Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

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There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Tokichi's coordinates took me to a small town in the north-west of the Land of Fire – fairly close to the Kubisaki Pass, actually – that was mostly just a collection of shops and houses around a crossroads.

There was a tavern, though, next to the general store, and given how we'd meet Tokichi in the Land of Stone, that was where I headed after checking the surroundings.

It wasn't a dingy place, or anything like that. It was clearly a place that saw a lot of use but it was in good repair. Clean, respectable, the kind of place frequented by both locals and travellers with a fair degree of confidence.

I would probably seem a bit out of place – a young girl travelling alone – but there was also no reason to be particularly stealthy and hide that fact.

Inside, I spotted Tokichi immediately, his raggedy coat and cowboy hat standing out. The other man with him was recognisable as the other bounty hunter that we'd run into on that mission. Gashi? No, that wasn't it.

"Sazanami," I murmured, approaching the table. I dropped a genjutsu over it as I went, shielding it from too much attention. "Gatsu."

Tokichi rose from this seat and tipped his hat. "Well hello there, little lady," he said. "It's good to see you again."

Gatsu looked much less impressed. "So, this was who you were wanting to meet," he said.

"It is," Tokichi confirmed, not seeming perturbed by his partner's distaste. He sat back down and I took the invitation to draw a chair, too. "I wasn't sure how quickly you would arrive."

"As quickly as I could," I answered.

Without any preamble, he took a small soft cover notebook out of his pocket and slid it across the table to me. It was beaten and a little dirty and there was half a pencil jammed into the spine but it was – if it had anything in it – worth far more than its weight in gold.

I trapped it under my hand so that there was no possible way I could lose it. "Thank you," I said, sincerely.

"It's mostly rumour," Tokichi cautioned. "Second hand, third hand… most of it is pretty wild." He took his hat off and scratched his hair. "We never got anywhere near the guy himself."

"Good," I said, and meant it. "Firstly, here. We have a fund to pay the people who help us. It's not very much, but I really appreciate what you've done."

"Ah, you kids helped me first." He tried to wave it off, and reject the payment, but I was serious about it. It was more of a risk than he understood, and he'd come through for me.

"Secondly, please contact me again if you come across more information," I requested. "Or if you need help."

Tokichi chuckled a tad uneasily. "About that," he said and exchanged a glance with Gatsu.

I leant back. "What is it?" I asked, more curious than anything. I was willing to help him, I just hadn't expected it to be called so fast.

"We're hunting a bounty," Gatsu said bluntly. "And they say there's a ninja involved."

"Okay," I said slowly. "That could be… complicated. Do you know if it's a missing nin or what village they're from?"

International relations were tense enough right now that no one would appreciate it if I threw myself in the middle of more and stirred it up, without it even being tangentially related to my mission.

"We were hoping you could find out," Tokichi said, reluctantly. "The bounty itself shouldn't be a problem for us, but if there's a ninja involved we wouldn't dare."

That was awfully clever of them. Then again, they had at least known one set of ninja and could probably work out when they were in over their heads.

"I should be able to tell that pretty easily," I said, narrowing my eyes in thought. I had great sensory range and it wasn't asking anything precise. Just… ninja? Yes or no. "Who are they? Where are they?"

Tokichi looked uneasy again. "They're human traffickers," he said. "Not here – closer to the border. We spent a couple of weeks trying to feel them out and that's when we heard there might be ninja involved."

That… wasn't good. Even if it was a ninja village involved. It was maybe even less good if a ninja village was involved. Sound? But this was a long way for them to come for random people who weren't even ninja, when Orochimaru had a whole country to pick from. And many closer neighbours.

"They're taking mostly young girls," Gatsu said, bluntly.

Well. It wouldn't be like anyone at home would be particularly surprised if I managed to stumble my way into a situation like this. The immediate, easiest option available to me right now was to play bait.

That made it clear why Tokichi was unhappy. Gatsu didn't really look thrilled, either, despite the attitude. And he hadn't even known I was coming, apparently.

But human traffickers of young girls sounded horrifying no matter how you put it.

"Okay," I said, very, very focused. "Tell me what you know."

If this resulted in a political problem, then politics could have a problem with me.

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Many people had a problem with me that day.

I was on incredible high alert, just from the potential connection to Orochimaru, which mostly just resulted in a lot of overkill.

The ninja on staff was barely a Chunin – more than enough to be a problem to Tokichi and Gatsu, but nowhere near enough to stand in my way while I was incredibly, horribly, morally offended by what was going on here.

"Which one was your bounty?" I asked, casually showing Gatsu and Tokichi the pile of tied up, concussed and unconscious men.

They were still alive. For now.

"I thought you were just going to scout it out," Tokichi said weakly. "We were going to help you with the attack."

"Plans changed," I said with a shrug. "There was a ninja, after all."

I organised prisoner transfer with the nearest outpost and wrote up an investigative request for the possible connection to Orochimaru – even though in hindsight I doubted it. An Orochimaru-controlled operation would have been ninja-controlled not just using a single Chunin as muscle. And whatever you could say about him, Hidden Sound ninja were competent.

No, this looked more like a case of people being horrible to each other without ninja involvement.

The trip back to Konoha wasn't exactly tense, but I was aware of the potential information I was carrying – sealed into my arm in the safest way I could – and how important it was. I was pretty eager to get stuck into it, but there was no way I was doing that out here.

I had to go through all the motions of returning from a mission – including logging the slightly-out-of-parameters deviation without mentioning that my contacts had been bounty hunters or that I'd done it purposefully and not totally by accident.

But once that was done I managed to retreat to my desk in the Intel Division and unseal the notes.

I transcribed them as I went, so that I could retain the original copy for myself, and it was pretty obvious that Tokichi had never really had any training in this field. Then again, that was true for a large portion of the informants we worked with, so it wouldn't really stand out.

He had, however, started the first page with Kakuzu's name and then a basic physical description - likely cobbled together from various accounts from different people given how inconsistent it was – and that was enough to allow me to dig up an extremely old Bingo Book page and attach it.

And bingo was his name-o!

That would definitely help, even if it was ludicrously out of date.

The rest of the information was a hodgepodge of facts. Tokichi had written it all down in the order he'd learnt it, which wasn't necessarily the same order that it had happened in. He had, thoughtfully, included the locations of the bounty stations and towns he'd been in however, and if the information had come with any timeframes.

I tried to order it into some kind of coherent timeline, though I initially ran into some confusion when Kakuzu's partner was described and it was very clearly not Hidan.

That cleared itself up within short notice, because the very same body had been turned in for its bounty months later, sans heart. That had been written very clearly, and had pretty obviously been a topic for some gossip, even amongst people who had bodies of all states of injury handed in for cash.

When I transcribed that, I underlined the point several times and put a large, questioning 'jutsu?' comment next to it. I had no information to point out what it was he could do with those, but it was very clearly a Something and I would highlight it until people took it seriously.

It sounded like the earliest of rumours was at least several years old and the newest was still several months out of date. During that timeframe Kakuzu had gone through several partners – all high ranking missing ninja – before landing with Hidan.

His name wasn't in there, of course. But there was a single, solitary mention of 'Jashin' and that was enough for me to connect it back to the Jashin Cult that had originated in the Land of Hot Springs.

Boom. Done.

I resisted the urge to cackle and rub my hands together. Instead, I very calmly assigned myself a follow up mission to investigate.

And then I took it all up to Tsunade. Handing the last set of important information to her had worked, so I saw no reason to try a different strategy this time.

"This is Akatsuki?" she asked, flipping through the report I'd written. I'd done my best to analyse it and draw connections without getting too wild but I couldn't exactly slip in information about his fighting style other than pointing out the star-studded list of bounties and the damage they had had.

I nodded. "My informant got confirmation on the cloaks and it matches the information that Jiraiya-sama had. Seems like their internal politics aren't exactly stable if they're turning their own members in for bounties."

"Could be good for us," she mused, lacing her fingers together. "But it worries me that they're able to just keep recruiting."

There couldn't be that many S-rank missing ninja. There weren't that many S-rank ninja in total. For them all to wind up in the orbit of Akatsuki, regardless of personalities or motivations didn't say anything good.

"I want to follow up on this reference to Jashin," I said. "I know the cult originated in the Land of Hot Springs, and while there might not be anything there any longer, it's worth checking out. I think it's a good lead."

I handed her the scroll with the follow up investigation to sign, and for the first time in the conversation, she frowned.

"Land of Hot Springs? That's right between us and Lightning Country…" She raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "You think I'm going to send you there alone? I'm assigning Aoba to go with you."

I thought about protesting it – I was the one that knew what I was looking for, and, if need be, could have just… made it up if I didn't find anything concrete – but she had a solid point. Given the status of things with Hidden Cloud, it would be dumb to go alone.

"Okay," I said. "I'll let him know to prepare for a mission."

Tsunade threw the scroll back to me, her signature in ink on the bottom. "Keep it quiet," she advised. "It's Akatsuki, so it's highly classified, but the best cover is for it just to look like a normal mission."

That I knew. "You got it, Hokage-sama," I said.

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Two days later, Aoba and I set out from the village in pretty much the same way we had for any of our other intelligence division missions. He'd convinced me to delay our departure for a few days because, contrary to most expectations, he was actually a professional who took things very seriously. He wanted as much background information on where we were going, what we were looking for and why as he could get.

That wasn't uncommon, actually. Mostly that stuff was included in the mission briefing, or ninja general knowledge about the area. This was an unusual case, and while I knew, he didn't.

"Nice day for it," he said, adjusting his sunglasses as we stepped past the gates. He waved to the shinobi on duty but didn't stop to chat. "Well, I suppose we better get a move on."

It took us two days of reasonably paced travel to even get to the Konoha outpost near the north-east border and when we got there it wasn't to good news.

"We're on high alert," the ninja at the outpost told us. "No one passes through. Not without the Commanders approval."

"Travel restrictions?" Aoba wondered, running a hand through his hair. "Are things that bad?"

She hesitated, which was a sign.

"Come on, Hirameki," Aoba cajoled – huh, apparently, he knew her. Well. He really did seem to know everyone. "What is it? Was there an attack?"

"There've been a couple," she said, lowering her voice and leaning in closer. "Just, you know, the usual. But we had a scouting team in Hot Spring Country yesterday – one with a Hyuuga, right?"

"And they saw something?" he asked, voice just as low, leaning in close, the perfect picture of eager gossip.

She nodded, long hair swinging. "Right. Not just something. He swore he saw a whole camp of Cloud ninja. Not just a team or two. We're talking hundreds of the bastards."

My breath caught in my throat.

"In Hot Springs?" Aoba asked, voice hushed for real.

"Yeah," she confirmed. "And if they're that far down… that means they're here to fight, right? You don't occupy another country just for kicks, do you?"

It certainly didn't sound any good.

"We already sent for reinforcements," she went on. "But they'll take time to mobilise." There was silence as that sank in. Time for the message to arrive, time to decide what to do, who to send, time for them to travel… if they hadn't had any advance warning then that amount of time would be too much. It might still be. "Hey, why did you want to get through anyway?"

"Intel mission," Aoba said, and managed to distract her from asking any more about it than that. We got the name of the outpost Commander from her though, which we needed.

"What do you want to do?" He asked me, quietly, when we were alone.

I bit my lip. "If the fighting starts now, it's not going to die off. We won't have any more luck trying again at a later date."

"That's true," he agreed. "The question is… is the risk worth it?"

Tsunade had ranked this as an S-rank mission, which meant that by any account it was. We were looking for information for a matter that had incredible political consequences.

That didn't mean this was the only way to get that information. Unfortunately, it was the only way I could think of and the only way at hand. If we passed it up, who knew when another option would arise.

And, furthermore, I had a personal stake in this in the form of Naruto. Akatsuki were directly after him.

Aoba didn't have that.

"I could order you to remain here and go on myself," I said idly. "Split the difference."

He snorted. "Don't even try that. Hokage-sama would kill me, anyway. I guess that means you want to push on?"

I nodded, as decisively as I could. "Yeah. If we head in undercover as civilians and try to stick to the main populated areas, we should be able to avoid conflict. We're not here to deal with Hidden Cloud."

Aoba nodded back. "Sounds like a plan." He paused. "I mean, not a particularly good one or anything. But it meets the requirements of 'A Plan'."

"Rude," I huffed.