Genin Days (VII).

They were on the road for an hour now, jumping from tree to tree at a comfortable but still rapid speed. Normally Itachi enjoyed these parts of a mission before the bloody part started, where he could enjoy the nature around him in silence. Sadly, this wasn't an option at the moment.

"You're just annoyed because you couldn't win against him once since he joined our team, so do us all a favour and stop whining," Yukio interrupted Anko in one of her long-winded monologues.

"Excuse me?! What has this to do with anything I just said?" Anko retorted irritated.

"You were telling us about this 'super strong and amazing Jutsu' you want to learn when we return from this mission! Don't act as if you don't want to learn it solely for beating Itachi."

Anko scoffed. "I don't want to learn it only to beat him with it, idiot. My life doesn't revolve around him. It will be useful to know and it's powerful, so I want to learn it. It's easy as that. And if it helps me cleaning the floor with boy-wonder over there, well, that's a nice extra."

He guessed he was lucky that he was used to Kisame's antics, or else this would have been much more annoying. His sensei wasn't as fortunate, though.

"Alright, that went on long enough. Calm down, now." While their sensei had still the same dark bags under his eyes, the ones Itachi had noticed the first time he had met him, there was no tiredness or exhaustion in his voice now. "While we will be in friendly territory for at least another day or two, we still need to be careful. You never know where you run into a missing-nin. In fact, we could even be close to one right now."

Anko and Yukio became serious almost instantly. It were moments like this where Itachi was happy that he joined an experienced team rather than one with Genin fresh from the academy. He was much more comfortable going on missions with people who actually understood the dangers of one instead of thinking about possible glories.

"Hai, Sensei," they both replied.

The Jōnin nodded. "Good. Does anyone have a suggestion about how we can protect ourselves from being surprised by enemies? Besides the usual methods, that is."

There was a moment of silence before Itachi raised his voice. "I might be able to get some eyes into the sky to look out for us by using the Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Technique)."

His Sensei raised an eyebrow in silent surprise, and judging by the eyes he could feel at the back of his head, his teammates had similar reactions.

"I wasn't aware that you were in possession of a summoning contract. Funnily enough, I didn't even know that there was a summoning contract with animals capable of flight in the village at all."

"I have a contract with the crows. They are more... unorthodox than other animals in that they don't require someone to sign a contract with them. In fact, they didn't even give me a chance to disagree with them on becoming my summons. One of them just pricked me with its beak to get some blood and that was enough."

And hadn't that been fun to explain to his parents. And not only once, but twice as they have done the exact same thing in the other timeline as well. It wasn't as if it was a bad thing, but it was definitively an unexpected incident. As far as he knew, his 'contract' with the crows was unique in all of the Elemental Nations, though there was the very likely likelihood that there were other cases like his that were kept secret by the various villages.

The contract he made with them this timeline had been, for some reason, happened later than it did in the last. It had happened less than a week ago while he had made it months earlier in his last life. He didn't know why they approached him later this time, which was pretty frustrating, but he was happy it had happened at last. Itachi hadn't even realized how much he had missed them, how lonely he had been without his constant companions, until they were at his side once again.

Finally being reunited with them also allowed him to use a few of the techniques that had been impossible to him since he awoke in the past. That was another point in which his crows differed from most other summons; instead of actually, physically helping him fight his enemies, they rather amplified his Genjutsu and allowed him to use some unique techniques. Sadly, to use these unique techniques, the summoner and the summon both needed to learn them. So even with him theoretically knowing how to use them, he wasn't actually able to use most of them as of yet.

The one exception was the Karasu Bunshin no Jutsu (Crow Clone Technique), for which he was glad. This version of the Bunshin required much less chakra than the normal Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Technique) while still creating a solid clone of himself. It also had the benefit of being able to reform should it get destroyed in battle, again without using as much chakra as creating a new clone would do.

In his opinion, which he admitted to himself might be slightly biased, it was a superior version of the Nidaime's Jutsu. It also solved the chakra problem he had with the aforementioned Hokage's version of the Jutsu quite effectively. At least meeting with the Sandaime should be much easier from now on.

"In that case," Tanaka-Sensei said with a small smile. "Please do so. Having eyes watching the area from the sky would be reassuring."

Itachi nodded. He then continued by biting his thumb to get some blood before he made the necessary hand seals.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Technique)!"

In a swirl of feathers and screeches, a murder of crows appeared before promptly flying into the air to watch the area.

"Wait, don't you need to tell them what to do?" Yukio asked a moment later.

He shook his head. "They knew what I summoned them for from the moment they felt my chakra call them here, there is no need to talk to them. Besides, these crows are still young and inexperienced, so they can't even talk yet."

"Hey," Anko uttered thoughtfully, "would it help if I summoned some snakes to keep watch when we rest? I would call them while we travel, but I doubt the weaker ones would be able to keep up with us."

Tanaka-Sensei's smile grew a bit bigger. "Yes, good thinking. Please do so when we stop for the night."

...

From then on they travelled mostly in silence.

They crossed the border to the Land of Woods on the third day after they left the village.

"From now on we need to be even more careful than before," Tanaka-sensei said calmly. "We don't want the kidnappers to know we're here, just as we planned."

Itachi couldn't say that he liked their plan. Not that the strategy wasn't sound, far from it, but his role in it wasn't something he looked forward to.

The plan was for him and Anko to act like siblings who lost their family and searched for a new home. Seeing that 22 of the 28 missed children were under the age of ten, Itachi was the ideal age to play the role. Anko joined him on this because it was standard procedure to never split Genin teams in a way where a Genin was all alone.

The next time the kidnappers would show up to snatch some children away, they would act all defenceless and let themselves be 'kidnapped'. Tanaka-sensei and Yukio then would follow them, aided by his crows, to find their hideout and fulfil all the objectives of their mission.

Honestly, he wouldn't even have a problem with his role in this, weren't it for one single detail...

"Finally Itachi will be forced to call me Nee-chan! I can't wait!"

He sighed.

.....

Approaching the orphanage and asking for aid went as well as could be expected.

With their dirty and in parts torn clothes, they looked just like you would imagine two children would do after they lived several weeks on the street. The patron of the orphanage had just looked at them for a second before inviting them inside, giving them something to eat and new clothes.

The facility was actually in much better shape than he had imagined. The building wasn't run-down at all, they had enough resources to feed and clothe every child in their care, there was some arrangement with a number of teachers who would come several times a week to teach the children reading, writing, and mathematics, and there was enough in terms of entertainment to keep the children happy.

Anko and he gained a lot of attention for the first few days, seeing that they were the new kids and still needed to 'settle down', but that stopped around three or four days into their stay. Since then, they didn't do much more than waiting for the inevitable.

It was exactly one week after their arrival during a stormy and rainy night that it finally happened. Midnight had just passed when Itachi's senses woke him up from his sleep, warning him of more than two dozen unknown chakra signatures surrounding the building. He instantly noted that most of them were, as expected, untrained and clearly no shinobi, but there were exceptions: at least six of them were definitively trained in the use of chakra.

He fought down the urge to jump up and prepare to face the enemy, which was a fight he nearly lost the moment eight people climbed through the window of the boy's dormitory, two of which were shinobi.

He didn't fight when someone pressed a hand over his mouth, only struggling as much as would be expected of a child his age.

He didn't fight when the sound of the struggle from the other kids reached his ears.

He didn't fight when one of the culprits tied him up with a rope.

He didn't even fight when one of them threw him over his shoulder and climbed out of the window.

'Not yet.' he thought. Not yet, but soon.

They would regret the day they decided to start kidnapping children, he would make sure of it.