Chapter Twelve: Things That Go Bump

A/N: So, it's been a while. And I'm sorry about that. But, with college, I think I might have a rather odd schedule.

Also, this one's a bit short. Sorry about that, too—there's a lot to manage for the next chapter.

"They all look like complete brats," Tazuna went on. "Especially the short one with the stupid face."

Almost immediately, Sasuke started snickering. Naruto and Sakura blinked for a moment before Naruto joined his brother in laughing, and Sakura managed to look completely mortified in under two seconds. And this time, Kakashi facepalmed. Kei decided that a hand was not enough and smacked her head against the nearest wall.

"That's my son, you know." Minato said with a razor-thin smile.

"—By which I mean he's an incredible shinobi and you should be very proud." Tazuna backtracked, breaking out into a cold sweat as the tiniest fraction of Minato's killing intent made itself known. Minato wasn't the type to attack a civilian, but the man probably needed to remember that the people he was trying to hire were nonetheless trained shinobi.

"And anyway," Kakashi cut in, "I'm here to make sure that nothing too serious happens." It was best to cut off the rant and the death threats in mid-thought, because the Hokage didn't tolerate threats to his village or his family. Ever. And he didn't need to reiterate it every single time it came up even obliquely. "One jounin is assigned to every team of genin to keep things from getting out of hand. Though, as a C-rank, it shouldn't really be a problem, should it?"

Minato, Kakashi, and Kei all caught the briefest look of guilt on the old man's face. Kakashi decided to let it pass. Though if something did end up happening and Naruto was hurt, he sure as hell wasn't about to guarantee Tazuna's safety against Minato in a homicidally overprotective mood.

"R-Right," Tazuna said, still nervous.

"If that's all," Minato said after a moment, "Team Seven is dismissed. Your mission begins tomorrow at nine."

"Yes, Hokage-sama!" All of the members of Team Seven said at once, though Naruto tripped over it a bit.

And then they were all gone.

Kei ended up being the one to escort Tazuna to the nearest inn—he was terrified that Minato would somehow come after him, apparently. And what she said about the Hokage's capabilities meant that he didn't get a lot of sleep that night.

Team Seven, however, regrouped on a nearby rooftop.

"So, nine tomorrow morning at the main gate, right?" Sakura asked, just to confirm their orders.

"Exactly." Kakashi said. "And try not to be late—our destination is a long walk from here. Also, bring bandages, rations, and camping supplies."

"…You're going to be late, aren't you?" Sasuke guessed suspiciously.

"Yep!" And then Kakashi vanished in a puff of white smoke.

"I hate it when he does that." Sakura said, shaking her head. "…Actually, what does he do before he shows up late?"

Naruto shrugged. "Obito-nii said he has a girlfriend."

"Sensei? A girlfriend? Since when?" Sakura squawked.

Sasuke put in, "We don't really believe most of what Obito-nii says, anyway." He rolled his eyes. "And if he does have a girlfriend, who is she? Because he's been arriving late to things since I can remember, so that can't be the only reason."

"I think I heard the name 'Anko' come up once or twice." Naruto offered.

"Isn't she the crazy lady with purple hair?" Sakura asked, having seen the aforementioned tokubetsu jounin on a previous trip to the hospital. She'd never asked why the woman was there, though. "I can't see Sensei going out with her."

"Well, I heard something else." Sasuke challenged. Of course he would—just as Naruto would do if Sasuke had come up with the theory first. "Like 'Ayame.'"

"That's the name of Teuchi-jiisan's daughter. Kaachan would kill him." Naruto pointed out. "But I heard something about a girl he's sending letters to, even if I never heard the name."

"I can't see Kakashi-nii with a pen pal." Sasuke said flatly. "Have you ever seen his handwriting?"

"…Um, I think I have an explanation." Sakura spoke up after a while.

"What?" Sasuke and Naruto prompted together.

"Everyone you're talking about…they're his fangirls, I think." Sakura blushed. "So, I think they might be making things up to make the other girls jealous." She paused. "Though Anko would make things up just because."

"…Please don't tell me you used to do that when we were in the Academy." Sasuke muttered.

"…I didn't?" Sakura squeaked.

"Can we just stop speculating on Kakashi-nii's love life?" Naruto asked after a second or two to process all the horror involved. "Because it's going really weird places we don't need to think about."

"You're the one who started it!" Sakura shouted.

"I know! But it's still weird!"

Meanwhile, in a building not too far away, Minato was doubled over laughing. Oh, Sarutobi's old crystal ball sure came in handy sometimes.

"I'm still not seeing how this is so funny, Sensei." Kakashi said dryly.

Minato just kept laughing.

"You're…actually on time, Sensei." Sakura said, sounding a little surprised.

"That I am, Sakura." Kakashi agreed, pulling out his slightly-worn copy of Icha-Icha Paradise once again. Of course, he wasn't going to explain the why or how he was on time (a minor miracle by any standard)—there wasn't any fun in that. And if it had anything to do with Kushina threatening him at knifepoint, he certainly wasn't admitting it.

"Then where are—oh, there they are." Sakura said, watching Naruto and Sasuke both run toward the main gate of Konohagakure. Slightly behind them, Tazuna was stumbling a bit just to keep up—which might have had something to do with the kage bunshin pushing and prodding at him from behind. They clearly didn't want to have a late start either.

"Hah! Five minutes to nine, Kakashi-nii." Naruto said brightly. "And we've both got extra supplies."

Sasuke held up his backpack, which was slightly lighter than Naruto's but probably contained most of the nonperishable supplies. Like extra weapons, since it was unlikely that they'd be able to carry enough kunai and shuriken for the mission just in their hip and leg holsters.

Kakashi nodded. "Good work, team."

"Bah! We haven't even left the village yet." Tazuna complained loudly.

"It's called 'positive reinforcement,' Tazuna-san." Kakashi said. "And anyway, we'll be on our way now."

"Finally…" Tazuna muttered, but that was the end of that.

But then, from absolutely nowhere, came a cry of, "Sasuke, Naruto! You forgot your lunches!"

Kushina came barreling up the road, bearing gifts. Or a bento for each of her boys. Either way, it was ultimately the same. She looked like she was in a rush—even more than the speed she was using, the way her hair was frizzing and the sheer manic quality of her grin gave it away. Kakashi decided to get out of her way before she did it for him.

"…See, this is why I said should we leave before she got back from shopping," Sasuke muttered to Naruto, reddening faintly in embarrassment. Their mother could be overenthusiastic sometimes—especially in the opinions of teenage boys.

Naruto was not, however, a typical teenage boy. "Kaachan!"

"I brought lunch for both of you." She grinned, holding up the boxes. "And Kakashi and Sakura-chan, too."

"Thank you, Kushina-sama." Sakura said. By this point, she had learned that Kushina could bull over anyone who even thought of getting in her way, including her husband and most of the clan leaders, despite being an ordinary jounin.

"Can we get a move on?" Tazuna muttered after Kushina was out of earshot.

"Yes." Kakashi gave his giddy students a lazy glance. "Team Seven?"

His genin immediately whirled to attention. So, the training with the bells and kunai had paid off. Excellent.

He smiled. "Move out."

Nami no Kuni was an island nation off the coast of Hi no Kuni. The only way to reach it from the mainland was to take a boat (though the bridge would help, whenever it got finished). Its primary industries were fishing and shipping, at least before a shipping mogul named Gatou moved in. It had occasional hurricanes, just like every other island near Hi no Kuni, which had rather extreme weather patterns in the late summer and early autumn. Nami no Kuni was beautiful, though, and ought to have been the kind of place that advertised its beaches for vacationing foreigners with deep pockets. It should have been prospering in the twelve years since Kiri forces had last used it as a way into Konoha territory thirteen years previous, bouncing back like it always had before.

Only it wasn't.

Shiranui Genma was fairly certain that he was only on this mission at all because the mission desk lady hated him (quite unjustifiably, in his opinion and the opinions of several people he'd asked). But since tokubetsu jounin generally didn't leave the village except for missions, he supposed it wasn't as bad as it could be—he got to visit a new part of the world, after all.

Oh, sure, Raidou probably didn't really like how their client had bumped the mission rating up to a B-rank even though they were just escorting her from place to place. Not that he cared after he saw the size of the bonus they were going to get for it, but Genma agreed with his initial assessment somewhat. There was no reason for two tokubetsu jounin to be sent on a wild goose chase like this one.

The mission scroll hadn't had much in the way of detail in it—just Yamaguchi's harsh, angular characters arranged into clipped phrases that seemed to imply that she didn't care for the one making her write the information down either—but there didn't seem to be anything really wrong with it.

Until you got to the bottom, anyway.

"This mission has no priority targets—you are bodyguards, nothing more. Keep Inabikarito from dying. Most likely enemy encounters for this mission are, in order, tsukumogami, bandits, nuke-nin, and Kiri-nin."

He was still trying to decide if Yamaguchi was fucking with him (likely) or if Inabikarito actually thought living appliances existed (also likely).

The trip to Nami no Kuni was actually a lot shorter than Genma had estimated, too—only one-and-a-half days to the coast, even without using roads. No one had told him that the ambassador had shinobi training and could keep up with them, though he supposed he should have figured from what the rumor mill had come up with since she'd arrived. But he still didn't believe that she trained with Kakashi and Gai—that was insane and probably suicidal.

Getting a damn boat took longer than the entire trip had in the first place—apparently, Gatou had effectively closed the borders of the country and only a few fishermen running lines back and forth had even a chance of getting in.

Genma and Raidou were shinobi, though, and Inabikarito had deep (figurative) pockets.

Two days after arriving at the coast of Hi no Kuni, all three of them were in Nami no Kuni.

"What exactly are we looking for?" Genma asked as they picked out a campsite later that night. "And don't tell me it's a flock of flying sandals."

Inabikarito—or Nariko, now that they'd finally gotten around to learning her given name—yawned widely and started arranging the firewood into a little circle of dead wood. "Anything out of the ordinary, really. We won't know for sure until we see it."

Genma just shook his head. She was crazy.

But Nariko didn't think that way. While Genma was dismissing her opinion—not too surprising, given that she'd never really made a point to present herself as competent if she could avoid it—and Raidou had just returned from a nearby freshwater spring with a kettle full of water, Nariko listened. She could see fairly well in the dark, smell most other youkai long before they made it close enough to attack, and had trained well enough to know what youki felt like for nearly every other type of youkai.

And there was definitely a horde on this island. Of what…well, that would be the surprise.

The scent of the wilderness—trees, animals, people—was being slowly overridden by a smell not unlike rotting meat. But so far it was faint, implying that whatever had produced it was still far enough away that she'd probably see it coming. A village had already been attacked, perhaps. If not that, something had gotten to the island's population of wild boars.

"I found something." Raidou said after a moment. Nariko blinked, having been staring into the fire for a while, and looked over at him. Something white covered his right sleeve and he was trying to get it off.

"What is that?" Genma asked, tugging on what seemed like a length of some wire—string?—that was clinging to his fellow tokubetsu jounin's hands. Only it didn't act like cloth or wire…

Raidou pulled the substance apart experimentally, commenting, "Looks organic. Almost like…"

Nariko walked over to him and stared at the stuff for a moment before freezing up. "It's spider web."

"Each strand's a millimeter thick!" Genma protested. "That's not possible."

Nariko just shook her head. "I know it when I see it. These are definitely threads to a really big web."

Genma said nothing for a moment. Neither did Raidou, though he continued to test the strength of the thread and Nariko noticed that it was starting to…well, for lack of a better word, set. And she couldn't remember if this was the web of one of the spider youkai that could uproot trees or not. It didn't help that she knew about three different types and all of them liked to eat humans.

So she took Raidou's hands in hers and examined the web.

"Pushy, aren't you?" Genma said in an undertone, though he didn't really seem to mean anything cruel by it.

Well, except that perhaps hand-holding meant something in shinobi culture or something. Whatever.

"Hold still," Nariko said, rather than acknowledging the comment. "I don't think this web is going to come off on its own, so I might have to burn it off."

Raidou blinked. "Isn't that a bit extreme?" Ah, right, he didn't think she could use chakra—technically true—and that she was going to make him stick his hand in the campfire. Which would be hideous overkill and probably make Raidou and Genma hate her forever, so that wasn't going to happen.

Nariko dragged him over to the campfire anyway so she could see without Genma getting in the way all the time. Her night vision was good, but not that good. "Try moving your fingers," she said after they were both seated.

There was a brief silence, aside from the cheerful cracking of steam in the burning wood. "Dammit."

Genma sat down next to them, cross-legged, and said. "Before we get to trying to set Raidou on fire, do you know what sort of thing makes those webs? I didn't sense any chakra."

"Well, that depends." Nariko said thoughtfully. The threads were going to set like rubber or concrete soon enough. "I'd guess that it's a tsuchigumo or a jorougumo. But depending on what happened before we got here, it could be kumogashira instead. All spider youkai, but different types…"

"Wait, wait. Those things are real?" Raidou interrupted.

Genma blinked. "…I thought jorougumo were just house spiders."

"Yeah, they're real. And the name refers to both kinds—though jorougumo usually have to live for four hundred years before they get powers." Nariko said, frowning. "Tsuchigumo are sort of like genjutsu-users, though they move around more than the other two. Most of them don't spin webs like this and just sit around waiting for food to come to them." She paused. "I really need to get this stuff off before it hardens. So don't…flip out."

"Why would I—?" Raidou sucked in a breath as Nariko formed four rapid hand seals and a tiny green-blue flame appeared on the end of her extended index finger. It leapt from her hand to the hardening webbing and started to devour it like an ordinary fire would do to paper.

"…You have to teach me how to do that." Genma said as the web finally fell away and shriveled. Since Raidou wasn't screaming, it looked like the technique was pretty much only for stuff like web and maybe rope, but given how fast it worked, you could probably use it to take out anything appropriately vulnerable.

Like the cobwebs on his apartment ceiling that he never seemed to remember to get rid of. Or those damned dust bunnies in the mission office.

"I can try." Nariko said—though, as a kitsune and raijuu hybrid, she wasn't sure it was possible for humans to learn any of her techniques, no matter how talented they were. She dusted her hands off in the fire. "So, that's that. Where'd you find the web?"

Raidou led them both to a spot not too far from the spring. It wasn't all that far from where they were camping, either.

"…Well, the good news is that the jorougumo isn't here." Nariko said, looking into the spring and around the nearby rocks. She climbed down from the exposed rock face and shook her head. "And this seems like an old nest, so they probably won't be coming back here for a while."

"Really," said Genma in a flat voice. He shook himself. "How do you know it's old?"

Nariko pointed nearly directly overhead. "That."

It was amazing how often people just didn't look up.

"…Well, I feel like a moron." Raidou muttered, staring at the exposed, blackened human skeleton dangling from the webs high overhead.

"The bones look a little scorched. But there's no way there was a fire here if these things burn up so easily." Genma said after a moment.

"I'm not completely sure, but I think I remember hearing about how kumogashira venom is partly acid." Nariko said thoughtfully. "Think that works?"

"I think we should just move our campsite somewhere else." Raidou said, shaking his head.

"Good idea."

Deep in the dense forests of Nami no Kuni, something huge stirred among the network of spider youkai webs. There was very little green left to the naked eye—the entire clearing had been coated from ground to canopy in spider silk designed to hold layer upon layer of mazelike illusions. Nothing hostile could get close without getting itself trapped in the webs and alerting every youkai in the area. After a pause, eight hairy legs receded and the creature itself shrank into a much smaller, humanoid shape. Cracking its brand new neck and shaking out the kinks in its new endoskeleton, the new figure glanced toward a little black shape at its side. "Someone just tripped the perimeter wards."

"Oh? Do we have any idea what?" Slowly, the tiny form uncurled to reveal a little tabby cat with eyes that glowed green in the dark. Her tail flicked from side to side, both tail-tips curling in the air.

"Not that I know of," her ally muttered, raising a hand to the master line of his web. "I'll send a scouting party out. Can't hurt to be careful."

The cat glanced at him. "I don't care if it's just another group of humans, but be careful if there are youkai."

"Ah, right. The 'law.'" Her companion turned his attention back to the web. "What's past is past."

"Funny how you're the one telling me that this time around." The cat said dryly. "You know what to do better than I do, anyway."

"Guess all that sniper work was worth something, then," he replied, equally withering.

"Yeah, well, it worked out well enough when we were both just running around like idiots, killing anything that looked funny or wore red." The cat turned her attention to the first of the other spider youkai to approach the master web—a jorougumo, to be specific. "Kiku, set up an ambush in the old village."

"Hime-sama, that would require much more legwork than we can pull off in one night." Kiku said carefully. All eight of her limbs were visible—though her forelimbs were busy hanging onto her biwa while the other six focused on balance and not annoying the almost hilariously tiny tabby with extraneous movement.

The last one to do so had lost the appropriate limbs. And then his head.

"Oh, don't worry. I'll be helping you set up!" the cat said with her teeth bared in a fierce grin. Kiku tried to stay absolutely still. The cat was liable to turn into a tornado of teeth, claws, and death spells whenever something annoyed her. "I have to do something while the rest of you set up for our possible guests."

"And if they turn out to be more than the scouts can handle?" the first, male spider youkai spoke up, his tone absolutely flat.

The cat turned back to him, though now her face was locked into a scowl. "Then we track them down and rip them limb from limb. And I'll have new toys to play with."

"Natsu…" the spider youkai said warningly.

"Hibiki, I'll be fine." Natsu said. "After all, I have you to back me up, don't I?"

Hibiki shook his head and left the webbed clearing.

"Worrier. He'd wear a hole through the floor if I let him." Natsu muttered. "Kiku, get out of here and start work immediately."

"Yes, Natsu-hime."

A/N: Vocabulary time!

Jorougumo: Lit. "whore spider" or "binding lady" depending on the kanji used, the youkai jorougumo is a large spider youkai that can transform into the form of a woman, either playing a biwa (a Japanese lute) or carrying a baby (which usually turns out to either be a rock or her hundreds of eight-legged children) to lure prey close. On other occasions, though, jorougumo are seen as spirits who grant protection from drowning to people who are kind to spiders. And it also refers to a type of Japanese spider species: the Nephila clavata.

Kumogashira: "Spider-head" youkai—first seen in the Inuyasha series in the episode where Inuyasha temporarily loses his hanyou powers, since it's the new moon.

Tsuchigumo: Lit. "earth spider," it's also a Japanese term for bandits and an ancient people that used to live in the mountains (whom the Japanese had frequent conflicts with). So, here it refers to a large spider youkai that wanders rather than using an orb-shaped web, and traps prey using its illusions.

Fun fact: Under the right circumstances, every one of those youkai will eat people. It seems to be a bit of a theme with animal-based youkai. :/

Less-fun fact: Thought I dropped the fugitive nekomata plot from before Madara's attack? Nope!