When they reached their destination, they saw a grey cement structure, with medium-sized windows, straight lines, and two floors. Seina surveyed the area and saw that there were only a couple of traps, but no barriers to deter potential enemies. Perhaps it was because the location was quite secret, nestled in the mountains where few outsiders would think to search.
"What kind of barriers are you going to set up?"
"I think I'll put up a few to prevent anyone with bad intentions from getting through. That means thieves wouldn't even be able to get past the first barrier."
In the end, she set up that barrier and others to protect the building from potential natural disasters, both accidental and not accidental. She also raised a barrier that would divert anyone who wasn't explicitly looking for the place away before they could find the lab. Lastly, she transformed some logs into a pair of large stone deer statues and carved a few runes into them.
"What are those for?"
"To defend the place, dobe."
"But how will they tell the difference between enemies and the Nara?"
"They'll be deactivated until the first Nara activates them. They just need to place a drop of blood on the head the next time they come to the lab. Basically, if someone passes through the barriers with ill intent and isn't a Nara, they'll be attacked just the same. Only a Nara can deactivate them, allowing them to filter people coming here without their permission—even if it's just to take a look."
Seina watched the sunset in the distance while packing her things in her pouch. Sasuke and Naruto, who had helped her carve some of the runes and kept an eye on the perimeter while she was busy with the barriers, were sitting on a fallen log.
"Do you guys want to leave already?" she asked, noticing how comfortable they seemed.
"Yes."
"You know… We could meet up more with our academy friends," she said. "We hardly ever see them, and we'll see them even less once you two get promoted."
"It wouldn't be a bad idea to train with them."
"She doesn't mean training with them, dobe," Sasuke rolled his eyes, "but social activities."
"Oh. Like getting together for a meal?"
"Exactly. We already see Team 10 every Monday. We could meet up on Wednesdays, for example, every week to chat, even if it's just for a bit. I haven't seen Tenten in months, just to name one."
"I don't mind."
"I'm all for it!"
"Great. I'll ask Ino to arrange it. If anyone can get us all together, it's her."
"Are we leaving or what? My butt is getting numb."
Sasuke, who never missed a chance to smack her brother, swatted Naruto on the head, making him yell in indignation. Seina sighed as she watched them start arguing again. They were really just kids. She caught them both off guard by their ears and appeared a few minutes away from Konoha's entrance, dragging them along.
"Hey!"
"Ow! My ear!" her brother shouted.
"Weren't you saying your butt hurt? I'm doing you a favour! Doesn't your ear hurt more now?" she teased. Sasuke snorted a laugh. "Come on. I want to get home."
They entered through the gate as night fully descended. They quickly stopped by the mission department to file their report and then headed home. She wouldn't have minded running into some of their academy mates, but they didn't see anyone interesting along the way.
"Already back?" asked Kakashi-sensei, glancing at them over his shoulder while preparing dinner. "How did it go?"
"Fine. Nothing weird happened."
"It was almost boring," Sasuke bluntly reported. "In fact, I don't even know why we went."
"Ah, who knows what Shikaku was thinking," Kakashi-sensei said, as if he couldn't imagine it.
Seina knew perfectly well why their entire team had been assigned. It was a favour from Shikaku to let them spend time together and get paid for it. Besides, having guards while she concentrated deeply in the mountains was never a bad idea.
"I'm going to check on the plants. Be right back."
She went down to her new greenhouse and checked that everything was in place and functioning perfectly. She looked at the space in front of her, realizing she'd need time to build a house to her liking.
"Dinner's ready!"
Her teacher's voice reached her through the open entrance, so after a final glance around, she climbed the stairs and closed the suitcase behind her. She heard her brother and Kakashi-sensei setting the table, chatting about trivial matters. Sasuke, curiously, seemed distracted, staring off into the distance. She didn't need to fully open their link to know he was thinking about something serious. Still, no one asked, and Sasuke didn't say anything about what was bothering him.
She took her usual seat, exchanging a curious look with Kakashi-sensei across from her. Naruto, of course, didn't seem to notice anything as he talked nonstop.
"What do you think we should practice with Team 10 tomorrow?"
Seina spent dinner in silence, as did Sasuke, listening as her brother and Kakashi-sensei talked about training, exercises, and military strategies. She discreetly glanced at Sasuke, but when she saw him smile slightly at Naruto's ridiculous suggestion of training kenjutsu while doing a handstand, she realized it might not be anything serious.
It was during dessert, a little later, when Sasuke spoke unexpectedly.
"I want to send a letter to my brother."
Naruto choked on his drink beside her. Seina quickly patted him on the back as she heard him cough. Kakashi-sensei, however, turned in his seat to look directly at Sasuke.
"Why?"
"The evidence suggests something else happened that day. Now I truly believe that Itachi isn't entirely guilty, even though he's not completely innocent either… I think he did what he could with what he had," Sasuke sighed, sounding more mature than a 12-year-old should. "I almost always forget that when it happened, he was only 13. Just a few months older than me."
"You already knew that. Why now?"
"Because of Seina and Naruto's cousin. Let me speak, dobe," Sasuke cut in when he saw Naruto open his mouth. "It's not directly related to her, but your situation made me realize that, even if Itachi is innocent, we would have a lot of work to do to get him back to Konoha…"
"You want to start communicating with him to pave the way," she said.
Sasuke nodded.
"I not only have to think about everything we would need to do in Konoha for him to be readmitted. I also have to think about how to convince Itachi to come back. Honestly, I'm not sure which part will be more difficult…"
"And if he doesn't want to come back?" Kakashi-sensei asked suddenly.
"Then… there's no point in convincing him to return, but I will find a way to let everyone know the truth. Even if that doesn't bring my brother back to Konoha."
"…You've matured a lot," Kakashi-sensei smiled, congratulating him. "A year ago, you wouldn't have been able to think clearly about Itachi, and now look at you."
Sasuke nodded. Seina noticed how Sasuke was happy about his teacher's recognition and how, deep down, he knew that Kakashi-sensei was right in saying that months ago, he wouldn't have been as mature as he was now. She remembered the Sasuke from the first day—the one who accepted eating that bento hesitantly, the one who confessed that killing his brother wasn't his greatest wish but rather his goal. Months ago, Sasuke wouldn't have even considered the possibility that Itachi might be innocent. He would have punched someone just for saying it out loud. How things had changed...
"What are you going to say in the letter?" her brother asked.
"And how are you going to send it?" Kakashi-sensei asked afterward, although he was already looking at her.
"I'm sure Seina can help me deliver it," Sasuke confirmed what everyone was thinking. "As for what I'm going to write... I don't know yet. Maybe tomorrow afternoon, I'll start thinking about what I want to say."
"You have time, so think it through. You should also consider that there's a remote possibility that we're all wrong and that he ends up being guilty..."
"You think that if Itachi were guilty, he could manipulate Sasuke or take advantage of him in some way, right?" she said rhetorically. It was the only possibility that occurred to her from Kakashi-sensei's words.
"Exactly."
"I'll think about what to write so as not to give him any important information. I'm going to bed."
Sasuke stood up abruptly. She could sense he wasn't as tired as he wanted them to think. Rather, it seemed that they had surpassed the emotional limit that his... new brother could handle. She smiled, recalling how Sasuke considered her a sister. An older sister, she hoped, although she was physically younger than him by a few months.
"Ugh. I think I'm going to bed too. I've had too many serious talks in just a few days," Naruto complained. "Good night."
"Good night, Naru."
"Good night."
They were left alone, pensive, reflecting on the situation with Sasuke and Itachi. Her smile, however, piqued Kakashi-sensei's curiosity, and he nudged her ankle with his foot.
"Why are you smiling?"
"Nothing. I was just remembering that the other day Sasuke called me his sister, can you imagine that?" she whispered, stifling a squeal at how adorable Sasuke was.
Kakashi-sensei chuckled softly at her delighted expression.
"I'm not surprised. Your relationship is more like siblings than just friends. Besides, Sasuke, although he doesn't show it, relies on you quite often. What does Naruto think about this?"
"He doesn't know or, if he does, he hasn't said anything."
"I'm betting on the first option," he chuckled again. "If he had found out, a competition for your attention would have started."
Seina stood up from her chair with too much energy. She walked around the table under the attentive gaze of the jonin and sat on his lap. She saw the slightly surprised but pleased expression on his face before she embraced him. She needed it.
"It's not a competition."
"I know."
She hugged him tightly, feeling his warm, firm, and slender body against her torso. A hand automatically lifted to caress her hair, which was gathered in a casual bun, and her nape. If she were a cat, she would have been purring.
"You know Sasuke hinted that he knows about us?"
"What?" he asked, startled.
"Yes. According to him, our relationship is... special, but it was clear what he was talking about."
"And he hasn't said anything else?"
"No. He knows my situation isn't exactly normal," she laughed. "What's he going to say?"
"Wow."
For a moment, she worried that Kakashi-sensei might doubt them now that someone suspected the truth about their relationship. But to her relief, he just held her tighter as if he knew what she was thinking. She pulled away from his chest, regretting having to do so, and sighed.
"I'm going to bed. Good night," she kissed him on the cheek.
"Sleep well."
The next day, she woke up early. It was Monday, which meant she had the much-anticipated training with Team 10. To her surprise, and Naruto's indignation, as soon as they set foot in the forest, she received a note asking her to report to Shikaku's office.
"What!? But we just got back from a mission yesterday!" her brother shouted. "Seina-nee, the old lady and that lazy dad of Shikamaru are exploiting you!"
"I'd better go see what he wants. Maybe it's not a mission."
She said goodbye to Naruto and Sasuke and headed towards the jonin commander's office. She knew the only reason he would summon her directly to his office was for a mission or something very serious and confidential. Given the situation, she hoped it was the former. She already had enough headaches from the past week.
"Come in. Ah, you got here quickly."
"I was relatively close."
"Right, the training. I almost forgot," Shikaku lied shamelessly. She knew he never forgot anything. "I'm afraid we have an emergency. We need you to hunt down a jonin we had stationed on the outskirts, near the border with the Land of Hot Springs. He killed some civilians, attacked a few comrades, and then fled."
"Can I see his ninja documentation?"
"Here you go," he said, pushing a summarized file towards her. "His name is Mezu Minamoto."
Seina quickly studied the file, observing the ninja's frontal photograph, and then read about his abilities.
"Why send me?"
"Because we don't know where he is. It doesn't seem to have been a completely spontaneous attack. He must have planned where and how to escape. If we send a team of hunters, it would take them some time to reach the border base and then hunt him down. The problem," Shikaku continued before she could ask, "is that he took confidential documents related to maneuvers against Kumogakure. That base, after all, is the closest one to our enemies within the Land of Fire."
"I see."
"I need you to capture him and recover all the documents as soon as possible."
"And if he's already sold them?"
"Recover them and eliminate anyone who has read them."
"…And if they've already fallen into the Raikage's hands?"
"Then retreat. That information isn't valuable enough to confront him directly."
"Understood."
Seina left at a brisk pace. She had everything she needed to set out, so she headed to the north gate to leave the village. It took her only 10 minutes to get there and register her departure at the checkpoint. She walked through the forest, glancing at the civilians who came and went from Konoha, chatting animatedly. None of them imagined that the 12-year-old girl who had just passed them was about to hunt down a Konoha traitor and, possibly, eliminate many people.
She used the hiraishin to travel to the Land of Hot Springs, which was relatively closer to the border base than Konoha.
"Mezu Minamoto."
The conjured arrow spun in her hand. Surprised, she realized it had turned westward. Could he be heading towards the Land of Rice Fields? She summoned her dragon, her fastest mount due to its size, and took off at top speed. The arrow guided her during the flight. It took her half an hour to reach the border between the Land of Hot Springs and the Land of Rice Fields.
"Where did you run off to, little rat?"
The arrow continued guiding her until it made a full turn, and she knew she had found him. The place seemed familiar. In fact, wasn't that the village she visited with Jiraiya on that mission she did with him? She landed as stealthily as possible and dismissed her dragon. She began to run again. She had to suppress an ironic laugh upon realizing that, indeed, she was in that run-down town where they left that girl behind. What was her name?
"Sasame," Kurama reminded her in a bored voice. "No wonder you forgot. She was pathetic."
"You have no empathy, Kurama."
She activated her bracelet, rising above a tree to get a better range of vision. Seina used her X-ray glasses to see what was going on inside a seedy bar. She found him there, accompanied by an unremarkable-looking man. She sharpened her hearing to listen to them alone.
"I told you I'd get it, didn't I? You'd better pay me because now Konoha is going to be on my ass," Mezu said in a low voice.
"I'll decide if the information is worth it."
"Do you think I'm an idiot? I'm not going to show you all the papers. At most, I'll show you a couple of pages. If you don't want them, I can go to someone else. I have several interested parties."
"Fine. Show me those pages."
Seina continued observing. She glanced around the bar, noticing how it was filled with people, and realized she could take Mezu and kill his client easily without anyone noticing. She descended from the tree, keeping her chakra hidden and wrapped in her magic, and entered the bar behind a half-drunk customer.
"Hey Kato! I didn't think I'd see you today!"
"I'm always up for one more beer," the man in front of her laughed, letting the door close behind him and chatting with the bartender.
She walked past them, using a spell to avoid bumping into people, who moved aside without even blinking. She slowly approached her target, unnoticed by anyone.
"Imperio. Stay calm and seated."
Mezu blinked slowly, remaining still in his seat without uttering a word. The other man didn't notice, too focused on reading the two pages of confidential documents. She pulled out one of the senbon Genma had taught her to make, coated in poison, and stabbed it into his neck while petrifying him simultaneously. She glanced around the bar, but no one was looking her way. Even if they had, they would have only seen one man calmly seated and another engrossed in a piece of paper. They might have sensed something was wrong only if they had looked into the victim's wide-open eyes, filled with terror, unable to move as the poison rapidly killed him.
Within a minute, the stranger was dead. She knew because his heart stopped, and his eyes lost their brightness, turning vacant.
"Leave the bar and head to the village's main entrance."
Mezu stood up. Seina took the pages the man had been holding. She cast a spell so that the muggles, the civilians, would look away as she made the corpse vanish into nothingness. Then, she left the bar and headed for the main entrance. She observed her target a few meters ahead of her. She followed him through the air, using the walls to avoid colliding invisibly with the civilians. As soon as he exited the village, she mentally guided him to a more secluded place.
"If I were you, I'd interrogate him about what he did with those papers… Who knows if this was his first buyer."
"Good idea," she said to Kurama. Then, she commanded Mezu to speak, "Have you given or sold these papers to anyone else?"
"No."
"How did you leave the border base without anyone being able to track you?"
"I have an accomplice who helped me escape and cover my tracks."
"What's the name of this accomplice? Is there anyone else working with you to betray Konoha?"
Seina listened to Mezu's monotone response. Luckily, he hadn't had time to sell the documents, even though he was planning to sell them to more than one buyer, just as Kurama had suspected. The accomplice was another dissatisfied jonin whom Mezu had managed to convince halfway through manipulation and some emotional blackmail. Fortunately, he had only counted on this one person before betraying Konoha, although his plan was to reconnect with him and start persuading more people to join him against the village.
The motive? He was a psychopath with a thirst for blood. He believed that times of peace weren't good, but boring and undesirable. He preferred to betray Konoha, with all that it entailed, simply for the thrill of killing people indiscriminately. Shikaku was right in thinking it wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision, but Mezu himself had confessed under her influence that he had rushed his plans by killing those civilians in a fit of bloodlust.
"Freaking psychopath," she growled, knocking him unconscious with a punch.
She put him inside the suitcase, in one of the cells, after putting chakra cuffs on his hands and feet. She also bound him with her magic, just in case, and petrified him. She quickly exited the suitcase, deactivating the magical barriers, and ran toward the forest.
"Kage bunshin no jutsu. Give this note to Shikaku," she said, handing a small note to her clone, which she had just written.
In the note, Seina informed him that there was another ninja at the border base who was capable of betraying them. The question was, should she capture him, or let Shikaku take care of it later? She waited atop a tree, hiding among the branches so no one could see her. Her clone returned exactly 15 minutes later with a mission scroll and a note. She read the note first.
"Return with the documents and Mezu. S."
Seina shrugged and used hiraishin to return. The familiar forest near the village welcomed her back, a place she knew well from countless visits. She walked towards the gate, realizing that only a couple of hours had passed since she left Konoha.
"Good mission?" asked the chunin at the entrance, puzzled.
"Excellent," she grinned, showing all her teeth.
It took her a few minutes to reach the interrogation department, where she left Mezu, still unconscious under Ibiki's watchful and unnerving gaze.
"Good job, Uzumaki. Go give the papers to Shikaku. He's expecting you."
She nodded. The walk to Shikaku's office was relatively short. They didn't even make her wait in the lounge with the other jonin resting. She knocked on the door.
"Come in."
Shikaku stopped writing reports, looking up, and sighed when he saw her. She handed over the documents without him having to ask. He verified, somehow, that everything was there and nodded.
"Excellent as always. You can go collect your pay."
"Hai, hai," she yawned.
"Are you going to the training field?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Tell Shikamaru to show you what he has learned to do," the commander smiled before dismissing her and returning to his report.
Seina left once more, feeling a tremendous fatigue. She wished the day would end, but it had only just begun…