Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small. ~ Lao Tzu

.

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"Okay, but hear me out," Genma was saying to Aoba as I came into the room. His senbon looped up and down as he spoke. "She's a Special Jounin, right? Just like the rest of us."

He looked expectant.

"Yes," Aoba said reluctantly, as if conceding a point by admitting that it was true. "But running patrol doesn't fall under Intel responsibilities."

"It could," Genma argued. "You have to be familiar with the village, right? And all the other departments. It'll be good experience." He looked very pleased with himself.

I was instantly really wary about whatever they were talking about. It wasn't paranoid to say 'me' because that was exactly what it sounded like but me for what?

"Well," Aoba hesitated.

Hesitation was weakness and weakness got exploited.

Genma turned, saw me, and smiled. "Hey, kid. Just who I was looking for. The patrol routes are short a couple of people tonight; can you help out?"

And even though I was slightly suspicious about the whole thing, my initial reaction was 'yes, of course', as it always was. The only thing that stopped me from agreeing, was because my time was already allocated here. I had a job to do.

"Aoba-senpai?" I asked. There was probably a reason Genma had asked him first.

"Ah, well. I suppose you can, if you don't have anything urgent to do…"

"Only the usual," I said, because nothing had come in for me and I wasn't expecting it to. It was nothing I couldn't put off to tomorrow, or wouldn't be redistributed to others.

Genma beamed. "Excellent," he said.

"So what's the catch?" I asked expectantly, raising an eyebrow at him.

He looked dramatically hurt. "There's no catch. Would I do that to you?"

I gave him an unimpressed look, but followed as he left.

"Seriously," he said, tucking his hands into his pockets and looking way more relaxed. "We're usually have enough relief staff for this kind of situation, only we're short on Special Jounin. And Hokage's orders are specifically that your teammate needs a ranking partner."

I paused. That was true but… "I don't think I really fit the spirit of that order," I said dubiously.

"You are a Special Jounin," he countered. Like that was his argument and he was going to stick to it, come hell or high water.

Well, yes, I was. But. I was still pretty sure I wasn't meant to count in this scenario. It was just a hunch.

"I'm sure you can handle it," he said. "Yeah, it's a perfect solution." He nodded, to himself.

I gave him a look but didn't protest. Patrol with Sasuke didn't sound bad, anyway. We hadn't had much time to catch up lately with him off doing mysterious Anbu things. And me being busy with everything I was busy with.

We got to the way station, and Genma sent me off with a wave. "Sasuke knows the route," he said vaguely. "He can fill you in."

I shrugged. That wasn't really how this was supposed to work, I was sure. But I trusted that Sasuke actually did know what he was doing.

Sasuke was waiting, leaning against one of the walls and looking both bored and highly unimpressed. "Huh," he said when he saw me. "How'd you get dragged into this?"

"Apparently they're short on Special Jounin?" I shrugged. "I wasn't doing anything interesting anyway."

Sasuke snorted. "That's only because the rest of them are as lazy as sensei," he said, turning to go. I followed, waiting until we were out of the station and out of earshot.

"Why are you here, anyway?" I asked, actually curious. "I thought you weren't on patrol anymore." On account of being in Anbu, went unsaid.

Sasuke shrugged. "I'm on the relief staff list," he said. "There's a whole lot of us that fill in when things happen and people are pulled off of the rotation or if the security level goes up."

And that, made sense, actually. Sasuke wasn't tied down permanently to anywhere, but he would still be visible enough, doing enough missions and patrols and things that people wouldn't be questioning where he was. Each particular assignment would be very day-by-day – and as long as he had a reasonable excuse, no one would be too shocked at not being able to find him at short notice. 'I was away training' surely counted when there were too many training fields to ever search.

It made so much sense that I wondered how many of the relief staff – generally people who I thought of as retired shinobi, or maybe parents looking for part time work – were actually Anbu giving themselves cover.

Because sure, there were some people who you just knew were Anbu – like Kakashi – but most of the time it was a secret. Not even an open secret, like things sometimes were in a ninja village, but an actual 'no one knows' secret.

We fell into an easy rhythm with each other, keeping step. Sasuke filled me in on where we were going and what we were doing and we traded comments back and forth that skirted the edges of things not talked about. I learnt that he was learning more kenjutsu and that his squad captain was 'pretty cool' though both things were so vague that it told me next to nothing.

Our route took us well out of the village proper, up the mountains and hills that existed outside the walls. We were paying attention, because that was what we were here for, but there was nothing of particular note.

"The river is low," I said absently, nothing important about it other than a vague point of conversation.

"Hasn't rained recently," Sasuke said, but without much interest. It was certain, though, a fact acknowledged and tucked away just in case it became relevant at any point. Being a ninja was all about collecting those little facts.

"Better watch out for puddles then," I suggested, because it reminded me of our first mission. It felt like so long ago.

Sasuke smirked, clearly making the same connection. We were going to end up with some of the weirdest Team 7 in-jokes.

"Hey," Sasuke said, head tilting curiously as he looked down at the river, "do you see that?"

We changed course, heading for the river and the outcropping of rock in the center.

There, just barely peeking out from the water line, were black lines on rock.

"Graffiti?" Sasuke suggested, though he didn't sound hopeful.

"You really think so?" I asked. We circled around it, onto the water and carefully closing the distance. If it was a trap, we didn't want to set it off. But there was equally no way we could ignore it.

"It could be," he argued. "Maybe. It's not impossible. "

Not impossible, no, but… "Not unless people started charging them with chakra when I wasn't looking," I said. "It's… weird."

"That is exactly what I want to hear," he sighed, though he didn't look terribly disappointed. He bit his thumb and went through a series of handseals, pressing his hand down on the water. A hawk burst out of the summoning jutsu, let out a screech, and alighted on his forearm. The talons probably didn't pierce through his arm protectors but he still winced.

I ignored him as he conveyed the messages to send to the patrol station, focusing on the seal. It was weird. I couldn't see it – the majority of it was under the water – but to my chakra sense it was slightly off.

"Yin chakra?" I wondered out loud.

But that wasn't quite right.

I wanted to be able to see it, to know what I was dealing with.

"Someone else will pick up the patrol," Sasuke told me, hovering over my shoulder as his hawk flew off, circling in the air above us as an indicator. "We get to stay and investigate the thing. What are we dealing with?"

"I have no idea," I said honestly. "It's an active seal. Whatever it's meant to do, it's already doing it. But we'll have to get this water out of the way so I can see what it is."

We both considered the river.

"Can we move the rock?" Sasuke suggested after a long moment.

I tapped my fingers against my thigh. "Should be able to. As long as we avoid the seal – I don't want to touch it with chakra until I know what it does. Or touch it at all," I amended.

It took us a few minutes and some complicated wire work to design a way to get the rock onto dry land. I ended up taking an unenthusiastic swim in order to judge how deep the seal went and performing my first ever underwater earth jutsu to cut the thing in half.

"You could have done that part," I grumbled, trying to wring the water out of my hair. It was cold.

"I wouldn't have known where it stopped," Sasuke claimed, with the same kind of innocence as Genma saying 'there's no catch'. "What do I know about seals?"

I snorted. "Oh yes, such expert skill is needed to tell where the ink is."

"It could have washed away," he claimed. Then tilted his head, like it was a question he'd never thought to ask. "Could it have?"

Ah yes, seal metaphysics. The question that most people who asked wished they'd never thought to ask.

"Not really," I said. "If it was the type of seal that could wash away, it wouldn't still be there." I rubbed the back of my neck, half in thought, half trying to get the water to stop dripping down. "A seal isn't ink. Once it's been activated, I mean. It's a pathway full of chakra that makes things happen. And chakra is… you can't just wash it away, right?"

Things could wipe it away – chakra dissipated into the air naturally, for one, which was a big part of why chakra storage items didn't work well, and there were chakra devouring things like kikaichu. But that was a different topic. That was about the chakra, not about the ink.

"Right," Sasuke agreed with a shrug, like I was making sense. "You have to stop the chakra to stop the seal, then. Counter it, somehow." He considered the stone chunk that we'd freed from the water. "So what would happen if we just …. got rid of it. Crushed the rock?"

I winced. "Yeah. Well. I have no idea." I shrugged, defensively. "It's complicated. It depends on how robust the seal is. If it's not very robust then destroying the surface it's on might be enough to break the chakra paths. Like…" I searched for an example. "If you tear a storage scroll in half."

No, shit. Storage scrolls were terrible examples. They were time-space dimension warping bullshit.

"Anyway," I barreled onwards. "A fragile seal will probably fail if you disrupt it like that. The ink is what carries the chakra and forms the patterns, so separating the ink lines separates the chakra."

"But if it is more robust than that?" Sasuke prompted, gamely.

"If it is more robust than that, the chakra can hold itself together," I said. "With your seal the ink moves, you know." I ignored his flinch. Yes, that was probably a bad example too. "So the seal might transfer to a new surface, if there's something close. Or it might just… hang in the air because air is still a surface…"

I fluttered my hands, trying to punctuate my point. "I think this might be one of those. It's an odd location. Good for hiding it after the fact but not really an easy place to write a seal. But write it on a paper tag and then bam, stick it somewhere it'll be invisible. After a while the paper will probably get destroyed but your seal will outlast it."

"So basically," he summed up. "It's not an option and will probably just make things more complicated."

"Basically," I agreed. "Now let me work out what it actually does then I can tell you what we can actually do about it."

But mentioning Sasuke's seal had got me on the right track. I'd seen it expanded, when Jiraiya had been studying it, and it made certain parts of this seal eerily familiar in style.

"Hmm," I said, picking it apart with my eyes. Sasuke ran a perimeter, searched the area for any other seals or traps and generally did a whole bunch of ninja things so I could stand around staring at a rock.

"Nothing else around," he confirmed. "Do you know what it does?"

"I think so," I said. "But it's going to sound a little crazy."

He tilted his head, like he was considering that. "Well. If it's only a little crazy…"

"It's not exactly a storage seal," I explained, finger hovering over parts of it as I sounded out my theory. "Or, at least, of a physical item. But there are plenty of non-physical things people can seal. Chakra. Bijuu. Souls."

Orochimaru had done it, with Edo Tensei and with his Cursed Seal. Or at least, managed to seal some part of a soul with the last one. And it explained the odd unbalanced feeling of the seal – reminiscent of the way Kubisaki's ghost had felt.

"Souls," Sasuke repeated, raising an eyebrow at me. "Since I doubt you're implying there's a bijuu sealed here."

I hummed. "I think we might have a ghost in the machine. Or rock. As the case might be."

"Okay," Sasuke said slowly and, again, asked the real question. "But whose soul?"

I hovered my finger over the first part of the seal. "Kisuke," I read. "I think it's a name. If I was going to try and seal someone's soul, a name wouldn't be the last thing I'd try. It's descriptive and specific, as long as you actually know who you're dealing with."

Edo Tensei worked off of DNA, of having an actual physical tie for the soul you were trying to call back. Assuming that this person hadn't been retrieved from the afterlife, then the requirements for it might have been different.

"Wow." I blinked. "This is weird."

"It's not the weirdest thing we've done," Sasuke said. "We found a seal. Nothing has really even happened yet."

"I'm thinking about the afterlife," I said dryly. "I try to avoid that."

But he was right in that we actually needed to do something about it. We had a potential soul stuck in a seal on a rock. For unknown reason, by an unknown person, for an unknown length of time.

Friend or foe?

"I could make an interfacing seal, I think," I said. "See if we can draw them out. Then just… ask."

Sasuke nodded. Then shrugged. "If you think it'll work," he agreed. "I don't know how else we'd find out. There's bound to be dozens of ninja in Konoha alone named 'Kisuke'."

Baring a second name or something to cross reference it with, it would take us a long time to find anything with that. And even if we did find the right person, we might not even know we had. Maybe a Kisuke who had gone missing here – or died.

I pulled out some paper and got to work. There was an open clause in the seal, and if I hijacked that and gave an output mechanism…

"Okay," I said, and slapped it on the rock. "Let's see if it works."

I charged it with chakra, ready to bail if things went wrong.

There was a burst of chakra smoke. Then a man, standing there and staring at us in confusion. Maybe thirty or forty years old, with dark brown hair. He was wearing loose, casual looking clothes, and had no visible weapons.

Not that they would have done any good. Being a ghost and all.

"What happened? Who are you?" He demanded.

"That's our question," Sasuke shot back firmly. "On behalf of Konoha security – Identify yourself!"

"Kisuke Maboroshi," the ghost said. He looked around, uneasily. But oh, it was so clear he was a ninja – lost and confused, he was assessing the situation and working out what had happened. His gaze lingered across our faces, over the seal and stone, over the river and surroundings. He flexed his hands, then stared at them. "I was fighting…" he said, though more to himself than to us.

I let him sort it out. I wasn't sure how one went about saying 'sorry, you're actually dead'.

"I have to report in," he said suddenly, urgently. "They have to know-"

Sasuke stepped forward, as if to grab him.

But the body flicker that Kisuke tried to use never happened. Because he was a ghost and had no chakra and was tied to the seal.

I coughed, awkwardly. "Uh, yeah. That's not really going to work. But we'd also really like to report in with whatever is going on so we can help each other out here."

My very logical offer was brushed off with an agitated shake of the head. I cancelled the seal and he vanished again. I didn't know if he would be aware in there – the initial confusion suggested not – and it seemed a bit mean, but it would give us time to catch up on the information that we did have.

"Now we report it?" Sasuke suggested.

"Now we have a name," I corrected. "I want to grab his file and see who he is, first. But yeah, then we'll probably have to tell Tsunade-sama."

We used my lightsaber to cut the stone down to a slightly more manageable size, until it was basically a tablet with a seal on it, and wrapped it in my jacket in possibly the worst kind of disguise ever.

I didn't want to carry a seal like that into the information archives, though. So it stayed with Sasuke while I used my Intel clearance to bypass the security and find the file. I'd been down here often enough over the past month that it didn't take long to flick through the file cards to 'Maboroshi' and find out where it was located. That it was in the 'deceased' section was of absolutely no surprise, but he wasn't listed as KIA. Or even MIA.

I flicked through the – really, really sparse – file to explain the discrepancy. There was a brief medical report of a coma with no known cause from nearly a year ago and a death certificate from only a few days before the Chunin Exam Invasion.

Curiouser and curiouser.

There was no information on about a mission, or anything of how he had become sealed in a rock in the outskirts of the village. There were in fact, no missions listed for quite some time. I wondered if that meant he'd been working on his own – or if that meant Anbu. Which might explain why he hadn't wanted to explain anything to us and report in on his own.

I took the file, signing that I'd taken it by code reference number rather than by name. I had no idea if anyone was keeping tabs on Kisuke or not – or if they'd bother tracking the low clearance archives if they did – but it was better safe than sorry.

Then I went back to where Sasuke was waiting impatiently. People were giving him a fairly wide berth and strange looks, which he only replied to with the most bland expression of annoyance I had ever seen.

"Found it," I said.

Sasuke nodded. "Shizune was here," he said. "The Hokage isn't available. She's at the hospital."

Which probably meant it was either urgent, or would be a long time. Both of which meant it wasn't a good idea to disturb her. We could have waited, but more progress was better.

I sorted through our options then nodded decisively. "Follow me."

We went down, winding through the corridors to a place that I was visiting with rather more frequency than I ever thought I would visit T&I.

I presented my ID and asked if Ibiki-taicho was in.

"Cause?" the ninja asked, sounding bored.

"Intel," I said automatically at the exact same time that Sasuke said, "Patrol."

We looked at each other. I shrugged. "Both."

That didn't exactly appear to impress anyone, but I wasn't going to get into the ghost story here. So vague non-reasons it would have to be.

Ibiki was sent for, though, thankfully. "The Nara girl is here for you again," the door guard said to him.

"Again?" Sasuke mouthed at me. Yes, that was interesting. Because this was the first time I'd asked for Ibiki.

"Another urgent delivery?" Ibiki asked, eyeing us.

"No, Ibiki-taicho," I said. "There's a situation that requires your expertise. Uhm. Do you have a briefing room? It's a little bit strange."

"Very well," he said, though the look had become interested. "Follow me." He nodded at the guard and we were let through.

Sasuke set the tablet down on the briefing room table and stripped it of the cover. We rattled through a quick explanation of what had happened and what we'd found and why we'd come here.

Ibiki's eyebrows climbed higher and higher on his face. "This is not a joke," he said. It wasn't exactly a question, but the fact that he felt like he needed the clarification said a lot.

"Not by us," I said. "And if it's on us, I'll be really annoyed too."

"I see," he said.

"I would have reported it to Tsunade-sama first," I went on. "But she's not available. And if he is Anbu then I'm not entirely sure what the next step would have been."

I could have taken it to dad – to the Jounin Commander – obviously, but taking it to Ibiki meant we were still making progress on the issue. T&I was a place that was practically designed to handle sensitive information and decide what needed to be done with it.

Also… I wouldn't lie and say I didn't want to know what was going on here, and once it was out of our hands we would probably never find out.

"Set it up," Ibiki said, getting up and opening the door. "I'll have someone send for his information, and then we'll work out what's going on."

I set my interface seal up around the tablet which took all of about ten seconds. Sasuke and I sat at the table while we waited for Ibiki to return.

"As you can tell," I said, and yawned. "Intel missions are terribly exciting."

"Just like this, huh?" he said wryly. "I would say patrol is better, but this came from patrol."

"It's all going to be paperwork from here on out," I said, folding my arms on the table and dropping my chin onto them. "The most exciting part will be Ibiki asking him questions. If we're lucky we might get to hunt down whoever did it, though."

I doubted it, though. I had a feeling that would be taken out of our hands and be someone else's job. Assuming that whoever did this in the first place was still in Konoha.

"We are lucky," Sasuke said hopefully, leaning back in his chair to stare at the ceiling. "It's in the name. I could hunt someone down. You could hunt someone down. You're a tracking ninja."

Ibiki came back with a personnel file that was much thicker than the one we'd brought with us, but wouldn't let us see it. Classified, probably.

Then he told me to activate the seal.

I did.

"-port immediately!" Kisuke said, agitated, finishing what he'd been saying before I'd cut him off. He stopped. Blinked. Looked around. The change in location must have been slightly jarring.

"Kisuke Maboroshi," Ibiki greeted. "I'm told you have something to report?"

Kisuke was much more accommodating now that Ibiki was involved, as anyone would have been. Ibiki had been in charge for longer than Kisuke had been 'dead' so he must have recognized him at least.

Kisuke had been investigating something – from Anbu, so score one for assumptions – and it had lead him to someone named Sabiru who had been in charge of some kind of defense plan. And given how the Invasion had turned out, that seemed relevant to the conversation at hand. Sabiru had, in turn, worked out he was being investigated and tried to get rid of him.

"I was off duty," Kisuke said ruefully, which at least explained why he wasn't in Anbu uniform. That would have been much more recognizable. "I wasn't on guard. He said… he said something about my wife. Do you know if she's okay?"

He didn't look hopeful.

Ibiki didn't look at the file. Had already read it and knew the answer to this question. "There was a fire at your house," he said. "Your wife perished in the blaze."

Had been murdered, most likely.

Kisuke closed his eyes. "I see. And then I died and it seemed as though I had simply snapped from grief. Sabiru got away with everything. "

He hadn't died at the time, but there also hadn't been any kinds of suspicions raised in the medical report. No signs of fighting, no obvious causes to the coma that indicated someone had attacked him. The seal itself might not have been meant to last – simply meant to be a method of killing that wouldn't arose suspicion.

"Until now," Ibiki corrected. "Though it might be late you have still completed your mission and revealed the actions of a traitor. It is no small thing. You have done well."

We were dismissed not long after that, sent off with the warning that this was classified and we weren't to talk about it.

"Do we at least get to hunt down this 'Sabiru'?" Sasuke asked.

"If Anbu was already investigating him, they'll want to finish this," Ibiki said, amused. "And that's if he hasn't already been found since the Invasion. The Hokage has been very thorough in her investigations."

"Well," I said, stretching my shoulders. "Maybe next patrol we'll just get attacked or something."

.

.

The next day saw me practicing my summoning jutsu by Sembei's house, as I had been since I'd signed the scroll.

Hey, Heijomaru had encouraged me to call him for practically no reason. I wasn't going to pass that up. I needed the practice, and I really wanted to start building a relationship with the deer in the contract. Signing the thing was just the first step – I could call them, but I couldn't actually force them to do anything. That was entirely down to their willingness to work with me.

Heijomaru came first, as he always did. Given that my later attempts at calling the deer were less precise, I suspected that was much more to do with him than with me.

"Good morning, Daughter of the Forest," he said, as he always did. I was beginning to wonder what the name meant. It sounded like it ought to have been important.

"Good morning, Heijomaru," I returned. "Thank you for coming."

There were a smattering of young Nara children around watching, seeming delighted by the summons. I'd worried the first time they'd been here, but Sembei hadn't and Heijomaru had tolerated them climbing all over him with a resigned sort of fondness.

I watched him settle on the veranda by Sembei's rocking chair and returned to try my summoning jutsu again. I was aiming for Gemmei, a doe that seemed reasonably knowledgeable about both the human and summon worlds and the history of both.

"Summoning Jutsu!" I called, spilling the chakra out through my fingers. I felt the call rattle through and could almost, almost feel it connect to something on the other side. I had to learn how to direct it better.

It was honestly a little humbling how easily Naruto had learnt this and how much harder it was than I was expecting. After his initial troubles, he'd never seemed to have any problems picking who to call.

That was harder than anticipated.

"Summon lady!" chittered the tiny fawn that I'd managed to summon instead. He bounced around me in a circle, wiggling with excitement. "You called, you called."

"Hello Nagaoka," I said, smiling at him instead of letting my disappointment show. He was a delight, anyway. Not someone I'd want to summon in combat, but he was always happy to come. Too young to have known Sembei when she was an active kunoichi his reasons weren't the same as his older allies. "Would you like a treat?"

I held out one of the little deer biscuits I'd brought with me. He nibbled it from my fingers, then pressed forward towards me.

I tumbled backwards onto the ground, not having expecting a shoulder charge. His long gangling legs trod over and on mine as he folded downwards, sitting on me.

No matter how small and cute, fawns were not made to be lap animals.

I 'ooffed', and made sure my hands weren't somewhere they'd get stood on. "It's nice to see you too," I laughed and scritched behind his ears.