Flying was something he felt he was reasonably good at. A couple of times when he'd had trouble getting to sleep, he'd taken to the skies over Konohagakure - just heading straight up and through the wards that had been erected around the village. He'd stayed there for a little while, looking down at the lights amongst the darkness. That light over there, that was his apartment. That light there - the Hokage tower. That light there - that had been Ichiraku's. At the distance he'd been, it had been almost like a little constellation to match the stars overhead.
It had actually brought home to him how fragile his village was, those little points of light surrounded by dark.
He had to close his eyes though, paying attention to the spheres and only opening his eyes again when the he'd had to take a break from monitoring his Wide Area Search as it went along.
About fifteen minutes in, he startled in mid-air, looked for Kakashi-sensei and decided he needed to drop in. But not directly. No point in making things easy when he could be flashy.
Sasuke Uchiha was used to being cool. Aloof. Vengeance-obsessed. Supremely competent.
Envious? No, that was not a common thing for him.
He walked near Tazuna's position, keeping an eye to the sides as they went. A flash of a now-familiar yellow as something shot past them going about as fast as a spooked rabbit.
"What's he doing?" asked Kakashi.
Sasuke glanced at his sensei, wondering what he meant.
"Those search spheres are passing our position faster," said Sakura. She shifted her stance, moving into a position Sasuke recognized as readying her forearm-gun. "Someone's coming!"
Sasuke dropped into a crouch, his kunai held ready. Though he could admit, if just to himself, that he wanted a forearm blaster too.
"Fast!" said Sakura, vaguely alarmed for a moment. "It's oh. It's just Naruto. He's coming up from the rear. Altitude five feet, speed 320kph."
Kakashi blinked at that. Maybe if they had courier duty ever assigned to them, he could hand it off to Naruto and let him deal with it.
"Duck!" called out Sakura.
"Where?" asked Sasuke before Kakashi was suddenly behind him and pushing him down.
There was a blur as Naruto tried to slow and stop and didn't do as good a job at that sort of task as at the low-altitude speed thing.
"I can see where some time flight training is going to have to be scheduled," said Kakashi drily.
Sasuke allowed his annoyance to show at the 'dead last' of his class nearly colliding into him with that sort of force.
"Sorry, Kakashi-sensei," said Naruto, "I thought you ought to know though. Some guy in a mask was going along our path, about half a kilometer that way."
"He still there?" asked Sakura.
"Don't know, sorry," said Naruto. "He spotted my spheres and threw some sort of jutsu - disrupting it. I'm trying to use my remaining spheres to watch the area he's in."
"Describe this mask," said Kakashi, apparently completely unconcerned.
"Uhm, hang on," said Naruto, focussing and causing another orb to form in midair, and then an image to appear in it.
"Ah," said Kakashi, adding this to the "genin can be useful things" folder of tricks to keep in mind. If only he could learn that and then use those around certain bathing areas and such. "Looks like a Hunter-Nin from the Land of Water. What would someone like that be doing around here?"
"Well, the Land Of Waves is located between Water and Fire," noted Tazuna as he studied the image.
"Hmmm," said Kakashi, considering their client.
Neji Hyuga was calm, cool, collected. On the outside.
On the inside, however, he was livid. Pissed. Annoyed. Ready to hurt someone.
On the plus side, he was a guy. 100%.
On the minus side, he had apparently been under a genjutsu in which he had transformed physically and then mentally into a girl. And done his hair up with ribbons. And flounced and skipped.
Who could have done it? Naruto Uzumaki was the number one hyperactive knucklehead ninja who could have done so - but apparently was out of town on a mission with Team 7. Neji was also told, in no uncertain terms, that Naruto was HOPELESS at genjutsu. That if it were possible to recieve a negative skill rating in genjutsu, Naruto would have managed it. This also let Rock Lee off the suspect list.
So, whoever had done this to him was a) very good at genjutsu, b) either had something against him personally or the Hyuga in general.
Putting the two together, Neji was able to come up with... nothing. At least nobody OF Konoha. While there might be many who held grudge against the Hyuga for any number of reasons, real or imagined, that level of skill was beyond any save a very very few.
There really was only one candidate whom he knew of that had the skill necessary to fool even the Byakugan. So he'd keep an eye on Kurenai Yuhi and see what grudge she might have against the Hyuga clan despite taking that failure of a Main Family member under her wing.
Unless.
Unless it was BECAUSE she'd taken Hinata under her wing? Could it be the forbidden love between an older teacher and her impressionable (and weak) student?
This would take looking into.
Haku frowned as one of the yellow orbs moved through the trees.
When he'd seen the first one go shooting past, he'd been alarmed - that perhaps his shadowing of the group had been detected.
That first sphere had shot past him, stopped, then come back. Which was all he really needed to see He use senbon with an explosive tag wrapped around it. That the explosion had been so big and shot through with lightning had pretty much qualified it as Dangerous.
The team had looked like genin from what he could make out from the tracks, except one of the kids (a couple years younger than him) seemed to vanish for a long period. When he'd investigated their campsite, he'd found a peculiar spiral shape sketched into the ground several times. He thought it looked familiar, but best to check with Zabuza on it before coming to a conclusion. Then there was this strange jutsu. It had acted as if someone was controlling it, which meant that someone was considerable. Then there was one of the other genin's footprints. The tread was unfamiliar and pressed heavily into the ground. Female, possibly chunin age or around his own age. Female, judging from the slight arch look. An inconsequential genin, a kid who vanished, a jonin, the bridge-builder, and a female chunin.
The priority right now was to reach Zabuza with this information. Getting close was entirely too dangerous with this many unknowns.
Sasuke was irritated. He didn't even know for sure why.
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(Posted Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:18)
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