Infiltration
"You're very good at that, Yukio!"
The brunette blinked up at the pretty girl who had spoken, a blush crossing his features as he fumbled with the coarse cotton strings he'd been attaching to puppet hands and feet. "Naraku taught me how." He said, unable to look her full in the face. The girl laughed, tossing her long hair. "You learn quickly then! Keep travelling with us and we'll make you a master puppeteer in no time!"
The boy smiled sheepishly as he laid aside the marionette strings. The girl offered her hand and he took it, standing up. They headed down the hill towards where the traveling troupe had circled their colorful wagons. She separated from Yukio and headed for her fellow dancers, who called out greetings and waved their filmy scarves at her.
"Stop flirting with the new boy, Kaede!" one of her friends said. "You're gonna scare him off before the rest of us get a shot!"
"It's sort of cute," said one of the others as she flicked her filmy scarf through the air. "He blushes like a sunburn as soon as you say something to him."
Another senior dancer laughed. "He might be cute but that never kept anyone's bed warm. Now come on, let's get this routine down or that old bitch will have our heads before we make the next town in Fire Country."
Kaede nodded turned in a quick circle, looking for where she had dropped her scarf before going off to talk to Yukio.
"She's quite the flirt, isn't she?"
Yukio looked up to see Kuro. He was one of the jugglers, with a broad grin showing a missing eyetooth. Yukio smiled. "I guess."
"There's no guess about it," Kuro chortled. "Come on, let's get the ropes set up before we move the wagons."
---
The criers had arrived a day before Genji's Players and the town was already buzzing with excitement. This was a boon for it mean other groups hadn't come in some time and the money would be good. The morning was spent drumming up even more excitement (a job perfectly suited for the prettiest of the dancers in their best looking silks) and setting up the makeshift performance area. As the sun was going down the troupe assembled around Old Naraku's purple wagon. She sat on the bottommost rung of the steps and gave every one of her people a steely stare.
"Now listen to me," Old Naraku's voice was hardened and sharp by many years on the road. She didn't need to speak loudly to be heard. "We need to make enough tonight to get to the land of Lightning, so if you've got it, flaunt it, don't be stingy." she made a broad gesture with a clawlike hand. "Do what you have to, you don't want us to starve, do you?"
The assembled performers nodded. Yukio crouched in the corner made a small dismayed noise. Naraku turned her grizzled gaze to him. "Boy? You have something to say?"
Yukio flushed and looked at his knees before shaking his head.
"I didn't think so." Naraku said.
The play they performed that night in front of the town's only inn was a simplistic one full of bawdy humor and dirty limericks, things that pulled the money in without a lot of effort. Their masks were peeling and their costumes had patches but with the notes of a flute and the whisper of silk it was as if they were on the finest stage in the land.
Behind the pageantry the other members of the troupe bustled, lifting sandbags and rattling pieces of metal to make lightning, flapping fans for wind and shaking gourds for rain. Yukio hauled ropes and easily ducked and wove in the careful half-dark of the backstage area. The flicker of the cheap lanterns used to light the performance lit his eyes up like pinpricks in the dark.
Naraku drove a hard bargain. Many grumbled over her prices for seating but they left smiling, and some of them didn't leave at all, enticed behind the brightly painted wagons by the dancing girls or boys. Naraku thought she spied a few mixed hitai-ate in the midst of the civilians; it didn't worry her.
She understood ninja.
The next morning Genji's Players packed up their equipment and hangovers, bound for the next town and the next show and the next coins.
No one noticed or perhaps no one cared that they were one member short. It wouldn't be the first time a newcomer disappeared in the dead of night after realizing that living on the road was nothing like they imagined.
---
When the first of the wagons started down the narrow gorge that led over the border into the land of Rain, the few guards kept their eyes peeled. There were bigger prizes than a travelling theatre group, but bandits didn't tend to pick and choose, especially this close to the Land of Wind.
"Good weather for it, huh, Kuro?" Kaede asked the man sitting beside her.
He smiled. "Yes." He said. "A cloudy sky. Perfect."
A moment later Kaede, side dotted with red, slumped off the wagon and down a small embankment. Kuro took hold of the reins and spurred the two horses into a brisk trot.
"Kuro, where's Kaede?" Another wagon-rider asked.
Kuro shrugged. "She stopped to take a leak so I told her I'd leave her." He grinned. "And I told her if I was nice enough to be slow I expect something good."
The girl smirked. "It'll be a cold day in hell, Kuro."
Kuro leaned in close. "Don't be so sure."
The thin, fine sword that emerged from Kuro's neck cut through the other girl like a spade digging out a chunk of earth and caught her driver in the shoulders. Kuro smacked the rump of their horses. The bodies fell and the animals took off.
It was bedlam. Wagons began crashing into one another in the narrow gorge and people were shouting. Kuro rolled his wagon forward with a face frozen in abject terror. A few of the guards threw themselves in front of him, assuming his horses had spooked. He trampled them and continued on.
It was Naraku who smelled a rat and Naraku who spurred her own animals down the path. She didn't look back to see two of the wagons burst into flames, their valuable stores of powder ignited. She didn't look back to check on the screaming dancers or the frantic strongman trying to lift a wagon off of his best friend.
By the time the poisoned gas canisters hidden amongst the rocks at the end of the gorge activated, trapping the last of the troupe in a thick green fog, Naraku was long gone.
---
Her horses were exhausted and so was she. At a bend in a creek Naraku slowed the animals, let them heave and drink as fast as they could. In her head she was doing calculations. How many of the wagons were salvageable? How much had she lost? Could she get another group together before the snow began to fall, keep to her schedule? How was she going to spin this for the Raikage?
Naraku's ears were old and her exhaustion worked against her. She didn't hear the woodbox on the back of her wagon opening. She didn't see the man crawl out- the man in black, face painted white with two gray dots above his eyes.
She didn't see him draw up lithe like a spider.
She didn't see Kuro walking through the forest towards her, half of his workworn clothes burned, eyes shining strangely red.
Naraku didn't see anything.
---
Not all of the wagons had burned which was an aggravation Kankuro didn't need. All the cheap paint layered on them, he'd figured they would go up like dry tinder. Apparently someone in the troupe had been smart enough to apply an indigo wash every once in a while. He wasn't happy to dip into his toolkit but dip he did and he made them burn.
He left the bodies where they fell, added a few artistic touches like taking melted jewelry and half-charred bank notes, bundling up silks and tools into a sealing scroll. There were so many bandits in the area and the gorge was a terrible choice for a group so large. Obviously easy pickings. Someone with a few fire arrows got out of hand was all. Anyway what bandit band this close to Suna would admit to being paid off in Kumo money?
Kankuro wanted to be sure and hunting down the bands would take too long. He left a few evil eyes scattered around, none-too-few abstract images of waterfalls painted in blood. He felt a little bad for using his brother's reputation, but a good puppeteer could pull off a performance with whatever they had at hand.
The stage was set, the curtain primed to fall. What few scrolls had survived the destruction were ready to be returned to the Suna archives. If Kankuro went at it hard he could be home in the next day and a half, maybe get some real sleep before he was needed again.
He looked over the carnage. Up above he could hear vultures circling. He doubted there would be much left of the troupe before anyone found them. He swept his cowl off his head and gave a deep bow.
"Genji's Players, you've been a marvelous audience." He said. "Thank you and good night."
---
Gaara stared down at the report.
"Information smuggling brought to a halt. Salvageable intel returned to cipher division. All involved eliminated."
Neat, concise, elegant. Each letter perfectly aligned in a hand trained by the most skilled teachers one could afford.
All involved eliminated.
Gaara felt sand fill his palms as his fingernails began to break skin.
the Kazekage stood up, easing out from his chair and pushing it in. He gathered up the mission reports and slid them into their folder before tucking it under his arm. He rose one hand to his forehead, activating his personal transport jutsu. When the sand cleared he was standing in front of a plain wooden door in the deepest part of the citadel he'd shared his whole life with his father, his sister, several minders (many of whom had wound up dead) and his brother.
For a moment Gaara hesitated. The light of the nearest hallway lamp almost seemed too harshly bright, like the flash of Kankuro's smile in the dark. Gaara knew his brother was in, could feel the faintest brush of Kankuro's chakra against his mind, a greased whisper to Temari's forceful gust.
He rose his hand to knock-
-and the door opened.
Kankuro leaned against the door frame, wearing a black robe and one of his 'at home' paint designs, two long streaked purple lines from his eyes to the bottom of his cheeks. In one hand was a habitual kunai, in the other a carving tool. His gaze flicked from Gaara's face down to the folder his Kazekage was holding. In the hard light his emerald eyes looked old.
"I was wondering when you'd find those." He said.