Notes: For everyone who thought I went off my nut in chapt 13: I am holding a piece of cake in my hand. I have two choices: A) hold the cake in my hand, or B) eat the cake. If I hold the cake in my hand, I am not eating it, but if I eat it, I am not holding it anymore. This is a dichotomy - I can only do one of two things, not both. A false dichotomy, however, is when there is actually a hidden option C (possibly D, E, etc). Example: I hold a piece of cake in one hand, then eat a different piece of the same cake…thus allowing me to have my cake, and eat it too. In chapt 13, Tenten had a choice: A) kill or B) be killed. Shino likewise had a choice: A) complete his mission, or B) fail his mission. Those were the only two choices presented them. Or were they?

Goals: To further the plot (there is plot! Oh yes! It’s is simply very well-hidden! Look underneath the underneath!)

Warnings: Some fighting, some body count, some politics, minor language. Plot thickening like old stew in a boot.

Chapter 14

Rumors and Scandals, Part I

“They’re clean,” Hinata said.

Beside her, Naruto grinned and chucked her gently on the shoulder. “Nice going, Hinata!” Hinata blushed, but her lips lifted in a genuinely happy smile. Naruto jumped forward eagerly and started hauling the hidden backpacks from the hole in the base of the tree, where Hinata had seen them hidden from almost a mile away.

“Search ‘em,” Tenten ordered, kneeling to pull one of the three bags from Naruto’s hands.

Naruto chucked the third to Lee, who caught it and carefully pulled open the top. The blond shinobi ripped open the first sack and rooted around eagerly. “Oh man, this one’s chock full of food! Score!”

“This one appears to contain mostly clothing,” Lee said with only mild disappointment.

“Ah hah!” Tenten pulled her own hand free from the sack she had been rummaging. “Got it! Geez, whoever these guys are, they aren’t well trained. Can’t believe they left a freaking map stashed out here where anybody could find it.”

“Anybody with Hinata’s awesome eyes, anyway,” Naruto commented, pulling out a wrapped ration bar and waving it at the Hyuuga. “So, what’s it say?”

Tenten glanced at Hinata, and was mildly surprised to see that instead of bright fire hydrant red, the pale girl was merely deeply pink. Well, Uzumaki had been complimenting her a lot for the last three days they had been on this mission. Maybe she was starting to get used to it. Tenten mentally shrugged it off and turned her attention back to the well-waxed paper she had found in the hidden supply stash. “Looks like whoever left these bags here was doing some recon of the area. There’s a lot of drawn-in parts on this map.” She frowned. “And they’ve marked off Taiji village.”

Lee brought his ponderous eyebrows down into a severe expression. “Then the rumors are true.”

“You think these guys are the ones who caused the mudslide at Taiji Village?” Naruto bared his teeth. “Then let’s go find the bastards!”

Hinata bit her lip. “We don’t know for sure the mudslide was intentional,” she said softly. “And if it was, these people may not have caused it.” She looked up at Tenten with more hope than conviction in her eyes. “Maybe they are just travelers, and they got lost on their way to Taiji.”

Naruto growled, but Tenten cut him off before he could speak. “Well, we’re not going to find out anything useful standing around here. Come on, Naruto, you and Lee hide these packs again. Hinata, scan the area. I’m going to make a quick copy of this map. They’ve got some other villages marked off, too.”

Lee and Naruto started hastily repacking the bags, Lee’s expression grim and Naruto’s angry. Tenten ignored them, making as accurate a copy of the map as she could on a scrap of paper. Suddenly, Lee jumped a little in surprise. Instantly, his three companions were on the alert, looking for what had startled him. “It is nothing,” Lee said quickly. “I simply…er, found something.”

Tenten raised an eyebrow at the uncomfortable look on Lee’s face. “In the packs? What is it?”

Lee coughed modestly, and Tenten felt her alarm replaced with mild amusement. Lee only got that look when he was faced with “matters of a delicate and feminine nature,” as Gai occasionally put it. Naruto leaned over to look into the bag at Lee’s feet. “Some kinda weapon or something?” he asked.

Lee hastily snapped the bag closed. “It seems this individual has a fondness for, ah, close-range weaponry,” he said.

That didn’t sound so bad. Besides, it was always interesting to see how people adapted different things into weapons. “What kind?” Tenten asked curiously, sticking the original map back where she’d found it.

“Whips,” Lee said, shrugging. Tenten looked at him questioningly, wondering what was so embarrassing about whips. “Colorful ones,” Lee told her. “With…accessories.”

“Ah,” Tenten bit back a laugh.

“What, like with feathers and stuff?” Naruto scratched the back of his head while Lee turned vaguely purple and Tenten doubled over in silent laughter. Of course Uzumaki would know about stuff like that, she thought. And would talk about it in the open like it was no big deal. Behind the man, Hinata was standing with her back to them as she scanned the woods, but her shoulders were nearly rigid under her jacket. Naruto wrinkled his nose, oblivious. “Death by fetish,” he said. “That’s, uh, wow. Kind of an embarrassing way to die.”

Tenten smirked. “I can think of a worse one,” she remarked over her shoulder. She stood up and turned to face the group, holding something she had deftly pulled from Lee’s sack before he closed it. She snapped it open with a practiced flick of her wrist, revealing an iron-ribbed fan edged in glittering fluffy pink lace. She fluttered it for a moment in front of her face and then winked at them. “Death by lace,” she snickered.

Naruto made a face. “Yeah, okay, that’s totally worse.”

“I think,” Lee said carefully, “that now would be excellent time to continue on our way.” He put the last bag back into the hole and stood up, regaining some of this normal exuberance as he did. “Come, my friends! Those villagers are in need of our assistance!”

Hinata gave a little gasp of sorrow as they came around the hills surrounding Taiji Village, and Naruto swore aloud. Tenten and Lee exchanged grim looks as they assessed the damage. A huge mound of mud and rock had collapsed from one of the larger hills, right over the western half of the village. Even from this distance, Tenten could tell that at least a dozen houses had been buried, and several more damaged. Desperate people were digging around in the rubble, while others sat desolately amid the shambles of their village. Hinata pointed, and Tenten followed her hand to see that the Konoha chunin medical team had set up a base camp right in the middle of the town’s square.

“Hinata, Lee, you get started with those search and rescue teams,” Tenten ordered. “Naruto, do a standard sweep along the hills, fire a green flare if you find anymore victims outside the village, red if you see signs of enemies. I’ll go report in to the field commander.”

“Right, we will save all the villagers and clear their homes by tomorrow morning!” Lee announced confidently. He shot off towards the diggers, shedding his pack and booming out a greeting as he went. Hinata followed close behind, veins standing out on her face as she scanned through the rubble for survivors.

Naruto dropped his own sack and pulled out two flares, watching Hinata and Lee go with a worried expression. “Watch out for any more slides,” he yelled after them. Hinata turned and waved back at him in acknowledgment, still running after Lee. “Don’t forget our deal!” he added. Hinata nodded, smiling, and then she and Lee disappeared into the village. Tenten raised an eyebrow at Naruto, but he merely grinned at her disarmingly. He flipped her a jaunty salute and disappeared into the hills. Tenten watched him go with a thoughtful expression, and then she shrugged and headed for the medical tent.

Tenten found the on-scene field commander, a chunin medic named Ito Ken, in a hastily erected tent at the base camp. “The initial damage reports were wrong,” the medic-nin told her as she entered the tent. “We thought it was just a few damaged houses, which is why we only brought a couple medics.” He gestured outside. “But when we saw the extent of it, we sent back for more help.”
Tenten nodded; this was all stuff she already knew. She glanced around, confirming that no one else was near except the poor half-dead woman on the medic’s table and the local nurse helping Ito. “Have you figured out what caused the landslide?”

Ito glanced up at her sharply before bending his head back to his patient. “That would be your job, of course,” he said peevishly. He tossed a bloody rag into a basin, a process which required him to turn away from the table and face Tenten. Sabotage, he mouthed at her.

“Ah,” Tenten said. “Of course.”

“Then you’d better get on with it,” Ito nodded, wiping his hands clean. He moved so quickly that she barely caught the Konoha hand signal Ito made before he turned back towards his table. Tenten turned and left the tent. She spotted Hinata several feet away, and quickly repeated the medic’s hand sign to the other kunoichi. Enemies nearby. Be careful. Hinata did not turn, but she nodded her head to show that she understood. As Tenten headed out into the crowd, she heard the Hyuuga’s clear, sweet voice over the scrape and shuffle of dirt as she issued orders to the diggers, directing them away from weak spots and towards the trapped people.

The Taiji leader was an old man, bent and wrinkled with age and leaning heavily on a stout hardwood cane. But he looked Tenten up and down with clear, perceptive eyes and invited her into his home, one of the few dwellings not overrun with injured or weeping villagers. “It happened very suddenly,” he said, once the formalities were finished. “Middle of the day, too, and no rain the night before.”

Tenten nodded and looked out the window, watching Lee toss heavy boulders away from a damaged rooftop peaking through the mud. “Are mudslides common in these parts?” she asked. “It seems likely, without a lot of trees to stop the erosion.”

The elder shook his gray head. “In times of heavy rains, it happens sometimes, although I have never seen one this big before. But it has been a dry season. I don’t even know how there came to be so much moisture on that hill.”

Water techniques, Tenten thought unhappily. Maybe those random Mist shinobi who attacked Chouji’s team weren’t so random after all. The Hokage was not going be pleased.

“Thank you for your information, sir,” Tenten said, bowing and getting to her feet. “I had better get on with my job then.”

“It has been a very dry season,” the old man repeated suddenly. Tenten stopped at the door and turned to look back at him curiously. “There are those who blame our troubles on the new Lord,” the old man said quietly, looking absently up at the ceiling.

“Are there many who say that in this village?” Tenten asked carefully.

The old man shifted his attention from the door to the window, and in a very low voice, he said, simply, “There were.”

Tenten followed his gaze to the biggest burial mound she had ever seen, and thought, the Hokage is really not going to be pleased.

“Hinata,” Tenten tapped the woman on the shoulder. “Are there any more survivors?”

Hinata turned to look at her, face sad. “I…we got here too late.” She bowed her head. “It’s just a recovery mission now.”

Tenten nodded. “Lee!” She yelled up to the top of the dirt. Her teammate’s dark bowlcut popped up immediately, covered in mud and dust. “We’re going on a sweep!” Tenten told him. “Do what you can; we’ll be back in an hour or so.”

“Go safely, my good friends!” Lee yelled back, hands too full of rock and debris to give them a thumbs up. “I will defend this village in the meantime, with my very life!”

“Come on,” Tenten jerked her head towards the hills. “Let’s go see what Naruto found, okay?”

They didn’t speak until they were well out of the village and into the surrounding hills, then Tenten shook her head. “The village elder says this probably wasn’t a natural mudslide.”

Hinata nodded. “I saw signs of water chakra residue in the mud.”

“He also hinted that there were a lot of rebels in the village,” Tenten examined a patch of torn-up grass. “People who spoke against Lord Masaru. It looks like the mudslide wiped a bunch of them out.”

“That could be coincidence,” Hinata said softly.

Tenten nodded, noting that the grass was bent back towards the forests. Whoever had passed this way had been headed to the trees, and had been here very recently. “Yeah, but we already know Masaru likes to use hired shinobi to take care of his problems. It’s possible he’s got some other hidden village shinobi working for hi-”

Hinata slammed a hand between Tenten’s shoulder blades, knocking her into the dirt.

Tenten just barely managed to tuck her head in and catch her weight across her shoulders, sending herself rolling down the sandy hillside. She ended up kneeling several feet away, hands full of knives as she scanned the area rapidly. Hinata was in a crouch ten or so feet above her, looking down at Tenten with her hands poised to strike. Behind her, the top of the hill where they had been standing was now shrouded in thick grey fog.

The Hyuuga shifting her stance, but Tenten was already moving, whirling hard and fast to catch the man sneaking up behind her in the neck with the hilt of her kunai. Instantly, Hinata was at her back, palms flashing towards the attacker’s face. The man avoided the worst of Tenten’s blow, though, and dodged back out of Hinata’s strike range.

“Three,” Hinata whispered in Tenten’s ear, then settled into her Eight Trigrams stance at Tenten’s back. The fog from the hilltop was sweeping down towards them, faster than any natural fog could move. It rolled and lapped around their legs like water, swirling around them as it slowly rose around their legs, their waists, their chests. In a couple seconds, Tenten realized, they were going to be completely enveloped in the suffocating fog.

“Where?” she whispered.

“Two south and low at fifteen feet, one northeast and high at twenty-five feet,” Hinata answered immediately.

And one of us totally blind, Tenten thought with disgust as the fog finally reached their faces and swelled up over their heads. Well, let’s see what we can do to even the odds a little.

“They’re moving on us,” Hinata whispered calmly. “Circling in east to west.”

“Stay with me,” Tenten ordered Hinata in a low voice, then drew a handful of small, disc-shaped objects from her scrolls. The two women started to run, Tenten scattered the black discs in their wake, taking care to drop them in small depressions or clumps of grass, where it would be easy for someone in a hurry to overlook them.

BOOM! BOOM!

Tenten looked over to Hinata hopefully, but she shook her head and held up only one finger. Damn, Tenten thought. Two of her mines had been triggered, but they had only caused one pursuer to drop out of the chase. That left two to go. Briefly, she wondered if she had been setting the sensors in her traps too sensitive again, and felt a small smile tug unbidden on her lips. Then she refocused her attention on the problem at hand, like the professional kunoichi she had trained hard to become. She could moon about her hormone issues later, when her ass wasn’t on the line.

Tenten stowed the remainder of her disc-shaped mines back in her pouch. Now that the enemy knew the landmines were out there, they would be on the lookout for anymore hastily laid traps. The gambit had worked once, but she’d have to come up with something new, and quickly.

The world seemed to get even darker than before, and Tenten had the oddest sensation that she was wrapped in thick, wet woolen blankets. She struggled to control her breathing, to keep it light and silent as they ran. But it was harder than it should have been. She was practically gasping, and they weren’t even moving as fast as she usually could go… “The fog,” Tenten choked in sudden understanding.

Hinata nodded, her voice sounded muffled even from only a few inches away. “It’s full of water chakra,” she agreed. “It’s trying to condense in our lungs.”

They’re going to drown us in air, Tenten thought. Instantly, both women swerved to head back towards the tops of the hills. If they could get to higher ground, the wind might be strong enough to clear some of the fog away. As they cleared the top of the nearest hill, Tenten pulled an extra large exploding note from her pouch and tossed it directly above them. She and Hinata threw themselves to the ground, ducking to avoid the fireball that blossomed overhead. The heat and flames expanded rapidly, devouring the fog and drying the kunoichi slightly. But all too soon, the flames flickered and died, collapsing in under the cold, wet press of the fog.

By then, of course, they were already under attack.

Tenten managed to roll to her back just in time to block the blade whistling for her neck. Tenten sucked in a breath, pushing hard as her kunci locked with the enemy’s katana just over her eyes. Behind the sword, the enemy shinobi – a young, pretty woman with black hair and narrowed eyes – grunted as she struggled to force the sharp edge into Tenten’s face. To the left, Hinata had vanished into the fog, but Tenten had no time to look for her mission partner. With a sharp kick and a deft twist of her upper body, Tenten threw the enemy shinobi over her head and came to her own feet. Before she was even fully upright she had a deadly curved scimitar in each hand. The enemy kunoichi attacked instantly, and Tenten knocked her aside. The woman bared her teeth and spun at Tenten again, with more force and aggression than grace. By now Tenten had a good gauge of her style and range, and was able to send the assailant stumbling against the now-muddy hillside.

Again, the enemy kunoichi charged, swinging at Tenten’s chest. “You’re overbalancing,” Tenten said calmly, stepping to the side and catching the katana between her two scimitars. With a flick of her wrist, she wrenched it from the enemy kunoichi’s grasp.

“Shut up!” The woman snarled again and hurled a handful of kunai at the Leaf kunoichi, which Tenten dodged. “You Konoha dog!” She could have blocked them or even caught them, but there was no need to get cocky. Not while the enemy still had at least one active teammate somewhere in the choking fog.

“You know, I know a guy who would be kind of offended at that,” Tenten remarked, dodging low to let the next wave of kunai sail over her head. "But probably not for the reasons you think." Hinata, she thought. Where the hell is Hinata? And didn’t Lee and Naruto hear those landmines? Freaking fog!

“You’re all dogs,” the kunoichi spat. “When Masaru gets done with this province-”

Tenten dropped to the ground, barely in time to avoid the dark shape that came hurtling through the heavy fog. It sailed over her head and straight into the furious enemy kunoichi. She dove backwards, but it was too late. The woman went down under the weight of a large, red-faced man with close-cropped hair and black tattoos all over his arms and face. “Yasuo!” The woman gasped. “Get off me!”

Tenten took the opportunity to move back, just enough to lose sight of her enemies in the fog but close enough to hear them. A second later, a light hand tapped her shoulder. “I think they’re working with Masaru,” she murmured quietly.

Hinata rematerialized at her side like a ghost in the fog. She nodded solemnly. “The man was making the fog,” she whispered. “I have incapacitated most of his chakra system, though.”

“Good, now let’s see what we can find out.” Tenten gestured, and the Hyuuga nodded in understanding. She started walking silently through the gray hills, showing Tenten where to walk so that the enemy could not see them. “So tell me,” Tenten called out, following Hinata through the gray hills and slowly dissipating fog. “How many innocents do you think died in that village, along with all Lord Masaru’s enemies?”

Hinata raised a hand and caught the kunai that came whistling at Tenten’s face. “This isn’t over, Konoha cowards!” The woman’s voice was shrill with rage. “Get out here and fight us!”

“Several,” a rumbling male voice replied grimly. “It was early in the morning, before everyone was gone to work.”

Tenten felt her eyes narrow. “You’re awfully casual about it,” she said accusingly.

“You don’t really care how I feel,” the male voice responded, in a steady tone. “And you don’t really want to fight us.”

“Don’t I?”

“No,” the woman yelled. “Because the Taneda clan could crush you like the gutless worms you are!”

Tenten felt herself go still. Hinata turned her head sharply towards her, eyes wide. “Taneda,” she said softly.

“Yeah,” Tenten replied, softly. “Taneda.”

Another volley of kunai forced the Leaf kunoichi to duck, but it was obvious the female was throwing at random. “Get out here!” she screamed. “Come out and face me, you murdering cowards!”

Taneda Shun, Tenten thought almost sadly. I guess I should have expected there to be some kind of consequences for that fight.

“Come, Leaf,” the big man said solemnly. “You must answer to us for what you have done.”

Thinking of bodies buried in mud, Tenten raised her scimitars. “And so must you,” she replied levelly.

Suddenly, Hinata was in front of her, clearly visible as the last of the unnatural fog burned away. “Enough,” she said, and though her voice was no louder than ever, there was a note of authority, of command, that made Tenten look up at her in surprise. Slightly below them on the hilltop, the two enemy shinobi – the Taneda clansmen – seemed to freeze as the petite Hyuuga raised a hand, palm out, towards them both. “That’s enough,” Hinata said again, and pointed to the large man. “You are going to fall down now,” she said simply.

And to Tenten’s utter amazement, he did.

“Yasuo!” The enemy kunoichi shrieked. She crouched at the man’s side, clutching at his body armor and shaking him. He didn’t move. “What did you do?” she yelled up at Hinata.

“I closed off most of his chakra system,” Hinata said, one hand still outstretched regally. “And I put a little of my own inside his body. Just enough to completely shut him down if I needed to.” She sounded said, but then she tilted her chin and put back her shoulders. “Now,” she said, once more with that commanding tone, moving into her fighting stance. “You will remove your genjutsu and help your teammate carry this man from this place, and you will not return.”

The enemy kunoichi was looking down at her fallen teammate, so she missed the quick hand signal that Hinata flashed to Tenten.

Tenten, recovering her wits, instantly pointed her scimitars in the direction Hinata’s hand signal had indicated. The air seemed to waver and shimmer for a moment, then the illusion dropped and a third enemy shinobi, a thin sharp featured man, appeared on the hillside. He stepped slowly towards the other two, keeping an eye on Tenten’s sharp blades as they followed him along the hillside. “Kill her, Jiro!” the woman hissed at him, “Kill the white-eyes before her jutsu kills Yasuo!”

“Shut up,” the third man replied impassively. “We’ve lost here, Fujita. Just help me get Yasuo and let’s go.” He turned his narrow face towards them, and for a moment Tenten saw a thinner, shorter version of Taneda Shun staring at her with carefully blank eyes. “But we’ll meet again, Leaf,” he said quietly. “We have business with you.”

Tenten nodded.

Hinata moved her hands, a tiny little readjustment of her fingers. The enemy shinobi took the warning, picking up the unconscious man between them and vanishing into the hills.

“Are you alright?” Tenten looked up to see Hinata staring at her with a concerned expression and one hand partly extended towards her.

She smiled crookedly. “The Hokage is going to be really unhappy about this.”

**

“Hinata! Tenten! Don’t worry, I’m here to save you!”

“Oh, um, thanks, Naruto.”

“Yeah, you’re my hero and stuff.”

“You betcha, ladies! So…where are the bad guys?”

**