"Here," Mari passed the girl a couple of coins, "why don't you hand me that tray, and then go see if Honami won't give you a couple of hours off? At full pay, of course. She'll understand."

After checking for observers, Mari smoothly took on the waitress's appearance. Honami's cooperation was opening countless doors for the team, in some cases literally. Hazō's call to work with her had paid off a hundredfold. The kid had the makings of an excellent infiltrator, Mari decided, just as soon as he got better at lying. And disguises. And observation. And persuasion.

And seduction. Mari counted herself very lucky that he was still a few years away from having to be taught seduction in earnest. After all, she was the only available teacher, and wouldn't that do interesting things to the team dynamic. It wasn't a problem ninja normally had—when she herself had been learning from Usami-sensei and Shiratori-sensei, she'd already had years of desensitising Mist conditioning, and immersion in an environment in which seduction training was considered as standard and impersonal as taijutsu training. Whereas teaching the arts to somebody who was more like your infinitely-teasable little brother...

Then again, the odds of Hazō actually asking her for seduction training were roughly the same as the odds of Kagome asking her to marry him. Come to think of it, Mari reflected, the master and the apprentice had a lot of things in common.

Keiko, on the other hand... Mari's blood ran cold at just the thought of thinking about that idea and all of its implications. Clearly, it was time to focus on the mission.

The tray held a single cup of tea. The temperature had to be gauged carefully—while Mari was happy to reuse the old classic Honami had used on Hazō, actually popping Mr Spy's disguise would attract all sorts of unwelcome attention. On the other hand, a waitress carrying cold tea would just make him suspicious.

As luck would have it, Mr Spy was facing her as she entered the veranda. He glanced up at her with a blank expression as she came into his field of view, then immediately returned to his book, a manual on the theory of civil administration that made Mari's eyes glaze over just to look at.

The man must have had some serious financial support to be able to use something like that as a mere prop. Unlike Jiraiya's books, such a specialised volume would have a very limited print run, which tended to mean a staggering price. After all, the beauty of a monopoly was that if you wanted to, you could make the customer bleed, and they'd still keep on coming back.

Mari's analysis ended the second she was in range. As she began to move past Mr Spy, she tripped over, squealing and sending a cup of lukewarm, very dark tea flying in a carefully calculated arc over the book and onto the man's chest. He reflexively tried to get out of the way, but at civilian speed he might as well have been trying to evade a thunderbolt. The tea went everywhere (though he did manage to save the book) and a large brown spot began to spread over his kimono. The surrounding customers and staff alike stared at him, some with amusement and others with sympathy.

Mr Spy's eyes snapped up to look at her. His voice was rich, cultured, a stark contrast to his unprepossessing appearance. It was also filled with excoriating contempt.

"Wonderful," he told her. "Now I'm the centre of everybody's attention. Honestly, I was expecting better of you given your work so far. You can be sure of a pay cut once your employer hears of this.

"Well?" he added. "Why are you just standing there? Don't you have a job to do?"

Mari couldn't help but catch the subtle emphasis on that one word, combined with the way he met her eyes as he said it. Oh, shit.

Their employer was running more than one game here, and apparently whatever Mr Spy was up to, it was important enough for him to be aware of their presence but not vice versa. This was why Mari, along with every non-Command ninja ever, hated the concept of a need-to-know basis.

As she retreated in a hurry, Mari heard Mr Spy hail another waitress.

"You there, girl. Have one of the men bring me another kimono from my suite. The beige one will do. I'll be in the baths."

o-o-o-o

"Which is why our client is an information-withholding sack of slimedrizzler balls. Now, let's move on. Forget our man of mystery, we need to move fast if we want to get Jōtarō and Mr Yu— the secondary target. They could leave as early as tomorrow morning."

Hazō nodded. "Are we still going with the original plan, Inoue-sensei?"

"That's right. Jōtarō's booking expires tomorrow morning, which means the bedroom window of opportunity will only be open tonight. As long as we're quick and careful, we won't be leaving time for the spy to make any moves."

o-o-o-o

Akane slowly walked up to the window. This was it. Finally her time to shine, to show Hazō-sensei that not only was she maturing as a fighter under his tutelage, but that she was an adult in her own right—or would be soon enough—with her own specialisation every bit as valuable as his sealing skills or Keiko's summoning. With all eyes on her, it was time for the practice to pay off.

As challenges for a ninja went, opening the window was a piece of cake, given the simple deadbolt and her experience with the neighbouring room earlier. A little sliver of metal, some youthful controlled breathing to make her hands perfectly still...

And right behind the open window was a series of almost invisible tripwires attached to the frame, each doubtless connected to a bell or two.

Snip!

Akane was on fire tonight. It helped that the ninja who'd set these up was an amateur—putting all those wires so close together might have felt like it was making the trap harder to bypass, but in reality it only made it easier to spot, after which point there was no amount of cunning that could save this kind of trap from rapid disassembly.

She carefully wrapped each bell in a piece of cloth, then lowered them to the grass. The bells were well-made, and she could already see the clever new traps she could come up with using the extra materials. Yes, Hazō-sensei would be impressed.

Akane softly moved the curtains apart. She could only see the outlines of two bodies on the floor, which suggested that the other man was in Jōtarō's room after all. For a second, her mind flashed back to Inoue-sensei's waggling of eyebrows when she covered this possibility during the planning meeting. There'd be no living with her after this.

Akane stepped back, allowing Inoue-sensei through. The window would only admit one person at a time, and Inoue-sensei was the best point woman, with her sharp senses and quick genjutsu.

Inoue-sensei froze as she came halfway through the window, her foot dangling in mid-air. Beneath her, the enemy ninja lay on the floor outside the window's line of sight, his hands already reaching up to grab her.

With desperate speed, the ninja lunged for her mid-air foot, trying to throw her off-balance for an immediate finishing blow. As his body rose, his hands began to close around her ankle...

But Inoue-sensei was faster. Even as she was stepping down, she had her hands going through a quick series of seals. The ninja's hands slipped down.

The rest of the team were quick to follow Inoue-sensei in, each casting a worried glance at the open door of the room. The smallest noise might be enough to carry to Jōtaro's room, and if he was awake, they could get in a lot of trouble very quickly. At a nod from Hazō, Keiko very quietly closed it.

Akane and Hazō-sensei quickly immobilised the ninja. When they'd been assigning roles, Hazō-sensei had volunteered himself for this part, prompting a snide comment from Keiko on his inexplicable fondness for tying people up. Her master had gone straight into defensive stammering mode, while Inoue-sensei grinned and Noburi looked uncomfortable. Akane herself still thought the whole thing was funny.

With the target at his mercy, Noburi began to drain him of chakra. This naturally disrupted the genjutsu, leaving the man to bolt awake to find himself, in the words of Inoue-sensei's plan, "roughly bound, gagged and being molested by Noburi's slimy tentacle". (This had not made Noburi any less uncomfortable.)

But after some struggling and very muffled pleas for help, the ninja finally sagged to the floor. Noburi knocked out the civilians, and at his signal, the team split up to search the room. The pace was glacially slow, with every movement having to avoid treading on a caltrop in the dark, or touching one of the pieces of crumpled up paper dotted everywhere, or otherwise making even the tiniest noise.

"Oh, shit," Inoue-sensei hissed several thousand years later.

Everyone immediately turned to look at her. She pointed down at the boy. In the faint moonlight, they could just about see the pattern of ink on his back. The spidery symbols could not be mistaken for anything other than a cypher. This... was going to be a lot harder to handle than a scroll.

As the team stared in silence at the writing, each trying to think how to proceed, the sound of footsteps came from the next room.

"Yami?" Jōtarō's booming voice demanded. "Why'd you close the door?"