Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Shikotsumyaku ❯ B Rank Mission ( Chapter 2 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any characters therein. They are all owned by Kishimoto Masashi.

 

 

 

Thump, swish, thump, swish, thump, swish……thump, swish, thump, swish, knock-knock, thump.

Tsunade's brow furrowed for a second. There had been a noise other than her stamping her approval on pieces of paper. Oh, the door, that must have been it.

`Come in.' Swish, thump, swish, thump, swish- she managed to get through the last few pages in the stack before Sakura entered. `Ah, Sakura, come in.' This was a good opportunity to take a break from work. `How's our “guest” doing?' It had struck the fifth Hokage that having Sakura take care of Kimimaro would be a unique learning experience for her. Whether or not she should let ANBU dissect him was another matter.

`Mmm… I've seen him hap- actually, I've never seen him happy at all- …he seems…kind of depressed.'

`Any idea why?'

`I'm not sure, but I think it might have something to do with the having the Cursed seal removed. Like it was a symbol that he was still connected to Orochimaru.'

`What makes you say that?'

`Intuition.'

`Alright. How is his breathing?'

`He can breathe by himself now, and he hasn't coughed up any blood since the operation. He seems fine to me.'

`That's good.' The room fell mostly silent as Tsunade tried to think of how best to phrase the next part. The only noises were coming from outside, and Kotetsu, who was quietly collecting the stamped pages Tsunade had been churning out for the last few hours. `Sakura.'

`Hai?'

`I need you to do something for me…'

 

-----

 

Being without the Earth seal was like being without his eyes and ears. He had no direction without it. It was the definitive proof that he was, in some way, useful to Orochimaru-sama. The only way he could have felt more useless was if he lost his Shikotsumyaku abilities, which were the only reasons Orochimaru-sama considered him useful in the first place.

But it had vanished. Like it had never been there at all. Did that mean Orochimaru-sama no longer considered him useful? Had he been cast out?

Wait…the girl…the girl had known it was going to happen. The fifth Hokage. She must have done something to the Earth seal!

He was getting angry, quite possibly, more angry than he had ever been in his entire life. Then again, it wasn't all that often that someone sabotaged his ability to further the dreams of the person he lived to serve. And he wasn't weak from sickness anymore.

The thick leather straps holding his arms in place stretched and squeaked under the force he was now able to bear against them. But it wasn't enough to satisfy him. The clasps were snapping frustratingly slowly, but he was getting there. When there was only a single clasp holding either of his arms, he lay back down and waited. Sakura would be coming back soon. And then he would make her tell him what they had done to him.

It took a bit of waiting for Sakura to return, but his rage hadn't lessened in the slightest. When she knocked and opened the door he was ready to grab her at the first chance he got, but when he saw her face his resolve faltered.

She looked………different. She wasn't smiling as she usually did, like she was trying to make him smile through osmosis. And she didn't immediately ask “How are you feeling today, Kimimaro-kun?” as she usually did. She just walked in, closed the door behind her, and sat down in the chair next to his bed with an expression like she was grieving someone's death. It was odd.

Before he knew it, his anger had ebbed away and he had totally forgotten that he was barely restrained anymore. What could have possibly happened that could make her act so strangely… Maybe, since she seemed to have become, in some bizarre way, attached to him, she had found out that ANBU were waiting for him, scalpels at the ready, and she was upset about it. It have been lateral thinking, but to Kimimaro it seemed plausible. The Leaf ninja had a very different way of looking at things, after all.

`Did they tell you?'

`Eh?' Sakura was surprised. This was the first time Kimimaro had initiated a conversation or said anything without being asked a question first.

`That ANBU want to learn about my clan's abilities.' He elaborated.

`Wh-umm…yes. How did you know?'

`ANBU brought me here.'

`No, I mean how did you know I just found out?'

`…' He didn't have any certain answer to that. He decided not to say anything at all. After weeks of looking after him, Sakura could recognise subtle hints about what Kimimaro was thinking. From what she could tell, he was on unfamiliar ground, talking to her like this, and it was making him uncomfortable. She decided not to pursue the question any further.

`Alright, I guess I'd better change your…' it took him a moment to realise that she was staring at one of his forearms, more specifically, at the heavily damaged restraints. `…What happened to the straps?' That one would be difficult to explain.

 

-----

 

Sakura sat at the desk in her room and pondered the task Tsunade had set her. Basically, the mission had two possible outcomes. Success or failure, nothing in-between. The “Successful” scenario was that Kimimaro would essentially become a Konoha resident, and start taking missions like everyone else. The “Failure” scenario was that Kimimaro would remain fiercely loyal to Orochimaru, and have to be handed over to ANBU, which almost certainly meant death at a non-specific time somewhere in the future. It seemed like a straightforward assignment, but there was that “fierce loyalty” issue to deal with.

At first glance this might have looked like, say, a D or maybe a C rank mission. But considering that Kimimaro was one of Orochimaru's most loyal and dangerous followers, it was easily a B rank mission.

Certainly, making Kimimaro a Konoha ninja would benefit him on at least a psychological level -not to mention benefiting the entire village with his extraordinary fighting abilities- but the potential difficulty and danger was still… a little high for her liking.

Speaking of psychology, probably the only way to shake such steely determination to help Orochimaru, even if Orochimaru thought he was useless, was to give Kimimaro a new goal. And that required her to do a bit of investigating into why he was so loyal to Orochimaru in the first place.

The way Sakura saw it there were two main ways she could try and get this information out of him: one was to be very surreptitious, so he wouldn't realise (or care) that he was giving her useful information. The other way, which wasn't quite so appealing, but might still work, was to ask him outright and see how he reacted. Kind of like trying to figure out what “the-thing-on-the-floor” is by stepping on it. If she decided to do that, she would just have to hope the other end wouldn't swing up and hit her in the face.