"A-rank!"
Mai slammed both palms on the assignment desk hard enough to rattle the ink pots. The chunin behind the counter flinched. Two jonin waiting in line behind them turned to look. Ebizo closed his eyes.
"Mai…" he said.
"A-RANK, SENSEI! OUR FIRST A-RANK THAT STARTS AS AN A-RANK!"
"Mai."
"Not a B that got upgraded! Not a C that went sideways! An actual, real, stamped-and-sealed A-rank mission from the start!"
"If you don't lower your voice, I'm going to request a D-rank instead."
Mai's mouth snapped shut. Her eyes were still enormous. She bounced on her feet, vibrating, her bandaged fists clenching and unclenching at her sides.
Pakura stood beside her with her arms folded. "Try to have some dignity. Stop acting like a little kid."
"Shut up, Pakura. I'm older than you."
"By like a week, so it doesn't even count."
"It counts."
Karura giggled behind her scarf.
Ebizo took the mission scroll from the chunin and unrolled it on the desk. The three genin crowded in.
"Intelligence retrieval. A rogue ninja, identity unknown, has obtained classified information and is offering the scroll to the highest bidder. The exchange is set to take place in the Land of Rivers, in a town called Takimura. Our orders are to acquire the scroll and bring the broker in alive. Intelligence division wants his mind intact for interrogation." Ebizo read.
"What kind of classified information?" Pakura asked.
"The scroll doesn't specify. The fact that multiple great villages are sending teams to acquire it tells us everything we need to know about its value."
"Multiple villages…" Karura said quietly.
Ebizo nodded. "This is why it's A-rank. The broker has reached out to Iwa, Kiri, Konoha, and possibly others. Every village that received the offer will be sending a team to that exchange. None of them intend to pay. All of them intend to take."
"So we'll be up against Iwa, Leaf, Mist, and whoever else shows up," Pakura said. "All at the same time. All after the same target."
"Yes."
"And they won't mind killing us to get it."
"These are shinobi from the great villages. We're ninjas from an enemy nation carrying headbands that represent everything they've been raised to oppose. No, they won't mind."
Ebizo looked at each of them.
"The broker must be brought in alive," Ebizo repeated. "That limits our options. We can't kill the target from range. We need hands on him. That means getting close, subduing him, and extracting him while every other team on the field is trying to do the same thing or prevent us from doing it."
Mai cracked her knuckles. "Sounds perfect for me."
Ebizo rolled the scroll closed. "This is the most dangerous mission I've given you. The enemies aren't bandits or hired muscle or minor village shinobi. These are trained shinobi from villages that have been fighting battles longer than any of you have been alive. If we encounter a team that outmatches us, we disengage. The scroll is valuable but your lives are worth more to the village."
"Yes, Sensei." Karura nodded.
"Tch." Pakura clicked her tongue. There was no chance in hell that she would run.
Mai was still bouncing, feeling the same as Pakura. "When do we leave?"
"Within the hour." Ebizo answered.
"Let's go right now!"
"Within. The. Hour." Ebizo repeated.
They packed. They left. And for the first time since any of them had tied a headband across their foreheads, Team Ebizo crossed out of the Land of Wind.
Mai hated the Land of Rivers.
She'd hated it the moment they crossed the border. The ground was sucky. Instead of hard-packed sand and sun-bleached rock, the earth was soft and dark and damp, squelching under her sandals with every step. Mud that got between her toes and stayed there. Grass grew everywhere and not the thin scrub brush that clung to life around Suna's oases, but thick green carpets that covered the hills and river banks in colors that hurt her eyes after a lifetime of beige and white and gold.
And the trees. Trees everywhere. Unlike her stubby desert palms she was used to these ones were tall and huge. Trees with treetops so wide they blocked the sky, their trunks wrapped in moss and vines, their branches dripping with moisture that fell on her head every time the wind blew.
"This place is friggin gross!" Mai announced, wiping a droplet of something off her glasses. "Everything is wet. The ground is wet. The air is wet. I'm wet. Who chooses to live like this?!"
"People who don't live in a desert." Karura said.
She was looking around with wide indigo eyes, her head turning every few steps to take in something new. A bird she'd never seen before, bright blue and red, sitting on a branch. A river wider than any she'd ever encountered, its water clear and fast and reflecting the green treetops above. A field of wildflowers growing in a meadow beside the road, purple and yellow and white, colors she'd only seen in paintings.
"It's beautiful…" Karura said softly.
"It's disgusting." Mai corrected her.
"Both of you are wrong." Pakura said from behind them. Her arms were folded and her nose was wrinkled. "It's not beautiful and it's not disgusting. It's inferior. The Land of Wind has the best terrain. You can see your enemy coming from ten kilometers away. Here?" She gestured at the forest pressing in on both sides of the road. "Anyone could be behind any tree. This place is made for ambushes and cowards."
"The Land of Wind has dragonflies the size of camels." Karura pointed out.
"At least you can see them before they strike." Pakura shot back.
"She's actually right for once. This place is terrible. Too many hiding spots. Give me a nice open desert any day." Mai agreed.
"For once? I'm always right!" Pakura shot back.
"Name one time when you were ever right about anything?" And as soon as Pakura begin listing incident after incident, Mai covered her ears. And when she was done, "See. Nothing. Can't even name one thing."
Pakura balled her fist and audibly clenched her teeth with anger.
Ebizo walked ahead of them and said nothing. He'd been to the Land of Rivers before, during operations that predated his students' births. The country hadn't changed. Lush, green, deceptively peaceful. It was someone else's home turf, and that alone made it dangerous.
They followed the main road for the first day, traveling openly. Four Sand shinobi on a trade route wouldn't raise eyebrows. The Land of Rivers sat between the great nations and saw traffic from all of them. Merchants, travelers, and ninja from every village passed through regularly.
On the second day, they left the road and moved through the forest.
The trees swallowed them. The treetops closed overhead and the light dropped to a green-filtered dimness that made Mai's skin crawl. She couldn't see the sky. She couldn't see the horizon. The world shrank to a tunnel of trunks and undergrowth and the sound of things moving in the brush that she couldn't identify.
"I hate this…" she muttered.
"You've said that twelve times." Pakura said.
"Because it's still true."
Karura paused on a branch, looking down at a stream that cut through the forest floor below them. Moss covered the rocks along its banks. Small fish darted in the shallows. The water was so clear she could see the pebbles at the bottom.
"There's nothing like this in Wind Country…" she said.
"Good." Mai and Pakura said at the same time. Then they looked at each other, surprised by the agreement. Mai grinned. Pakura turned away.
They reached the outskirts of Takimura on the third day.
The town sat in a valley where two rivers converged, a sprawling settlement of wooden buildings and stone bridges built along both banks. It was larger than Shiokaze by a factor of ten. Markets and inns and tea houses lined the main streets. Boats moved on the river, carrying goods between the docks. People filled the roads in numbers that made Suna's market district look empty by comparison.
Ebizo stopped the team on a forested ridge overlooking the valley. The town spread below them, busy and bright in the afternoon sun.
"This is where the exchange happens," he said. "Somewhere in that town, within the next two days, the broker will make contact with his buyers. Our job is to find him first."
"How?" Pakura asked. "It's a town of thousands. We don't know what he looks like."
Ebizo looked at Mai.
Mai pushed her glasses up her nose and grinned. "Leave that to me."
She stepped to the edge of the ridge and looked down at the town. Through the Byakugan-loaded lenses, the world transformed. The wooden buildings became skeletal outlines she could see through.
"Hoo boy. We've got company. A lot of it." Mai giggled, her head turning slowly as she scanned.
"Report what you see…" Ebizo sighed.
"East side of town, near the river docks. Four shinobi, moving together. They're sticking to the alleys and side streets, avoiding the main road. One of them is carrying something heavy." She squinted. "They've got headbands. Iwa-nin."
"Stone, okay." Ebizo said.
"South side. Two signatures on a rooftop near the market. They've been sitting there for at least ten minutes. Not moving. Just watching." Mai's head shifted. "I can see weapons. Swords, I think."
"Kiri, possibly."
"And..." Mai's face changed. She went still. "Northwest. In the trees. Three signatures. No, four. They're in the treetops on the far side of the valley. Really well hidden. I almost missed them."
"Village?"
"Green flak jackets. One of them has... huh." Mai tilted her head. "One of them has really weird eyes. Their chakra around the eye area is, I don't know how to describe it. It's brighter than the rest of their body. Like it's concentrated in their face. And they're looking around the same way I am. Like they can see everything. It's really similar to how K-"
"Leaf." Ebizo realized.
"And that one with the eyes is looking right at us." Mai said.
"Right now?" Pakura asked.
"Right now. Staring straight at this ridge. At us. They know we're here."
"Hyuga most likely." Ebizo already understood. Ebizo was quiet for a moment. Then he stepped back from the ridge's edge, further into the tree line. "Pull back. All of you."
Karura froze behind her scarf.
Mai could see it. Had always been able to see it. The glasses read chakra, and her transformation only dressed the surface; every time she'd opened the Byakugan on a mission, Mai had been standing next to her watching her best friend's eyes light up the same way that Leaf nin's were lit up right now. Mai had known for months. Mai had known and thought so little of it that she'd nearly said it out loud on a ridge in enemy territory, in front of everyone, because to Mai it was just another thing about Karura, like the scarf. There was no malice in her anywhere. There was also no lid on her. That would need another secret between them.
The Hyuga was a different problem, because the Hyuga was Mai's glasses with a brain behind them.
Everything Mai could see, he could see. Through her transformation like it was fog on a window. He hadn't looked yet, not really, he'd found four Suna shinobi on a ridge and that was all, but they were here for the same scroll he was, which meant eventually she would be looked at. And the first time that white gaze settled on her face in earnest, he would see what Mai saw, and unlike Mai, he would understand it.
She began thinking.
She couldn't stay out of his sight; three hundred and fifty-nine degrees and kilometers deep. She couldn't rely on the Transformation Jutsu; those eyes ignored it. She couldn't explain it after the fact; there was no story in the world where a Suna baker's daughter carried the bloodline of a clan that had never once let its eyes leave Konoha. Theft would be the kindest thing they could accuse her of. And if her own sensei could only be trusted up to the line where the village began, then Konoha's patience for a mystery like her would be short.
The information could not exist. It was that simple. It could only end one way for them…
None of the Leaf nin could go home.
She was a little surprised at how quiet the thought was. She was sorry about it and what she had to do but it changed nothing at all.
"Hyuga?" Mai didn't know what they were.
"I'll explain later." Ebizo told her. They retreated into the town's crowd. "The Leaf team knows our position. That changes our approach. We can't set up on this ridge." He looked at Mai. "Keep scanning. I want to know every team you can find and where they are. Update me every hour."
"Got it, sensei." Mai was already looking through the trees, her head turning in slow sweeps.
"How many teams total?" Karura asked.
Mai counted. Her lips moved silently. "The Iwa squad on the east side. The two on the roof who might be Kiri. The Leaf team in the trees. And..." She kept scanning, her head turning further south, then west, then back. "Two more signatures on the north road coming into town. Moving fast. Headbands visible. I don't recognize the symbol."
"That could be anyone. A smaller village trying their luck." Pakura said.
"Could be. Mai, keep tracking them. For now, we assume every signature you identify is hostile until proven otherwise." Ebizo agreed.
"What's our plan?" Pakura asked.
"We gather intel from inside the town. Separate but close. We locate the broker before the exchange happens and take him before anyone else can. Mai is our eyes. She guides us to the target and warns us if anyone moves on our position."
"And when someone does move on our position?" Karura asked.
"Then we earn our A-rank pay."
Mai couldn't help but shiver in excitement at those words.
They relocated south along the ridgeline, dropping into the valley through a ravine that kept them below the tree line and out of sight from the Leaf team's position. By late afternoon they'd circled to the southern approach, entering Takimura through a gate on the riverside that was busy enough with merchant traffic to hide four more bodies.
The town was louder up close. Street vendors calling out prices. Children running between market stalls. Music from a tea house on the corner. The smell of grilled fish and fresh bread and river water and a hundred other things that didn't exist in the Land of Wind.
Mai wrinkled her nose. "Even the food smells wrong."
"It smells wonderful, you just want to hate it because it's not from the Land of Wind." Karura told her.
"Traitor."
They found an inn on a side street near the center of town. A small quiet kind of place that didn't ask questions about four travelers who paid in advance and wanted rooms facing the street. Ebizo took a room on the second floor. The girls shared one across the hall.
That evening, they gathered in Ebizo's room with the shutters cracked open and the sounds of the town drifting in from below. Mai sat on the windowsill, her glasses catching the lamplight, her eyes moving constantly as she scanned through the walls and buildings around them.
"The Stone squad moved. They're in a building on the east side. Looks like an inn. All four of them in one room. Their heavy guy is still carrying whatever that thing is." she said.
"The Kiri pair?"
"Still on the roof near the market. No, wait. One of them moved. He's inside the building below. Tea house, maybe? The other one's still on the roof."
"Leaf?"
Mai was quiet for a second. "Gone."
"Gone?"
"I can't find them. They were in the treetops northwest of town and now they're not there. I've been checking every few minutes and the last time I found them was an hour ago."
Ebizo's jaw tightened. A team with a sensor that could match Mai's glasses, one that had already spotted them from across a valley, disappearing from her sight entirely.
"Keep looking. They're still here. They just don't want to be found." He said.
"Those tree-hugging cowards…" Mai said.
"That's Konoha." Pakura smirked in agreement.
Pakura sat on the floor with her back against the wall, her arms crossed. "So we have Iwa, Kiri, Leaf, and unknowns. All of them in the same town. All of them here for the same person. And the broker hasn't even shown himself yet."
"He will. Tomorrow or the day after. He's letting the buyers gather. The more villages that show up, the more leverage he thinks he has." Ebizo said.
The room was quiet for a moment. Outside, the town's evening noise rose and fell. Laughter from the tea house down the street. A dog barking. The distant splash of something hitting the river.
"Get some rest, girls. Tomorrow we start hunting. Mai, you're on watch until midnight. Wake Pakura for the second shift. Karura takes the third." Ebizo said.
"Yes, Sensei." The girls responded.
Mai was already looking through the walls again, her head turning in slow arcs, her glasses catching the lamplight in faint violet reflections.
The town settled into night around them.