seals on our tongues." He paused, but didn't notice the paper thin crease that sprouted between his brows. "What month is it, Medic-san?"

"November."

"... Ah." It was sort of bright in the repository. His kikai crawled along his insides, their spindly legs idly weaving and idly wondering if he would get his glasses back to shield his sensitive eye. But he didn't think he'd get them back. What use would glasses be for the dead? "We'd left Konoha sometime in August."

It was fall in Konoha. Sakura said she'd found a persimmon tree on one of their D-ranks outside the village, and after a more than enthused Kiba made her promise to take them there when it ripened so he could see how much he could stuff into his mouth at once.

November would've been perfect.

"Perhaps it's selfish of me, but I suppose I wouldn't mind being the first to die," Shino muttered more to himself and his insects than the other in the room. His gaze sought out his glasses on the other side of the room. He stared at its blurred outline, missing the paper-thin crease deepening on the medic's face. "I'd die knowing they're still alive. Because if I was the last one to go... the last—the..."

He trailed off and met the medic's blank stare. "My team?"

(He didn't know this was a medic whose reserve was slowly crumbling around his eyes at the sight of someone whose thirteen years were not long enough to fear the deaths of others over the death of himself.)

:: ::

This was it. This was the one. The worst decision he'd ever made in his entire life.

If only he didn't give in to the pressures of the hospital, the sight of his friends and coworkers falling to fatigue and exhaustion and to the voices in their heads berating them for not being able to do enough. If only they didn't have this problem of too many patients and not enough interest in the healing arts to make up for the strain in the industry.

If only he never knew about what was behind that thick metal door.

"They're alive," C answered, "and you won't be dying today."

He pulled out a pair of Kumo-issued sandals off one of the shelves and set it at the boy's feet before snatching up the orange glasses and throwing them over as well.

"You are now a Shino without a surname who grew up in a small village along Lightning's border. You have medical training and have come to Kumogakure to expand on it and I am the superior that has signed off on your request to work at Cirrus Central Hospital," he said. "Your restraints will now allow you access to your chakra as long as it converts to medical chakra upon release. Your kikaichu are to stay out of sight. You are never allowed anywhere without supervision. And—" He loomed forward, a mask of complete apathy on his face. "—no one will ever learn who you are, nor will anyone see a millimeter of your forearms or the cuffs at your ankles that the sandals will hide. Is that understood?"

Shino turned his uncracked glasses in his hands and wiped a smear of dirt off the right lens with his thumb. He slipped them on and thought of Aoba.

"Understood, Medic-san."

The blonde nearly scoffed as he ushered him out a back entrance of the building.

"My name is C."

... This was an absolutely terrible idea.

:: ::

Sato Akemi unlocked the door to her shop when the sun started to barely crest over the horizon. Normally she wouldn't be so early but a couple shipments were set to arrive in an hour and she promised the delivery man she wouldn't make him wait as long as he did last time because well, it hadn't been her fault her alarm clock had fizzed out on her that morning, but she'd make sure to come extra early just in case.

As the lock clicked and she took a single step through the threshold, a particularly chilly breeze swept past her and goosebumps rose on the skin of her arms.

Her wind chimes rattled, and there was nothing behind her but a cloudless sky and the beginning of a perfect day.

:: ::

We Can Feel December's Breath in Our Bones

:: ::

Mabui's heels were silent on the stone stairs as she ascended to one of the higher floors of the building. Catatumbo Penitentiary didn't typically carry too many inmates and hadn't held prisoners from another country in years. They'd been lying low since the failed abduction of the Hyuuga heiress nearly a decade past and shinobi from other nations were smart in avoiding their borders.

Catatumbo didn't even have fifteen current occupants, as a shinobi prison, one would think it a relatively low number compared to the 50+ civilians Staccato Detention Center's held.

She nodded at the guards as she entered the hall and looked into the first cell. It was empty and this time she didn't panic-not like the first time.

The guards had to jump to stop her from sounding the alarm and hastily explained something like 'C-sensei had him' or 'It was all C-sensei's idea', and when she burst into the hospital for that blonde head of hair, she ran into Shino himself in the midst of assessing a group of new patients and handing off newly filled forms to the attending nurses.

She'd been pulled aside by a near disheveled C before she could reveal anything incriminating, and even though having a secret prisoner work for the betterment of Kumo wasn't necessarily a thing, the stats surrounding Cirrus Central Hospital had been showing signs of a general increase and she couldn't argue with the numbers.

Raikage-sama tried to.

His outrage sent his couch careening out the window, but after seeing how well the Aburame shouldered the extra work, in turn taking some of the bulk off the actual resident medics, the only punishment C received was sitting at the end of a three hour long rant and getting taken off the mission roster for six months.

Mabui peered into the next cell. Not too long ago the walls had been filled to the brim with nonsensical symbols and reasoning that wound around in circles and circles before they got back to the same place they started. The boy—the Inuzuka—had ripped off part of his black pants to scrub his dried blood off the walls so he had room to puzzle out even more of whatever ran through that mind of his, his canine watching the whole time while he crossed his shackled paws beneath his jaw.

The last cell in the hall held the girl trudging through one-armed pull-ups while being hooked up to an IV drip. She was the only one of her team to request the guards for things: a wooden bar and a resistance band.

The resistance band she tied to one end near the center of the wooden bar on the ceiling and the other end tied around to the remains of her left arm.

Mabui quietly admired her resolve. C had noted her amputation had been recent in her initial examination, not more than a month old by the time they landed in Kumo's clutches.

She stepped away from the cell and made her way back down the hall. There were a few more things she had to do before reporting back to Raikage-sama, such as drop off some documents for the Cipher Division and collect the weekly update from the Seals Division...

She paused in front of the middle cell again and rushed to peer through the small window in the door. Sharp eyes darted wall to wall, top to bottom, sentence to sentence of blood-tinted words and crude diagrams brought to life with the pricked pad of a finger.

Locks, matrices, sequences, layers, odds, evens, primes, margins, ratios—

Seals. Seal Theory. Every single available concrete space was crammed with seal theory.

When she tried to read those brown-crusted words in a new light, those circles made a little more sense in the way they curved and the starting points weren't at all the same with their tweaked angles and shifted perspectives. She didn't know how long she stood there gaping at the advanced scrawls, but by the time she reached the bottom of one of the walls, the dog had stalked into her line of vision with hunched hackles and eyes too guarded and wary to be anything intimidating.

The chuunin stopped writing. "Huh? What's up, boy?"

Akamaru barked lowly and he turned towards the small slip of a window on his locked door.

(But no one was there.)

Kiba pat his partner on the head. "Which one was it?"

A bark.

"Green eyes, silver hair. Not a guard?"

A small huff.

"Huh. Wonder what she wants." He spun back on his heel and toward a wall as he pricked the scabbed pad of his pointer finger with one of his fangs and pressed it up against the concrete. "... Hey, Akamaru?"

Akamaru raised his head and cocked it to the side.

"You think we're gonna rot here? Y'know, in a Kumo jail?"

There was silence as a tail thumped against the floor in consideration. His partner whined quietly before resting his head on the shackles around his front legs. Kiba's brow furrowed for the slightest moment and he sighed.

"Yeah," he murmured. "At least it's not the Coliseum." He dragged his finger through another line of theory, even quieter, "Or gettin' stabbed in the back in Konoha."

(Mabui willed herself to move away from her place beside the chakra-sealed door, confusion in her eyes and an unfinished to-do list on the forefront of her mind.

Her heels were silent.)

:: ::

The not-guard-lady didn't come by again for a while. Akamaru didn't notice anything and neither did he-though Kiba couldn't really say how long it'd been. He could barely keep track of time back when they bulldozed through books and books of research and they had Sakura in the Coliseum to count down the days that passed to the hour. But here? No windows, no sun, no nothing.

The guards brought in food twice a day at different times to really hammer in the loss of awareness and pushed it through a small hatch at the bottom of the door with a latch that could only open from the outside.

He was surprised when the prison served them meat every other meal, unlike Nezu and Co. who'd only ever served them rice and vegetables.

He thought Kumo was supposed to be the hardass country.

There was the ringing click of the hatch and two plastic trays are pushed through the slot. Kiba reached to pull them close but stopped halfway when the hatch didn't shut as quickly as it usually did.

Akamaru was immediately on his feet with his claws out and his legs set like a spring was coiled within them. A handful of seconds passed before a plain glass ink bottle and a capped brush was slipped through followed by a manila folder with a post-it note on the front.

What is the overlay?

The hatch shut.

"Overlay?" Kiba mumbled. Akamaru sniffed at the folder as he pulled it into his lap and flipped it open. Inside were pages of notes and chicken scratch of trying to puzzle out the complete seal overlay from the configurations written out on the first page.

Two barks.

"Yeah, they prob'ly want me ta' do some shit for 'em, but..." He shuffled through more of the papers. "What's the point? I'm jus' some dumbass kid from Konoha." The folder shut and got tossed to the other side of the cell and the trays pulled forward. "But hey. Don't gotta use blood for the walls anymore, I guess."

He shoveled unseasoned pork bites into his mouth, bloody writing at his back and his partner at his side.

:: ::

Two meals were served and the folder was still in the same place he'd tossed it.

Kiba hated that more often than not he caught himself lingering on the folder and the post-it note as his fingers itched for something new to work on. There was only so much he could dig up from all the stuff he learned before from what he could read in the library or what Iruka-sensei taught him and at this point, the theories on the walls were just him writing to write.

But if he worked on whatever was in that folder...

He groaned and slid onto the ground, capping the brush and setting it next to the near-empty ink bottle. Akamaru's tail thumped a couple of times against the floor as he swung his head around to look at his partner.

"I really wanna look at that overlay stuff, but like, it'd be like me doin' Kumo a favor, right?" Kiba asked. "Why would I do somethin' like that?"

Akamaru stared at the folder for a few moments and woofed.

"... Yeah. I guess. I'm askin' why I should do Kumo anythin' when Konoha never did nothin' for us either."

Wasn't that right? When Sarutobi Hiruzen was alive he'd done the equivalent of cutting off their tongues and sending them on mission after mission in hopes they'd never make it back for another. And after his death he'd damned them again by turning them chuunin by decree and somehow, letting Danzo have his way.

Letting Sai fuck them all over.

Kiba exhaled through his nose. No, he shouldn't blame Sai.

He should be blaming himself for thinking he could trust him.

When the small hatch opened next and two trays were slid through, the folder was pushed out before it closed, the inside covered in freshly dried ink and the finished overlay boxed on the very last page.

:: ::

"It's all correct?"

"Correct? This work is borderline ingenious!" the Seals Technician exclaimed as he spread the notes on the table. Mabui peered at the one particular sequence he pointed out. "Take this for example. The team and I tried to work it from top to bottom then bottom to top, as one normally goes about figuring how to complete sequences and matrices or anything of the link." He then pointed at the writing not quite in the middle, but close. Maybe a few characters off. "But this is the starting point. Clearly marked, too. I don't know how you could possibly start so off-center, but the outcome? It would have taken us maybe a week or two longer to go about it the usual way, but you took this a couple of days ago?" He turned to her fully, eyes wide and shining. "Who managed to solve it so quickly? I'd love to have someone like that on the team."

Oh.

Mabui smiled, easily covering up the quiet anxiety trembling beneath her professional front. "When I received your weekly update and found you to be struggling with this particular seal, there was an... associate I've come across who I believed could help. It seems my hunch was not only a hunch."

The Seals Technician knew that the term "associate" was more or less a nod to the fact that whoever managed to solve an advanced overlay like that one was meant to be kept on the down low or not even mentioned at all.

He shrugs it off. It wasn't like he was a stranger to shinobi affairs.

"You know, if those scrolls you'd taken off those prisoners hadn't been marked highly classified, I'd be hunting down that associate right now to try and get them to break those locks," he sighed. Mabui's expression tightened slightly-well of course Inuzuka would be able to break those locks since it looked like he'd been the one to craft them himself-and it was something the Seals Technician didn't see. "Could your associate come down one of these days? It would really help us out."

A bead of cold sweat ran down the back of her neck.

"I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you very much, Mabui-senpai!"

She left the building with a particularly sharp pain in her forehead and an image behind her eyes of a bemused C raising an eyebrow at her in his rare disbelief.

:: ::

During the meal right after Kiba had sent the folder out, the hatch opened and a third tray was slipped into the cell. On it was a plate of something that looks like pink cotton candy, but somehow thicker and gummier than anything he'd seen in Konoha.

Thank you.

The note read.

If there's anything you'd like, please let me know.

A part of him wanted to snort and ask to be set free, but as he glanced down at the silver at his wrists and the dark brown embedded in his arms, he couldn't find the energy in himself to make the joke.

He was tired.

So, so tired.

Kiba flipped the post-it note over and scrawled on it with the last of his ink before he slid it back through the hatch, and it shut.

I want to know if my team's okay.

He went back to his meal not expecting an answer, and Akamaru sniffed his food before he latched onto a bone with quite a bit of marrow at the center.

The hatch opened once more, slowly, and a soft voice floated through. It was deep and rich and Kiba's mind immediately tacked it onto green eyes and silver hair.

"They're alright," she told him.

Before he could even think to reply, the hatch closed and it was quiet again. Just him, Akamaru, and the writing on the walls.

:: ::

Kisame wasn't ashamed to admit that he'd felt relief when they weren't able to capture Uzumaki Naruto.

It was a couple weeks back when they'd escaped the Toad Sannin's trap and reported back to Leader empty-handed, but none of that deterred him even after they'd been dismissed by the static chrome of his projection. He'd taken to bugging Itachi about getting checked out by a medic one way or another, and if not for the whole thing with his lungs, then at least for his eyes that he'd overused.

So here he was, sat in a too-small plastic chair in a shinobi optical specialist's waiting room, rain pattering against the windows and the receptionist trying his best not to look him in the eye.

Kisame glanced at the pile of old magazines at the short table to his left and picked up the one on the top of the stack and leafed through it with unfocused eyes.

Uzumaki was even smaller up close. At the chuunin exams he'd seen the boy on the other side of the arena, loud and impatient and smiling for pup. In the hallway in the middle of that tourist town, Kisame could see how short he really was—unkempt blond hair, confused blue eyes, clothes a little too worn to be passed off as just from 'training'.

He didn't kill kids. Never had, never would.

But he wondered just why Konoha wanted to kill one of their own kids by shoving a demon behind a baby's navel.

He sighed and tossed the unread magazine back on the table. He leaned back, and the plastic creaked slightly under the movement. It would be a while until he could head back to Konoha since their new implementation of a stricter policy, meaning he couldn't check up on pup like he'd planned on originally.

'And all it took was an invasion by a literal sannin to get them to up their security,' he griped internally.

A hand came down to rest on his left shoulder just beside his bandaged seal, and he looked up.

Itachi and his faintly cloudy black eyes stared down at him. "Shall we?"

Kisame stretched his legs and stood as he slipped his hat over his head. His partner followed suit as they both stepped into the rain-stained streets. True to Ame culture and produced from the Ameks that lived there, the cement streets were covered in neon art almost ingrained in its foundation. Little paintings of things like cranes and frogs flowed bright orange and pink and green and purple under the torrential downpour.

The scarce visitors that came were always amazed.

The natives knew it wasn't just art.

Kisame remembered how pup would always hop on the green lily pads when they walked the streets at night, her bright laughter echoing in his ears. The memory was grainy, now. He hadn't heard her laugh in so long.

"Hey, Itachi-san, let's head ta' that tea house ya' like. I'm kinda cravin' that orange spice tea they got."

Itachi tilted his head. "Hm. It's been a while since I've had their green tea."

They walked along the gleaming caricatures beneath their sandals in a village where red lanterns hung over the streets and neon signs brightened the skies in a way the sun never could.

:: ::

In January We've Lost a Winter

:: ::

"Bee, I'm serious!"

"And I'm tellin' you not ta' sweat, so why's what you're doin' is fret?"

A slammed his fist against the desk and a crack ran through the center. "You know damn well why I am! Because once you get an idea in that damn thick head of yours I need to send at least three of my top shinobi to stop you before you try!" He sighed and shook the splintered wood from his hands. "Just... don't look into it. Please. Two of them are already off the leash and that's enough of a headache as it is."

"Two?"

A glared. Bee raised two placating hands. "Lips sealed, that the deal. Won't do nothin' that'll wrinkle that mug, bro."

Gyuuki's snort echoed in his head as he slipped out the office and straight towards the exact place he told his brother he wouldn't near. 'Of all the things you could've invested yourself in, this is what you choose. I shouldn't be surprised.'

'You're tellin' me those secret Konoha-nin locked up ain't interestin'?'

'I'm telling you that you should listen to your brother and heed the potential consequences of your actions, dumbass.'

'Well you can sit back and watch the show cause Imma find out what I wanna know.'

Gyuuki huffed and said nothing else.

Killer Bee chuckled under his breath at his friend's exasperation before he stepped into the chilled air of Kumo's high peaks. Even though he walked down the smaller streets with less vendors and even less people, he could see the neat, slanted overhangs and the benches and gazebos perched atop roofs. Stairs were attached on the sides of each building that wound up to the gazebos and suspended bridges criss-cross over the streets, shadowing markets and walkways and where civilians could traverse over more than just the ground.

The Kumor had always wanted to be as far from the ground as they could. Maybe that was why all the children learn to scale steeps and cliffsides as quickly as they learn to walk.

He smiled and waved at someone sweeping up the front of their shop. The owner took one look at him and promptly turned their back to continue sweeping. Bee had spent over twenty years staring at the turned backs of those who wanted nothing to do with him that the action didn't lessen his grin as he continued on his way. The younger villagers tolerated him much more than the older ones did, which was far more that he could've asked for, but was it wrong to wish he'd meet someone who didn't already have an image of what type of person he'd be? Just because he wasn't like them? Just because one of his closest friends had ravaged the village even before he was born?

Couldn't they just give them a fair chance?

'Bee...'

"Hm?" he replied aloud. "Say somethin', Gyuu?"

The Hachibi didn't respond as Catatumbo crawled into his sights. Killer Bee instantly perked up and didn't even try to sneak past the guards. He strolled through and they were either too intimidated or knew better than to stop him. He was quick to traverse up the stairs to the flood he'd been specifically ordered not to go to and bursts through the door.

The guard stood between the Confiscation Repository and the hallway of cells almost slumped at the sight of him. "Bee-sama, you're not supposed to be here. Raikage-sama gave clear instructions for you not to be on the Penitentiary's premises," she said. Damn, how long ago did A give the order? "Could I advise that you train instead? Or to check in with the wall patrol since it's part of your duty as Village Guardian?"

"Ah, c'mon Enmu, lemme see one of the Konohans. What's the worst I could do? They got their chakra locked as far as I heard, and I'm just wonderin' what stirred the word on these birds." Enmu Sôun wasn't amused, but her black-painted lips twitched and her pale pink eyes narrowed. "Tell you what, if I get in and you don't tell my bro, I'll snatch you one a' those burgers by the grotto."

She cocked a blonde-ish white brow that was nearly as pale as her own skin. "I guess I get why you're so interested in those kids. No one really knows 'bout them, but the ones that do can't really get a read on what's what."

Bee blinked behind his dark glasses as the smile slowly faded from his face. "Kids?"

Enmu jerked her head towards the hall and settled back against one of the walls. "Check it for yourself, Bee-sama." She tilted her head. "And I want a burger for lunch tomorrow from the blue shack in front of the cracked arch."

The cracked arch was one of the bigger grottos and had more locals hanging from the ledges than bats.

He hummed absently as he slipped into the hall. The first cell was empty and so was the second, but the third cell...

A girl with pink hair with one arm held herself in a handstand. Drenched skin stretched taut over hardened muscle and there was no lapse in her form. Her toes pointed towards the ceiling and the IV drip taped to the junction of her elbow ran as smoothly as the sweat that dripped from the tip of her nose to the cold hard floor.

'So the prisoner's really a kid.'

'And a Konoha shinobi caught within our borders,'  Gyuuki reminded him firmly. 'Don't get any ideas, Bee. You've already done enough by disobeying your brother. Go home.'

'I just told Enmu I'd buy her a burger to not talk to a prisoner? Nah, Gyuu, that's a waste.'

'Bee! Don't—'

Bee's hand was already on the door. The locks immediately began to open and that mischievous part of his brain was always so smug that no matter the security clearance, his chakra would always be recognized as per the requirements of the Village Guardian position.

He squeezed through the smallest crack of the door he could manage and closed it behind him just as quick. The girl stayed planted on her hand for a long few seconds before she lowered on foot on the ground, the another, then stood to full height.

It surprised him that the top of her head reached taller than his shoulder.

"You're not one of the guards usually in this building," she said. He cocked a brow and leaned back against the concrete.

"And why's that your thinkin' when you're just a cucumber in this cell picklin'?"

When she turned to face him fully, her black prisoner's shirt did nothing to hide those rippling scars that spanned from her shoulder blade to her jawline and ended ripped and ragged at the bottom of her cheek. Though it wasn't her appearance that quite caught him, but it was the lingering chakra of whatever caused it that pulled at his senses.

It was familiar. It was angry.

It was just like Gyuu's.

"Your hands," she answered. Her gaze flickered down at them. "They're not the same ones that deliver the meals, so it's either you're a new guard that's paid me a visit or you're not a guard at all." She held her hand behind her back, the IV tube swaying slightly with the movement. Her chin never dipped. "What can I do for you?"

Respectful is the first word that popped into mind at her display, which was surprising in itself considering young shinobi never have their arrogance curbed until they lose themselves in their first kills or their first capture or the first time they needed to obey an order they could only wish to forget.

He was curious—did she stand tall because she didn't know what she was doing or because she knew all too well what she'd gotten into?

Bee pointed to the IV bag. "Why've they got you hooked up?"

"I train until I can't and they don't want me dead."

"No?"

"No. But I don't know why." Her fingers curled beneath the thin plastic tube and gave it a light tug. "Konoha has no warmth for Kumo and vice versa and you must have realized we're worth nothing more than wild animals you happened to pick up on your borders." Green eyes were blank and cold and not so bitter, and it cast an eerie light in the dim prison cell. "I'm waiting for my execution, sir, but I didn't think I'd be waiting this long."

Gyuu hadn't said anything in a while, but Bee could clearly see him in his mind's eye. The beast quietly observed the exchange, his eight extra arms tucked beneath him and his two main ones crossed over his chest.

'Her name.'

'Huh?'

'Ask for it.'

He rolled his eyes beneath his glasses and passed on the message. The girl raised one of her brows.

"Sakura. No surname."

Konoha never really had interesting shinobi. Maybe there were a few autumn leaves in the sea of green like Kiiroi Senkou, the Yellow Flash, or Ichizokugoroshi, the Clan Killer, but the pink is new.

And, undoubtedly, one of the more interesting things he'd come across these days.

"Sakura, then," he acknowledged simply. Bee left the cell after that, stopping at the end of the hall and at the receiving end of one of Enmu's deadpan looks.

"Did you get what you came for?" she asked.

"Didn't know what I came for, not really," he said. He jerked a thumb at his head. "But I got somethin' up here, ideally. Keep it hush, shush, word's not gonna get out, but I think I found an interestin' sprout."

Enmu's forehead wrinkled like she wanted to argue, but she only sighed noisily and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I really can't keep up with you, Bee-sama."

'... I wonder if there was someone out there,' he thought as he set out of Catatumbo for the day. 'Someone other than A that could keep up with me.'

:: ::

Sakura had her head pressed against one of the walls when the stranger walks in again. She counted just a little over twenty-four hours before he'd shown up again, but she didn't open her eyes or push away from the wall when she heard his sandals tap gently against the floor. There was a faint rustle, and she figured he crouched to be at least eye-level with her.

"Is it raining?" she asked.

"Showers started some time ago, supposed to creep through the day all snail's pace slow," he replied. "What, can you tell from here? The building's soundproof, ya fool."

Her father once told her the rains in Ame were unnatural. He always joked about God and his temper, God and his complex, and she loved the little stories he thought up for her. But it wasn't until she was a bit older and a bit wary that she began to understand why Leader-sama was worshiped just as much as he was feared.

He laced his chakra in the rain, she figured. And maybe that was why even when the skies were blue and clear over Konoha, she would always know when to tell Kiba not to keep Akamaru outside for too long.

"But I was right."

"Hm... Guess you were."

She opened her eyes and faced the stranger to find him with a hand on his chin and his gaze far off and considering. Two blue tattoos sat just beneath his left eye along that socket bone, and there were more swords strapped to his back than seemed sensible.

Not a guard. A regular force shinobi, maybe? Maybe not. He must be high enough to gain clearance to sit around her cell doing nothing and looked old enough to have established himself as someone important in the village. Idly, she cursed herself at not having kept up to date on Kumogakure's history and politics; she'd been too busy digging up Konoha's and Suna's pasts and problems, but she knew that wasn't an excuse.

"Alright then," the stranger decided. He stood and popped open the door. "Let's go."

He disappeared from her line of sight.

And left the door wide open.

Sakura blinked once before she slowly rose and shuffled to peer into the hallway. The stranger had his arms crossed as he waited near the end of it, bobbing his head side to side to a rhythm she couldn't hear. She glanced back at her cell, then the hall, then him.

Breathe in, out. Straighten your back. Lift your chin. Not too much. Never lower your eyes. This is not arrogance. This is not intimidation.

This is practicality.

She strode forward like there wasn't the weight of three other worlds on her shoulders.

(She would never know the way Gyuuki's head tilted at the sight of her.)

:: ::

Enmu Sôun was halfway through her burger when the last prisoner of the hallway stepped into view.

She stared. The girl stared back.

After Bee took a cloak from the Repository and handed it to the girl to slip on, Sôun sunk her teeth into another bite of her burger and slumped against the wall.

"Bee-sama, you do know that I'm now required to inform Raikage-sama of your actions."

"I'll have her back in the cell in a while," he waved. "Don't get tangled in your knots, I'll keep her low profile."

They were both out before Sôun could give another long suffering sigh.

Her groan echoed through the prison block before it was muffled by a mouthful of bread and buffalo patties.

:: ::

Kumogakure floated on the clouds.

Sakura's gaze flickered at everything she could spot through the low hood and the light rain and saw the dozens of plateaus connected by the bridges that made up the village, all different heights with trees sticking out the sides with swings wrapped around their sturdy branches. She committed everything to memory—she tried—but the smell of something that isn't dust and concrete made her head spin.

But dust and concrete was better than blood.

They crossed to a plateau far from the main districts, raised much higher than most of the other platforms and dotted with steps carved into its side that wind all the way around, narrow and cracked and steeped.

But even as she looked down at the clouds and the endless fall below, all she could think about was the air.

Ame air was always thick with the musk of rainwater and the heat of neon signs. It was a scent of heavy spice from the curry stalls and moss that settles in the cracks and crevices of dark brick and stone. In Konoha, it was an air of green leaves and green tea and green stalks of flowers sold from the Yamanaka Flower Shop—it was an air of sun and sweat, of tree sap and wood work.

Kumo's air was thin like breathing hot air on a cold morning, and it was new.

At the top of their silent climb they stepped onto a mesa with no boundaries and with their clothes soaked from the rain.

Sakura tipped her head back, letting the droplets splatter on her cheeks. Pink hair ran down to just about the middle of her back, and she wondered just how long it had been that it no longer nagged her that it needed to be tied up and out of reach.

But she supposed prisoners had no need for—

The metal bands around her wrists ankles release every last drop of her chakra, and with a face still turned up at the heavens that never smiled at her, she breathed.

And instantly ducked away from the foot careening towards her head.

:: ::

'Gyuu, take a look! She dodged that hook I cooked and there's a fire in her eyes. Makes me wanna check just what she's gonna try.'

The sky rumbled and he grinned as she aimed a kick to his face that he blocked. She used his arms to launch herself behind him to try and snag one of the swords on his back, but a pivot and his elbow was soaring for her stomach. She twisted hard enough that her cloak whipped off and she used the brief distraction to make another grab for a sword at his hip.

"Hey! I ain't gonna let you snatch one a' these," he chided. Bee gripped her hand and chucked her far enough that she slid to a stop just before she could topple off the mesa. "These blades right here you ain't allowed ta' seize!"

"Afraid I'll break them?" she called out as she swiped a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth.

"Afraid you'll bring me ta' tears with a bad form, fool, ya fool!" he laughed. "Konohans don't know how ta' wield a sword if it's the last thing they do, you 'spect me ta' believe what's different's gonna be you?"

Sakura flexed her fingers, all five of them up to count. "If you don't think Konohans are at your level, then how does an Amek compare to a Kumor?"

'She's Amek?' Gyuuki hummed. He plopped his chin on his hand as he watched her through his host's eyes. 'Explains the attitude with the rain. An immigrant to Konoha then, maybe to—oi!'

Bee unsheathed a sword from his back and threw it blade first. She let it pass over her shoulder until the start of the hilt slid just past her peripheral, and her hand came up to lock around the red bandages. Not a goosebump on her skin came from the chilled rain, and he snorted. Definitely an Amek.

He took a single sword for himself.

'...Bee, I want the truth.'

Even with only one arm she held the sword like it was her own, tipped slightly in front of her and knees slightly bent and ready for action.

She lunged. So did he.

'What's on your mind, Gyuu?'

Most of her blocks are in perfect form save for the blows he directed at her left side. She wasn't used to the opening and it was obvious, but her determination made up for it with awkward angles and the way it was like she was meant to carry a blade.

'What are you doing?'

Bee shunshinned behind her and twisted a free hand in her hair while the other pressed sharpened silver against her neck. But just as quick as he trapped her he lost her, and he was left with a dense clump of pink snagged on his calluses as she retreated to the other end of the mesa.

She'd taken the weapon, held it to the base of her skull, and sheared it all the way up.

He blinked, and she sunk into another fighting stance.

The rain pelted harder and the clouds were at their darkest gray, and as the skies filled with lightning, he found himself laughing amongst the thunder claps as he twirled the sword in his hand.

"Let's roll, kid!"

:: ::

'You never answered me,'  Gyuuki said after Bee locked Sakura back in her cell with a dry set of prisoner uniforms and skillfully avoids Sôun to avoid any questions. By night the rain had let up some, but there was no use in getting dry until he got back home. 'You wasted your whole day humoring that little Amek.'

'Little? She's way taller than Enmu!'

'All you humans are insignificant, but that's beside the point!' the beast snapped. 'The girl, Bee! Why did you bring her out of the cell, why did you fight her, why did you lend her one of your swords, why did you bother? Until your brother comes to a decision about them, they're prisoners on death row and shouldn't be treated as comrades. What are you thinking?!'

'Nothin' much.'

'Really?' Gyuuki drawled. 'And what exactly has kept you so occupied that you're forgetting your obligation to your duties?'

Bee walked onto one of the rope bridges that connect plateau to plateau, careful to mind the third step that had never been fixed since the day he broke through it nearly seven years ago while he was running away from A.

'Dunno,' he shrugged. 'Prob'ly the same stuff that got C and Mabui.'

The Hachibi sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. 'Bee—'

But Bee didn't listen, his hands tucked in his pockets and an old tune whistling past his lips. Gyuuki knew he should raise his voice to get his idiot's attention and try to knock some sense into that hollow head of his, but he heard the words that have been rattling around his host's brain since the day he heard it and relented with another loud sigh.

"I really can't keep up with you, Bee-sama."

No Kumor could keep up with their Jinchuuriki Guardian: Killer Bee.

So why did Bee think an Amek in Konohan clothing could?

:: ::

Senju Tsunade was the Fifth Hokage and she couldn't give any less of a damn about what everyone else thought about it even if she tried.

She spent her days in her office with a bottle of sake on her desk and a sharp tongue to lash if anyone came to her with stupid shit laced on their tongues. Hell, she'd already garnered a reputation of an iron fist after reducing an incompetent nurse to tears with a single sentence and demolishing a wall of the hospital when they couldn't make up their minds about costs of expansion and filling her ears with useless whines and drivel.

But currently, the one thing that pissed her off to no end lay on her desk. Six broken pens piled up by her chair and her assistant, one Kato Shizune, stood just out of range of the Hokage's blast zone as she clutched Tonton close to her chest.

Three stacks of paper were stacked heavy beside her desk and ten more smaller stacks sat innocently around her work space.

"Why is there so much paperwork today?" she managed out of ground teeth.

"It's, uh, Tsu-Tsunade-sama, the system these papers go through is a long process and only now have all of these been approved for you to read and sign, and ah! Tsunade-sama! We just got that desk yesterday!"

"Get me the dumbasses in charge of this useless ass system right now!" she demanded, a fist through her brand new desk. Shizune quickly bowed and sprinted from the office without a second to spare as pages flew all around her.

And somewhere, buried under stacks and stacks of papers and folders and staples, there was an unread report from a mission assigned over five months prior.

:: ::

In February We've Lost a Home

:: ::

A sat facing the windows, his office empty save for the steaming cup of tea on his desk and the completed stack of paperwork just waiting to be picked up by the errand boy that would come by in a few hours. His head rested in his palm and his fingers curled against his goatee.

It was a nice day out.

And he was pretty sure those Konoha chuunin were enjoying it just as much as the next Kumo citizen.

He tipped his head back to rest against the couch, eyes on the wooden ceiling.

He wanted to hate what's been happening. He wanted to bark at his shinobi and his assistant and his brother for what they were doing—taking the prisoners without his permission and-and treating them like were one of their own? Absurd! Especially since they were that damn Konoha lot who couldn't be trusted no matter how much they preached about peace and unity and teamwork.

A scoffed. Teamwork? Unity? Tell that to the Uchiha and the Senju that built up that village starting from a single plank, but could never again come together for that peace.

The prisoners should already be dead; they were forcefully sealed (he swallowed a grimace and shoved off the sympathy that crawled over his shoulders) and squeezed dry of anything useful.

He was going to have the Aburame killed first but C had snatched him up and thrust him into Cirrus Central Hospital hoping for a cure for the overworked medics and, well, it worked. A was hesitant to admit it, but the boy was sufficiently trained and had once sewn up a patient with a pack of floss and a senbon when his chakra was no longer at his disposal, both intriguing the other medics and giving C a heart attack at the crude, effective method of surgery.

And that wasn't even mentioning the reports he'd been receiving from the Seals Division had been filled with glowing praise for "the kid prodigy Kiba from the same border town as Cirrus' new medic that Mabui brought along" who never followed the rules of step-by-step seal solving and rattled off the most bizarre theories that he gestured with fanged grins and poster-sized papers filled with his evidence.

Akamaru is such a great addition to the team too, a Seals Decryptor once wrote, like a mascot, almost! I think the stress levels in the department have gone down having him come along.

Then came the whispers of Killer Bee's new sparring partner: a Sakura with pink hair that could match him blow for blow and always got back up even after accidentally getting tossed off one of the village's sparring plateaus. Rumor has it that she'd climbed all the way back up with her one arm and two feet until she'd hauled herself to the top three hours later, sweat blinding her eyes and her fist held up to keep fighting.

He wanted to hate them. Wanted them locked back where no one knew who they were and regarded like the enemies they should be.

He raised his head back up and watched some of the citizens hanging around the bridges as he leaned forward against his thighs.

He wanted to hate them, but he remembered Kumogakure was built by the hands of runaways taken in by wandering monks until they were old enough to wander themselves. With no one to meet and nowhere for home, they walked until they found an abandoned shrine at the base of a mountain and built up.

And since then, they welcomed all with no family and no place and promised to have all of that in the clouds, in Kumogakure.

He sighed. Or at least, it was how the legend went and why most of the Kumor never had a surname.

A saw heads of all colors, skins of all colors, backgrounds of all colors traversing the streets and sharing laughs and words like they've never known what it meant to be a stranger.

It had been five months since three kids and a nin-dog had been captured on the borders of Lightning Country with the headbands of a village that never came for them stuffed deep at the bottom of one of their bags.

A stood and dug out an execution form from one of the cabinets. There was no date or official stamp, but the names had been printed on a long time ago.

Inuzuka Kiba. Akamaru. Aburame Shino. Sakura.

Of Konohagakure.

He crumpled the paper in one hand and let it roll into the trash.

A wanted to hate them, but he didn't.

:: ::

Izumo diligently sorted through an entire binder of cleared mission reports to store down in the Archives. Kotetsu had managed to skip out of this particular job, much to his grumpy displeasure, but his partner promised to get them take out from that soba stall on the other side of town and he couldn't find it in himself to complain too much.

Some of the missions and reports weren't too bad to read through and the grumbling ones from the shinobi attending D-ranks got a little snort out of him every now and again. Genin complaining about getting cats out of trees? Precious.

The last report he had was stuffed in a slim folder with no note on the tab, so he flipped it open to check the date and ranking.

He stopped at the sight of the face of Kotetsu's student staring blankly at him, a red MIA stamped across her picture. The next page, Tsume's son. MIA. His nin-dog partner. MIA. Next page, Shibi's heir. MIA.

At the ends of their profiles: PRESUMED DECEASED.

"Shit," he whispered in the dim light of the Archives. He could already see the look on Kotetsu's face when he hears the news; the red-rimmed eyes and the slack jaw and the way he'll disappear for a few days when he finds out that...

Izumo snapped the folder shut and drew in a deep breath and morbidly, he thought,

'Unlucky Eight, huh?'

:: ::

Enmu Sôun is another beautiful OC of croquasari on tumblr!

:: ::

And we end with some awesome art by

clowncunt on tumblr!

emotaco101 on tumblr!

small-lizards-art on tumblr!

prikachuu on instagram!

a moodboard by emilyjustleft!

and a cover by teardroppop!