The Smallest Things [S-Rank]

[Shiruko Makoto]

"So let me get this straight," Sheimi said, staring at Makoto in disbelief while a small blue-haired girl enthusiastically attacked an ice cream cone. "You went on a trip out to a radio tower in the middle of nowhere to shut down a numbers station, and found a little not-human girl there and decided to rescue her?"

"You think I should have left her there?" he asked incredulously.

"Well, no." She glanced back at Miki for a second, then to him again. "But why did you bring her back here? Why not just...let Sand take responsibility for her? This happened in their country, after all. This isn't even our jurisdiction."

He shrugged loosely, uncomfortable. "I found her. That kind of makes it my jurisdiction. Besides, I don't specifically know any seal experts in Sand I could ask to help her."

Plus he wasn't exactly comfortably leaving unattended or in the hands of a stranger a small child who really had no means of defending herself, and who seemed to have latched onto if not him, at least the phoenix, for the moment. Even if she wasn't human. Who knew what would happen if she was hurt while still sealed?

"Get the walking portal to nothingness to help her. He's supposed to be good with seals." She shrugged. "He fixes her, she goes back to doing whatever it is non-human spirits that age do. Float around aimlessly, probably."

"And if he can't fix it?" Which Makoto rather suspected he couldn't, freaky void canceling powers included into the bargain. "You just want to leave a child here?"

"I'm not saying dump her on the streets in a gutter," Sheimi said, clearly exasperated. "Obviously we'd find someone willing to take her in and look into her problem. But we didn't come here to...I don't know, adopt a child. We have enough to do without factoring her in."

He looked at Miki, then at Sheimi again, and raised an eyebrow, waiting. She scowled at him, as if already knowing what he was going to say.

"I can't," he said. "And I know from a logical standpoint, you're right. Just...a lot happens here, okay? This is one of those crazy ninja villages, and they have sandworms and necromancers and who knows what else wandering around here. I'm not just going to leave a child here when she can't even take care of herself and has already been kidnapped once. Not even with her not being human."

Sheimi rubbed her forehead. He wasn't sure whether her demon was yelling at her or he was giving her a headache. "Fine," she said after a moment. "But if Mister Void doesn't want to help, she's your responsibility. All right?"

"All right," he said. "But um. It might be better if she slept in your room."

"Does she sleep?" she asked doubtfully, and they both looked at Miki now, who had finished her ice cream and was licking her fingers.

"What's sleep?" Miki asked curiously, proving she could hear them the whole time.

"That's also a problem, if she doesn't," he pointed out. "Though...I guess the phoenix doesn't have to either; it can watch her." No objections were forthcoming, so he counted that as assent.

~

Tatsuya wasn't in his room and had likely taken to exploring the area himself, so Makoto took it on himself to carefully show Miki around town, keeping an eye out for trouble while he did. He had had to tell her she ought to blink every now and again so as not to appear too creepy to people, and she couldn't seem to do anything about generating a shadow, but overall it seemed to be going all right.

"So this really used to be all underground?" Miki demanded, peering at every new building they passed like she had never seen anything like it. Maybe she hadn't.

"Last time I was here, it was," he confirmed. "They've been slowly moving it up since the Maelstrom stopped. Most of it is up here now."

"Wowwww."

And that was even leaving out his involvement in getting the storm to stop, which he had yet to enlighten his teammates on. It didn't seem like a thing to brag about, even if they did know he had helped take down that giant undead sandworm some time back.

There is someone following us, Makoto.

He did not react to that statement outwardly. Shit. Uh. Would getting into cover help, or can you not see them?

I would have to become visible to go look for them, which would not exactly help us right now, so I cannot say.

Crap.

"Hey Miki," he said casually, "did you want to check out the bazaar? It's a sort of open air market. Lots of people, lots of things."

She squinted up at him, as if something in his tone was off enough to make her suspect something. The fact that a child-spirit who had been isolated her whole short life had a better read on emotional cues than he did was depressing.

She did, however, go along with him when he started tugging her around and down winding paths, taking a circuitous path toward the bazaar, occasionally checking over his shoulder. It seemed like too much of a coincidence to think that someone would be following them, not particularly long after he rescued her, and be after him and not her.

And even if they were for whatever reason after him, despite the low profile he'd kept, he wasn't putting a child in the line of fire.

He was debating the merits of throwing stealth to the wind and just scooping Miki up and running (despite his own size, if he picked her up and bolted it was an awful lot faster than trying to break into a run and drag her along) when just as he turned down another back lane, a hail of arrows shot down right at his feet.

Miki shrieked and jumped behind him to cower. He flipped out and deployed his parasol behind her, shielding her from anyone who would try and sneak up on them.

Three men and a woman, all masked, two holding bows, dropped down in front of him, landing among the arrows embedded into the sand.

"Why don't you just hand over the kid, and no one will get hurt," one of the men said. "No point in defending one that's not even human, you know? She goes back in her box and we forget about this whole thing."

They weren't ninja, he could tell that much. He could probably take four of them, but he also really didn't want to blow his cover on the whole 'spirit-possessed' thing in the middle of (okay, outskirts of by this point) a city.

"I was aware of that, thanks," he said evenly. "Now how about you leave before I have to hurt you?"

"Even if you're a ninja, one hand behind your back isn't going to do you any favours in a fight," the woman said, as if trying to sound reasonable. "There's no point in getting violent."

Even before merging with the phoenix he could cast with one hand, but they didn't know that. He could feel Miki pressed up against his back, trembling. No question that these people were involved with the ones who had taken her.

He needed something he could catch them all in briefly, so he could get Miki secured somewhere safe before he went after these people--maybe Sheimi would watch her? He should have known better than to think that it would take them very long to find her...

Just then, another hail of projectiles came from above. These ones looked much larger. One went right through one of the men's chest, another into another's leg at the knee straight through to the ground. The last man and the woman darted off and away as two more came down where they had been standing.

A brown blur landed in the spot where they had been, just as the man with the javelin through his leg collapsed, the tip of it protruding from the bottom of his boot.

"Tell me," Tatsuya said mildly, "can anyone go a single week without getting into some kind of trouble here, or is it just you?"

 

[Shiruko Makoto]

"What the hell are you doing here?" Makoto demanded, temporarily forgetting about the skittish not-even-seven year old behind him. "Have you been following me?"

Tatsuya shrugged almost too casually and leaned on one of his javelins. "I was bored," he said, which even Makoto knew was not really an answer. "You seem to run into all the interesting situations around here. Who is that behind you and why doesn't she have a shadow?"

Oh, right.

He moved his parasol and Miki crept out to his side, immediately grabbing at his hand when she did. It appeared she already associated him with safety. Fantastic. He sheathed his parasol rapidly and let her cling to him.

"This is Miki," he said. "She's a spirit child who's been sealed into human form. Miki, this is my cousin Tatsuya, who I'm sure has some sort of positive attribute to him somewhere."

She peered at Tatsuya, mumbled a quiet, "hi," and shrank back.

Surprisingly, Tatsuya did not snark off to him, or continue their dialogue in any way. Instead, he tucked away all his weapons with careful movements, which upon reflection seemed designed to fall within a range someone untrained could still track with their eyes--which Miki did with some curiosity. He ignored the dead man and unconscious man on the ground and knelt down nearly to her eye level, still moving relatively slowly.

"Hey there," he said, in a soft, level tone. "Looks like you've had a bit of a shock today. You feeling all right?"

Miki blinked up at him. "'m fine," she muttered warily. Her grip on Makoto's hand loosened slightly.

"When my little siblings used to get scared, they'd come to me," Tatsuya said, apparently reminiscing except for the fact his gaze was steady, not distant. "Not that they often did, mind, that they'd admit. Or maybe at all--they're a bit strange. But they were happy enough to come to me with their problems, and I would always try and fix them." With the unspoken current of, I know how to make things okay for children who are a little different. "But I would need them to tell me what was wrong before I could help."

Miki shrank back a bit, out of apparent guilt rather than fear this time. Makoto was just watching in amazement.

"So, can you tell me honestly if you're upset, and why?" Tatsuya finished, looking at Miki seriously. His two-coloured eyes should have made the look off-putting, but it didn't seem to bother her much.

"I'm scared," Miki said after a minute, as Tatsuya continued to kneel there patiently, not making any move toward her, just watching her in an unthreatening manner. "Those were some of the people who locked me in that little room and told me to read the numbers, before niisan and the pretty bird rescued me."

...Did she just call me big brother?

It appeared by the quick look Tatsuya gave him that he'd noted it too, but didn't seem to find it worth addressing, treating it as natural. "Hm. Well, we're not going to let them lock you back up again, don't worry."

Surprisingly, instead of sniffling and going on a crying jag like Makoto half-suspected she might do, Miki stared at Tatsuya, then at him, and nodded slowly. "You really think that? Okay."

"We'd best regroup," Tatsuya said as he stood back up, glancing at the unconscious man bleeding out slowly through his leg. "We'll meet back up with Sheimi and work out a way through this. I'll carry this guy so we can interrogate him."



~

Sheimi was not happy that Tatsuya had sided with Makoto on this one, although when she heard that he had been ambushed and pressured while walking around grudgingly admitted she would have done much the same. Which was good, Makoto felt, as it would be good for them to have a practiced interrogator with them when they talked to the man Tatsuya had left alive.

Deliberately, mind. He had even bandaged the man's leg to prevent him from bleeding out after tearing the dead man's shirt sleeve off, and said Makoto should not stop the bleeding; it worked well as a threat.

(Tatsuya claimed he was not and had never been an ANBU of any kind; Makoto wasn't entirely sure he was being truthful with that.)

Given the option between smuggling an unconscious wounded man into the desert and interrogating him while in a highly populated city, they opted for the former. Well, Tatsuya and Sheimi did; Makoto was to follow along after some time with Miki, not too far for them to help should they have to guard her but not so close they'd be exposing a child to Warden interrogation methods. Tatsuya was unusually insistent on this point.

Bit odd for him to be so insistent on keeping people from things they're afraid of now.

It seems more related to his attitude toward children, actually. I wonder if he's always been like this, or the state of his siblings has enhanced this quality?

He didn't grumble aloud, since Miki was clinging to his hand again as they walked through the desert outskirts, but he did think grumbly thoughts.

By the time he reached the others, they were done, and there was no trace of a body. He didn't much care how they'd done that; he could think of multiple ways off the top of his head. Sheimi didn't give him time to ask any questions before she spoke.

"The numbers station was part of a front operation for a well-organized troop of bandits," she said briskly. "They've been operating out of northeast Wind for some time, and they're apparently quite good. The numbers were coded messages, using a cipher that rotated each week. They don't have formally trained ninja, but they do have people with the skills of such. If we're going to bust them up over this, it's going to have to be all three of us--assuming you don't want to do the sensible thing and bring Sand's authorities in on this."

That was...an option he'd been considering. Probably one that was even potentially open to him.

"I ran into them before, actually," he said after a second. "Or at least, I assume these are the same ones, since I only found the one large troop in that region. I stole back something they stole from someone else. I didn't realize they were that well-organized."

Sheimi snorted, recognizing his glossing over of the notion of asking for help as what it was--a tacit refusal to. "Great. Did they see you?"

"No." Definitely not. "Additionally--well, if we're not in this to rescue anyone, just to break them up, can't we just...I don't know, cave their hideout in on their heads?"

"We'd have to see the place first," Tatsuya said. "If it's in the wrong sort of place, it could cause a rockslide. And we don't know they haven't kidnapped anyone else."

"And what are we going to do with her?" Sheimi asked, jabbing a finger at Miki, who waved. "Our options are to leave her somewhere we don't know she'll be safe, bring her along and she maybe gets hurt, or leave one of us with her and reduce our fighting power by a full third." She didn't need to point out they were all shitty options.

"We bring her, and one of us hangs back with her providing long-range support," Makoto decided. "That should probably be one of the two of us, since Tatsuya seems mostly a close-range fighter."

"We all are," she pointed out. "Unless you're volunteering? I still think leaving her somewhere inconspicuous is the best option."

"They'll go after her again," he pointed out. "We don't actually have a whole lot of choice on that front."

"Or she can come with me," Tatsuya interjected, apparently sensing this wasn't going to be resolved, "and I can use the same technique I did to absorb both of your attacks should someone target her."

Makoto considered this, then shook his head. "Risky."

"Our best option," Tatsuya corrected. "Because the real alternatives are that or leave her somewhere--you know better than to split the party in something like this."

And why was this his decision, anyway, and not a vote? He didn't like any of the options, none of them did; the idea of one of them hanging back just sounded like the least terrible. Better than leaving a defenseless child in the care of people he wasn't sure could protect her, or bringing her into a bandits' fortress.

"We're all going to have to keep sharp, not just you," he said finally. "It's easiest for you, though, I agree. Miki?"

"Mm?" Unlike a human child, she had been content to wait patiently while they discussed her fate.

"We're going to take out the people who kidnapped you," he said in a controlled tone. "You stay near Tatsuya as best as you can. okay?"

She looked up at him, seemingly troubled. "Can you really keep me safe there?"

"Yeah," he said, determined to make it true. "Don't worry about it."

Again with the squinting at him, as if she could tell if he was telling the truth or not. "Okay," she said at last. "I'll stay close."

And that was all there was to it; they were on the move.

 

[Shiruko Makoto]

Plotting a raid on a bandit stronghold was a surprisingly thorny issue.

Normally.

If you weren't three highly trained ninja.

Even for them, there were a few complications here and there. Said main complication was riding on Tatsuya's shoulders on their way there, given that he was the physically strongest of the three of them and used to carrying a good deal of extra weight around in the form of enough weapons to make even Makoto double-take. He wasn't sure if that was Tatsuya's version of his own preparedness, or genuine paranoia. Regardless, Miki was not much additional weight for him, comparatively.

"You know where we're going, right?" Sheimi asked him quietly as they made their way out into the desert toward the cave network Makoto had retrieved the probably-Grass-princess's strange bird statue from weeks earlier. "I mean, for sure?"

"Yes," he said simply. "When I was searching something out before, these were the only bandits in this part of the country I could find. Which makes sense, if they're as successful as the man you were interrogating claimed."

She snorted. "Believe me, he wasn't in any shape to make anything up by the end."

Makoto chose not to dwell on that. It wasn't his business--and besides, the man had tried to kidnap a child. For not the first time.

It rather limited any sympathy he might otherwise have had.

They reached the cave network in due time and stopped a quarter kilometer out, ninja senses able to pick up enough detail from that range. Miki peered at it from her spot on Tatsuya's shoulder curiously, though it was unlikely she could actually spot anything useful.

"So I guess we're going to have to go in and case the place, killing bandits as we go," Sheimi said, punctuating it with a sigh. "Messy, but unavoidable. What'll we do if we find other people they have?"

"I've been thinking about that, and it seems unlikely--they wanted Miki for her capacity to not have to sleep as well as controllability. They wouldn't easily have picked anyone else up."

"They didn't with the last client who hired me to take a look at this place," Makoto agreed. The area was much the same. "But 'probably' is not the same as 'definitely.' And they may also have other valuable things."

It was out of his mouth before he realized how it sounded, and was in the process of trying to work out a verbal eraser as the two of them exchanged looks before Tatsuya spoke up again.

"There's something to that," he agreed. "So we'll loot them as we go too. Sounds good. I assume Makoto has the usual clan seals for expanded pockets on his coat, but Sheimi...?"

She waved off the concern. "My boyfriend is one of your crazy lot, remember? He did me up a few things, detachable pockets that I keep on the inside of my jacket mostly."

Clever. Just because those who aren't blood relatives can't learn the clan seals doesn't mean we can't make things for others with them. Makoto approved of Kanashimi's apparent loopholing--but it also indicated to him that his brother must have been quite serious about Sheimi, to get her something like that. He put a bookmark in that thought for later.

"So no just detonating the place, then," he agreed. "Tatsuya, are you okay carrying Miki while we do this? Miki, are you all right being carried?"

He had decided on the way over a slight modification to the plan, but if it didn't work...

"Yes," Miki said in a small, subdued voice. "You're all way faster than me."

"She barely weighs anything," Tatsuya said, unconcerned. "All the same, I'd prefer one of you take point just in case. I usually do, but I won't while holding a child."

Makoto snorted. "Why would we have a person take point? That's just silly."

There was a glint in Sheimi's eye, like she had an idea what he meant, but she was still the one to ask, "What did you have in mind?"

~

There were missions that called for subtlety. Tatsuya voiced this upon hearing of Makoto's plan, but immediately followed it with the fact that they would be alerting the bandits when they got in anyway, and it wasn't as if they were going to leave any left alive. So this was not a mission that called for subtlety.

This was a fact that Makoto had already realized when he decreed the best thing to take point would be a massive, intimidating creation jutsu. They could rule out ones that wouldn't fit through the opening of the cave, which really just left one good one.

So it was that a giant black crystal dragon crashed headlong into the bandit cave from seemingly nowhere, immediately sounding the alarm and sending the guards at the front of the cave diving for their weapons and yelling.

"And here I thought I was the crash and bang type," Tatsuya said, half-admiringly, as they waited for the initial ruckus to be cleared out by Makoto's dragon as it thrashed around inside the initial cavern. Both he and Sheimi also knew the jutsu, but Makoto was the one with the best chakra conservation ability, so he had been the one to cast it. Sheimi was next, should they need another. "Do we have anyone who's capable of stealth at all on this team, or did whoever put this little expedition together neglect that?"

"I can do stealth if it's absolutely called for," Makoto said, a little defensively. "It just isn't my strong point, is all."

Sheimi, who was actually watching the cavern, nudged him. "Dispel it. Time for us to head in."

The damage to the caves when they entered was fairly minor. Tatsuya was the one who pocketed the majority of what was still sitting in a pile waiting to be sorted, while Makoto and Sheimi casually looted the bodies, many of which had been crushed by the dragon and some of which had been flat-out impaled by the dragon's crystal spikes that he'd lined it with.

The footsteps in the single hallway weren't much to dissuade them, either. Makoto took point this time, keeping a chakra shield much like the ones he'd used in the storm mission in front of him. This time, instead of having them hovering all around the party members, he layered them all directly in front of him, covering most of the corridor as they moved. Miki was openly giggling from Tatsuya's shoulder by the sounds of it.

The cave network appeared to consist of fifteen connected rooms, some large and made into barracks and others set up for other purposes such as loot holdings and essentials. This just meant that they happened on the majority of the bandits either asleep or just waking up from sleep due to all the loud fighting noises. Sheimi dispatched these with well-controlled water jutsu that she was capable of spontaneously generating past Makoto's shields, due to them not really being a barrier. They left the bodies to loot on the way back out.

Finally they reached the head bandit and his two bodyguards, who were already coming out of what looked like an office to meet them. It was apparent the guards had been hired for their muscle, but the boss's gaze immediately went to the small spirit child perched on Tatsuya's shoulders. Miki, for her part, shrank back and slid down, draping her arms over Tatsuya's shoulders.

By unspoken agreement, Sheimi and Tatsuya went for the guards and left the boss to Makoto. He didn't give the man a chance to say anything as he blurred forward with his knives flipped out in a hot second, dropping the shields as he moved. He barely noted the water whip that cut through thug one or the spear that punctured thug two through the throat. No, he was more concerned with his knives, now seemingly shimmering the colour of his blue-green chakra instead of their normal dull metallic grey, as they plunged through the boss bandit's lungs, his hands going through the broken-open ribs with his momentum.

...He was strong, even for a ninja, but not that strong. Huh.

"Jinchuuriki perk," Sheimi said laconically. "Your Ninjutsu skill is your melee skill now. Hey, how many trips do you think we'll have to make between the loot rooms and outside and then the pawn shops?"

"Well, it'll definitely pay for anything we need, if we were getting tight on funds," Tatsuya said cheerfully. Miki had climbed back up his shoulders, and appeared to be peering down at Makoto as he cleaned his nives off on the bandit's shirt.

"Definitely more than one trip," he said absently, testing the heft of his knives before sheathing them. It hadn't changed. That was something.

With all the crazy events and changes going on around him, it was nice when some things remained consistent.