Lungs full of spears. Can't see. Thing still there. Snapping at heels. Can't keep going. Swimming for too long. Need to breathe. Need to breathe.

Slow, they said. Easy to outrun, they said. Aquatic, they didn't say. Going to die.

Stupid Wakahisa. Went first, nicked leg. Blood in the water. Now this. Need to breathe.

Leg about to cramp. Need to breathe. Going to die.

Body slowing. Can't feel arms. Need to breathe....

Light!

Hazō burst out of the water at the end of the underwater tunnel, gasping desperately for air. The slitherbeast followed....

Keiko stabbed the thing's flat, sinuous head again and again as it came out of the water, driving the kunai deeper each time. In agony but somehow still not dead, the screeching slitherbeast turned and lashed out at her, Hazō forgotten. The serpentlike monstrosity twisted its head sideways, driving Keiko against the wall as its jaws opened around her waist, rows of teeth shining in the sunlight.

With a scream, Keiko threw the kunai she was holding into the slitherbeast's mouth. There was a gurgle, but the berserk monster kept coming. Its jaws began to close....

Wakahisa's heel came down across the creature's spine, slamming it down into the rock beneath. At the same moment, its jaws snapped shut, scoring sharp lines across Keiko's body. But the impact of Wakahisa's kick had driven it down and back, pulling it just short of biting Keiko in half.

Before the slitherbeast could move, the three genin descended on it in a swarm of piercing metal. They did not stop until long after its original shape became unrecognisable.

No matter what, Hazō decided as he applied first aid to Keiko's cuts, the rest of the team could never learn the truth: that this entire thing was his fault.

"Inoue-sensei," he'd innocently asked, "do you think we could have some special team-building training tomorrow?"

o-o-o-o

It was the morning after his request that Inoue-sensei gathered them together.

"Good news, kids," she said, grinning from ear to ear in a manner that sent chills down their collective spines, "I have some extra-special training for you today."

She walked over to Keiko and whispered something in her ear, something that made the girl stare at her, aghast. She repeated the process with Wakahisa, causing him to go flaming red. Finally, she approached Hazō.

She said only eight words, but those eight words awoke a feeling of unbearable shame in Hazō, followed by humiliation and then horror. He watched Inoue-sensei, knowing that something terrible was coming.

"In case you're wondering," Inoue-sensei said, "back when Shikigami invited me to be part of his project, I made the effort to dig up some dirt on every member of the team in case they stepped out of line. And while you kids are too young to have any real skeletons in your closets, you're also young enough to be really easy to embarrass.

"So here's the deal. This," she held up a map, "shows the shortest route from here, through the Vermin Hills, under the Blue Cliffs, across Rendclaw Forest and to the Crimson Waterfall. You have until sunset to climb to the top of the Crimson Waterfall and exterminate the nest of reaper mantises there. You'll have just enough time if you're quick. Oh, and if you fail, the entire group gets to hear what I just told you."

Hazō's horror increased by several levels.

"Wh-What do we get if we pass?" Wakahisa asked in an unusually high-pitched voice.

"A sense of pride and satisfaction in your own abilities," Inoue-sensei beamed.

"Oh," she added as an afterthought as she walked away, "this is meant to be a challenge. Don't even think about using chakra, or I'll know."

The group was silent for nearly a full minute.

Finally, Wakahisa, still red, turned to Keiko. "At least tell me you can figure out some shortcuts."

"Um, sorry," Keiko replied, squirming a little. "She got me to help with the map. She said she wanted the most efficient route for a group like ours to get through those areas by sunset assuming we didn't stop to rest."

Hazō and Wakahisa stared at her mutely.

"She said it was for an emergency escape route! I didn't know!"

o-o-o-o

The sun was getting low in the horizon, and they were still in Rendclaw Forest, having got themselves turned around several times while fighting off various interestingly-coloured (and thus probably extremely venomous) snakes. The trees were thick, the sounds of the wildlife alternately intimidating and eerily quiet, and occasionally there were clumps of bones which definitely belonged to local animals.

"You know," Hazō began, "I'm starting to think that when Inoue-sensei designed this training, she –"

"Shh!" Keiko hissed.

She was right. Now Hazō listened, there was definitely something moving behind them.

A second later, a roughly human-sized, grey-furred creature resembling a hunched-over rat stalked into view. It made no sound, and did not move to attack or flee, instead merely staring at them with hollow black eyes.

"Why is it just standing there?" Wakahisa whispered to Hazō.

"I don't know. Be careful—we don't know what it's capable of."

The creature raised its paws. Without a sound, black three-foot claws emerged from them.

"OK, I guess we do."

"What's the plan?" Hazō asked.

"Uh...OK," Wakahisa said. "I'm going to lock down its movement with ninjutsu. Mori, soften it up from range, then Kurosawa can finish it off while it's reeling."

There was a rustling sound, and then a second creature emerged from behind them. It, too, produced its claws, and then did nothing but stare. Its gaze seemed cold, almost lifeless.

"Change of plan. I'm going to keep this one busy. You two take the other one out and back me up as fast as you can."

Three more creatures emerged, positioned unambiguously to surround the group.

"Change of plan," Wakahisa began.

"Run!" Hazō yelled.

Hazō ran at a gap in the circle of monsters, but without chakra-enhanced speed he couldn't quite make it in time before their ranks closed with an eerie smoothness. The others weren't doing any better, leaving the group in a gradually tightening circle. More creatures were arriving by the second.

Hazō thought fast. He hadn't brought any exploding tags—he'd used up his individual supply while training with Kagome-sensei. But what he did have was a few practice blanks that Kagome-sensei had said looked like "they might not blow your head off unless you screw up". Of course, he'd also been very clear that Hazō was not to try infusing them until he'd had more training, at least not within ten miles of Kagome-sensei.

But desperate times....

Hazō slowly pulled out a blank, not noticing that the creatures immediately stopped moving, and concentrated as hard as he could as he slowly ran his finger across the surface of the seal.

In Hazō's mind, the blank was a labyrinthine landscape of impossible geometry, the flat drawing of the seal a compression of several intertwined dimensions that only loosely corresponded to conventional space and time. A single line out of place could signify time being told to run backwards, or matter twisting in on itself as a circle without beginning or end, or a channel pointing not up or down or left or right or towards or away but out, and if you were unlucky enough, something on the other end of that out might notice and decide to come in.

But when the blank was right, and Hazō's exploding tag blanks had recently become always right, it felt like he was the creator of his own miniaturised world. His chakra filled in the paths prepared for it, breathing divergent laws of physics and spatial relationships into what had once been a simple piece of paper. An exploding tag wasn't a firebomb—it was a command to the universe in the universe's own language, and the universe should consider itself lucky that Hazō wanted nothing more of it than a managed spherical energy release.

The moment of euphoria faded. Hazō gazed at his new exploding tag for the merest instant, then stuck it to a kunai and threw.

o-o-o-o

"This is bullshit," Wakahisa stated flatly when they finally stopped to catch their breath at the edge of the forest.

Hazō was thinking the same thing. "We're going to get killed if we keep going without using chakra. I'm not even sure if using that exploding tag disqualified us—exploding tags are chakra-based, but on the other hand they do count as standard ninja tools."

"That was a good throw," Keiko said. "But didn't you say earlier that you used up your last tag when Kagome-sensei told you to blow up that weasel because it was looking at him funny?"

"He thought he recognised the expression of a Hidden Rock infiltrator." Hazō pounced on the opportunity to change the subject from the fact that he had risked killing them all (or worse) with an on-the-spot act of sealcrafting he hadn't been strictly allowed to do.

"Anyway, I agree with Wakahisa," he went on. "We've got to stop this. Inoue-sensei's gone too far this time."

Keiko gave a reluctant nod.

Of course, forfeiting would mean Inoue-sensei humiliating everyone with their embarrassing secrets. But then.... you know what? After being nearly eviscerated by erynies, snapped up by slitherbeasts, paralysed by pain vipers and, well, rended by rendclaws, Hazō was not prepared to let her win.

"I wet the bed until I was nine years old."

"What?" Keiko asked confusedly.

"That's my secret," Hazō said, with very little trembling in his voice. "That's what Inoue-sensei was going to tell you all. My mum said the Iron Nerve had complicated effects on a developing body.... and I was having a hard time with things, OK?"

Wakahisa laughed.

Hazō felt a strong impulse to curl into a ball.

"No, no, Kurosawa, chill," Wakahisa said, still laughing. "It's just.... part of Wakahisa Clan training is having to sleep with your chakra barrel next to you above your bed. And if your chakra control lapses while you're asleep.... well, you get the idea. So wetting the bed? Really not a big deal from where I'm standing."

Hazō stopped wanting to curl into a ball.

But he was the only one feeling better. Keiko chewed her lip and crossed her arms, while Wakahisa looked at the ground with his hands closed into fists.

Finally, Wakahisa grimaced, turned to face Keiko, and opened his mouth. "Mori, I...."

"I kissed a girl once!" Keiko shouted.

The two boys looked at her with expressions of wonder on their faces.

"It was for a dare!" she desperately insisted. "It didn't mean anything! Don't give me that look!"

Seeing her so uncharacteristically flustered, Hazō did his best to laugh it off. "Hey, you're still doing better than me on that front."

She snerked, and seemed to relax a bit.

Then it was Wakahisa's turn. He took a deep breath.

"Mori, I.... I.... the thing is.... you're.... I.... I have a crush on...." He wilted. "No, I'm sorry, I can't do it."

But Keiko took a step towards him, and gave him a warm smile. "It's OK, Wakahisa. I feel the same way."

Wakahisa froze. "You.... do?"

Keiko nodded. "I do."

She looked somewhere into the distance. "Isn't she amazing?" she sighed.

Hazō was awed by Wakahisa's willpower as the latter visibly restrained himself from going over and hitting his head repeatedly against the nearest tree.

o-o-o-o

Hazō, Wakahisa, and Keiko sat around the campfire as the sun set (figuring that if Inoue-sensei wanted them, she could damn well find them herself). There was a curious feeling of warmth enveloping them that had little to do with the dancing flames.

"You know," Hazō said, "we've been through a lot together. Remember what terrified little newbies we were back at the Swamp of Death? Now look at us."

Wakahisa gave him a sceptical look. "Are you saying you're not terrified anymore?"

Hazō shrugged. "More like.... I know you guys have my back. All those bizarre chakra monsters we've fought? None of us could have faced them alone. I think today just drove that home. And that goes for all the infiltrations as well. I like how I have you to brainstorm plans with, and point out errors, and how you guys can do things I can't, and the other way round, without me having to feel bad about it. I never really had that with my old team. I was a loner, and that suited both me and them fine."

Wakahisa lounged back and looked up at the stars. "You know what I like? The two of you have never once treated me as a walking chakra battery, and Inoue-sensei hasn't either. That's what I was expecting when I went on that mission. You don't get to shine as a Wakahisa. No matter who you are or what you can do, everyone just wants you to power them up and then stay in the background while they steal the spotlight. And.... you don't do that. So thanks, I guess."

"What do you want, Mori?" Hazō asked. "We've been so focused on running away, we've never discussed our plans for the future."

Keiko looked surprised. "Want? I want all this to be over. I want things to make sense again. But that's not going to happen, is it? You can't come back from being a missing-nin."

"Maybe not," Hazō replied. "But I think you can move forwards. We've all grown a lot compared to how we started out. Maybe not yet, but sometime soon we can start thinking about where we want to be, and what we want to do. I don't know about you guys, but I only ever had one thing tying me to Mist, and that was my mum. Now she's on her own, and...." Hazō took a second to repress a wave of...sadness? Guilt? Worry? It was a mixture of feelings he couldn't and wasn't sure he wanted to untangle. "And I want to get her out of there, or at least make sure she's safe. Then I can move on with no regrets."

"No regrets, huh?" Wakahisa echoed. "I like the sound of that. Let's face it, we've got a really badass jōnin leader, a girl with a brain the size of a planet, and a rising star of ninjutsu. Oh, and Kurosawa, you can be pretty good in a fight too. Sometimes. I don't like the idea of getting killed any more than the next man—and the next man is Kagome—but I feel like it would be a waste not to do something really big with all that talent sooner or later."

Keiko gave him a weird look.

Wakahisa's reply floored her.

"Because, Mori, once Kurosawa and I have a plan, I trust you to figure out how to make it work."

Keiko's mouth opened and closed soundlessly as she tried to come up with a reply to that.

Taking pity on her, Hazō tried to think of something to say. Now he thought of it, perhaps it was time to voice a thought he'd been wondering about quite a lot in recent days.

"Guys," he began nervously, "we've saved each other's lives several times each now, and we're probably going to be stuck together for the foreseeable future. And I could be wrong, but I feel like...we're becoming friends.

"Do you think that," he swallowed, "maybe it's time we moved to first names?"

An awkward silence filled the clearing. The fire seemed to burn more quietly.

"I...I mean, if you don't think that's...."

"You've really got to chill out...Hazō," Wakahisa said, stretching out the syllables experimentally. "You always have to take everything so seriously. Right, Kei...K...Ke...."

"Don't push yourself," Hazō advised as his anxiety faded. "It's not like we don't have time to get used to the idea. If you're both OK with it, I mean."

Keiko didn't say anything, but gave a faint nod.

"Hey, kids," Inoue-sensei waved from right behind Noburi, making him jump. "Guess you've passed my secret test."

o-o-o-o

"Have I mentioned how that's getting really old, Inoue-sensei?" Hazō grumbled.

Hazō deployed the special move he'd been training in secret, darting his head out of the way in a quarter-circle as Inoue-sensei's hand came down in a somewhat leisurely fashion. However, she lunged forward at the very last second, her hand twisting to violently ruffle his hair.

"One day," Hazō muttered to himself.

Inoue-sensei laughed. "You can call me Mari, by the way. Wouldn't want to be left out of the team bonding experience."

Hazō gave his best vengeful smile. "Of course, Inoue-sensei."

Inoue-sensei gave him a look in return. "Anyway.... You kids have successfully accomplished the second strongest defence against blackmail: let the secret out before somebody else can.

"Strictly speaking," she added, "it's a two-stage process. Let the secret out, then assassinate the blackmailer later."

"What about the strongest defence, M-Ma...Inoue-sensei?" Keiko asked.

Inoue-sensei sighed. "The first and most effective defence is simply to assassinate the blackmailer without faffing about with other countermeasures. But sometimes that's impractical, at least in the short term. And the third, for your reference, is to find out some of the blackmailer's secrets as counter-blackmail, and then assassinate them later. Any questions?"

She looked hopefully at Noburi, but Noburi had already exchanged glances with Hazō.

"Actually, yes, Inoue-sensei."

Inoue-sensei's shoulders slumped. "Go on."

"What's your most embarrassing secret? Sharing that was a key part of our 'team bonding experience'."

Inoue-sensei looked at him flatly for several seconds. "Well played."

She sat down by the fire, prompting Noburi and Keiko to shift to make room.

For a few seconds, she was lost in thought, or perhaps she really was coming up with something she found hard to admit in public.

"Actually.... I was too scared to sleep with a man until I was eighteen."

Three sets of eyebrows rose to maximum elevation.

"B-But," Noburi stammered, "you...seduction missions...how is that even...?"

Inoue-sensei closed her eyes for a second. "All sorts of ways, many of which I don't think you're ready to know about. Let's just say that there is room for a variety of support roles on a seduction mission, and I just let somebody else...take point...every time."

After Keiko's revelation earlier, it occurred to Hazō that "sleep with a man" was suspiciously specific, but he decided it would be best not to seek clarification. Instead, he felt that Inoue-sensei's admission had earned her a certain amount of team bonding, though he intended to keep using her surname for a while longer. Perhaps until she stopped ruffling his hair....

"So Inoue-sensei, we were talking about our plans for the future. What do you want to do?"

"Future, huh?" Inoue-sensei asked. "No idea. Never did. I mean, I figured I'd settle down eventually—very eventually—if I met the right person, but I never met anyone in Mist who could keep up with me and wasn't taken, and I imagine that would go double for civilians. And really, what was there to do other than to keep taking missions, and get whatever fun I could out of life?

"When Shikigami brought me on board, his project seemed like a chance to do something big, something meaningful. But look what happened to that. Thanks to him, right now survival is top of the agenda. Anything more would be a luxury.

"Then again," she added after a second, "I always did like my luxuries. Keep your eyes open, kids. Maybe we'll find something bigger and better somewhere along the line. It's a policy that's served me well so far." She winked.

"I think I can help with that," the ninja in faded green clothes told her. Then he jumped down from the rock outcropping he'd been sitting on, and raised a kunai to throw.

o-o-o-o

Inoue-sensei's hands were a blur of seals.

"Silent Night Technique!"

The kunai dropped out of the ninja's hands as his entire body relaxed—except for his eyes, which remained locked on Inoue-sensei's.

They'd drilled for this sort of thing. Hazō got out a length of ninja wire and approached the enemy carefully, while Keiko prepared to throw kunai at the first sign that he might be breaking free of the genjutsu. Noburi came in from the other side to Hazō, water clones flanking him and ready for action.

As Hazō reached out, the ninja suddenly sprang into action. He grabbed Hazō's arm, twisted—and threw him bodily at Inoue-sensei.

Inoue-sensei dodged sideways in a brief flicker of movement, but couldn't help being clipped by a flailing Hazō. It took her an extra moment to reach the enemy ninja, by which time Noburi had already engaged.

Noburi executed a near-perfect flanking manoeuvre, himself and two of his clones forming a semicircle around the ninja's left while the third clone slipped around to cut off the enemy's retreat.

Unfortunately, Noburi had committed an error: the enemy ninja wasn't there. A clone puffed into non-existence, leaving Noburi and his water clones as nothing more than a wide obstacle between Inoue-sensei and her target, as well as blocking Keiko's line of fire.

Then the enemy attacked.

A powerful two-handed palm thrust punched through two clones in a row, causing them to explode outwards in a big burst of water—just as Inoue-sensei reached them. The sudden splash of water into her face caused her to do arguably the worst thing one could do in a high-level ninja battle. She blinked.

The next thing she knew, she was on the ground with one of the ninja's hands around her throat. He raised a kunai....

And then he was a metre away as Keiko's shuriken passed through the space where he had just been.

Putting his hands down by his sides, the ninja gave a big smile. "I think I like you four."

o-o-o-o

Inoue-sensei moved from prone to upright without visibly passing through any intermediate stages. "You could have killed me then. If you weren't going to, why attack?"

The ninja gave another smile. "I just wanted to establish the power dynamics before this conversation went any further. It only takes a few seconds, but it can save both sides a lot of time and effort.

"By the way, that technique of yours. Am I right in thinking it's an adaptation of Mist's White Night genjutsu? Very nice work, combining the original's brute force with.... I guess I'd call it a certain playful elegance. Much like its wielder."

Inoue-sensei did not lower her guard. "If you're here to seduce me," she told him coolly, "you should've brought chocolate."

Without missing a beat, the ninja reached into a sleeve and pulled out a small box, which he tossed her in a slow, non-threatening underarm throw.

Inoue-sensei opened it carefully, then gave a surprised laugh.

"All right, smooth operator. Why don't you introduce yourself, and we'll see how things go from there."

"You can call me...Yūjin," the ninja told her, sweeping into a quick but dramatic bow. "Bad manners to give an alias, I know, but things would get messy if my name started floating around Iron just now."

"Well...Yūjin," Inoue-sensei shifted out of combat stance, "I take it you already know who I am?"

"Inoue Mari, known as 'Heartbreaker', though I hope never to find out why. And these three must be Mori Keiko, Wakahisa Noburi, and Kurosawa Hazō. A pleasure to meet you all.

"You see," he went on, noticing Hazō's eyes narrow in suspicion, "this is exactly why it's good to know each other's power levels in advance. You don't have to decide whether you should be trying to kill me, because you know you can't, and you don't have to fear that I'm trying to kill you, because you know I've chosen not to. So now we can skip all that and move on to civilised discussion.

"I know you must have many questions. Who is that outrageously handsome man? How did he find us? What does he want? Is he single? But for now we must constrain ourselves to practicalities. I'm here to offer you a job."

Inoue-sensei raised her eyebrows. "I'm sorry, but working under strangers isn't my style. Maybe we should take some time to get to know each other first?"

"You wouldn't rather have an exciting blind date with an international man of mystery? No? Very well, I shall skip to the end and fill you in."

His expression turned serious. "Something is happening in the north of Iron that risks catastrophically destabilising the region—at a time when any wrong move could spark a Fourth Great Ninja War. My network is weak in Iron, and I need reliable operatives here, which is why I've chosen to contact you four. I need you to infiltrate an organisation called the New Samurai Army, based north of Shinamachi, and find out everything you can about it—its resource base, numbers, the identities of its leadership, everything. And I need you to start now. We may have only months before it's too late to act."

"And in return?" Inoue-sensei asked.

Yūjin gave a roguish grin. "In return, whatever you want. Flowers? More chocolate? A date with the most eligible bachelor on the continent, which is to say me?

"But I won't press you for an answer now. From what I hear, you four don't know yourselves what you want yet, and far be it from me to demand commitment at such an early stage. This mission should give you time to figure out your own answers, and at the end I'll be here with my huge network, ready to make all your dreams come true. Why, we might even end up with a long-term working relationship."

"I see," Inoue-sensei said. "But I'm afraid I'm going to have to talk to my kids before inviting a man like you into my life."

She looked around.

"What do you three think?"