Ch319. Anko's mission experiences

It was two weeks since Team Seven arrived in the Land of Waves and Anko was getting more and more frustrated as her attempts at locating Gato failed one after another. The rat was hidden well. Much too well, for her tastes. If only she was able to reach him and introduce him to her snakes. The rest of this entire mission would be a piece of cake after that.

But no! At first, Anko tried the old-fashioned way and sent shadow clones as scouts all around, listening to rumors and trying to find Gato's hideout with their tracking and sensing prowess. That didn't do much. She didn't have a proper lead for tracking to work and Anko quickly understood that her meager sensing capabilities were rendered useless by the fact Land of Waves was a country. It didn't matter she could sense almost anything in several hundred meters when she really focused. In the end, that was not even a drop in the bucket compared to the size of an entire country.

Since her first attempts failed, Anko decided to go a bit smarter about it. She decided that tracking Gato was pointless for now, and as such, she focused on his subordinates. Anko tracked several thugs working for Gato. Some she interrogated and killed, others she let be and just followed them to their hideout.

Unfortunately, this was yet another miss. Anko did discover several hideouts across the country but there was no sign of Gato in any of them. No matter how much Anko searched them, she simply found out that these were hideouts for his mercenaries and the businessman clearly didn't stay in such lowly accommodations.

Anko's third attempt was fueled by her frustration. She honestly decided to stop giving a damn and straight-out infiltrated a town where Gato's shipping activities were focused. That was Gato's domain. Everybody important in the town worked for Gato. It was the only port in the Land of Waves that was allowed to trade with the 'outer' world and Gato's ships were coming and going on a constant basis.

Anko quickly found out the main reason why Gato wanted to keep the Land of Waves under his rule was the humid temperature good for growing a particular drug that was all the rage nowadays in the capital cities. Most of these 'trading' ships simply smuggled drugs and occasionally slaves.

Not that she cared. It was a horrid sight but during her career as a kunoichi, Anko saw and did worse. Unfortunately for the slaves, nobody paid her to free them. She was not a hero and helping these people would not help her in finding Gato. She did briefly ponder about causing a commotion and hoping the businessman would show up but that would take too much time. It would be a waste of effort considering Anko suspected Gato's men would definitely attempt attacking Tazuna again in a week or so.

Gato most likely already sent mission requests so his reinforcements should be arriving anytime soon. His wealth was also nowhere near the Land of Waves or its slowly bankrupting banks. Even if Anko fully destroyed the town, it wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things. The only thing capable of making their mission easier was Gato stopping his breathing activities.

The next thing Anko did was to check on the supply lines of the town. She broke into various offices and checked what was imported and exported. Sadly, she didn't find what she was looking for and had to grudgingly admit she started to feel a bit of respect towards Gato and his methods of hiding. Wherever he stayed, he probably received supplies from somewhere else than this town. In hindsight, that was quite smart as it prevented anybody from finding out the location of his hideout by simply following the paper trail.

That was Anko's last attempt at locating Gato. She simply lacked the necessary time to find the midget.

Fortunately, the two Kiri ninjas arrived and that meant the responsibility of guarding Tazuna could be split among them and Team Seven.

Zabuza and Kakashi usually were on the babysitting duty, taking the genins of Team Seven to the bridge and attempted not being bored to death watching the process of bridge-building while Anko enjoyed some of her secret stash of Dango at Tazuna's house, lazing arou-... ahem, she meant guarding Tsunami and Inari.

Zabuza's apprentice, Haku, was quickly snatched by Anko when she found out the... trap could actually make Dango. As such, Haku was stuck with house-guarding duty with Anko where she served as the main Dango-maker for what she thought was a slightly deranged snake-loving kunoichi, too dangerous to offend. Hence, Haku made damn sure her Dango was tasty.

Needless to say, this was one of the more bizarre missions for the young trap.

It was only natural to split their forces in this way. Raiga was apparently S-rank so while Anko was also S-rank ability-wise and could theoretically face Raiga in one versus one, Kakashi and Zabuza would be outmatched if they found themselves alone facing Raiga. Putting them together on one team was to simply give them a chance to survive and withstand Raiga's attack until Anko arrived.

Inari actually tried to tell them how hopeless facing Gato was and how utterly outmatched they were by the civilian dwarf. Poor kid miscalculated his candies with that decision because Zabuza was not one for coddling kids. Nor was the extremely frustrated Anko.

The killing intent that washed over Inari the moment after he tried to be a childish prick made the boy cream his pants brown and fall on his butt, bawling his eyes out from the sheer fright.

Anko could swear it was mostly Zabuza's fault! She released only enough killing intent to scare a chunin! Who in their right mind would use their whole killing intent on a small brat?

She utterly ignored the fact Zabuza, even when using all of his killing intent, would not be able to scare an experienced chunin...

Poor Inari forgot how to speak for the next day. Good for him that Anko knew some rudimentary mind-healing otherwise he would have had nightmares until he was middle-aged.

After that, Tsunami was quite cross with both Anko and Zabuza, and they suddenly found themselves without breakfast privileges. What a bummer...

On a less depressing note, Kakashi was also glad for the addition of Zabuza and Haku once the two tsunderes became comfortable around each other and stopped secretly palming their weapons every second of the day. Nowadays Zabuza only glared at the giggling Kakashi whenever the perv read his books in front of Haku who became red as tomato every time.

This led to little Sasuke developing a small crush on Haku. Oh, the mighty Uchiha tried to hide it and act indifferently but Anko saw right through his facade and noticed the 'subtle' glances in Haku's direction with his Sharingan activated, etching the sight into his memory.

Anko wasn't about to tell the poor boy that he fell for a trap. She could almost taste the sweet, sweet opportunity for some high-end teasing that would present themselves when the Uchiha finally realizes he etched Haku's image forever into his mind, linking it with the feelings of attraction and that Haku is actually not as female as Sasuke first thought.

Anko wondered if this would cause some problems with the boy's sexual orientation later on. Sharingan was a powerful tool but it could be utterly devastating to the user if used during emotional moments since anything seen with it can't be unseen.

She ALMOST pitied Sasuke.

So far, this first mission was proving to be an incredible success as far as getting new experiences went and provided a lot of entertainment for Anko.

'Alas, all good fun has to come to an end,' Anko sighed, sipping on her tea as her senses picked up two hostile people approaching Tazuna's house. She stood up and rolled her shoulders, 'Time to earn my keep, I guess...'