Stillbirth

"May those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse the Leviathan."

- Book of Job 3:8

Eins

The streets were silent, quiet and would have been peaceful if it weren't for the ominous noose hanging from a broken streetlamp. It meant to all who walked on the streets, to those who pimped, killed and stole on the streets that they were out of their cages. They being the real murdering lunatics who sold people, children included on the black market.

The noose danced in the wind then, and the lookouts posted by the "Auctioneers", as they'd been dubbed by the public, to keep an eye on the deadened streets failed to notice a flash of white zip past, climbing up the side of a ruined building that had once been an editing company.

Hands, though small and frail looking gripped the jutting parts of the building with an iron grip swinging up higher without a problem. Wooden geta shoes clung to feet loosely while the female climbed up the side of the building quickly and quietly. The body of the female currently moving so agilely was dressed in a white kimono with splotches of dark grey on the sleeve hems and the bottom trim. A thick black obi was tied tightly, hiding numerous weapons and miscellaneous things.

The young woman scaling the building came to a stop when she reached the edge of the top of it, white eyes flashing to and fro. Her blue black hair was pinned back from her face with a long blue ribbon wrapped around her hair but also held up by a pair of polished black chopsticks. Standing on the building, she took a quick surveillance, waiting for something. Lifting the thick collar of her kimono, she spoke into a small silvery disk, "They're not here yet. Something's wrong," she whispered.

Static before an annoyed and still rather blank voice replied, "Stay put. They ran into a few border bandits so they'll be late." The young woman fidgeted and because she hadn't replied the voice snapped suddenly, truly annoyed, "Hinata, remain in your position do not abort." She still didn't answer, looking around her and listening carefully for a flare or faraway bomb. "Hinata," the hiss sounded a little more than irritated now.

"Remaining in position. Mission is not be aborted," she confirmed doubtfully, eyes roaming and looking for any new signs that the supply truck would arrive. "Shikamaru?" she whispered.

"Yeah?" the static was cleared now, so she heard his tired yawn in the background, away from the microphone.

"Why was the pickup scheduled here?" she asked, turning to her left and looking around.

She heard him sigh, but paid it no mind. "Hinata if you're going to be this freaked out, do you want me to send in Temari?"

Hinata stiffened and hissed back, "N-no! I'm fine, I was just curious, that's all. I'm not freaking out, I'm fine," she insisted and it sounded plastic even to her.

"Good, just breathe in and exhale, count to ten and keep your eyes on the ball, alright Hinata?" she listened to Shikamaru and sighed.

"Alright, I will."

"You'd better, or I'm sending Temari in and she hasn't slept in about three days," Shikamaru snorted at the end of his sentence.

Hinata's left eye twitched and she felt a cold slime seep into her insides, rolling down the walls of muscle and tissue. The feeling of foreboding was back and she couldn't quell it so she bit her knuckle. Facing a cranky Temari recently back from a mission was like throwing breadfruit at a lion – especially if that lion was dragged from a night's rest just because a paranoid rodent of the platoon was scared shitless over absolutely nothing.

Her stomach cramped and she reached into her obi to pull out a small packet of nori crackers.

Maybe she was just hungry, maybe she'd been watching too many horror flicks with Kiba, maybe she was naturally too paranoid for her own good, maybe there was no reason to be all uptight – it was just a pickup. That's all it was – not a spying information retrieval job or a kidnapping of a high totem pole figure or an assassination. It was just a pickup.

Hinata crunched on one of the crackers, tasting salt and seaweed. All she had to do was escort it back to the base, make sure that everything was there and keep an eye on them to make sure they didn't pull any funny business.

Hinata turned to her right, looking over the buildings around her and down on the street – the still desolate and quiet as death street. She continued to eat crackers for another five minutes, still not seeing anything and the cold, slimy feeling in her gut like a crawling slug hadn't gone away, but only increased. She sealed the packet and tucked it back into her obi – those crackers weren't helping at all at the moment.

She lifted her thick collar, "Eh, Shikamaru?" she asked and forced the tremble out of her voice.

She received a muffled curse and then he yawned into his microphone, "What now Hinata?"

"Uh," she looked around quickly, "Should I change my position because I still don't see any sign of them."

Silence and then, "Hinata you're freaking out; standby I'm sending Temari out," he rummaged around and Hinata knew he was going for the buzzer that would trigger the alarm in Temari's room.

"A-ah no!" she spat it out so fast that she forgot to keep her stutter in check because it would be a dead giveaway of her panic.

"Hinata you're obviously not in the best of shape to deal with this now so I'm going to send Temari out with you and forbid you to watch late night horror fests with Kiba."

"Shikamaru, I promise you that I'm fine," she hoped that Shikamaru wouldn't somehow sense that she was shaking, even if he was at the underground base. "I'm just…"

"Scared?" she bristled defensively at his bored tone.

"No! I'm just worried about the supplies truck. I mean, they met up with those border bandits a while ago, so what if they ran into something else too?"

She heard him click his tongue, "I'll use the GPS and check in with them."

Hinata hid her sigh of relief, "Okay."

She heard him start typing rapidly and sighing, muttering about how troublesome everyone was. She waited.

The wind blew past her and tugged on her pinned up hair, sending her lengthy sleeves a flutter. "Hinata…" she heard him start but trail off, as though unsure. "Hinata, it shows that they're there. Are you positive they're nowhere in sight?"

A lukewarm gushing feeling entered her arms and stomach; like some sort of garbage slime. "No…they…they're not here, Shikamaru."

"Hinata, I want you to take a quick look around and if there's still no sign of them, retreat immediately, you hear?" he sounded blasé about the whole thing, but knowing Shikamaru he was doing it for her, not out of the fact that this wasn't important to him.

Hinata gulped, clutching her collar, "A-Alright." Hinata leapt off the building to land on its neighbor's rooftop and began to scout diligently, though her heart was about to beat its way from her rib cage.

"Hinata, what foreign film would you recommend because they're being rated as the top movies of the year." Maybe she was extremely easy to read, maybe she'd been breathing too hard while on her microphone, maybe Shikamaru was a mastermind at reading people even if it wasn't a face to face conversation or maybe she'd forgotten to keep the panic out of her voice, because she knew Shikamaru didn't like watching television or watching movies. It was another one of his strategic tactics, like his battle, kidnapping and espionage plots – he was keeping her talking so she wouldn't have a total heart attack.

She licked her lips, "Well um there's this one Korean movie called um Eye for an Eye, it got really good critic ratings."

"What's it about?" his lazy, calm and almost perpetually bored tone made her relax a little. She looked to her left, right, southwest and east before jumping from the building to the other rooftop.

"Uh it's about a-an abused housewife who has a son and she raises him to hate his father," Hinata squinted in the darkness when she saw something move on the next rooftop. It moved fast. "And when she tells him to kill him, he does…" she trailed off and spoke no more.

On the other end Shikamaru leaned back in his chair and waited for Hinata to finish her little foreign film summary. The bluish glow of the computer screens was cast over his face and his single silver earring shined; black barcode hidden beneath his hair. He frowned, "Hinata?"

A sharp gasp, grunt of what sounded to be pain and demented laughter sounded out from the other end. Shikamaru's normally lazily roaming black eyes snapped open wide and alert. "Hinata?" he called out to her once, receiving nothing but static as a response. "Hinata?!" he yelled out, no longer playing cool and unperturbed by the fact that the GPS said they were there, but Hinata, their top scout couldn't find them.

Static.

"Hinata!"

…

…

Chouji fidgeted in his seat while he actually chewed quite slowly on his steamed noodle plate; eating at a considerably slower pace than usual. Black eyes, all encompassing like water in a deep well stared at him blankly, not blinking and then taking a bite out of an apple while Chouji continued to be discomforted.

"I make you nervous," Uchiha Sasuke – one of the underground base's top mercenaries stated bluntly.

OF COURSE YOU DO YOU FREAK! "Heh, what gave you that idea, you just normally sit next to Shikamaru or Temari or Naruto…that's all…" was what really came out of Chouji's partially full mouth.

Sasuke took another bite out of his green apple, "Hn."

Chouji stared back at him, unsure of what to do when faced with the Uchiha and Sasuke of course stared back. Chouji stared for about another ten seconds or so before rising and taking his tray with him, about to exit the cafeteria before Sasuke could kill him or something, "Uh…nice talking to you." The plump young man practically ran away bawling his eyes out, wondering the fuck he'd done to deserve to have to be in the company of that weirdo.

Sasuke watched him leave out of the corner of his eye, gnawing on his apple. Chouji went through the doors and left the cafeteria empty save for Sasuke.

"Sasuke," the black haired youth turned at the sound of Tenten's voice, the older woman leaning on her hip with her customary tanto tied to her back hip high. "Where's Temari?" Sasuke bit into his apple and turned his head from her, so the woman with the twin brunette buns sighed in annoyance and sat down in front of him. "Where is she?"

"Miss someone beating on you?" he asked around his apple.

Tenten scowled at him and narrowed her eyes, "Listen up you no good son of a bitch," Sasuke's jaw clenched. "Just because –somehow, fuck knows why – you're in the good graces of Naruto and Shikamaru does not mean that you are with me."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed and red rimmed his obsidian, "I have no reason to be in the good grace of someone like you."

Tenten snarled and her hand flashed silver, already having pulled out her tanto, pointing it straight and steady at Sasuke's left eye, "Don't test me and don't you dare be condescending you brat – you're lucky Naruto pleaded with Shikamaru and Tsunade to not execute you and leave you for the coyotes." Sasuke didn't flinch while he stared at the tanto and Tenten's enraged face.

"You're not going to go into a long winded explanation on how I should express my gratitude are you?"

Tenten hissed and resisted the urge to plow the blade into the gelatin of his eyeball. "No, I'm saying it wouldn't kill you to not be a bastard for two goddamn seconds."

Sasuke smirked, "You have no idea what would kill me."

Tenten's lip curled from a deep scowl to a twisted smirk, "Shall we find out Uchiha?"

Tenten gasped and blinked when the smooth feel of the lacquered hilt of her precious tanto was gone and the blade was pressed to her throat. "I hate threats, Chao," he hissed her last name, "However…if you're telling the truth, then it's an entirely different matter."

Tenten saw into Sasuke's eyes then, meeting them head on and seeing not just black and tints of red. She gulped silently and a cold chill overcame her stomach – a play of maddened power. Sasuke's arm moved and slammed the blade into the table all the way to the hilt. Tenten flinched harshly and withheld a startled gasp at the sudden movement. Sasuke stood over her and she looked up at him, feeling the hairs on her neck go up. "Temari's resting – she and the idiot just came back from a three day mission."

He walked away.

…

…

Gaara closed one black rimmed eye, other grey green one locked onto his target, trigger finger itching but he had a will made of steel, or some other unbendable metal. His target remained unmoving, black and still. Locked on – fire.

The handgun kicked like a mule while it fired but it was his favorite one – silver and shiny, it was a giant. It had been built crooked in such a fashion so that he would be the only one who could handle the kick and aim it right.

Three shots rang out in a certified order – first one was immediate, a three second pause before the second was fired and the third was immediate. A moving target appeared from a trick wall that flipped and revealed its secret; a body of metal – red and silver ran forth from the end of the target range, moving forth in a run, lobster like claws snapping and single red eye perched atop of its head blinking and trained on Gaara.

Gaara closed one eye again and leaned his weight on his right leg. He kept his eye on the cyborg's left metal leg, watching it stretch out for another long step, exposing thick cables and wires. He waited for another half a second when it stretched out again and fired, deep into the wires and blew the left leg of the cyborg cleanly off, causing the metal body to topple.

It went into a three legged crouch and scuttled to him, the twin guns on its shoulders popping out and aiming straight for the redhead who in turn fired straight into the right shoulder's gun, causing it to turn harshly, facing the left gun once it began to fire.

His gun aimed for the red eye, still trained on him and three consecutive shots – the first one was immediate (to the eye), then a three second pause before the second one was lodged into the chest panel, denting it and nearly going through the motherboard. The third one was immediately after it and crushed through the weakened protective chest casing, burning through wires and hammering into the motherboard that fried within ten seconds, shutting the cyborg down where it went into a still life and hung limply.

"What?" he barked quietly in the dimmed lighting of the practice room. He straightened from his 'sniper' form to turn to look over at his commander; Shikamaru who blended into the darkness quite well.

There was a flick and the bright and blinding lights of the practice arena flared on; bleach white and covered the training area like genocide. Gaara squinted while his eyes adjusted, reloading his gun absently while doing so. Shikamaru leaned his weight on his left hip, looking over at the demolished cyborg left for dead on the concrete and sighed, running a hand to frizzy black hair in a ponytail. "Gaara, I need to talk with you," he walked to the other exit opposite of the door he'd just entered from. He didn't motion for Gaara to follow him, but the redhead knew to do so anyway.

The door clicked shut behind them and the two were walking down an empty sterile white and light grey hallway. Gaara held his gun before sliding it carefully into its respective place at his black belt. The redhead frowned and walked alongside his commander, noting the frazzled look on his face. Shikamaru noticed he was being observed discreetly and wiped his face of everything but a lazy and annoyed look. He rummaged around in his pants pocket before unveiling a cigarette.

Popping the butt end in his mouth he pulled a lighter from a pocket of his dark green jacket and flicked the lid open, flame dancing. He lit his cigarette and inhaled long and slow before sighing while exhaling. A curl of scented purple smoke followed while Shikamaru ran his hand through his hair again.

Shikamaru was leading him, Gaara realized, to the main central computer laboratory which was usually strictly kept for his commanding officer and Sakura. Shikamaru opened the door and darkness beheld them. The lazy commander walked in and the redhead took it as an invite before stepping into the computer threshold.

Hazy blue lights flicked on and off, greens and red from satellite surveillances and rolling pictures and bios of wanted criminals were on the screens of the many computers held in the lab. Shikamaru, however, led him to a large monitor with a headset that lay on its side. "Gaara, earlier I sent Hinata out for a pickup since the supplies truck was supposed to arrive today; the meeting place was at the Bad Lands."

The redhead cast him an underhanded glare, "The Bad Lands?"

Shikamaru nodded and wiped a hand over his face, "I don't know why exactly they wanted to meet there of the godforsaken places on this rock, but they'd made their decision. I wasn't really in any place to object since technically this facility is running pretty low on funds and since winter is coming up, all the other prices would be skyrocketing so it was either them or we starve." His commander's voice was flat and dry.

The redhead frowned slightly, "If they wanted to meet at the Bad Lands then they're hiding from something."

Shikamaru nodded his agreement, "Or from someone."

Gaara turned to him with a serious face, "Why didn't you send anyone else out with her? She's only a scout and the Bad Land is crawling with S class."

Shikamaru sighed and took another long puff of his cigarette, "I know, but Temari and Naruto just came back from a three day stake out and kill from Chiba. Tenten was on medical leave because she had been wounded when the Uchiha retrieval had been ongoing. Sasuke…can't go since he's on probation. And you," Shikamaru looked away momentarily to stare at a nearby computer; a blue glow on his face. "You couldn't go with her for the obvious."

Gaara's facial expression didn't change, and he turned away to look at the list of all the wanted ones, listing all the way from S to D class criminals. There was an awkward silence, before the redhead spoke softly, but it made it all the more menacing, "You still should have sent someone with her."

"There weren't any people to send with her," Shikamaru rebuked with annoyance in his voice.

Gaara's black rimmed eyes narrowed, "Shikamaru, cut the bullshit, I'm in here for a reason and I want to know why." His hands were itching to reach for his gun – either one since he was ambidextrous.

Shikamaru turned from him, cigarette smoke pluming up. He entered a password into the computer and spoke, "Hinata had been waiting for the truck for quite some time since they'd run into bandits earlier and she wanted me to check up on them, so I checked with the GPS and they'd been there, for a while too it seemed like. I told her to check around for them to see if they'd parked somewhere near, and then…" he trailed off.

Gaara's eyes narrowed and his trigger fingers itched again. "And then what?"

Clicking a few times, Shikamaru answered the redhead vaguely, "This is the audio feed we got from Hinata since we can't get any sort of visual feed over there – some sort of scrambler that mixes up the images."

The volume was medium, and Gaara listened when Shikamaru topped talking. A black background with a green graph line showed the intensity of the sounds moved, silence before a sharp feminine gasp, background static, a muffled grunt of pain, demented laughter and final static that made the green line go haywire.

"Play it again."

Shikamaru replayed it and he listened, carefully. "Play it again," he repeated when it ended.

His commander did so, and the redhead closed his eyes to block out everything else, a sharp feminine gasp but there was a small, almost inaudible grunt of pain not from Hinata. She had been startled and had gone into immediate self defense. The background static melted into air rushing past the microphone she would have hidden in her open collar and then a sound he hadn't caught before - harsh breathing; like fear. She was running, not coordinated, and something scared her; scared her bad.

No sound of footsteps following her, but a definite whack – whoever hit her hit her good and then her grunt of pain. He heard something flop to the ground, her body, tired or unconscious. The crunch of boots approaching her was barely there and whoever had done this was not an amateur. Chuckling and a small whisper, Gaara strained his ears, "Fürchtet euch nicht." A howling gale of demented laughter and then something Gaara couldn't catch before static overcame the microphone.

"Shikamaru replay it about ten seconds ago."

"Fürchtet euch nicht," maniacal laughter and a hissing whisper, near the microphone so that it could have been taken for static, "Aus." Then static.

Gaara opened his eyes to look at Shikamaru, "I think it's German"-

"I'm going, I'll find her and while I'm at it look for the supplies truck."

"Gaara, stop right there, I'm not sending anyone out right now because one, we need to see if we can contact her since we don't know if she's still in the Bad Lands or alive."

The redhead's eyes narrowed, "Which is why you should let me go."

Shikamaru shook his head and sighed, "Gaara, I already went to Tsunade and she said to wait for at least eight hours before we send any sort of rescue team out."

The redhead's lip curled back, "And why is that exactly?"

Shikamaru remained cool and collected despite the menacing tone, "Gaara we're already handicapped due to our limited man power since you, Temari, Naruto and myself, not including Hinata, are the only ones who are actually able since Sakura and Ino can't leave the base unless it's for emergencies."

Gaara's scowl faded to a blank and stoic mask, "Then what?" his voice was deep rooted and hinted at a snarl.

Shikamaru sighed and leaned back against his desk, inhaling on his cigarette and running his hand through his hair, "We wait."

Shikamaru heard the click of a boots tapping on the waxed tiled floor, and he looked up to watch Gaara's back as he left. Shikamaru sighed and finished off his cigarette, putting it out in the glass ashtray and tipped his head back when the computer lab's door shut closed, encompassing the genius in darkness. Shikamaru replayed the video, listening to anything they might have missed.

"Fürchtet euch nicht. Aus."

-

This is what I get for listening to Rammstein (love those Germans –drool-) and watching Bakuretsu Tenshi (always love that anime :D) earlier. -.- Like it, don't like it? Tell me; there's a purple button and flames (good ones) and constructive reviews are doubtlessly accepted. –sweat drop- Also note that this isn't going to be a Hinata centric fic; this is just the opening to a lovely lil world of trouble for the team which I'll go into next chapter, where I'll also introduce Neji, Temari, Naruto and maybe by then I'll also introduce Ino, Sakura, Kiba and Shino.

Well, why don't you try to answer two questions for me: Why isn't Gaara allowed to work with Hinata? Why does Tenten seem so ticked with Sasuke?

Suggest a few pairings if you like too.

Explanations:

Bad Lands – What used to be Kyoto – but is now a city in ruins, it is a breeding ground for kidnappings, drug deals and where many criminals choose to hide out due to the bad reputation it carries with it. (Will be gone into more detail Chapter Two or Three)