[Episode 147057] [Episode 147057]The wind was blowing fast from the north, carrying bitterly cold air along with it. The temperatures made the rain freeze in the air; it was more like hail. This was winter, surely, and by the calendar.
Few would brave this sort of weather to journey outdoors. One such person was a young woman of seventeen years, who was headed to the administration building on a summons.
She knew she was about to be sent on a mission, and with the awful weather Konoha had been battling for the past week, she expected it would be equally horrid. ANBU-AS missions were never pleasant or easy: they almost always involved killing people, and the odds of death were great.
Hyuuga Hinata had never expected to be recruited to the ANBU-Assassination Squad. Her basic physical abilities and combat skills were nothing special; she was poor in the Hyuuga Gentle Fist, which was very bad because her year-older cousin Neji looked to become the strongest Hyuuga ever, and her five-years younger sister Hanabi would be in the same league; she wasn’t a genius like her academy classmate Nara Shikamaru; and she knew no ninja arts (ninjutsu) of great power or utility.
So when she was contacted, it came as a surprise. However, once their reasoning had been explained, it was obvious. Hinata could fade into the background like almost no other ninja of her age or rank and few Leaf ninja overall, and that skill was well-suited to AS missions. Her missions consisted of killing civilians in business or government who were either enemies or antagonists of the Leaf, or had obtained information they were not meant to possess. It was a disgusting job which she hated, but she did it well.
When you’ve never been highly regarded in your life, you take whatever sort of high regard you can get.
She didn’t know where she’d be going or who she’d have to kill on this mission, if indeed she’d have to kill anyone, which she nearly always did. She never killed two people in a row by the same method or in the same industry or in the same territory or governmental position. She never left incriminating evidence behind either, and none of her kills had ever come close to being solved – some of them weren’t even known to have been murders.
What she did know was that Tsunade had made curious comments to her after almost every one of her missions – testing her, she supposed. The Fifth Hokage was sometimes regarded (by less-than-charitable supporters) as having been the weak link of The Three, but Hinata knew that was utter garbage. Orochimaru and Jiraiya *might* have been more feared as combatants, although Tsunade’s combat powers in her prime were terrible enough to fight against; Hinata knew perfectly well that Tsunade *knew things* in ways that neither of her male teammates had achieved. Orochimaru had conducted horrible experiments, often on living subjects, to gain most of his knowledge; it was why he was an S-rank criminal. Tsunade…well, Hinata was simply aware that Tsunade was much, much more than she appeared.
Hinata had been part of ANBU-AS for three years, since only days after she’d made chuunin. The organization had apparently been waiting for her promotion to recruit her; they had watched her for some time previous. For most of her time, she’d worked in a five-member “team”, although that term was only for form. Her missions were virtually always conducted alone. The other four members of her “team” were all jounin, and all were at least ten years older than her.
The frozen rain bit at her as she walked. The temperature was a horrid minus-30 degrees Centigrade, and the wind was blowing at sixty-five kilometers per hour (~40mph). It wasn’t enough to blow her off her feet, but it was powerful enough that she’d long since decided emitting chakra through the soles of her feet as a brace was a good idea. This was easily the worst weather she could remember in her lifetime. She wondered if it was the worst weather on record, and decided that if it was not, she would not have liked to be around for whatever was even worse.
She knew that in the Lightning Country, far to the north and east, the temperature was usually horrendously cold all year. There were five great countries: Fire, Wind, Earth, Water, and Lightning. Konoha – the Leaf – was in Fire Country. Hidden Sand was in the Wind Country. Hidden Stone was in the Earth Country. Hidden Cloud was in the Lightning Country. And Hidden Mist was in the Water Country. There were four other minor hidden villages: Rain, Waterfall, Grass, and Sound, but none of them had leaders like the Kage’s. And Hidden Sound was Orochimaru’s creation, which made it largely a sham.
Hidden Sand were strong allies to the Leaf, although there was still tension. Hidden Stone were not enemies, but they were not truly allies: they and the Leaf simply didn’t attack one another. Hidden Mist were roughly like Hidden Stone. Hidden Cloud…well, they *might* have been allies but they were the one village Hinata wanted to watch as the entire thing burned to the ground. Hinata hated them all, and there were reasons for that hatred, none of which she liked to think about.
Hidden Sound was obviously an enemy. And the three minor hidden villages were too minor to be able to afford bad relations with any of the five big villages. Hinata was not of high enough rank to know if there were any other minor settlements on the rise. Rain, Waterfall, and Grass had all sent ninja to her first chuunin exam. It was the first of two – when she wasn’t promoted first time out, she waited two years to try again.
It was an idea which paid off. Her second exam had taken place in Hidden Stone village. She had breezed through the written first test. The second test involved finding a particular object hidden in the mountains which made up most of Earth Country. Hinata’s had been a very small clay pot. The Byakugan had proven invaluable, for the pot had been buried and the area heavily booby-trapped. Skill with the Byakugan and skill with the Gentle Fist were not mutually inclusive: the latter implied the former but as in Hinata’s case, the former did not imply the latter.
Hinata’s sole match in the final round of fights had been against a thirteen year-old girl from Hidden Mist, whom she injured only enough for the referee to stop the match and award Hinata the victory. Her victory in the final round, quick success at the second test, and high score on the written exam proved enough to secure a promotion.
And she was recruited into ANBU-AS within a week of returning to Konoha. Now, three years later, she stood in front of the doors to the administration building. Once she entered, she would have to find Tsunade. That would be difficult, but, as it always had, the Byakugan would probably be invaluable.
Improper though it was, Tsunade had been Hinata’s main sounding board in the last three years. Hinata didn’t like discussing any of her missions with her ANBU “teammates”; she didn’t know more than two or three other ANBU members and was only close with one; Hanabi was too much younger and too much stronger to be concerned with Hinata’s own issues; Neji was too busy as one of the Leaf’s highest-ranking jounin; and her father Hiashi had the emotional resonance of a rock. Even though her father had long-since apologized for the way he’d treated her before Neji nearly killed her in her first chuunin exam, she was still not close to the man and would likely never be. And she only had a few other options for sounding boards she might have been comfortable with: her genin teammates Inuzuka Kiba and Aburame Shino, her former jounin instructor Yuuhi Kurenai, and…Uzumaki Naruto, the one she’d have preferred.
But none of them were available. She hadn’t seen Naruto in almost five years, not since about a week after he and the group returned from the failed mission to retrieve Uchiha Sasuke. Kiba had virtually no spare energy to talk as he used all of it in combat at the academy, either in instructing academy students in basic taijutsu or serving as a sparring partner and opponent for senior chuunin and jounin who practiced violent, unarmed taijutsu styles. Shino was an ANBU member, but in IS (Interrogation Squad) instead of Hinata’s own Assassination Squad (AS). And Kurenai was dead. She had been killed while on a mission collecting information about likely Akatsuki informants. It was theorized she’d stumbled on something of great importance and been killed when the group found out her location. But no one knew anything for sure. She’d simply stopped meeting her contact, and no corpse had ever been recovered. It was almost certain that none ever would.
Shoving those thoughts from her mind, Hinata pushed the front door of the administration building open and rushed inside, letting it close behind her. She stepped into the entryway and waited for security to finish clearing her. This was one of the more annoying parts of the frequent forays into the main office; it always seemed to take an age. Hinata hated the waiting, because she was always stuck thinking about what the next bit of unpleasantness she’d be assigned would be. They seemed, to her, to get more and more horrible as time went on.
Security cleared her just then. Five steps ahead, she activated her Byakugan and began reading chakra signatures all over the building. As expected: no instant detection of Tsunade. She would be cloaking herself somehow. Mentally, she made the switch from chakra sight to X-ray vision and began scanning rooms as she walked.
Five minutes later she finished the ground floor. No sighting.
Within an hour she’d finished the building. Nothing. So, either Tsunade wasn’t even in the building, or she knew of and could defeat the X-ray vision *and* the chakra sight of the Byakugan. Hinata switched to a wide-area passive chakra scan. She waited. Nothing.
So, it was now feasible that Tsunade could defeat the ranged chakra scans. Or, she was out of Hinata’s range. That was possible: Hinata’s range was only four-fifths of a kilometer (half a mile). Her father’s was 1.6km (one mile), but Hinata knew that her father didn’t have near her own precision, so she felt it worked out better for her.
This was problematic. Walking around all of Konoha would take a long time, and the weather was not exactly inviting. And it wouldn’t necessarily provide answers. The major questions being, how much about the Byakugan did Tsunade actually know, and who fucked up to allow her that knowledge?
Hinata hoped, for one shining moment of sadism, that she could pin it on her father.
She then felt a strong flare of chakra right in front of her. And she thought, “fuck.”
She turned off the Byakugan. Tsunade. Well, that figured.
Tsunade glared down at her – Hinata was one of the few adult ninja of chuunin or greater rank whom she was taller than – and in a condescending voice said, “Genjutsu. Study it more, or die on a mission. Don’t choose the latter.”
Typical Tsunade-style scolding, Hinata thought.
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(Posted Sat, 22 Oct 2005 19:16)
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