Chapter 15 – Team 13: D-Rank Mission #5… A Game of Hide and Seek! Part 3

"Was it REALLY necessary to truss my students up like criminals and then browbeat them like misbehaving pets, Inugami?" Iruka Umino's demanding, incredulous voice carried across the schoolyard as Kimiko Itou returned after the first hour of the mission. The scarred primary instructor of the Konoha Ninja Academy stood looking disgruntled at the white clad medical ninja trainee. Sho Inugami was standing his ground before the man who had tried to act like an uncle to every student that passed through the academy. Miho Hyuuga was straddling the swing that was tied to the branch in front of the school while wryly smiling in the direction of her student and her friend.

"It seemed appropriate at the time, Iruka-sensei." Sho replied unrepentantly as Itou took a position next to Miho-sensei to watch the floor show. "All six of them did an abysmal job and drumming into their skulls the fact that in the real world they probably would have gotten a kunai slid between their floating ribs was warranted. A little bit of embarrassment won't kill them; if they have brain one in their skull, they might even LEARN something today."

"What's going on, Miho-sensei?" Kimiko whispered as Miho began to chuckle at Sho's ribald counterargument. Hyuuga-sensei merely pointed to a set of students that had their arms bound behind their backs with the white ribbons that Iruka had given Sho in the Hokage's office when announcing their mission. Itou blinked a few times before she began to laugh. "Oh, geez, Sho..."

Iruka shook his head. "Why can't you play well with others?"

"Look, Iruka-sensei, if I'd really wanted to terrify them; I could have pulled a Mizuki and put the fear of Kami into them. Hell, Whiskers," He paused, realizing the teacher might not get the nickname. "NARUTO did a better job at the Bushin no Jutsu than these students did at using the stealth techniques you painstakingly taught us." Inugami answered. Then he grinned. "Besides, 'Oni is an evil butcherer of all those who cross him,' remember? I've got a reputation to uphold."

The Academy instructor sighed. "I've known you for years, Sho, and I still can't figure you out at times."

"Being unpredictable as a shinobi keeps you alive, Sensei. You taught us that - it's not MY fault that I'm so good at it."

Umino chuckled ruefully. "I guess you're right. No more ambushing the students, though, huh?"

Sho shrugged. "I only did that to the utter rejects. The others didn't suffer such an ignominious defeat." He straightened up as if hearing something. "Good; he's finally back."

Nakahito Haruno suddenly appeared between Sho & Iruka and Kimiko & Miho. He was dripping sweat and his breathing was a touch on the rough side. "Sorry I'm late..." He gasped, trying to catch his breath. "But I spotted two more on my way back here and stopped to catch them."

Inugami looked Haruno up and down, focusing more on the other Genin's legs. The medic nodded. "Not bad, Haruno... You seem to be getting better at Body Flicker - I'm not seeing the kind of muscular stress that you had in your legs during the Ichiraku mission."

"WHAT?!" Kimiko gasped in surprise as Haruno gave the medic an odd look. "Sho, did you just give 'Hito a... a COMPLIMENT?!"

"He must be sick…" Nakahito said, pretending to put his hand on the medic's forehead to check for temperature. He didn't actually TOUCH Inugami – that would probably cause him to pull back a bloody stump – but it was enough to provide the illusion.

Inugami rolled his eyes to retort, but Miho Hyuuga rose up from her seat with a smile. "You can discuss that later. Now that Nakahito's back, we can go out and finish this mission. So far we've got 32 of the students back - 34 if we count the ones that 'Hito said he caught on his way back. That means we've only got six students unaccounted for that we need to try and track down."

She looked over her three Genin and then at the collection of students that were lined up against the Academy wall. 'They really are good at this - I guess Iruka-kun knew what he was doing when he asked for my team specifically.'

Hyuuga-sensei then turned her silver/white gaze back to the three young adults that she'd been assigned to finish educating in the way of the ninja. "Okay, Team 13. We're going to pair up to look for the remaining students, so as planned; I'll be joining in the hunt. We'll split Kimiko's original search zone in half and add it to Inugami's and Haruno's."

She paused. 'Pairing Kimiko and Nakahito together is probably a bad idea at the moment...' She thought to herself. 'They're functioning now, but that was still a nasty shock they had this morning.'

"Kimiko, you and Sho will search the west side of the permissible hiding zone and sweep up what 'Hito left behind while Nakahito will accompany me to see if Sho missed anyone. When you find a student, each party will put BOTH of their ribbons on before sending them back to the Academy. Any comments or questions?"

Sho nodded, "Keep your eyes peeled. I detected the chakra of my older sister in my quadrant, but since Miho-sensei promised to not use her Byakugan, I felt it would be cheating to catch her because of my familiarity with her skills. Since I sensed Karin but didn't see her with my normal eyes she's using the Hide-in-Plain-Sight jutsu. You're going to have to be extra sharp if you plan on catching her. I also caught traces of two other students on the border with Kimiko's search quadrant, but they were really good at disguising their trails and were staying on the move, so I couldn't afford the time to nail them down."

Miho Hyuuga nodded. "That's fine, Sho-kun, thanks for the heads up." She glanced at the other two Genin. "Any similar traces?" Kimiko and Nakahito shook their heads silently. "Very well. Team 13, Move out!"

* * *

Nakahito Haruno and Miho Hyuuga jumped from rooftop to rooftop, using their skills with the wall-walking jutsu to make almost unerring, prodigious leaps to cover far more ground than they could have by following the lay of the land. They had already found two students - at least one of which was one Sho had mentioned in passing thirty minutes earlier.

Coming to a stop atop a dango shop, Miho Hyuuga glanced around, but after a few moments, she sighed wryly. Haruno landed not far from the Jonin kunoichi. "Something wrong, Miho-sensei?"

The espionage specialist stretched her neck and ran her fingers through her midnight black hair to help cool herself. Miho was very proud of her hair, but it did cause her to retain more heat than was probably safe at times. Occasionally she toyed with the thought of trimming it down. She never would, though; her fondest memories of her late parents were the hours she'd spend with her mother letting her try various styling options or the assorted hair decorations - like the purple ribbons she always wore - that her father would unfailingly bring home with him whenever he returned from a mission before he'd been injured in the War.

"Just getting a bit overheated from all the searching the hard way." The kunoichi admitted, pulling out a canteen of water and taking a few deep drinks. "I'm starting to wish I hadn't promised the Honorable Grandson I wouldn't use my Byakugan today. I never really had to learn how to search for people the old-fashioned way - I was able to use my Kekkei Genkai from the time I was 6."

"You know, Sensei..." Nakahito said slyly. "I didn't make any such promises and I've got a trick up my sleeve that could speed this up." Hyuuga gave him a curious look, but he simply responded by making the seal sequence for the jutsu that Karin-chan's scroll had taught him. "Fire Style, Dragon's Eye Jutsu."

Once again, the web of glass-like fire appeared in his hands. He ran to the roof's edge and began to look around as quickly as possible. "Okay... I see six heat blurs - four of which I can see with my naked eye." His face flushed at the word naked and his mind returned to the events earlier in the day, but before too long, the heat of his less-than-perfect jutsu became unbearable. "Ouch!" His hands broke apart and he began to wave them to try cooling them off.

"Are you okay, 'Hito?" Miho asked, pulling out her personal first aid kit and walking over to him. Haruno's hands were a beet red and the first hints of forming blisters were visible. "Oh, my..." She said in surprise as she pulled out an analgesic balm made from the extract of a Dragon Heart herb. She squeezed some of the medical ointment out and began to gently massage it into his slightly burned skin. Fortunately, the fact that he already had a blush on his face prevented his sudden daydream about his teacher from giving away his thoughts.

She glanced at him. "Where did you learn that technique? It seems to require a bit more skill at nature conversion that you currently possess; something else for us to work on."

"Hmm..?" He responded, clearly distracted. "Um..."

Miho Hyuuga sighed as she let go of her hands, realizing what was happening. Technically, it was flattering to be thought about, but it could be annoying at times as well. She glanced over his shoulder and raised a hand in a wave. "Oh, hi, Kimiko! It looks like Nakahito's fantasizing about me again. I hope he's leaving my clothes on for a change!" She called to the open air.

THAT broke through his mental fog. Haruno spun around wildly. "Wait, Kimi-chan! I can... ex... plain..?" His voice trailed off as he registered Miho-sensei's trilling laugh of amusement. Nakahito sighed, slowly turning back to her with a betrayed look in his eyes. "That's not funny, Sensei... I'm trying really hard to avoid having lapses like that, after all..."

"I'm sorry, 'Hito," Miho said, wiping a tear of mirth from her eyes, "I just couldn't resist. Where'd you learn that jutsu?"

"Oh. Inugami-chan gave me a scroll as a way of apology for what happened during the training session. Don't tell Sho about it, though - turns out its one of their grandmother's techniques and I don't want cause her any problems for showing it to me."

"Ah, one of Saki-sensei's techniques... I thought I recognized it, but I couldn't recall where from."

Nakahito looked at her curiously. "You knew Sho's grandmother, Miho-sensei?"

The Jonin kunoichi nodded. "Oh, very well. She was an instructor at the Ninja Academy back when I was still a student thirteen years or so ago. Sarutobi-sensei had retired from being Hokage about a year before, becoming the headmaster. He was recalled to service as the Hokage upon the untimely death of the Yondaime, she volunteered to fill in until someone else was available for the job. She was it until she died seven years ago and Iruka was appointed as her replacement."

Nakahito blinked, looking over her shoulder. "Oh, is something the matter, Iruka-sensei?"

Miho-sensei ticked a finger at him, thinking he was trying to get back at her. "Nice try, 'Hito, but I'm not falling for that."

"Falling for what, Miho-chan?" A voice asked as someone poked playfully at the small of her back.

The Hyuuga kunoichi let off a cute squeak of shock as she spun around to see that her long-time friend HAD shown up behind her. It was a rare occasion when he managed to get the drop on her. "Iruka?! When did you get here?"

"Just a few seconds ago. You were busy reminiscing about Saki Inugami and completely missed me." He said with a smile. "I forgot to remind you that we only scheduled about two and a half hours for this exercise, so you've only got twenty minutes left before we have to recall the winners so we have enough time for the after action review and grading." He gave her a quick, playful kiss on the tip of her nose before disappearing in a puff of smoke.

Miho shook her head to clear her mind, but there was still a trace of a blush on her cheeks when she turned to face Nakahito. "Well, you heard him; let's get moving." Nakahito gave her a grin and nodded before taking point to lead the way.

* * *

On the other side of the search quadrant, Itou and Inugami were sending the student they'd found - one of the ones that Sho had noticed previously - on his way back to the academy with a blue ribbon tied to his left arm and a white one on his right. Kimiko sighed, pushing back one of her bangs and drawing Sho's attention to her hair. "Man... You weren't kidding when you said he was good, Sho. It must have taken us, what ten minutes to finally nail him down?"

"Nineteen, actually," Sho said. His eyes narrowed, noticing something different about her, before he consulted his memory. "That's a pretty flower you have there, Itou-san. You didn't have it on you earlier, did you?"

Kimiko smiled. "No, I didn't. Lee-kun gave it to me when I was on my own. Ino Yamanaka told me that it's called a Water Tiger Blossom and that it was apparently the basis for my clan's emblem. Lee didn't realize it when he bought the flower from Ino's family's store, which makes it an even more special gift for a friend to give."

She paused for a moment, expecting him to say something else, but the medical ninja was oddly silent. Itou glanced at him and was surprised to find him with a hesitant look on his face. 'What's going on with him?' She wondered to herself. 'First he compliments 'Hito and now he seems uncertain of himself. Sho's NEVER been uncertain of himself in all the years I've known him.'

She looked at him, breaking the odd silence. "Are you okay, Sho? You haven't been acting nor..." She paused. Normal wasn't really the right word for Inugami. "Acting the way you usually do since we left the Academy together."

Inugami dropped onto a nearby bench with a world-weary sigh. It was the most human expression that Kimiko could recall him ever making and caused Kimiko to approach in an effort to reach out to the normally closed off Genin. Sho looked up at her, eyeing her for a few moments. Kimiko imagined that she could actually see his mind racing through his green tinted glasses as he considered her.

"Kimiko..." He started slowly. "Would you... Would you say that you consider me... a friend?"

The Itou clan survivor paused as she realized that she'd never really considered the question before. Inugami was a teammate and he seemed to go out of his way to be a jerk at times… But despite that... She nodded slowly. "Well, yes, Sho. I mean, you healed my injuries when I lost control of the Wusha and saved my life twice during the Yondaime's Gambit exercise..." She blushed faintly remembering the kiss he'd given her. "You even shared your chakra with me and then got beaten up for it. If all that doesn't put us on friendly terms, then I don't know would. Why do you ask?"

Her answer caused an unexpected reaction from the normally cool medical Genin. He removed his glasses, revealing his differently colored eyes briefly before wiping half-imagined tears from them. To her shock, his hands were trembling nervously as he tried to put his glasses back on, but finally gave up since he was unable to concentrate. "Then... As a friend... Could I ask you for your opinion on something?"

'Holy shit...' Kimiko thought to herself as her jaw dropped slightly in shock. 'I've never heard Sho ask for ANYONE'S opinion about anything. Whatever it is, it has to be big to get him so unhinged...'

She coughed to clear her throat and collect herself, sitting down beside him on the bench. For a brief instant, she thought about taking his hand to try and comfort him, but she quickly stifled it. It would be a normal action for anyone else, but Sho was definitely not quite like anyone else. "Sure, Sho-kun; I'd be glad to."

"What would..." He started, but stalled out, shaking his head. He paused to reframe the question. "Hypothetically speaking - how would you react if you had this person that you considered important to you, like a friend - and you found out, somehow, that the other person not only felt the same way about you, but more so - that they think they're in love with you?"

Kimiko's jaw dropped further than it had before in utter disbelief. 'Wha... WHAT IS HE ASKING? Is Sho saying that...? Is he talking about HIMSELF...?' Her throat suddenly felt dry - like she hadn't had a thing to drink in months after crossing the Land of Wind on foot. 'And ME?'

It took a few minutes for her to be able to get rid of the dry feeling and trust that her voice wouldn't break. A stray fancy made a picture come to mind of the two of them on a date, but it felt WRONG somehow... Like someone else should be there. She shook the image of her and Sho out of her mind, but her cheeks felt like they were on fire. "Sho-kun... I... I think that that's really sweet and all, but I don't think we would be a good match for each other..."

Sho's eyes bunched up in confusion - almost as if she'd been speaking in a foreign language that he was only passingly familiar with and he had to sort it out. Suddenly his ears burst into a blush nearly as furious as the one on her cheeks as he scooted away from her. He raised his hands, waving them in a frantic gesture of negation. "NONONONO! Geez, no..."

He stood up and began to pace; a clear sign that her comment had further dragged him out of his element. "Oh, man, Kimiko... I didn't mean to infer THAT. You're pretty and you're smart, but I wouldn't think about coming between..."

He snapped his mouth shut before he could finish THAT chain of thought since it would probably devastate the ability of Team 13 to function cohesively. He wiped his mouth, taking a deep breath. "This has to do with someone else that I just found out about earlier when I was searching alone..." His shaking visibly increased in intensity as a nervous sweat broke out on his face.

Understanding flashed across her mind as her heart filled with compassion for the nervous young man. 'So he really is human after all...' She thought as she smiled gently at him, holding out her canteen. "Easy, Sho. Here... Sit down, take a deep breath and calm down. Just tell me as slowly as you need to not feel uncomfortable; you don't have to rush it."

The medic sat back down on the bench, accepting the proffered drink. It took him a minute or two to calm himself. "Damn... If this is even remotely how you and Haruno have felt after one of his accidents, I'm sorry for every joke I've ever made about them..." Her blush spread like wildfire across her face and he winced. "Oh, man... That's right; something happened earlier today, didn't it..? Sorry, didn't mean to say that out loud."

Kimiko sighed. For some reason, THIS sensitive, slightly nervous Sho Inugami she couldn't help but like, whereas his normal persona had a tendency to be incredibly irritating. Occasionally funny, but irritating nonetheless. "It's okay, Sho; I think I'm starting to come to terms with it. You were saying?"

Now that he had started to calm down, Inugami could hear the nervousness in her own voice - a sign that she was trying to be strong to be able to help him. "I'll make you a deal: you help me with my problem and I'll see if I can help with yours. It's the least I can do for a friend." He put out his hand. "Deal?"

Itou blinked; the surprises kept coming today. 'I've never seen him try negotiating before either... He'd normally either do it himself or bark orders - although that kind of makes sense for a doctor who might not have the time to coax an agreement out of someone. This must be something really important for him.' She gave him a warm smile, accepting the proffered handshake. "You have a deal, Sho-kun..." She paused, giving him a gentle smile of encouragement, "So, Dr. Inugami... What's on your mind?"

Sho grinned despite himself. He hadn't earned the right to that title yet, but for some reason it felt right. "Well, Itou-sempai," He started, deliberately using the honorific to stress how much he was counting on her at the moment. "I had a bit of a run-in with Motoko Hata while I was bursting the bubbles of hope for the students in the Eastern sector. We ended up talking for a few minutes and then she fainted dead away on me."

'Again?' Itou thought in surprise. 'Poor Momo…'

He paused, thinking of how to reveal what Raiden had exposed without exposing his involvement. "I don't know if it's because we were talking about Whiskers... Sorry, Uzumaki... But I came to the rather startling revelation that Motoko-san has recently gotten a crush for me. It's really galling because I somehow missed all the hints - especially since a lot of them are identical to the ones Hinata Hyuuga shows around Naruto all the time."

"Wait a second..." Kimiko gasped in shock. "How did you know that Hinata-chan likes Naruto-kun?!"

"I do have eyes, Kimiko - in fact you'd be surprised at just how good they can be." Sho replied cryptically. "Whiskers is one of the few people I connect with, so I'm typically around when he runs into her. HE'S completely oblivious to that fact, but then he wouldn't be Naruto of he weren't. Hinata's also one of the few decent people in this village so I try to avoid interfering. Hinata's had a crush on him since, like, day 2 at the Academy."

Itou looked at Inugami incredulously for a few seconds before she began giggling. Sho gave her a slightly hurt look and she stopped. "Oh, I'm sorry, Sho... It's just..." She paused to take a deep breath. This almost felt like a betrayal of one of her closest friends, but the fact that he seemed to be on the verge of being able to fulfill the other woman's fondest desire ignited Itou's romantic spark and she wanted to see this meet cute to come true.

"Uhmm… Sho? There's really no easy way to tell you this, but… Motoko's liked you nearly as long as Hinata has Naruto; it's NOT a recent development."

"WHAT?" Sho demanded in incredulous shock as his face collapsed in dismay. To have missed something so obvious for so long..?

The kunoichi nodded. "I've been friends with Hinata and Motoko for years – pretty much since we entered the Academy. In fact, it was because Hinata was obligated to attend because of her duty to her family that I decided to become a ninja. Avenging my clan came after I learned the history of my family and the betrayal that left me an orphan. Hinata's father and the Hokage had made sure that I was taken care of, but at the same time had made sure to not go into those kinds of details until they felt I was old enough to handle it."

She shook her head. "In any event, Motoko started showing an interest in you before the boar attack, but it wasn't until afterwards - when all the others started being so mean to you, including me - that it really turned into something more than idle interest." She smiled, draping an arm over his shoulder in a sideways hug. "But to tell you the truth, I always thought you two would make a great couple."

"This isn't funny, Kimiko!" Sho said slipping out of her embrace and standing up to resume pacing as the wild look of hopeful fear returned to his face.

"I wasn't joking, Sho." Kimiko replied, confused by this abrupt reversal on his part. "I'm serious." She looked horrified for an instant. "Don't tell me you don't like Motoko-chan?"

"OF COURSE I LIKE HER, YOU DENSE TWIT; WHY DO YOU THINK I'M LOSING MY MIND LIKE THIS OVER HERE?!" The medic-nin practically bellowed at her in denial.

His pacing turned almost rabid. "Motoko-san was one of the first to start talking to me again after I killed that boar. She might have even the sole reason that I managed to keep my sanity… I'd lost my grandmother – the woman who practically raised me because of how busy my parents were and still are – about a week or two before, got chased by a side of ham that was ready to kill me simply because I crossed its path, and THEN everyone at the Academy started shunning me and calling me names."

A sad and happy smile pulled at his lips. "Did you know that Hata-san never ONCE said anything mean to me, never tried avoiding me, or ever cringed when I walked by...? If only for that I'll be eternally grateful to her."

The kunoichi's face screwed up in confusion. Sho had always been a bit of an enigma, but this was taking it to new heights. "So where's the problem, Sho? You like her, she likes you... I've heard of marriages that started out with less than that."

Sho paused and his demeanor made it obvious that what he was about to reveal was extremely personal and was not to be shared with ANYONE. "I don't deserve to be that lucky! I..." He stopped, running his hands through his hair on either side of his head, considering something he'd never thought of before.

He straightened up as he made the unconscious decision to put his full faith in Kimiko Itou.

"You probably don't remember this, but you, 'Hito, and I had been sort-of friends during our earliest days at the Academy..." Kimiko frowned as she tried, unsuccessfully, to dredge up the memory. "Didn't you find it just a little odd that my behavior completely changed right after that pig attacked me? That I started making fun of people and finding amusement in their misfortunes?"

"I remember Iruka-sensei saying something about how that that was how you were trying to cope with what had happened to you... So, I have to say, no; not really."

The medic looked warily at her for a few seconds, as if weighing his options. "Kimiko-san, what I'm about to talk about, I've never even spoken of it aloud to anyone before: Not my family, not Aniki, NO ONE - you understand? It's kind of disturbing, okay?"

Itou nodded acceptingly. "If you think sharing it will help me help you, I'll listen. In fact, I'm glad you're willing to trust me so much."

Sho took a deep breath. "You've probably heard most of the stories about what happened to when that boar attacked me; some of them might even be partially accurate." She nodded. Of course she had, since most of them had been made up by the other students at the Academy. "At some point when running for my life, when the boar wasn't more than a foot away from running me over, I more or less blacked out. I managed to survive the next few minutes because something..." He paused, as if hating to speak about a normally unspeakable horror. "Something happened to me that day that made me..." His voice cracked. "Oh, Gods help me, it made me a monster, Kimiko!"

"Oh, Sho..." She sighed. "I didn't think you believed what the others said about you."

He shook his head. "I DON'T. You see, my normal behavior is a deliberately sculpted charade that lets me use their fears about me to keep them at a distance. Sometimes, I find someone like Naruto, Shikamaru, Chouji, or Aniki that I just don't have the heart to act that way towards. But 'Oni Inugami' nothing more than an act to protect the people of Konoha... From what I really am."

Confusion at his logic was evident on Kimiko Itou's gentle features. Inugami sighed as if disappointed that it had come to this. "I guess I'm just going to have to show you for you to understand..." He sat down on the bench. "I'm going to show you what happened that day… As it happened from my perspective."

Kimiko blinked. "You can do that?"

Inugami nodded. "Genjutsu essentially links one mind to another in a limited fashion. With the right focus, it can be a two way street. Please, close your eyes…" Itou hesitated, but knowing how hard it was for the medic-nin to open up as much as he was, Kimiko decided to trust him. Sho placed the palm of his hand on her forehead. "Ninpo: Shared Recollection Jutsu."

The darkness of Kimiko's world suddenly shifted into a stark white room. She was herself, standing in the space besides Sho Inugami. She felt a prickle at the base of her neck… This felt disturbingly similar to the dreams she had been having of the Itou family the last few weeks, but was different.

"Freaky…" Kimiko said in the dreamscape.

"It's about to get weirder." Sho said as a filing cabinet suddenly appeared beside him.

The medic-nin unlocked and opened the cabinet, extractingt a green orb. As he held the orb, it suddenly expanded, washing over them. The white room turned into a scene in a forest on a spring day. There were birds in the trees and a small puddle of water. The entire scene was so realistic that Kimiko almost imagined she could smell the flowers growing on the bushes. At the edges of the vision were a series of rapidly shifting numbers that meant nothing to Kimiko.

"Whoa!" Kimiko said, surprised. "I didn't know anyone could use Genjutsu like this!"

"Most can't, Itou-san," Sho said softly. "But because I have a photographic memory, when I get the picture of what I want in my mind, the image has a surprising amount of clarity. What you're about to see is the first thing that I saw when I came to. I'll warn you; it wasn't pleasant then and it hasn't gotten any better with age."

Words began to appear in the middle of the scene. > Wait… I'm alive? <

A hand – that of a child, but bigger than the two Genin moved into view – eclipsing the scene for a moment. The hand was covered with deep red blood. > Ow… My head… <

Kimiko looked to Sho in confusion. "This is literally my mind, Kimiko." He answered. "The words are my thoughts, the view is what I witnessed with my own eyes."

> What's happening...? I was running from the boar… And then I felt lightheaded. <

"I was running." Sho said softly, explaining. "My heart was racing, beating harder than it never had, but I couldn't get away… The beast was bigger and faster than me… The stress was too much; I passed out. I was sure it was going to kill me…" He paused. "Maybe it would be better if it had…"

"What do you…?" Itou began to object as the world shifted; young Sho was standing up. "OH, MY GOD!" She gasped, her hands jumping to her mouth.

> What is this..? < The mind of Sho Inugami asked in confusion at the sight. > What happened to the pig?! <

Through the opening in the foliage, there was the body of a massive boar. Based on the scale, the pig was easily twice as big as Chouji Akimichi was now. The fact that it was dead was not the distressing thing about the image.

It was HOW the wild animal had been killed.

The boar's head had been twisted counter-clockwise nearly 180 degrees, snapping its neck and leaving its head dangling with its upraised tusks pointed to the ground. Both sides of its hairy body had been split open. Kimiko could see sunlight streaming in one side, under the boar's cracked spine, and out the other side. All of that didn't compare to the most horrifying part of the macabre scene... The boar's insides were spilling out of the holes that had somehow been ripped in the pig's armor-like hide.

The really nauseating part was the fact that some of those exposed innards showed signs of someone EATING them. There were human jaw-sized bite chunks visibly missing from several parts of the bloody organs.

The scene tilted as the boy dropped to his knees. > Oh, gods… I was hungry just a few seconds ago, but I feel full now! < The boy began to heave for a few moments before vomiting blood… and boar innards. > Oh, gods… I did this! <

Unable to hold back, Kimiko's real body spun aside; breaking the mental link between her and Sho. She gripped the bench, preparing to mimic the boy's reaction, but she managed to prevent the dry heaves from emptying what little was in her stomach.

"That's why I started acting the way I did…" Sho's voice said in her ears as he handed her his canteen of water. "I was equal parts horrified at what I had done and terrified that I might lose control around others in the future. Better to keep people at arm's length… So that…" His voice caught. "…So that the smallest number of people miss me when I eventually have to be put down."

It took Itou several swigs of water before she trusted her voice. "Was that…" She took another swallow, recalling Karin's warning during the wall-walking jutsu practice. "Was that the first time you used your combat mind?"

Inugami straightened up, surprised at Kimiko's words. "How do…" He paused, remembering that he'd left his older sister alone with the others. "Ah, Karin spoke out of turn, huh?"

"Don't be mad at her… She accidentally let it slip and decided we needed to know."

Sho mulled that over for a few moments. "True enough." He finally agreed.

"But was…"

Inugami shook his head. "This… was not my combat mind. That uses the skills already I have but allows me to use them without guilt. This was…" He paused, looking for the words. "Something darker, more powerful than I was then... It allowed me to slaughter an opponent far more powerful than me, using methods that I didn't know HOW to use. It's like… It's like there is a demon inside that hides beneath my awareness. It's there, but I can't see it, can't control it, can't fight it, can't get rid of it…" He shuddered. "…But it's never come out since that day. So I don't know what may make it come out again… Fear? Survival Instinct? Rage? What is the trigger?!"

"How..." Sho took a stuttering breath as tears began to well up in his eyes. "How can accept Motoko's feelings when I'm a potential danger to everyone around me, Kimiko? It wouldn't be fair to her to do that when I know that the day will someday come that I finally lose the ability to keep that monster under wraps and turn into the demon that lives within my soul? The day that happens, they'll probably have to kill me to protect the village…"

His jaw tensed. "I REFUSE to make the angel that Hata-san is suffer the heartbreak and torment THAT would undoubtedly cause her. She deserves better than that... Better than me…" He wiped the tears away, clearly trying to remain as stoically as possible.

Kimiko felt tears start to trickle down her own face. There was a sweet nobility about his dilemma that further excited the romantic spirit in the kunoichi. Purity to his affection that bordered on the line between love and devotion... The fact that he didn't, couldn't, even say the word 'love' when referring to his feelings for Motoko-chan told her that he was afraid to admit it - even to himself.

She wiped the tears from her eyes. "I think... I think you're not giving yourself enough credit, Sho…"

"These are facts, Kimiko." Sho said. "I'm dangerous… What if…"

Itou began to feel irritated; this overly-emotional Sho was too much. "What if Naruto became Hokage tomorrow?!"

Inugami sputtered, starting to laugh despite himself at that thought.

"Okay, so you've got a dark side that can be inhumanly brutal, but you're refusing to enjoy life out of fear of what it MIGHT do. That's not living; that's existing at best." Kimiko said, giving the older boy the one-armed hug that Nakahito would give her when she was down on herself. "If you feel so strongly for her, let her KNOW so she can help you share your burden. As your friend, I'd suggest you try and take a chance on her; I think you'll be surprised at how well it will work out."

"Thanks, Kimiko..." He said after a few seconds. "I'll consider it; I really will. But it won't be something I can just decide to do out of the blue."

The medical Genin put his glasses back on. He paused for a moment and raised an eyebrow. "So, just out of curiosity, have you ever considered taking your own advice?"

For another brief instant, Kimiko had a vision of herself on a date with someone; this time it was Lee-kun. But, just like before, the dream felt wrong and, for the life of her, she wasn't sure why. A blush colored her cheeks. "I don't have anyone like that, Sho... Avenging my clan comes first - once I can lay my family to rest, then maybe I can start thinking about love."

'She really is as oblivious as I was...' Inugami thought to himself. 'Somehow, that makes me feel a little better.'

The faintest hint of a smile creased his face as some of his confidence returned. "Naruhodo... I see. Well, we had a deal; help on my problem for insight on yours..." He sat back down on the bench. "So, why don't you get it off your chest; what did 'Hito do this time? Walk in on you in the shower?"

Kimiko's eyes widened in shock as her jaw dropped open.

* * *

One of the two invisible heat sources had turned out to be nothing more than a peeping tom hiding in a tree in front of a girls' dormitory. Between Nakahito and Miho, they smacked the pervert into semi-conscious insensibility before turning him over to the civilian authorities. Actually, Haruno had done most of the beating; Miho mainly kept him from going completely overboard in his effort to expunge his own guilt by projecting it on the peeper. Finally, Miho finally had to remind Haruno that they were running out of time.

The two of them utilized the Flash Step to get over to the area that the second heat source had been. Miho looked around carefully - she had sharp eyes, even without the Byakugan, but she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary on the street. "You're sure it was over here, 'Hito?"

The red and black clad ninja nodded as he caught an odd scent on the breeze: Early spring cherry blossoms... and lilacs. He smiled wryly, pulling out two extra pears that he'd been saving from his equipment pouch. "Hey, Miho-sensei. It's rather warm out here and I know you ran out of water in your canteen... Care for one? They're really juicy - it should take the edge off your thirst."

The odd way he stressed some of his words caught Miho's attention and she realized that he wanted her to come a little bit closer. "Why, thank you, Nakahito." She said, walking over to accept the fruit. "I was starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable." Once she was close in, Nakahito's eye flicked to the right. The kunoichi glanced in that direction and spotted a bench, but didn't see any signs of someone's presence beyond the faintest trace of chakra; too faint to track. "Why don't we have a seat over there?"

He turned in the direction that she'd pointed in and the scent got stronger. The Genin nodded. "Sounds good, Miho-sensei." He began to walk just behind her. Now close enough to speak softly without being too obvious about it, Nakahito whispered. "It's Karin Inugami, Sensei... I'm sure of it. She's got this lilac perfume that she put a few drops of onto the scroll she sent me and a friend of hers that I caught earlier smelled of cherry blossoms because she started using the same hair care products that Kimiko uses. Catching both scents right here, right now can't be a mere coincidence."

"Mmmhmm..." Miho agreed, taking a bite of the pear as she took a seat on the bench. The sweet juicy flavor practically exploded in her mouth. "Oh, you're right, 'Hito." She said, keeping up the act to avoid raising suspicions. "This does hit the spot..."

The twin scents had been increasing in intensity as they approached the bench. He raised his hand to take a bite of his pear, but at the last instant, he whipped his arm out around a patch of empty air. "Hey, Karin-chan, have a bite." Haruno offered as he felt his hand catch something that felt feathery soft.

"Owowowowow!" Karin Inugami said as she became visible. Nakahito had a handful of the student's fiery red hair bunched up in his grip and she was leaning back as if suddenly stopped in her tracks. She had apparently been attempting to sneak past but 'Hito had managed to reach out at just the right time to grab her trailing tresses. "No fair... You used that jutsu I gave you on me!"

"That only narrowed down where you were, Inugami-chan. Your scent is what actually gave you away this time." He rubbed her hair between his fingers, confirming the scent. "You and Shinobu use the same shampoo and conditioner?"

The elder of Sho's two younger sisters slapped his hand to free her hair. "I might have told her about the products Kim..." She paused and looked up. "You caught Shinobu, too?" She grinned flirtatiously. "Where'd she kiss you?" She asked, arching a single eyebrow, a display of interest that she'd learned from her brother, but one was far more effective in her hands than his.

Miho Hyuuga began to laugh as Nakahito Haruno began to sputter. "K-kiss... Shin... YOU DID SET ME UP!" He accused her.

Karin gave him a sensuous wink. "Maybe... Maybe not." 'Hito began to make flustered sounds of annoyance, causing Inugami to giggle girlishly. "Okay, okay, no, I didn't. Shinobu just likes kissing boys that are good looking." She gave him a kittenish wink this time.

Nakahito sighed, realizing that he'd completely lost this round to the young woman. "Miho-sensei?" His voice was pleading.

The Jonin kunoichi rose to her feet, having mercy on her student. "Okay, Karin-san, since we both caught you, you're getting two ribbons. Armband, please?" The Inugami girl nodded, pulling off the multicolored band, handing it over silently. "Thank you!" Miho said, quickly looping her purple ribbon around the other kunoichi's wrist.

Nakahito tried to put his on her left wrist. "Uh, uh!" Karin said stabbing a finger into his chest. "You just broke my hair band; I want you to fix my hair, 'Hito-kun." Nakahito raised his left hand to his face with a weeping sigh. Inugami-chan began to pout cutely. "Pweeze, 'Hito-sama?"

Haruno nearly choked on his own breath as Miho Hyuuga began to laugh again. He waved his hand. "All right, all right." He gave her a pitying look. "On one condition, Karin-chan," Sho's sister looked at him curiously. "Please, for the love of the Kami, don't EVER say that to me that way again!"

"Deal. And don't worry, my lips are sealed. Kimiko won't hear a peep from me."

"And not a word to Sho, either." Nakahito said quickly.

"I'm playfully flirting with you, 'Hito-kun; not trying to get you killed."

"Good enough." The Genin said tying a quick butterfly bow as he had for Shinobu Dayspring. He paused as he finished. "Oh, one last thing..." He leaned forward, whispering in her ear. "When do you turn 18?"

Karin blinked in confusion. "I turn 13 on September 6th, so five years from now." A faint blush appeared on her cheeks... Could her efforts have been THAT successful?! "Why?"

"So I know when it's no longer safe to be living as a bachelor in Konoha." He answered with a wink, causing her to flush with embarrassment and finally winning himself a point against Sho's sister.

* * *

"Man, Kimiko, you just can't seem to catch a break as of late." Sho said dryly as she finished telling him about the latest misadventure between her and Nakahito, as well as the events leading up to it. "There's not much I can do about the last part aside from chemically inducing a bit of amnesia in the two of you..."

"Sho, come on, I was serious for you." Kimiko chided him.

He raised an eyebrow. "Who said I wasn't being serious? Targeted amnesia isn't exactly something you can do in your sleep."

A quick frown from the kunoichi caused him to raise his hands. "Okay, sorry. You say the odd dreams that reminded you of what I just did with my memory started about the same time as the puddles began to appear? And the first was right before our mission to the Hot Springs Village? Never before?"

Itou nodded. "Yes to all three questions."

Sho puzzled over the quandary for a few minutes before recalling something that he'd thought he'd seen at a distance during the Yondaime's Gambit. "That amulet around your neck... Where did you get it?"

Kimiko reached into her tunic and pulled out the odd star-shaped necklace. "My sister, Reiko... Well, at least I think I did... In one of the dreams, she put it around my neck just before she and my mother hid me in the panic room under the floorboards of the house."

"May I see it for a minute? I think that it might be the connected your dreams."

"I don't see how..." She said as she unlinked the chain clasp and handed it to him. "It's just an ordinary piece of red coral carved into a five-pointed star."

He took it cautiously, his hand glowing with a faint green energy. "Except that ordinary pieces of coral don't glow blue when wet. This one did for a few minutes when you used the Water Dragon jutsu to kill that illusionary kunoichi that had apparently injured Nakahito. It seemed to react when you got extremely emotional." He focused on the star. "Very unusual... A part of this coral is still alive, despite not being in water."

"Alive?" Kimiko Itou asked in surprise.

Sho nodded. "All coral is alive, didn't you know that? It's created over countless decades by microscopic life forms, but those organisms only live in water if the environmental conditions are exactly right for them. This coral has not only been removed from the water, but was then put through a number of processes to shape and polish this piece of calcium carbonate to its current form. All of those steps are most definitely outside of being 'exactly right' for them, yet I sense life nonetheless."

"I was never big on biology... Heck, I've never seen the ocean outside of pictures." The coral suddenly flashed a bright blue light that caused both Sho and Kimiko to wince. The star fell out of Sho's fingers, but he managed to catch the chain before the relic from Kimiko's sister could be damaged. "Oww! What was that?!"

Sho blinked a few times before the dots from the intense light faded. "We just got an answer..." He handed the necklace back to Kimiko. "Someone went to a LOT of trouble and inscribed some kind of jutsu inside the coral itself; probably by altering its molecular structure somehow. That jutsu gives off energy similar to non-sentient life and I simply misunderstood what I was sensing. To be absolutely honest, I've never seen anything like it. At the same time, though, I can't bring myself to dismiss the thought that this is somehow related to your dreams."

Kimiko looked at the stone. "Why? Why would someone do something like that?"

Inugami shrugged. "That's the problem; I can't say. The technique is extremely advanced. This pendant could be a storage device designed to preserve knowledge - like some kind of organic computer. It could be a homing beacon. Hell, it could be the key to bring about the end of the world for all I know. All I can tell you for certain is that it responds to chakra and emotion."

"I wonder if it might be related to something my older sister shouted in the dream… What was it..? Oh, Mizugan!"

Sho rocked back in surprise at her words as his mind considered another pathway of knowledge. "You know... I didn't even consider that..." He raised his hand to his chin and began to rub the underside of his jaw with his ring and pinky fingers as he began to think about it.

"Wait a second, you mean you've heard that word before?"

"Hmm..?" He said without really looking at her, as if answering the question didn't require him to stop his other chain of though. "Oh, yes, of course I have; it was the Itou clan Kekkei Genkai. My family specializes in genetics. We find the various Kekkei Genkai of the world to be VERY interesting; it is only the rarest of the rare that catch us by surprise..."

"Our…" She asked in shock. "The Itou Clan WHAT?!"

Sho Inugami blinked as her exclamation shattered his chain of thought and he looked at her in disbelief. "You didn't know? They never told you about that?" There was a momentary pause as he frowned in thought. "No, of course they wouldn't... It wasn't very common even then."

"Tell me, Sho." Kimiko ordered before he could fall back into his reverie. She could scarcely believe her luck; a member of her own team had information about her family that she'd never even heard whispers of before.

The medic shrugged. "I suppose it's the least I can do for you... The Mizugan - or Water Eye - is one of the many ocular Kekkei Genkai in the world; nearly as famous as the legendary Rinnegan and almost as old. In fact, most of the Kekkei Genkai in the world seems to be related to the Rinnegan, albeit with only a fraction of the power the Rinnegan possesses. The Mizugan has a number of unusual properties - its primary ability is to act as an eye of insight that allows for remote viewing through any source of water within the range of the user's chakra."

"Sort of like the Hokage's Telescope Technique, you mean."

Sho nodded. "Very close; in fact, he might have based that technique off the Mizugan. In the case your family's Kekkei Genkai, however, it could target MULTIPLE water sources at the same time - so instead of only having one set of eyes, it was like having dozens or hundreds; kind of like the way an insect's eye works. However, unlike the Byakugan, it could only view the natural light spectrum... It trumps Miho-sensei's eyes in terms of range, though. With enough water sources and chakra, the wielder of the Mizugan could literally supervise an entire region in real time; like being able to see every square inch of Konoha at once."

"Holy cow..." She gasped in thought.

"In the Land of Water, where your clan originally came from, it made your family the undisputed masters of that nation for several centuries - they could see anyone if they were in line-of-sight to the ocean. But, for all its power, fewer than 1 in 200 shinobi ever acquired the Mizugan. The one of its odder quirks that there was never any record of a man ever manifesting it - only women... Women with the Itou bloodline."

Kimiko frowned. "I wonder why Sarutobi-ojisan never told me about it..."

"I could tell you; but you won't like the answer, Itou-san." Sho said softly as he bowed his head slightly. He'd lied once in the last few hours and he wasn't about to consider doing so again. Especially not to someone who'd accepted what he'd shown her the way Kimiko had. "If you ask, though, I will answer."

'He's gone formal on me again... Just like when he offered to do the chakra transfusion.' The kunoichi realized. 'He's absolutely sure I won't like what he has to say... But...'

She straightened up, coming to a decision. "I need to know, Sho-kun." Kimiko said as her heart filled with a determination to learn what had been kept hidden from her.

The medical trainee nodded. "So be it. I can think of two likely reasons. First of all, there's a chance that you will never be able to manifest the Mizugan, Kimiko… Your blood carries the POTENTIAL to use it – especially if your sister had it – but there is no guarantee. There are countless records of only one Itou in a generation getting it. The Hokage probably wouldn't have mentioned it so as to keep you from agonizing over it if you never develop it and pin your hopes on any children you have getting it."

The young woman thought about it for a moment. "You're right, that does sound like something he would do; wouldn't he?"

Sho nodded. "There's one other reason that is even more likely, but I'm begging you Kimiko, don't ask me. It could ruin your life; maybe even some of your friendships..."

"My life was ruined when I was three years old, Sho. It can't get any worse." She responded. "And I can't see how your assumption could affect me so deeply that I'd turn on a friend. What's the other reason?"

The young man took a deep breath. "When Hinata Hyuuga was three years old, the Village Hidden in the Clouds attempted to kidnap her in an effort to acquire the secrets of the Byakugan." He started, attempting to be evasive.

Itou nodded coolly, her eyes narrowing. "And Hinata's father rescued her. It was the same night my clan was killed."

"I know; I couldn't forget if I tried..." Sho said with a sigh. She wasn't going to let him beat around the bush. "In those days, the three noble houses of Konoha were extremely close... If one asked another for a favor, it was usually granted without a second thought in the name of solidarity." He looked in her eyes. "Now, let's say Hiashi Hyuuga did NOT stop the kidnapper; what do you think would have happened?"

Kimiko frowned in confusion as she thought about his question. "Well, first of all, he would have ordered every available Hyuuga clan member to find Hinata-chan. She's the Heiress Apparent and, at the time, his only child. Then he would ask for assistance from the village and the other noble families..." Her voice trailed off as realization began to dawn on her face.

Inugami gave her a single, almost apologetic, nod. "The Itou clan was killed because the Mizugan would have been able to foil the Cloud Village's plan. They could have used the Water jutsu they specialized in to create a rainstorm that covered the Land of Fire from one border to another, making it impossible for the Cloud ninja to return home with their prize unseen."

Itou sat there in stunned disbelief for a moment. "You're saying that my clan... Every single member of my ENTIRE family... Died just to allow a kidnapping to go off without a hitch?! A KIDNAPPING THAT FAILED NEARLY AS SOON AS IT STARTED!?" She shouted as rage and grief ripped out her heart and tears began to flow like a flash flood from Kimiko's eyes. The star-shaped pendant began to glow with a faint light. "Oh, God damn it..!" Kimiko Itou began to weep inconsolably, burying her face in Sho's chest.

Sho Inugami remained silent, patting her shoulder gently; much the way his mother had the night after he'd killed the boar to save his own life. The two of them sat there for what seemed like hours; even after Kimiko's tears had dried, her sobbing fell silent, and the light faded from her sister's necklace.

There was a sudden crack of thunder as a bolt of lightning lanced across the sky. Sho looked up, seeing a repeat of Miho-sensei's signal that started their search for the students. "Looks like the game's over..."

Kimiko Itou looked up. Her eyes were puffy from the crying, but Sho gently used his hand and medical skills to wipe them and the residue of their passage away. She sniffed once, but gave him a simple smile of gratitude. The knowledge had caused her some pain, but in exchange, now she knew the whole truth about the WHY; somehow that made it worth it. "I guess we need to head back to the Academy."

Sho nodded in silent agreement.

* * *

It was nearly ten minutes later by the time the four members of Team 13 and the remaining students had reassembled on the parade ground of the Konoha Ninja Academy. All forty students had reassembled into their groups by class. 38 out of the 40 bore at least one of the colored ribbons that the team had been carrying. The two that were missing ribbons - Sho's younger sister, Lucia, and one of the 12-year-olds that Kimiko didn't recognize - stood by Iruka-sensei.

Sho looked at the class of eleven-year-olds and spotted his other sister standing beside her friend, Shinobu Dayspring. Both had Nakahito's red ribbons tied like butterflies in their hair, but they were the only girls in that age group with the ribbons like that. The two of them kept casting eyes at Nakahito and giggling to themselves. Sho looked at the other male member of his team and watched him squirm uncomfortably at the attention they were giving him.

'Haruno's being tortured enough by those two; I don't need to get involved.' Inugami contemplated as he gave off a silent snort of amusement.

Iruka-sensei clapped his hands to bring everyone's attention to him as the primary instructors of the various classes pulled out their grade books. "All right, everyone! I trust that a good time was had by most of you?" The students made assorted noises of agreement, but a few cringed in silence. "Well, we have two that managed to avoid getting caught during today's exercise." He gestured to the two students standing by him. "So Lucia Inugami and Haseo Sorakage here both get A+ grades this time around. Congratulations, you two!" Umino-sensei said as Haseo and Lucia's teachers made marks in their books and the other students applauded.

"Now, if Team 13 will come up and join me..." The four member active ninja cell came forward. "I want everyone that has two ribbons to line up in front of Miho Hyuuga and the rest of you to line up in front of the Genin that caught you because - and I did say that today was going to have a bit of a twist - THEY will be deciding the grades the rest of you earned!"

"What?" Kimiko and Nakahito asked in shocked surprise; as did the entire congregation of students.

Iruka grinned at them. "It's standard operating procedure for the game; you get an A+ if you don't get caught at all and whoever catches you decides what score you get unless outvoted by three or more instructors. Once we're all lined up, you can start grading them, but we'll do it one member of Team 13 at a time so the teachers can properly record them. Generally speaking though, you can give them any grade between A- and F. Just be prepared to explain your reasoning for the grade if challenged by one of the teachers."

The students began to line up according to Iruka-sensei's orders. Hyuuga-sensei ended up with Karin Inugami and the three other students that had survived to the second round. Kimiko Itou had twelve students line up in front of her: Taven Kuroshida was the first in line and he gave Itou a nauseatingly familiar wink and a toothy grin, but a growling sigh and a quick shove towards the back of the line on her part replaced him with the much more acceptable sniffly-nosed Udon.

Miho Hyuuga gave her a curious look. "The idiot still hasn't learned the lesson Ino gave him earlier." Kimiko explained with the faintest of blushes.

Nakahito Haruno, standing to Kimiko's right, looked at the young man that Kimi-chan had just ejected to the back of the line, frowning impressively. He looked down his line of eleven students, looking past Shinobu Dayspring and Moegi at the front to spot the young man he'd named Hentai, who was practically cowering at the end of the line, red ribbon still tied tightly around his throat. 'Hito caught Hentai's eye, glanced over at Kuroshida and narrowed his eyes at Hentai. The glower apparently was expressive enough that Haruno imagined that he could hear Hentai cringe and then nod as he stepped out of line to talk with his classmate.

The two twelve-year-olds talked for a few moments and there were several gestures by Hentai to his throat and Nakahito. Kuroshida blinked in surprise; he glanced at Nakahito who threw him one of Sho's most malicious grins - the one with a maniacal glint to his eyes - and a slight licking of his lips as he drew his thumb across his neck. The combination was so creepy that it caused Haruno's own spine to crawl. For the target of his intimidation efforts, Taven's eyes widened in stark terror, dropping to his knees and prostrating himself in a clear attempt to beg 'Hito's forgiveness.

To Nakahito's right, where Sho also had eleven students gathered in front of him, the medic-nin grinned and leaned over to Haruno. "Impressive combination... The licking of your lips was a nice touch; I'll have to remember to use it on special occasions." He whispered conspiratorially.

Haruno chuckled as he remembered his earlier epiphany where Sho Inugami was concerned. He still wasn't ready to apologize for the last seven years of being a short-sighted jackass, but he was ready to stop seeing the medic-nin for his reputation and see him for what he really was. "Be still my beating heart... That's the third compliment you've given me in the last four days, Sho. You'd better be careful; I might start thinking you might actually like me rather than seeing me as the punch line for one of your jokes."

"Oni" Inugami began to laugh softly, his laugh missing its usual mocking overtones. "You might be right, Nakahito." He answered as he turned back to his students. The only one of any real note was the Hokage's grandson, who was standing towards the back of the line between two of the students that were still practically hogtied - part of Sho's berating of them had included numerous threats of bodily injury if they weren't still tied up with the EXACT knots that he'd put into their ribbons when the exercise was finished. It had been those threats that had sparked the exasperated debate between him and Iruka-sensei upon Sho's return to the Academy.

"All right," Umino said once everyone was in place. "Once you get your grades, form back up into your normal class assignments. Miho-sensei, since you are the superior officer here, why don't you start us off."

The purple clad Jonin kunoichi smiled at her long-time friend. "Okay." She said, briefly clapping her hands to get down to business. She glanced at the two "winners" of the day's games. "For starters, good job to the both of you, but don't get over-confident; if Iruka-sensei ever invites us back, you might not be so lucky next time."

She turned back to the students in her line. "Since these four nearly made it to the very end, I'm going to award them all an A minus. In most stealth situations, you're rarely going to be passed by the same person multiple times and your skills were sufficient that it took at least 3 passes before we actually caught you all. On a real mission, you'd likely have been in and out before a sentry would have approached you that many times."

She looked at her students. 'Sho's method of grading might give me some insight into how he thinks...' The Jonin kunoichi thought to herself. Hyuuga nodded to the apprentice medic. "Inugami-san, why don't you handle your students next?"

The medic-nin nodded in acceptance of the order. "I spoke with each of you at some length when I caught you, so you already know why you will receive the grades I'm about to give you. Since I don't know your names, when I give you your grades, just head over to your teacher to make sure your grade is properly recorded." The eleven students that Inugami had caught nodded in agreement; their first encounter with Sho had intimidated them, the second had cowed them, and this third one resulted in mere acceptance of his superiority. "I want the six of you that have your arms tied behind your backs up here to see if I need to follow up on my promises. NOW."

The six Academy students nearly trampled their peers in an effort to obey Inugami's commands. As soon as they were lined up, they made an about-face to expose their tied up arms. Nakahito, who hadn't heard Iruka and Sho's conversation earlier, whistled in admiration. "Damn, Sho... I don't think I could get out of some of those bindings."

"That was the general point." Sho responded as he began to examine the knot series. "D+," he announced to the first one as he whipped out one of his kunai and cut the central tension piece - the part of the knot that, once severed, caused the entire ribbon to fall away. Sho had tied the knots in a specific way as a reminder to himself how badly the student in question had screwed up; mainly because he'd fully expected Iruka-sensei to saddle them with this responsibility. "D, D+, D-, C-."

He paused as he came to the final one. His eyes narrowed as he examined the knot and frowned as he saw something he didn't like. "F!" Inugami snarled as he flipped the twelve year old in question about. "Why did you let someone untie you?" The medic demanded.

"I... I didn't!" The student squirmed in terror.

Inugami's eyes narrowed in anger as he laid one of the flat edges of his kunai near the student's throat. Iruka looked horrified and moved to interpose himself, but Miho-sensei, noticing that Sho was missing the usual tells that indicated the young man was truly inclined towards violence, stopped him. Kimiko and Nakahito, seeing the same lack of the signs, remained unconcerned at the heads of their lines.

"Why are you lying to me, boya? Or didn't you believe me when I said that I'd..." Sho leaned in and whispered something.

Whatever was said between them clearly terrified the young man. "Okay! I admit it! After you caught me, I didn't come right back to the Academy; I stopped over at my girlfriend's house and spent some time with her."

"WHY?" Inugami bellowed in the young man's face.

Finally fed up, the young man shouted back. "You only beat me; you can't break me! Your empty threats may shock me, but you can't force me to do what I don't want to do!"

'Oh... Shit... Oni's going to gut this guy...' Or some variant thereof was the thought that ran through the minds of most of the people there.

Then Oni Inugami laughed. And everyone's jaw dropped in shock.

"Who's your teacher, boya?" He asked as he cut the young man's ribbon and sheathed the throwing knife. The younger man pointed and Sho glanced in the direction indicated. "I retract my prior decision: C+!" A number of surprised looks were suddenly oriented at the Genin medic.

"I deliberately humiliated the six of you to drum in the fact that in the real world, you would have likely been killed for failing to do your job right, but there are cases when you might instead be taken alive." Sho explained loudly enough to ensure that everyone heard him.

He gestured to the others that had been bound in embarrassing ways. "These five simply accepted their failure. Had they been captured, they likely would have succumbed to whatever torture they might have suffered and potentially betrayed themselves, their teammates and our village. Annath Auryodus here, however, defied my orders. Had he been captured, he may have been killed by the enemy OR, thanks to his determination, spitting in the face of my dire threats to himself and his loved ones, he might have been able to devise an escape plan and return to the village with useful information. Remember that - nothing is final until you breathe your last breath, understood?!"

"Hai, Inugami-sempai!" The six students that Sho had been specifically addressing - and several of the bystanders who'd been watching with rapt attention - called back.

"Either Sho is cannier than I suspected," Iruka muttered softly to Miho. "Or he just came up with that on the fly…"

Hyuuga shook her head, impressed with the Medic's oratory skills. "He undoubtedly had that planned from the beginning… He was the first on the Team to realize D missions are for both on-the-job training and supervised practice of a Genin's skills. Adding a lesson in how to handle capture seems right in line with how he tries to layer his efforts to share his knowledge with Kimiko and Nakahito."

"Konohamaru Sarutobi." Inugami finally said, having reached the last of his captured students while the two instructors had talked.

The Hokage's grandson stepped forward unflinchingly. "Hai, Inugami-sempai!"

"You impressed me earlier with your quick thinking in disabling a Genin who was being rather insulting to you earlier. Most people wouldn't think of using Uzumaki's…" He paused looking for appropriate words. "Special Technique in such a situation."

Iruka's jaw fell open in horror, as did Kimiko's. "S-S-S-Special Technique?!" The teacher sputtered. There was only ONE "special" technique that Naruto had shown off recently… And it was completely inappropriate for a teenager to say nothing of the Hokage's eight year old grandson!

"I'm breaking Naruto's jaw when he comes back from the Land of Waves…" Itou gritted. Then she noticed the blank look on Nakahito's face and smacked him upside the back of his head. "Snap out of it, Baka!"

"Special technique?" Miho asked in genuine confusion. Umino flushed in embarrassment and whispered an explanation. Hyuuga's pale cheeks turned cherry red. "Honorable grandson!"

"Ignore them…" Sho ordered, keeping the boy's focus. The young Sarutobi, who'd started looking a bit embarrassed, looked back up to Inugami. "There are times when the unexpected choice creates an opening that you can capitalize on. Naruto showed you how that can happen from what you told me."

"Yes, sir!" Konohamaru agreed immediately.

"So, in respect for your quick thinking, I'm going to give you an impromptu test…" Inugami continued. "You've seen how I've graded all the others before you. Based on that, what grade do you think I'm going to give you?"

The boy paused, looking up at the white haired Genin. "I sense a trap here…"

Sho nodded, impressed by the boy's awareness of it. "Very good. Continue."

Konohamaru tapped his foot in thought. "You're friends with the Boss, but you're not going to let that or my relation to Geezer count." Another nod. "You gave the defiant guy a C+ while the others like him got D's..." He looked over to the ones with the double ribbons. "But out of fairness, you aren't going to give me an A- like your Sensei gave the ones that lasted the longest but still got caught… And the others…"

He gave the medic-nin his snagle-toothed grin. "You're giving me a B+!"

Sho reached down and ruffled the boy's pompom of hair. "Brilliantly deduced, Konohamaru." Inugami looked at Iruka and nodded confirmation. The Chuunin nodded his approval and marked the gradebook accordingly. "Remember this lesson, Sarutobi-kun. It will serve you well in the future."

The Sandaime's grandson saluted the medic-nin and stepped back with the rest of the class.

Miho Hyuuga nodded her approval at her Genin's use of logic, if not his methods. "Kimiko, why don't you go next?"

Itou nodded, "Okay. Udon-kun here used a very good illusion technique, but made a minor mistake that allowed me to spot him, so he gets a B-!" Konohamaru and Moegi both cheered for their team member as the boy bowed respectfully to the kunoichi.

She made quick work of her other captures until Taven Kuroshida came up, looking nervously at Nakahito, who narrowed his eyes as the young man came up. Kimiko gave him a glower and merely said, "D+." The young man then booked it to the end of the line in an effort to get as far away from the duo as possible.

"I don't know what the one with the ribbon around his neck said to him," Sho murmured under his breath, "but it seems to have done the trick."

"Guess I can't give him an F-, then…" Haruno whispered back.

Miho Hyuuga arched her eyebrows at the two young men on the team, though she couldn't hear their discussion. They seemed to be bonding faster than she'd expected... "'Hito, your turn."

The red clad ninja worked through the first few cadets easily enough when little Moegi, the third member of the Konohamaru Corps, came to the front. Nakahito dropped to one knee so he could look the young girl in the eye. "Hi there, Moegi-chan."

"Hi, Haruno-sempai!" She replied back, feeling rather chipper.

"I've got to give you a B for your effort today. Do you think you know why?" He asked, remembering how Sho had checked the Hokage's grandson for understanding and felt others could learn a lesson from Moegi.

The little girl paused looking up as she thought back. "Uhmm… Oh, I know I accidentally gave myself away because I was impressed by how that older kunoichi you talked to cut up and caught that orange in mid-air using a wired shuriken!"

Kimiko and Miho both arched their eyebrows at Nakahito in an unspoken question, but they didn't interrupt him.

Haruno, who missed the look, nodded. "That's right. You also made a tiny error when using your camouflage technique. Watch…" He made a quick seal set and turned himself mostly invisible, but when you looked at him from different angles, you could tell there was a three-dimensional object trying to pretend to be a two dimensional surface. "You can see me, right?" He asked.

An "OH!" look appeared on Moegi's face. "Oops! I got the coloration right, but I forgot to make myself look flat!"

Nakahito reappeared as he released the technique and stood up. "You got it. You probably would have been fine if you'd been hiding against a tree to look like a branch or a bulge on the trunk, but not against a fence or a wall, okay?"

The girl nodded, smiling up at him again as she moved to the back. "Thank you, Haruno-sempai!"

"Older kunoichi?" Kimiko finally asked.

Haruno shrugged. "Just a new friend I met out on the training grounds the other day before you came back with lunch. She happened by while I was observing the kid's camouflage."

Hentai was next after Moegi, he wilted when Nakahito turned to look at him. "F, right..?"

Nakahito shook his head. "D-" The ninja with the ribbon around his throat blinked in surprise. "I'd recommend you keep your head on a swivel when you're in 'enemy' territory – you got complacent and lost in your own thoughts…" He pointed to the red ribbon. "Just remember, that could have been your blood and try harder in the future."

The perverted shinobi bowed and beat a hasty retreat.

"Wasn't he wearing a different pair of pants earlier?" Sho asked; a sly grin on his face.

"I don't know what you're talking about." The red ninja said with false innocence as the next student stepped up. "C." Inugami shook his head with a 'Sure you don't' look to his eye, but let it lie.

The final students were quickly graded until Shinobu Dayspring came up; the last to be graded. Nakahito's red butterfly ribbon was still prominent in her hair, causing Kimiko to glance between Karin Inugami, the new girl and her best friend, but she said nothing.

"I can only give you a B+, Dayspring-chan." Nakahito said. "You hid yourself really well as part of the sign for Ichiraku's but you gave yourself away, so I can't justify an A-." The year-younger kunoichi pouted slightly, but nodded acceptance before returning to the group.

Iruka stepped up as the last teacher nodded confirmation of the grades. "All and all, well done!" He said to the combined classes. "Please bow and thank Team 13 for their efforts to teach you all. Once you've done so, head back to the classrooms so we can finish out the day!" The 40 or so younger cadets bowed as one with a chorus of thank you before departing the field.

Once they were gone, Umino turned to his recent graduates. "You three did great today. I'm very proud of how well you conducted yourselves…" He arched an eyebrow at Sho. "The lesson you gave your 'prisoner' students was probably a bit more extreme than I would have preferred, but you did limit it to older students rather than terrorize the younger ones; so thank you for that."

The medic shrugged. "Their efforts were a disgrace for their age, Iruka-sensei. I mean, Sarutobi-kun did better than those six and HE tried using a three-man camo sheet by himself!" The teacher winced at that thought, making a mental note to give the failed students some extra training in the next few weeks. "They probably deserved worse, but while my reputation suggests it, I'm not THAT cruel." He smirked. "You also didn't say how far we were allowed to go in giving a lesson."

"I'll keep that in mind for the future." The teacher said dryly.

Nakahito looked at his former sensei. "This was a lot tougher that I expected… I've got a whole new respect for you, Iruka-sensei." Kimiko nodded in agreement.

The scarred Chuunin nodded his acceptance of the young man's compliment. "Well, a teacher would have had a few advantages in doing this, Nakahito. One, we have more experience – I'm twice your age, after all." Haruno nodded. "And two, we've spent every day with these kids, so we know their quirks and how they think better than you do. Most of them try the same hiding spot or technique each time, which is why I get a prior year class to test them occasionally."

A light lit up in Kimiko's eyes. "Because we don't know what to expect from them!"

Umino grinned. "Right in one, Kimiko." He gestured to Sho. "With the exception of Inugami, here, none of you had any connection to anyone in this grouping and I knew I could count on him to offer an unbiased opinion on his sisters from an educational standpoint." He looked at the medic. "I noticed that you didn't catch either of them; they've got their Hide in Plain Sight that good already?"

"Karin, yes." Sho agreed. "I knew roughly where she was because I could recognize her chakra pulse, so I left her capture to Miho-sensei and Haruno-san; it wasn't fair to use that advantage against her." Iruka nodded agreement.

"Lucia… I'm honestly not sure on; she wasn't in my initial search area and I'm afraid I was a bit…" He said apologetically, pausing to glance at Kimiko for a moment. "…distracted during the second search. Either I completely overlooked her or we simply didn't cover enough ground to find where she was hiding."

Miho Hyuuga blinked in surprise. Inugami had always been single-minded when it came to missions. What could have happened?

"It was partially my fault, Miho-sensei, Iruka-sensei." Itou said, lying effortlessly in a way that surprised Inugami as she covered for them. In that moment, the medic knew he'd been right to trust the kunoichi with one of his secrets. "I'm afraid I was a bit giddy during our mutual search – I ran into Rock Lee and found out his Jonin may know a number of my family's Taijutsu kata. I'm afraid I was gushing a bit to Sho."

The two teachers nodded acceptance of the kunoichi's words. "Fair enough." Iruka said. "I am very pleased with your performance – and growth in these few weeks since you've left the Academy – and will inform Sarutobi-sensei as much. Catch you four later!" With that, the head instructor nodded to the four man cell and headed back into the school.

"Congratulations, Kimi!" Nakahito said, genuinely excited for her discovery - even if it had to come from Rock Lee.

Itou smiled wanly. "Yeah… Though my joy is a bit cooled because I have to get the information from Might Gai…"

"If he offers, just say no to the green one piece leotard." Miho Hyuuga says with a smile, causing all three of her Genin to shudder at the thought of Itou wearing the outfit the two strange ninja were fond of. "The man has his quirks, but he is probably the best Taijutsu fighter in the village… Even if he is denser than Hokage Cliff at times…"

"Just make sure Tenten is with you during the training." Nakahito suggested. "She seems to serve as the voice of reason on their team."

"Ah, so that's the older kunoichi?" Miho asked, recalling Moegi's comment. Haruno nodded. "Nice to see that the Hokage tried to temper him with a kunoichi's touch this time around…" It was a testament of the deal between Itou and Haruno not to be irrationally jealous that Nakahito didn't lose it over Rock Lee or that Kimiko didn't get suspicious of Tenten.

"All right, everyone. Let's report our mission completion to the Hokage and call it a day…" Hyuuga finished. She noted the slightly haunted look hiding at the corners of Itou's and Haruno's eyes… She paused; Inugami was also showing stress indicators – even worse than that of his teammates. Whatever had distracted him, it was clear to the Jonin that whatever had distracted Kimiko and Sho, it was NOT what the kunoichi had confessed.

'So he's unwilling to lie,' Hyuuga thought to herself, 'But will allow a lie through not providing all the facts… What the hell could have happened between them and why would Kimiko cover for him? Stranger and stranger…'

"We'll take tomorrow off to recover from some of the… Shocks… Of the day." Miho announced, causing relief to appear in all three Genin, who were all clearly in need of a mental health day. "We'll meet on the 8th at the 20th Training Zone for continued Wall Walking jutsu practice. Okay?"

"Hai, Sensei!" All three replied instantly.

"Let's move out!"