Thought I'd drop a little bit of a teaser for you guys - there'll be fewer updates over these two weeks due to my trip. ;)

Complexities of Blackmail was inspired by a dream I had sometime in July... It has evolved into a somewhat complicated story, and I've already begun thinking about the sequel to it. ;) Special thanks to white noise and brine for drawing the cover image! This is rated M for various questionable scenes - read on at your own discretion.

Naruto and its characters do not belong to me.

Complexities of Blackmail

Prologue

Planet Aesis, Nov 15, 2030, 1630 hrs

"Know your positions?" Lieutenant Tenten glances at her subordinates from the corner of her eye, releasing the safety on her pulse gun. "Remember, we only need to extract Quachron and his inner circle - seven of them. No more, no less."

Beside her, Second Lieutenants Rock Lee and Inuzuka Kiba nod, similar firearms at the ready. "You've told us the same thing ten times in the last thirty minutes," Kiba mutters, a wolfish grin flashing across his face.

"Five times, Inuzuka. Don't exaggerate." Tenten narrows her eyes at him. Kiba looks skywards.

She ignores him and checks the clear emerald visor fixed over her left eye, pushing a button on its frame to switch between screens (one shows her physical stats and ammunition supplies, another contains details of their mission). Lee and Kiba are each wearing one as well - the visor rides on their ears and serves as a communication device, a brilliant invention by the scientists aboard the Konoha.

The shadowed alley they're crouched in is empty, save for trash cans and unmarked doors along cement walls; high above, on the main street, hovercrafts zoom by, civilian vehicles oblivious to their presence. It's the perfect city, the perfect place on Aesis for drug lords to do their business, because few pay attention to the goings-on at ground level, especially where streets are dimly-lit at night, and most are in a hurry to get home before the suffocating darkness descends.

"I'm moving out," Kiba announces, slipping away from their shadows towards a particular steel door. Tenten watches as he plants a code-breaker just above the door knob - the keypad flashes a couple of times, and seconds later, the indicator light turns green. Kiba gives a signal; Tenten and Lee are instantly on their feet, flanking him, keeping their backs to the building wall.

The door swings open to reveal an empty, darkened room. Kiba touches his visor to activate his infrared vision, scans the uninhabited space from behind the doorjamb, and heads in. In that moment, Lee glances over at Tenten, bushy eyebrows lowered with determination, and the look in his eyes says, I'll do my best.

Tenten smiles at him - she trusts Lee and Kiba with her life. Years of working together have made Dragon Platoon a well-oiled fighting unit, and close-combat missions are her favorite. There's no telling when or how something might break this routine, though, so Tenten savors every exhilarating minute of it.

She nods at Lee, and they activate their infrared visions at the same time, heading through the doorway after Kiba.

It turns out that they've walked right into a trap, when a heavy metal door slams right behind them and the bolts slide shut. Lee and Kiba look to Tenten. They are in the middle of the building, in a windowless room, and have no way out. The information sources have screwed up - Tenten curses, looks around for a way to break into Quachron's offices.

She toggles the visor so it displays the floor plan of the building - the drug lord must know of their presence by now, so a surreptitious attack will not work. A surprise entry it is, then.

Tenten reaches into the pouch at her waist, pulling an explosive out. She sets it for five seconds, sprints forward, and affixes it onto the corner where two walls meet. All three of them take cover-

Boom!

A cloud of dust and debris sweeps into the storage space. There is no knowing what lies behind these walls - they duck below the misguided shots flying from the gaping concrete hole, and pick off the enemies that make the mistake of showing themselves.

"Radar," Tenten orders, pointing to the room diagonally across from the impromptu entrance. Kiba and Lee nod, toggling their visors, and the three of them start forward, stunning Quachron's underlings with their pulse guns, aided by the additional visibility that radar provides.

They slip through the door quickly, barely avoiding a patrol, and make their way silently down corridors and up stairs, ghost-like, until they've reached the highest floor, where the important offices are.

"Looks like they're all in one room," Tenten mutters to her team. The visor shows seven people clustered around a table on the west wing. "But these might be impostors - that blast was warning enough. We'll capture these guys first and work our way from there."

Lee and Kiba nod, and they sprint out into the offices in single file, searching for security cameras and unexpected company. Surprisingly, nothing gets in their way, and even more surprisingly, Quachron and his inner circle are all present in the meeting room Tenten kicks the door down to, seated around a polished table. All men turn towards them. Her visor matches the facial profiles of the men to Konoha's database. Seven out of seven.

Quachron gets to his feet at the head of the table, well-fed belly stretching out his business suit. "What do we have here?" he rumbles.

It seems almost too easy, really, until Quachron snaps his fingers, and every man in the inner circle pulls a pulse gun out, state-of-the-art ones that Tenten dreams longingly about. Six versus three.

She curses; Dragon Platoon dives out of the way of fatal shots, though Tenten swears again when tens of laser guns are lowered from the ceiling, aimed at them. Kiba mutters a low expletive.

"This is just another form of training!" Lee exclaims, rolling behind a metal desk.

"Kiba! Use the smoke bomb on them. Lee and I will handle this," Tenten orders. Kiba throws himself towards the meeting room with a salute; she turns back to the lasers, taking the machines out with rapid accuracy. The smoke bomb will decrease visibility of humans, whereas the guns on the ceiling are likely using infrared to aim. And she and Lee are the sharpshooters on their team.

"So, what're we waiting for?" Kiba taps his foot impatiently, arms folded. Next to him, Quachron and his inner circle are gagged and bound on the street, stunned for the next few hours or so.

"The police should be arriving soon. Shut up while I work on my report, Kiba," Tenten orders absently, focused on the holographic screen of her palm-sized computer. Lee is on his five hundred and first push-up further down the pavement.

"Sure we can trust the police here with these guys?" Kiba asks dubiously, looking over at her.

She shrugs. "Orders are orders. We don't do anything more than that."

"We should concentrate on the springtime of our youth," Lee tells them, between push-ups, sweat dripping onto the sidewalk. Kiba rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, listen to your Second, Lieutenant. You need to get laid," Kiba remarks offhandedly, swiping at the red face paint on his cheeks. "Lose those twin buns on your head and wear something different for once. You don't have to be in uniform all the time on the Konoha, you know."

Tenten flings a poisonous glare at him, tapping hard on her roll-up keyboard. "I'll wear whatever I damn well want, Inuzuka," she growls, annoyed, because Kiba, like their colleague, Ino, can't seem to resist digging at her resolution to not get involved with anyone. She cracks her knuckles. "And whether I sleep with anyone is none of your fucking business."

Kiba tosses an easy grin at her. "Hey, if you wanna beat someone up, these guys here are all yours." He shoves his foot into one of Quachron's sidekicks.

"You make yourself such an easy target, Tenten," Lee sighs next to her, and Tenten pretends not to hear him, hitting 'Send' and powering her computer down. At least all she really suffers from these days is teasing - what can really get worse about her situation, right?

Konoha, Nov 18, 2030, 1145 hrs

The Byakugan docks in the spacious hangar with a quiet hiss. Behind, heavy steel doors roll shut, sealing together to form an airlock, and air is pumped into the cavernous structure, with the same composition as that on Earth's.

Lieutenant Hyuuga Neji leans back into the pilot's seat, closing his lilac eyes for a brief moment. It has been a while since he's been back - two years, to be exact - and he wonders if much has changed here. Updates from his cousin, Hinata, have kept him in the loop on the people filling the various positions (Tsunade is still the Admiral in command of the Konoha, and Captain Gai has not yet quit his aggravating spiels about youth - hopefully no more Gai or Lee lookalikes have sprung up during his absence).

Neji suppresses a shudder at the memory of being forced to wear forest-green spandex.

His subordinates, Second Lieutenants Hagane Kotetsu and Kamizuki Izumo, have been abuzz with excitement throughout the past two weeks, ever since they were called back from their current mission light years away.

And for what purpose? To babysit kids? Neji's jaw tightens. The mission they've been on was to provide protection for a cluster of planets, and although that does not quite have the same ring to it as a highly dangerous operation, facing off against various aliens, and learning to handle a multitude of situations sure looks a lot better among his achievements than training children.

The only advantage of returning to the Konoha, as Neji sees it, would be to give himself a greater presence among his superiors, so that they would be more likely to keep him in mind for a promotion to captaincy. He would do his late father proud with another early advancement in ranks (because there's no doubt that Neji will become a Captain, sooner or later), and having other geniuses like Nara Shikamaru around just means that there are obstacles in his way.

A little part of him is, however, curious about Lieutenant Tenten, from his old trainee cell - but Neji quashes any thoughts beyond whether she's still with Dragon Platoon. She will be but a distraction, after all.

"Good food and women, here we come!" Kotetsu cheers, when the indicator lights in the ship and the hangar both flash green. "We'll take our leave now, Neji."

He nods when Izumo echos the same parting words, slowly unbuckling his seat belt. It will definitely be a nice change to have clean quarters and his laundry done for him, as compared to dealing with the backward technology in the Orion cluster. It will also be pleasant to glimpse Tenten in the hallways once every so often, perhaps.

Maybe his trainees will get to face off against hers.

Neji smirks then, his first satisfied smile in some time. He wonders if she's still as volatile as he remembers her to be. Probably.

In a lighter mood, now, Hyuuga Neji leaves the Byakugan, and powers it down.

A/N: Yes... a sci-fi spaceship AU. You bet I was super-excited about this. The prologue sets the stage for lots of things to come - are you ready for it? ;)