"Kazekage-sama, there's been another attack!"
Gaara stood abruptly, indicating that his meeting with the Jounin commander was over. "What has happened?"
The brunette Chuunin in front of him looked downright terrified to be in his presence. "It- it's Kankuro-san." She ducked her head to avoid eye contact. "He was found outside of the diplomatic suites and taken to the hospital. He's not entirely coherent, but-"
With a whoosh, Gaara was striding down the hall. "What about the girl he was with," he demanded briskly.
"Ah, girl? There was no one else," she said uncertainly. Baki scowled at her, and she cringed away, hugging closer to the wall while she trotted behind her kage.
"I see." Gaara's face may as well have been carved from stone. "You there," he ordered to his guards. "Go to the third floor of the diplomatic suites and investigate. Don't disturb anything you find, but I want a full write-up." Then he turned back to the Chuunin. "Take me to my brother."
Shizune outright cursed when the door to the operation room was flung open with a bang, wiping a bit of sweat from her forehead with a wrist. "This is a delicate procedure," she protested, swiveling to see exactly who had disturbed her work.
She didn't appear intimidated in the slightest by the sight of the Kazekage himself.
"Get out of my operation room, now," she snapped, turning back to the wan form being held down by two nurses. "This is a nasty poison, and-"
"Wait," Kankuro gasped, eyes flickering open. "S'at you, Gaara?"
"I'm here," his younger brother replied softly. "What happened?"
Fevered as he was, it was hard to tell if the violent way the puppet user shook his head was purposeful or reflexive. "P-puppet master," he forced out, teeth chattering. "Tricked me with a dead nurse. Took Aiko. Wanted you to come after her."
The bowl Shizune was holding dropped in shock, shattering on the tiled floor. Her face was pale.
"Are you sure?" she asked quietly.
Kankuro nodded his head with visible effort, fighting shudders. "Didn't hurt her," he added, sounding strangely grumpy. "She was high enough that she saw a nurse and went along willingly."
The medic nin who had prescribed the drugs Aiko had been on looked nauseous.
"I'll take care of it," Gaara promised seriously. He laid a hand on Kankuro's shoulder. "Thank you, brother." Then he directed his gaze to Shizune. "Will he recover?"
"Er- yes," she forced out, swallowing hard. "Provided I get this poison extracted as soon as possible. I'm not as talented with this jutsu as Tsunade-sama is, so I really need to get to work."
"Of course," Gaara demurred, giving a long glance at his brother's pained expression.
"It hasn't had time to spread, so it shouldn't take me long," she soothed. "Just wait outside, okay?"
Nurses hurried by, giving awed and frightened glances at the section of hallway that their Kazekage and the Jounin commander were leaned up against, along with one frightened-looking Chuunin messenger.
Baki gave a heavy sigh that rustled the cloth hanging over half his face. "I don't like waiting like this," he rumbled softly. "We have to make an attempt to get that girl back. Our treaty agreement with Konoha-"
"I know that, and I will not leave her," Gaara interrupted quietly. "The doctor assured us that this operation will not take long. We should gather all the information possible before setting out on such a venture."
He gave the younger man a long, evaluative look. Then Baki snorted. "You've gone soft," he accused fondly. "You can just admit that you want to be sure your brother is alright."
In lieu of answer, Gaara turned his face away to signal the conversation was over. They waited in silence for another ten minutes before the door creaked open.
"You can come in now," the Konoha medic-nin called quietly, eyes tired and shoulders slumping. Her two assistants hurried out, but she lingered when Gaara strode into the room to examine his brother. "I wouldn't talk to him for long," she cautioned. "He'll need to get to sleep soon to fight off any lingering effects."
Considering the state he had been in only half an hour before, Kankuro looked surprisingly good. His hair was still plastered to his face with sweat and already smeared facial paint was a grey mess, but his vitals had improved and his eyes were more alert.
"I'm glad to see you so improved."
Kankuro rolled his eyes fondly and scrunched up his nose. "That's because you didn't see what they did. I think that hurt worse than the poison."
"Well, don't get poisoned again," Gaara pointed out sensibly. His brother made a mock surprised face, as if the idea had never occurred to him.
"What happened to Aiko? Have you figured out who took her?"
Baki and Gaara exchanged a look. "We were hoping you could help us with that," the older man explained with a visible frown. While they talked, Shizune was washing her hands vigorously at the small sink and occasionally glancing over warily.
The bedridden teen groaned. "No clue, sorry," he admitted honestly. "It was definitely a puppet user." Then he shuddered. "A creepy one. One who used a corpse. Do you remember that pretty nurse who we got to help us get Aiko settled in?"
Gaara winced.
"Yeah, that about sums it up," Kankuro agreed glumly. "Whoever it was, he was hidden well. Maybe it was a genjutsu, or maybe he was never in the room. I was stupid," he admitted. "I saw a familiar face and I let my guard down. He hit me once and had the girl jab me with a needle, and I was down for the count. Corpse-nurse slung Aiko over her shoulder, said something dramatic in a man's voice about you coming to rescue her personally, and trotted out the door."
Though her back was turned away from the group, Shizune's flinch was visible.
If he'd had eyebrows, they would have been drawn inwards. "She didn't resist?" Gaara's tone was a little incredulous. Aiko just didn't seem like the type to take that lying down.
"That's my fault," Shizune said miserably, turning to face the group. "After I did the major surgery, I knew we wouldn't be able to get to the follow-up appointment before she woke up. Not with how many injuries we had coming in. So I gave her a massive prescription of painkillers so at least she wasn't going to feel anything. If she's even awake, Aiko won't be in any state to do so much as make a bunshin."
"You couldn't have known," Kankuro muttered a little bitterly. "I fucked up just as much, probably more."
"As productive as this line of discussion is," Baki interrupted dryly, "Perhaps we should determine our next course of action. It seems that we don't have much choice. We have to send a team after the girl."
"He demanded me personally," Gaara pointed out mildly. "He may well kill her immediately if he sees anyone else."
"We can't send the Kazekage," Baki argued. "What will the people think?"
"Yes," a high voice agreed, "What will they think?"
Kankuro sunk down into his bedcovers, clearly not delighted about having the two honored siblings in his sickroom. Elder Chiyo didn't seem to care one whit for his comfort, clacking in and giving Shizune a nasty scowl. Her brother meekly followed at her heels.
"Why don't we just cut out the middleman and tie you up before we toss you over the wall," she snarked unpleasantly. "After all, we have such an excellent track record with losing Kazekage when they wander off to confront mysterious persons. Why not go for three in a row?"
The two Jounin Gaara had sent to investigate the room where the fight had happened appeared in a shunshin flicker, kneeling at his side. The room was getting rather crowded.
"The people will think," Gaara enunciated seriously, "That it is my responsibility as Kazekage to ensure the safety of my people and our alliances. They will know that Uzumaki Aiko is largely responsible for curtailing the destruction when we were invaded. Suna does not leave her allies to die alone."
Her lip curled, but Chiyo didn't have a reply for that. It was hard to make one that didn't claim Suna had no reason to fulfill the terms of treaties they made. That was obviously an unwise argument to make with foreign nin in the room. "Fine then, pup," she said finally, turning to leave. "Don't die so soon."
The two Jounin who had come to report exchanged looks. One managed to protest, "Surely you would have won without Konoha's assistance, Kazekage-sama," before ducking his head when Gaara looked directly at him. Firsthand reports had been vague, since very few nin had been close at that point. Most of them had been participating in the evacuation of the civilians and young trainees, or in hiding themselves under orders. Very few could hope to interfere in a fight with a shinobi who could tax the abilities of their Kage. But none of those vague reports had given too much credit to the girl. Some claimed that Gaara had finished the intruder with a sand coffin, other claimed it had been the Jounin commander who had beheaded the scum. The general consensus was that the girl had merely come up with a plan to get the intruder within reach of their Kazekage.
"No," Gaara said quietly. "I do not believe that I would have."
And that was that. If the Kazekage claimed this girl had saved Suna, they couldn't leave her without losing honor. Especially not when she had been taken from under their noses.
Without another word, Gaara set off for the village gates. With the exception of Kankuro and the Elders, the rest of the assembled shinobi trailed after him like ducklings. "Baki, can I leave the village in your hands for now?"
"Of course," his old teacher nodded.
"Thank you."
"There's a group incoming!" shouted one of the gate guards, hand over her eye. That wasn't strictly procedure, but to be fair everyone was a bit on edge.
With the way the last few days had been going, the assembled shinobi jumped to the conclusion that this was another assault. They tensed in the long seconds before the first face became visible- and then relaxed as one.
"That's Temari," Baki breathed with a faint smile. "Bout time, girl."
"Naruto," Gaara said unnecessarily. For once, he didn't seem pleased to see his friend. Actually… he looked a bit tense and ashamed while the group came to stop. Nonetheless, he gamely strode out to meet them, maroon fabric fluttering behind him in the wind. Naruto's attention instantly latched onto him.
"Gaara!" He practically threw himself at his fellow jinchuuriki. "We brought back Temari! Why do you have Aiko?"
"Strictly speaking, we don't," Shizune muttered glumly.
It hadn't been intended to draw attention, but nonetheless she had it. The entire group of newcomers seemed focused on her.
"What are you talking about," Naruto's old teacher demanded. Shizune looked a bit discomfited at being the sudden center of attention, so Gaara stepped forward with a hand raised.
"This is my fault," he admitted quietly. "She's been taken out of the village by the partner of the man who she helped me kill two days ago."
Oddly, that statement didn't seem to clear things up.
"What the hell are you talking about," the Uchiha who Temari seemed to find so interesting demanded crossly.
He realized for the first time that his hawk-carried messages to Konoha must have reached them after this group had departed. Well. That didn't make things any easier. "She appeared to help," he began delicately, (ignoring the way that the Uchiha muttered to Naruto 'appeared, there's that euphemism again, does everyone think we're stupid?'), "shortly after Suna was assaulted by Akatsuki. With her assistance, we managed to kill one of them after he had done quite a bit of damage. His partner ran away, and we thought he had left entirely. It appears that we were wrong. He must have hidden within Suna and managed to find where Aiko was convalescing."
At that point, Naruto interrupted in a suspiciously high tone, "Convalescing? Why was Aiko convalescing? Is she okay?"
"She'll be fine," Shizune assured quietly, rubbing at his back. "She's heavily sedated, but the reconstruction went as well as could be imagined."
That was where Kakashi and Sasuke seemed to blanch, though Naruto took the comfort for what it was and focused on something else. "Akatsuki, huh," he said quietly. "So… this was about you, then. They came to take you, and they're using Aiko as bait."
Gaara inclined his head. "An accurate assessment," he agreed quietly. "I was told to come alone. I am about to depart now. Please, wait for me here."
"Are you kidding?" Naruto demanded, aghast. "Why would you do what he says? You must be nuts if you think I'm not coming with you. That's my sister we're talking about. You wouldn't leave Temari behind, so don't tell me not to come with you for Aiko."
"This is my responsibility as Kazekage," he argued just as fervently. "She was under my protection, and-"
"She's a Konoha nin," Sasuke pointed out sharply. "You can't stop us from going after her. Give it up already. You're stuck with us. She's our responsibility too."
Baki rolled his eyes, clearly tired of all the drama. No one else seemed to share his sentiments.
'Perhaps it would be worth the risk of killing her to have some peace of mind,' Sasori thought rather uncharitably. The girl slung over the back of his most recent corpse puppet just wouldn't shut up for long. Where are we going, can I see Shizune, I feel sick can we slow down, blah, blah, blah.
He had been lucky in that she was so drugged that she honestly thought anything strange she perceived was the result of her state of mind and not an indication that she should be concerned. It had kept her mostly quiet while they passed through Suna and went directly over their pathetic walls.
Unfortunately, the drugs that had been pumped into his current companion by some kind soul who had cared more for pain relief than cognitive function also made it very dangerous for him to use one of his own sedatives on her to shut her up and put her out. He would end up killing her eventually in any case, but she was much more useful to him today alive than dead. He could always control the Kazekage's actions by threatening to kill his captive, but Sasori could hardly un-kill her if he turned out to need her alive later. His plan included having her as a mitigating factor and a shield of sorts between him and that damnable sand. That awful stuff got everywhere in his poor puppet joints. It was part of why he'd never come back to this hellhole.
Aiko sniffed unhappily. Nurse-chan hadn't readjusted her at all since flinging her over a shoulder what must have been at least an hour or two ago, and said shoulder was digging painfully into her gut, which seemed to make breathing even harder. Not even chakra healing could totally mitigate whatever had happened to her side in that fight against Deidara with just a single session. Her hip was stiff, and the skin felt stretched and painful around the joint and a little ways down her leg.
Even for a drug-induced hallucination, this was strange. It had gotten awfully dull, too. What kind of drug trip was dreaming about looking at sand pass under her forever? Her neck was starting to hurt from hanging down. This couldn't be proper medical procedure.
"I must be a really boring person," she mused. Nurse-chan made no response, mechanically running over dunes towards a destination she apparently didn't feel like sharing.
Something about the situation was really tugging for her attention, but it was hard to focus through the fog in her mind competing with the pain in her heavy limbs.
She frowned. That was it. Something about that last bit was important.
'Pain,' she realized. 'If I hurt, doesn't that mean the drugs are wearing off?'
Uncertainly, she raised her head from the sand passing underneath nurse-chan's feet and bent backwards a little bit to stare at the quickly receding skyline of Suna and the shimmering heat wave that had been following nurse-chan for quite a while.
She'd figured that part had to be a hallucination. She didn't smell a person there at all… though Nurse-chan was starting to get decidedly rank.
A chill fluttered up her spine.
'I think I know what that smell is,' she realized dully. 'That's meat starting to spoil.' Aiko swallowed a bit of bile, no small feat when hanging upside down and in constant jerky motion.
"Finally coming to, are you?"
That voice was definitely not coming from her friend the nurse. It never had been. That meant she was pressed up to a corpse. A quickly decaying corpse. A feeling like spiders crawled all over her skin, and she struggled frenetically to be released. Obligingly, nurse-chan stopped and heaved her onto the sand. She yelped at the impact. It was relatively soft to the touch, but it was burning hot and it hurt the uncovered flesh on her legs and arms. With a quiet whumph, the woman who had been carrying her collapsed like a puppet with cut strings… probably because that was exactly what she was.
"I had been growing weary of dragging that carcass around, but it seemed to soothe your idiotic whining. No need for that any longer. There is no one here to hear you."
The shimmer she now recognized as a sign of a genjutsu being impacted by glittering bits of sand in the sun disappeared. What it left was decidedly less ethereal. In fact, it was pretty damn sturdy looking. She'd never seen anything like it, but Aiko knew what it was.
'Sasori,' she realized, feeling sick. The thought that immediately followed was, 'Oh fuck, I've been kidnapped. I'm that girl. I'm 'Rescue me Daphne.'' She pictured it- and blanched, realizing that with her current outfit- "I even have red hair and a purple dress," she wailed. Goddamnit!
The bulky puppet seemed to stare. "You are impressively deranged," Sasori said after a long silence. "Luckily, your obvious deficiencies will seem much less apparent when you are under my power. You should be grateful."
Aiko blinked warily. He seemed to be waiting for her to ask. "Uh, why should I be grateful?" she asked awkwardly. 'Play along with the crazy person for now.'
The situation didn't look to be in her favor for an outright battle, after all. She was severely weakened from a major healing and over a day and a half of bedrest and no food (judging by the skyline), still not in her right mind after being drugged, and completely unarmed. Her best option was probably to play along and see what happened. After all, she was relatively certain that someone would be coming for her.
Even if she hadn't had faith that Tsunade had the sense to know something was wrong when she never returned, now that she could feel her chakra again Aiko could sense the distant siren song of her Hiraishin seals. They were scarily faint, though. She couldn't be more than two hours or so away from Gaara, but his tag felt as distant as it had when she'd been in Konoha. Using it would be incredibly difficult. Of course… it was also very close to her other two tags. Her team had come for her. With them so close and her chakra so hard to access, it may just be most intelligent to wait for them to show up and not risk a dangerous Hiraishin.
Best not to tell the lunatic that, though.
"You will receive the honor of becoming one of my tools when the Kazekage comes to fight, of course," said nutjob replied blandly.
Aiko blanched. That was fucking creepy.
"You mean… like her?" She sort of flinched/ gestured in the direction of the medic nin corpse, doing her best to prop herself up on the sand so she felt less like a broken doll splayed on the ground.
'Okay, now would be a great time for someone to show up to rescue poor limp-legged Daphne. I didn't realize they were this slow.' She paused, and internally corrected, 'Poor beautiful, limp-legged Daphne who can't be blamed for this at all.'
Sasori scoffed, curling a wooden tail through searing hot sand in agitation. "Hardly. No, that corpse had not been prepared so that I could use it for anything but basic movement. If you aren't too damaged in the fight, I will use a special technique I have developed to ensure I can make use of your chakra enhanced abilities. If you killed Deidara, you may not be completely worthless. The Kazekage will be a better trophy, but I can always add to my collection as a thank you for ridding me of that incompetent fool."
She recoiled, strangely indignant about being an afterthought to Gaara. "I'm not a consolation prize," she protested crossly, managing a more dignified position that was at least sitting up with her knees splayed. "I would be a fucking awesome puppet!"
Then she thought about what she was arguing.
'Maybe that's not the best position to take. In fact, fuck waiting for the boys to get here and save me. This guy is dangerously crazy.'
"Anyway, I have a better idea. How about we don't do that?" she asked awkwardly. Aiko hated backtracking rhetorically, but the last argument just hadn't been a winner.
Sasori just gave her a look like she was an idiot.
She waved her hands and gave him an apologetic smile. "Not that it isn't every girl's dream to become a puppet slave, but this is all just happening so fast. I'm going to have to back out."
Instead of verbally replying, he moved to backhand her with his wooden tail. Reflexively, she deflected it with a chakra chain that sliced a chunk right out of his puppet. If puppets could have shell-shocked expressions, Sasori might just have right then.
'Hey, my chakra is working regularly,' she noted with some cheer. That brought a good thought. "Bye bitch, I'm out," she chirped (already picturing how hilarious his expression would be when she disappeared), waving at him before yanking furiously on the loudest signal.
Sasori of the Red Sand took a moment to close his eyes, count to three to soothe his already-strained nerves, and then opened them again. The girl was still gone. "Like a mirage," he mused. "Perhaps she regained control of her chakra much sooner than I realized and employed a genjutsu."
The theory almost worked. But a genjutsu wouldn't explain how she could have utilized a solid manifestation of chakra to slice his tail. No, she had to have been physically present at the time of that attack. Perhaps she had utilized an especially efficient shunshin? If she had managed to clear the last dunes, it would explain why she was out of sight. The brat was from Konoha- she couldn't possibly know the desert well enough to set off in any direction other than the one they had come from. She would die in the desert if she tried.
Of course, she was going to die in the desert regardless. He didn't appreciate irritations like her.
"I'm coming for you, little girl," Sasori uttered lowly, heading back in the direction he had just come from.
How vexing. She was wasting his time. But it was no matter. She couldn't have gotten far. If he turned around, he should be able to retrieve her and still get back to his chosen confrontation ground before the Kazekage managed to escape the bureaucracy back in Suna and set out to find him. Not being a tracker of any kind, it should take the brat plenty of time to track him down. Sasori had already set the trap. Using his captive as a human shield hadn't been his only contingency plan, after all.
"Well, that's embarrassing," Aiko muttered to herself and a rather startled looking lizard. The Hiraishin had worked… sort of. She found herself in the middle of nowhere and completely alone. More importantly…
"Someone is eventually going to be confused as to why there's an ass print in the sand with no footprints leading up to it."
She wasn't going to admit to this. 'I must be tireder than I realized,' she grumped. 'God, when was the last time I was so far off the mark?'
Incredibly depressing.
"I'm hot, bleeding, sunburned on the back of my legs, and I have sand in my braaaa," she wailed piteously. "and I'm not even where I wanted to go." She snuffled helplessly for a moment, trying to recapture her shinobi calm. Everything about this sucked super hard.
To be honest, it was pissing her off, now that she'd stopped to think about it. What the hell had she done to deserve a day like this? What kind of asshat picked up his hostage from the hospital? And why the hell hadn't security been better? She'd just totally saved Sand's collective asses the day before or whatever.
Where were they, anyway? She'd been kidnapped for what felt like a million years. 'If you want to get anything done, you have to do it yourself,' she thought grumpily, searching out for one of her Hiraishin tags to try again.
At least she had traveled in the right direction. She could see Suna in the distance, much more closely than it had been when she had been with Sasori. It wasn't close enough to really make her feel like she was far enough away from that lunatic, though, so she'd have to try again.
'Act natural,' she counseled herself. 'Totally not going to tell anyone that escape attempt one was a failure.'
"Working together, we can do anything," Naruto shouted, hand curled into a fist. "I don't care that he told you to come alone."
Gaara huffed quietly. "Alright," he acknowledged. "We will save Aiko together." There was a collective sigh of relief from the Konoha delegation.
Whumph.
"Yo," Aiko said blandly from where she was sprawled on the ground at Yamato's feet. Literally. She was sitting on his sandals and using one of his legs as a support. "Sup?"
Temari gave an unbecoming squeak and jumped backwards into Sasuke, who reflexively caught her around her upper arms. Then he flushed red and stuffed his hands into his pockets.
Yamato smacked a palm to his face, already shaking his head. "I can't believe I was worried about you," he groaned quietly to himself. To be fair, she wasn't looking much like herself. Her hair was a fuzzy halo around her head, she was frightfully pale, and there was a large bloodstain leaking down the front of the purple dress he didn't recognize.
As if to complete the range of emotions in the tableau, Kakashi was staring with his visible eye wide in shock.
"Aiko!" Naruto shouted, dropping to his knees at her side, fingers clenching helplessly as if he was scared to touch her and hurt her. He eventually settled with gingerly resting a hand on one of her shoulders in a weak attempt to steady her. "We were going to rescue you!"
She gave him a dirty look and jabbed him with a finger. "I rescued my own damn self, thank you very much," she bit out testily. The intimidating effect was somewhat lessened by the way she was swaying slightly in place.
"How?" Temari asked, visibly baffled. Her brother must have been on a similar train of thought, because he quickly added.
"Did he not have you incapacitated?"
Aiko huffed. "It was easy," she said snippily. "It's not my fault everyone else sucks. I'm a grown damn woman and I don't have to explain myself or wait to get saved."
"Which is why you're holding onto my leg like an angry baby koala," Yamato agreed blandly.
"Yes," she agreed, not loosening her grip on his rapidly numbing calf. "This is intentional."
That was about the time she seemed to notice just how baffled the group looked. "What?" Aiko demanded, looking about as threatening as a kitten and twice as crabby. "Do I look like a damsel in distress? I don't fucking think so. I'm an independent lady. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I missed my check up and I'm going to go take a nap."
There was a rather undignified giggle from Kakashi that the group decided to ignore, and a whispered, "She's still high, isn't she?" from Temari.
"As a kite," Shizune muttered back with some satisfaction.
"What about the man who kidnapped you?" Sasuke furrowed his brow at her.
Aiko waved a hand dismissively. "Creepy fucking puppet guy? Ain't nobody got time for that. I sure as hell didn't. If I'd waited ten more minutes he would have made me into a puppet. Slow ass bastards."
There was a collective flinch and Kakashi started flaring killing intent. Naruto was twitching.
She put her palms on the ground and attempted to stand up. A knee gave out halfway and she thumped back down onto the sand.
"Take it easy," Shizune huffed, pushing her way forward and picking the other kunoichi up with about as much effort as she'd use to pick up a hairbrush. "You're right about one thing, it's way past time for a follow-up."
"Kay," Aiko yawned, curling into the medic nin's arm. "Bye dudes. I'm out."
There was an awkward silence at the gates of Suna while the assembled rescue team watched Shizune trot off with the damsel in distress.
"Perhaps we should hunt down this man regardless," Gaara offered after a long moment.
"Yeah," Naruto agreed sheepishly, scratching at his head. He scowled. "I don't like the sound of this guy. Puppets?" He made a rude sound.
"I do seem to vaguely recall some kidnapping incident," Sasuke added dryly. It seemed to him like a better reason to think their opponent was bad news than his weapon of choice.
As four Konoha ninja, the Kazekage, and his battleaxe of a sister sprinted off into the distance, Baki finally allowed himself to groan. "It's like I'm surrounded by total weirdos," he mumbled crabbily to the gate guard. She gave a terrified giggle and then shrunk back against the wall, as if worried that Gaara might have heard even from such a distance.
Pakkun wasn't terribly happy about running on such hot sand, but he pushed on despite burnt paws. At least his fur shielded him from the harsh sun that was quickly turning the porcelain pale skin above Kakashi's mask pink. They ran without interruption for a little over an hour until Pakkun signaled the scent trail had changed. When he gave a surprised whine and stopped, the whole group flickered into a sudden stop around him.
"What's wrong?"
The pug snuffled around the ground, not even looking at his summoner as he lead them slightly to the side of the regular, straight trail he had been following. "Aiko's scent is much stronger here," he explained. "Most of the time it's been very faint, like she was carried above the ground. But something happened here."
"But we aren't tracking Aiko," Sasuke pointed out with a little hostility.
He got a dirty look in return. "If you can smell another living being, go ahead and track them, boy. If not, let me do my job."
The group bristled uncomfortably at the implication that their opponent had disguised his scent so well that Pakkun couldn't catch up on it. The two most at home in the desert scanned the landscape. Temari's eyes widened at about the same time that Gaara's did. Naruto wasn't paying attention—he was holding direct eye contact with an oversized lizard. It looked decidedly grumpy to see them.
"That is not a natural mark," Gaara said quietly, kneeling to point at a strange indentation in the sand. "It seems oddly careless. The tracks leading up to it have been obscured immaculately. Were it not here, I would never have known that another living being had been here."
'That's an ass print,' Yamato and Temari thought at the same time unbeknownst to each other. She gave the group at large an incredulous look, as if wondering how so many adults could fail to recognize an ass when they saw one in the sand. Presumably they had all seen one before.
'Things make much more sense now,' Yamato tried not to snicker. 'Aiko deals much better with S class freak jobs than she does with confronting personal failures. That's why she was so grumpy when she found us.'
"How bizarre," Kakashi muttered with a slight frown, crouching to get a better look at it himself.
"I've never seen anything like this," Gaara said seriously, staring as if some secret was hidden in the sand.
Yamato suppressed a highly inappropriate laugh and turned it into a rough cough. Temari shot him a sharp look that turned to shared amusement. "S'dry," he explained weakly, holding eye contact with the only other person with a social life of any sort.
Naruto nodded seriously, a frown painted on his features. "It is." He wasn't a tracker, so he shouldn't say anything at all. But personally… he thought it looked like a butt. 'Beserious,' he scolded himself. 'Now isn't the time for jokes. I need to focus so I can help get the bastard who hurt Aiko.'
Sasuke was scanning the dunes around them for movement, eyes red and muscles tight. Clearly, he was above such juvenile fixations at a time like this, so Naruto was determined to keep a straight face as well.
"I don't like leaving without knowing what's going on," Pakkun rumbled, "but this isn't going anywhere. We should go back to the straight trail."
After a while, a doubled path of a strange trailing indentation appeared in the sand. Gaara appeared severely discomfited by that point. It wasn't often that he ran into trails that were totally unfamiliar to him. It wasn't difficult to track—even if it hadn't been visible, the tip of whatever it was had been soaked with day old blood that Pakkun easily tracked. Aiko's trail stopped at the exact place where they discovered a woman's body, bloated from the sun and already picked at by flies. Her skin was straining at a dirtied Suna medic nin uniform.
"The girl that the intruder used to surprise Kankuro," Gaara said quietly. Pity flickered through his gaze. Naruto looked horror struck by the sheer brutality. The girl's neck was completely mangled, and a gigantic splotch of blood trailed down her back that matched suspiciously close to the one on Aiko's front. This girl had been murdered and used as a pack mule.
"He just left her here, like trash?"
The quiet statement seemed to hang in the air for a moment.
Naruto clenched a hand into a fist. "I really hate this guy," he muttered lowly. Sasuke shifted uncomfortably, looking around and avoiding eye contact. He was clearly sharing the realization that this could just as easily have been Aiko. They were hunting a dangerous man.
Of course, even when he wanted to be comforting, Sasuke didn't quite have it in his heart to be nurturing. "Why are we standing around? Let's find this man already."
It was blunt, but a good point.
"Aiko's trail completely stops here," Pakkun pointed out huffily, panting in a desperate attempt to cool down and catch his breath. "I'm useless here."
Gaara's eyes narrowed. "And this is where the doubled path begins. Our intruder showed his true form here."
"He must have gone back for Aiko when she left, not realizing what she had done," Temari added easily while Kakashi knelt to thank and dismiss his summon.
Naruto swallowed uncomfortably. "Does that mean he's given up and making a retreat?"
After all, the path eventually came back and continued past this point. Clearly, he'd given up on finding Aiko and gone on his way in the opposite direction of Suna.
It was hard to say. "Just a moment," Yamato added quietly before turning to Gaara. The teen was still staring at the much-abused girl who he had seen only the day before. "If you'd like, Kazekage-sama, I have a sealing scroll we could use instead of leaving this girl here." The younger man took the proffered scroll with a solemn nod and pulled it open, kneeling at the corpse's head.
"I don't think he gave up," Kakashi added thoughtfully, looking up at the sky. "After he determined he couldn't find Aiko, he followed the exact same path out and retraced his old steps. That indicates that his destination hasn't changed."
"Could be heading to reinforcements," Temari said grimly. In silent agreement, the group set out at top speed as soon as Gaara had tucked away the newly filled scroll. If that was this man's intention, it would be in their best interest to head him off. He had already lost time by searching for his missing prisoner.
They saw the profiles in the distance outside a cave of some sort long before it was possible to make out any faces. However, they were rather distinctive profiles. They weren't the kind of people one could run past, so the group came to a cautious stop with fifty feet still separating them.
"Itachi," Sasuke breathed, sounding strangely nervous. Naruto shot his friend a soothing look and nudged his side with an elbow.
"It'll be okay," he growled. "If he was involved in this, we'll kill him too, Sasuke."
It was downright unnerving to see Sasuke look so sick and reluctant at the sight of his murderous brother. If he'd made a prediction, Naruto would have thought Sasuke more likely to get angry. That only made it worse—this guy shouldn't have so much power over Sasuke. In fact, scratch that. He didn't have that power over Sasuke, because Naruto wouldn't let him hurt his friend again.