WIP/teaser - Teamwork -- sidefic/prequel/OC POV
Okay, I was asked twice about stuff that happens in this fic, so here it is. I think I've posted bits and pieces of this before in comments, idk, most people probably didn't see them.
It's not complete, I wanted to put in the Anko scene as well and some things drag on a bit and need to be trimmed. It's from a random Chuunin OC who was on surveillance detail the night Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura hook up and before Teamwork 1 starts.
I kinda love the old broad. She's... really bitter. XD
(also i probably should edit the part where she thinks naruto looks like a clone of minato and not like his mom at all, since canon said it was the other way around and i find it adorable that naruto is basically boy-kushina. Proof that this fic is WAY TOO OLD!)
"And a good day to you, Haimisu-san!" the grocer calls cheerfully. Ikusa grunts back and nods dryly, trudging her way up the street. She doesn't pause; the grocer is an endless fount of information, but Ikusa has better things to do right now than sift through a half-hour of gossip to extract the interesting bits.
She stomps her way up the rickety stairs, careful to hit the middle of the seventh step and avoid the eleventh entirely. Aunt Kushuka is almost blind and her arthritis keeps her crooked, but she's neither deaf nor unable to throw a weapon yet.
"I'm home," Ikusa announces, before she steps in.
She finds her aunt slumped in her chair by the window, napping quite heartily, a finger hooked through the loop of a kunai. The blade is dirty with damp earth, and one of the plants on the windowsill looks freshly repotted. When she was a brat barely out of the academy, so long ago, Ikusa used to lecture her aunt about how weapons weren't supposed to be deliberately dirtied, and she was dulling the edge, and she would ruin the leg sheath. And her aunt laughed and asked her if she knew that kunai had started their life as a gardening utensil, and gave her a full history lesson on the first ninja and their traditions.
Nowadays Ikusa still remembers the traditions, but aunt Kushuka doesn't. Ikusa keeps them anyway, even if she has no one to pass them down to.
She closes the window, covers her aunt with a shawl, and then goes about putting away her purchases. She doesn't make an effort to be quiet; aunt Kushuka's memories might be wandering to and fro, but shinobi instincts aren't so easily forgotten, and total silence would wake her up more surely than any kind of noise.
Ikusa makes dinner for two, nothing complicated. During the dinner, her aunt calls Ikusa "Mommy," and Ikusa forces a fake smile and berates Kushuka gently when she doesn't eat her vegetables.
"I'll be out again tonight," she says, even though she knows her aunt will forget. "Gappeki-san will come and keep you company. Be nice to him, will you?"
She doesn't have high hopes. Her aunt was a brat in her youth. Thankfully, she gets tired fast, and her failing body limits her a lot, but she still has the creativity.
When she leaves she brushes a quick, discreet kiss on her sleeping aunt's brow, just over the claw scar that digs a furrow through half of Kushuka's forehead, and she promises she won't let the Kyuubi get at anyone else ever again if she can help it.
+
He always looks so normal -- ill-mannered and loud, but outgoing too. She is told that some people find that endearing.
Ikusa knows what lurks behind those smiles. She cannot understand how anyone who knows would still be taken in. Perhaps it would help if they had also read his files.
The incident where he chased down his teammate and shoved an arm through his lung was only a warning to pay closer attention -- not the act of stopping a traitor, no (she still does not understand why Uchiha Sasuke walked out of that hospital with his chakra pathways intact and his tendons in one piece), but the bestial savagery of it. By the time he was fifteen, he'd gone rabid on a target, dismembered and torn him into very literal shreds with claws and teeth, and eaten part of his throat and face. She just cannot accept that the people in charge at the time just swept that little information under the rug, as if it had been an isolated accident and not a sign of escalation.
She never expected the Copy Ninja to be taken in by the simple trick she sees, by the fact that the creature's face is an almost perfect double of his dead teacher, with no trace of the mother that should have contributed roughly half of its traits. She wonders that Hatake doesn't seem to know kitsune are shapeshifters, that no one seems to question the likelihood of that familiar, well-respected face being used as protective camouflage.
She doesn't bring up that theory. No one wants it to be true; they'd discount it out of hand, and then discount everything else she might bring up, even when it's rooted in nothing but pure fact. But when she reads this week's reports the signs are there, scattered across twelve different lenses from twelve different observers.
...Happier than usual today! Him and his pranks. ...
...Roughhoused with Inuzuka Kiba of Team Kurenai. Left a few bites. ...
...Sulkier than usual today...
...Twitchy. Response time to unexpected movements in his direction at least a half-second faster...
...B-rank mission : Target had to be hospitalized. Broken limbs, deep lacerations, needed blood transfusion...
...That's three times the idiot's tried to grope Haruno in five hours! What the hell is going on in his hormonal little head, it's not like he doesn't notice she bitchslaps him through more and more walls with each repeat, right? God. ...
It's her turn now.
She would have liked to take over as Hatake leaves for parts unknown, but the man rarely has the courtesy to wait until he is relieved; Team Seven's members are long finished with their latest report and gone by the time she reaches the mission center. Ikusa utters a short, irritated sigh, and goes to buy bread for the pigeons.
Little gray-haired woman, all sinews and stringy muscles, with a tight braid that pulls at her temples. She looks more approachable, more harmless, more part of the background, when she's sitting there throwing crumbs on the ground and watching birds gather at her feet.
Mostly she feeds the useless flying rats because the flock of them will hide any messenger pigeon she summons and sends off. But it takes time, time for her pigeons to spread over the town, time to search the streets, to scan the crowds, and more time to fly back to her and report. A half-hour passes, and then a hour, and soon the whole bread is gone and she has two sparrows perched on her knee.
They're cute, she has to grant them that. And the satisfied cooing surrounding her is soothing to her nerves. But it's been a hour and a half now and anything could be happening, though she certainly hopes the target is simply spending time indoors somewhere...
Somewhere that isn't Haruno's or Uchiha's or Umino's place or anywhere else he's known to go.
Old, two-toed Ashige scares the sparrows when he hawk-dives for her. He lands on her shoulder -- not the left one, signifying a report to give -- but the right one; action.
"Target?"
"Bar district," the old pigeon rumbles in her ear, with a voice deeper than such a small body should produce. "I'll lead you," he says. He takes off from her shoulder, and she takes off after him, kicking off the bench and racing his shadow on the roofs.
Bar district, huh. She doesn't like that much. Anyone is more rowdy after a drink or two. The Kyuubi Jinchuuriki is not even close to being 'anyone'.
It's getting dark outside, the streetlamps and lanterns dancing colored lights on the crowds of party-goers, and throwing the rest in shadows. Her genjutsu is good, but she knows today she can't use it; he's in the company of his teammates. The girl tends to be observant of such things, but she has no schooling past the very basics; the day Ikusa is unmasked by a teenager with no bloodline and no training is the day she retires. The traitor would probably see through them, though. She keeps to the darkest roofs.
She notices the pink hair first. The three of them are still together, and for a moment she almost relaxes, because it's a documented fact that the target gets more keyed up when his teammates are out of sight too long. Granted, that tends to take a few days to really become noticeable...
There's something in the way he moves through the crowd. Something in the way his fingers curl around his teammates' wrists. It looks like a friendly hold at first glance, but it's tense enough, strong enough, that Ikusa can tell they'd have a hard time breaking free.
Ashige ruffles his wings and huddles on her shoulder, peering with beady eyes at the predator winding its way through the herd down below. She runs a knuckle against the smooth feathers of his throat.
"What do you think?" she asks. He doesn't answer right away, twitching his head to track the target's progress.
"-- lost him."
Ikusa goes tense all over. It shouldn't be possible to lose a trio of teenagers moving as a unit, and two of them with pale hair colors that stand out against the crowd. But they're gone from sight all the same.
It's been happening more often in the last two months. She knows it. They all know it. The target's awareness of being watched is growing. Three weeks ago one of Ikusa's partners was even knocked down as Uzumaki changed directions brutally, without warning. He helped her up. He saw her face. Ikusa's superior had to reassign the woman -- too dangerous otherwise. But there's no way to tell if he's identified anyone else.
Their supervisors said reassigning Sumire was just routine procedure. But Ikusa knows what lurks behind those eyes, what watches through. She couldn't afford to hope it truly was an accident, already forgotten.
She sends Ashige to circle overhead, but a pigeon's eyes are no good in the dark, and it takes a long time before they finds him again, cutting through back streets with single-minded purpose. He's aiming straight for home, teammates still in tow. She waits for them to get inside the building, for the lights to turn on in that apartment, and then a little bit longer, just in case they're only picking something up and leaving. Ashige tells her they're seated in the living room and drinking some more, so Ikusa decides it's safe enough for her to leave the immediate vicinity of her target's apartment and go to the only vantage point that lets watchers see inside it. The apartment might be small and in a bad area of town, but it's on the top floor of a tall building and there are no other apartments so high nearby.
She gets to the small room they use, blocks away -- a good thing she has powerful binoculars. She trains them on the balcony window.
The sky is dark. The inside of the room is lit up. There are absolutely no inconvenient reflections on the glass.
Her target hasn't even bothered to entirely undress either himself or the body under him. At first she can't even tell which one it is -- the traitor or the girl -- and then she realizes it's both, kind of, piled together in a boneless tangle as he ruts inside them. She sees a flash of white fangs as he bites the traitor's shoulder, as he pulls out of the girl to force himself inside the traitor instead.
For a second he opens his eyes wider than those predatory slits, and they're red.
They're red.
"Ashige," she says, voice surprisingly calm, all things considered. "Code three. Go."
She keeps watching, grim, a little sick. She can tell his teammates are acting strange -- sluggish, pupils blown, eyes not tracking as well as they should, halfway between drunk and drugged. Often the Jinchuuriki forgets himself and breaks the mask of happy, horny teenagerhood, and underneath there is only a feral kind of hunger that destroys all pretense of humanity.
A code three is a serious threat -- the fox acting through. No transformation yet but she feels it might yet be triggered. She should have reinforcements in a matter of minutes.
They don't come.
Ashige gets back first, lands on her shoulder, and they wait. And they wait.
"Fujita is on duty tonight, isn't he."
Ikusa grits her teeth. Fujita is a spineless yes-man who should never have been a ninja, only good to play mediator for office politics. No doubt he passed the bucket to the closest superior officer he could find, instead of making any decision of his own.
Uzumaki is rough with his teammates, bordering on violent, and Ikusa doesn't understand why neither of them resists. The girl should be punching the target for taking liberties, not spreading her legs. The traitor should be trying to kill them both for witnessing his shame, for seeing him bent over on his knees. They just keep looking drugged.
Ashige tilts his little head. "Weren't there legends about kitsune feeding on energies via sex?"
She starts swearing under her breath. "If that's what's happening here, by the time my support comes they'll both be dead. Damn it."
The traitor himself might not be a big loss, but the loss of his eyes will have people looking for someone to blame. The girl simply doesn't deserve it, it isn't like she chose her teammates, like the higher-ups were allowing people to warn her about what they are.
That'll teach those fluff-brained morons not to listen to her warnings. Hasn't she warned them enough already?
It's almost a half-hour later when two chuunin and a jounin land on the roof and slide into the observation room, and by then the Kyuubi boy has dragged his prey out of sight into some other room. She reports what she saw tersely, jaw clenched shut. She knows what's going to happen even before the jounin, Suzuki, opens his mouth.
"Well. He's not violent now. He might become so if we interrupt."
The younger of the chuunin, bless his innocent little heart, stiffens in offense. "So it's alright to let him keep raping them?"
The jounin scowls, using offense to hide unease. "We don't know that it's truly rape. They're teenagers. They're drunk. Those things happen."
The other chuunin -- a Branch Hyuuga in her thirties -- shapes a hand seal, squints through the walls, and then makes a disgusted grimace as she lets the jutsu go. "They're just having sex. And for god's sake don't make me look again."
Ikusa scowls. The Hyuuga barely looked thirty seconds, in the middle of the action; how can she determine whether it's consensual? Especially if drugs or Kitsune powers are involved.
"Either way, his behavior was clearly animalistic, and I didn't dream the fangs and the red eyes. If you'll review the reports you will notice the trend -- he's been increasingly agitated all week, and now with the alcohol who knows what could happen. He might--" she reminds herself to be diplomatic, keep going with the more widely accepted theory that the boy Naruto even exists as his own separate entity, "-- he might lose control and do something he might regret."
"Such as?" the jounin inquires, sarcastic.
Ikusa's upper lip curls. "Such as going for a lovebite and forgetting he has fangs. I might have forgotten to mention he has exhibited a marked tendency for throat and nape bites already." She didn't forget. She just doesn't think the man really understands what that behavior implies.
She stares at Suzuki. Suzuki stares back for a long moment, and then he lets out an explosive sigh and turns to his team to discuss it, neatly cutting her out of the discussion.
"We need permission from the Council."
"They're all asleep. They won't be happy to be woken up for nothing." The way Suzuki glances at Ikusa, what he thinks is clear -- he thinks she's paranoid, making mountains of molehills.
Ikusa has never known a mole to raze a whole village to the ground. She closes her eyes and prays for strength. Bureaucracy in inaction.
"We should request further instructions," Suzuki decides.
She summons a pigeon in pointed silence and hands it to them.
At least Suzuki isn't completely stupid; he also asks for support troops, just in case the situation suddenly escalates. They are, after all, in the middle of a housing district. Of course that means the higher-ups will be twice as scared to trigger a panic with an ill-timed intervention.
She waits and she waits, watching as her pigeons tremble and force against their instinct to even fly in the direction of her target's den. She thinks she might even feel the pulses of inhuman chakra brush against her skin, even from that distance.
The Hyuuga has gone grim, quiet between two reports on the state of his chakra. "Gold," she'll say, and then "Orange," more tersely, and relax with "White" or "Blue."
The blue state never lasts. Ikusa waits for the time when the flashes of orange will turn to flame red.
+
It takes the higher-ups another three full hours to decide to send a small team of powerful, competent people who the Kyuubi host might not want to annihilate on sight. At worst they can probably extract themselves. The first Ikusa hears about that is when Hatake Kakashi, Sarutobi Asuma and Mitarashi Anko walk into the small observation room.
Mitarashi is scowling, chewing almost viciously on a small wooden stick which splinters under her teeth. Sarutobi looks weary, or maybe half-asleep, it's hard to tell. Hatake doesn't show anything, not even a fake smile.
He asks for a detailed report. She gives it. He nods absently, thanks her without meaning it, and turns to the Hyuuga for more information.
Turns out in the meantime Team Seven have fallen asleep.
The tension in the room peters out. Ikusa even allows herself to relax a little. It's still not safe. He might wake up in the same state or worse. But at least for the moment nothing is happening.
The jounin spend the rest of the night playing cards. Ikusa keeps watch, and from time to time she allows herself to wonder if her aunt has slept well, whether she's had nightmares again. The neighbor knows how to take care of her, though. Aunt Kushuka will be fine.
It's not complete, I wanted to put in the Anko scene as well and some things drag on a bit and need to be trimmed. It's from a random Chuunin OC who was on surveillance detail the night Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura hook up and before Teamwork 1 starts.
I kinda love the old broad. She's... really bitter. XD
(also i probably should edit the part where she thinks naruto looks like a clone of minato and not like his mom at all, since canon said it was the other way around and i find it adorable that naruto is basically boy-kushina. Proof that this fic is WAY TOO OLD!)
"And a good day to you, Haimisu-san!" the grocer calls cheerfully. Ikusa grunts back and nods dryly, trudging her way up the street. She doesn't pause; the grocer is an endless fount of information, but Ikusa has better things to do right now than sift through a half-hour of gossip to extract the interesting bits.
She stomps her way up the rickety stairs, careful to hit the middle of the seventh step and avoid the eleventh entirely. Aunt Kushuka is almost blind and her arthritis keeps her crooked, but she's neither deaf nor unable to throw a weapon yet.
"I'm home," Ikusa announces, before she steps in.
She finds her aunt slumped in her chair by the window, napping quite heartily, a finger hooked through the loop of a kunai. The blade is dirty with damp earth, and one of the plants on the windowsill looks freshly repotted. When she was a brat barely out of the academy, so long ago, Ikusa used to lecture her aunt about how weapons weren't supposed to be deliberately dirtied, and she was dulling the edge, and she would ruin the leg sheath. And her aunt laughed and asked her if she knew that kunai had started their life as a gardening utensil, and gave her a full history lesson on the first ninja and their traditions.
Nowadays Ikusa still remembers the traditions, but aunt Kushuka doesn't. Ikusa keeps them anyway, even if she has no one to pass them down to.
She closes the window, covers her aunt with a shawl, and then goes about putting away her purchases. She doesn't make an effort to be quiet; aunt Kushuka's memories might be wandering to and fro, but shinobi instincts aren't so easily forgotten, and total silence would wake her up more surely than any kind of noise.
Ikusa makes dinner for two, nothing complicated. During the dinner, her aunt calls Ikusa "Mommy," and Ikusa forces a fake smile and berates Kushuka gently when she doesn't eat her vegetables.
"I'll be out again tonight," she says, even though she knows her aunt will forget. "Gappeki-san will come and keep you company. Be nice to him, will you?"
She doesn't have high hopes. Her aunt was a brat in her youth. Thankfully, she gets tired fast, and her failing body limits her a lot, but she still has the creativity.
When she leaves she brushes a quick, discreet kiss on her sleeping aunt's brow, just over the claw scar that digs a furrow through half of Kushuka's forehead, and she promises she won't let the Kyuubi get at anyone else ever again if she can help it.
+
He always looks so normal -- ill-mannered and loud, but outgoing too. She is told that some people find that endearing.
Ikusa knows what lurks behind those smiles. She cannot understand how anyone who knows would still be taken in. Perhaps it would help if they had also read his files.
The incident where he chased down his teammate and shoved an arm through his lung was only a warning to pay closer attention -- not the act of stopping a traitor, no (she still does not understand why Uchiha Sasuke walked out of that hospital with his chakra pathways intact and his tendons in one piece), but the bestial savagery of it. By the time he was fifteen, he'd gone rabid on a target, dismembered and torn him into very literal shreds with claws and teeth, and eaten part of his throat and face. She just cannot accept that the people in charge at the time just swept that little information under the rug, as if it had been an isolated accident and not a sign of escalation.
She never expected the Copy Ninja to be taken in by the simple trick she sees, by the fact that the creature's face is an almost perfect double of his dead teacher, with no trace of the mother that should have contributed roughly half of its traits. She wonders that Hatake doesn't seem to know kitsune are shapeshifters, that no one seems to question the likelihood of that familiar, well-respected face being used as protective camouflage.
She doesn't bring up that theory. No one wants it to be true; they'd discount it out of hand, and then discount everything else she might bring up, even when it's rooted in nothing but pure fact. But when she reads this week's reports the signs are there, scattered across twelve different lenses from twelve different observers.
...Happier than usual today! Him and his pranks. ...
...Roughhoused with Inuzuka Kiba of Team Kurenai. Left a few bites. ...
...Sulkier than usual today...
...Twitchy. Response time to unexpected movements in his direction at least a half-second faster...
...B-rank mission : Target had to be hospitalized. Broken limbs, deep lacerations, needed blood transfusion...
...That's three times the idiot's tried to grope Haruno in five hours! What the hell is going on in his hormonal little head, it's not like he doesn't notice she bitchslaps him through more and more walls with each repeat, right? God. ...
It's her turn now.
She would have liked to take over as Hatake leaves for parts unknown, but the man rarely has the courtesy to wait until he is relieved; Team Seven's members are long finished with their latest report and gone by the time she reaches the mission center. Ikusa utters a short, irritated sigh, and goes to buy bread for the pigeons.
Little gray-haired woman, all sinews and stringy muscles, with a tight braid that pulls at her temples. She looks more approachable, more harmless, more part of the background, when she's sitting there throwing crumbs on the ground and watching birds gather at her feet.
Mostly she feeds the useless flying rats because the flock of them will hide any messenger pigeon she summons and sends off. But it takes time, time for her pigeons to spread over the town, time to search the streets, to scan the crowds, and more time to fly back to her and report. A half-hour passes, and then a hour, and soon the whole bread is gone and she has two sparrows perched on her knee.
They're cute, she has to grant them that. And the satisfied cooing surrounding her is soothing to her nerves. But it's been a hour and a half now and anything could be happening, though she certainly hopes the target is simply spending time indoors somewhere...
Somewhere that isn't Haruno's or Uchiha's or Umino's place or anywhere else he's known to go.
Old, two-toed Ashige scares the sparrows when he hawk-dives for her. He lands on her shoulder -- not the left one, signifying a report to give -- but the right one; action.
"Target?"
"Bar district," the old pigeon rumbles in her ear, with a voice deeper than such a small body should produce. "I'll lead you," he says. He takes off from her shoulder, and she takes off after him, kicking off the bench and racing his shadow on the roofs.
Bar district, huh. She doesn't like that much. Anyone is more rowdy after a drink or two. The Kyuubi Jinchuuriki is not even close to being 'anyone'.
It's getting dark outside, the streetlamps and lanterns dancing colored lights on the crowds of party-goers, and throwing the rest in shadows. Her genjutsu is good, but she knows today she can't use it; he's in the company of his teammates. The girl tends to be observant of such things, but she has no schooling past the very basics; the day Ikusa is unmasked by a teenager with no bloodline and no training is the day she retires. The traitor would probably see through them, though. She keeps to the darkest roofs.
She notices the pink hair first. The three of them are still together, and for a moment she almost relaxes, because it's a documented fact that the target gets more keyed up when his teammates are out of sight too long. Granted, that tends to take a few days to really become noticeable...
There's something in the way he moves through the crowd. Something in the way his fingers curl around his teammates' wrists. It looks like a friendly hold at first glance, but it's tense enough, strong enough, that Ikusa can tell they'd have a hard time breaking free.
Ashige ruffles his wings and huddles on her shoulder, peering with beady eyes at the predator winding its way through the herd down below. She runs a knuckle against the smooth feathers of his throat.
"What do you think?" she asks. He doesn't answer right away, twitching his head to track the target's progress.
"-- lost him."
Ikusa goes tense all over. It shouldn't be possible to lose a trio of teenagers moving as a unit, and two of them with pale hair colors that stand out against the crowd. But they're gone from sight all the same.
It's been happening more often in the last two months. She knows it. They all know it. The target's awareness of being watched is growing. Three weeks ago one of Ikusa's partners was even knocked down as Uzumaki changed directions brutally, without warning. He helped her up. He saw her face. Ikusa's superior had to reassign the woman -- too dangerous otherwise. But there's no way to tell if he's identified anyone else.
Their supervisors said reassigning Sumire was just routine procedure. But Ikusa knows what lurks behind those eyes, what watches through. She couldn't afford to hope it truly was an accident, already forgotten.
She sends Ashige to circle overhead, but a pigeon's eyes are no good in the dark, and it takes a long time before they finds him again, cutting through back streets with single-minded purpose. He's aiming straight for home, teammates still in tow. She waits for them to get inside the building, for the lights to turn on in that apartment, and then a little bit longer, just in case they're only picking something up and leaving. Ashige tells her they're seated in the living room and drinking some more, so Ikusa decides it's safe enough for her to leave the immediate vicinity of her target's apartment and go to the only vantage point that lets watchers see inside it. The apartment might be small and in a bad area of town, but it's on the top floor of a tall building and there are no other apartments so high nearby.
She gets to the small room they use, blocks away -- a good thing she has powerful binoculars. She trains them on the balcony window.
The sky is dark. The inside of the room is lit up. There are absolutely no inconvenient reflections on the glass.
Her target hasn't even bothered to entirely undress either himself or the body under him. At first she can't even tell which one it is -- the traitor or the girl -- and then she realizes it's both, kind of, piled together in a boneless tangle as he ruts inside them. She sees a flash of white fangs as he bites the traitor's shoulder, as he pulls out of the girl to force himself inside the traitor instead.
For a second he opens his eyes wider than those predatory slits, and they're red.
They're red.
"Ashige," she says, voice surprisingly calm, all things considered. "Code three. Go."
She keeps watching, grim, a little sick. She can tell his teammates are acting strange -- sluggish, pupils blown, eyes not tracking as well as they should, halfway between drunk and drugged. Often the Jinchuuriki forgets himself and breaks the mask of happy, horny teenagerhood, and underneath there is only a feral kind of hunger that destroys all pretense of humanity.
A code three is a serious threat -- the fox acting through. No transformation yet but she feels it might yet be triggered. She should have reinforcements in a matter of minutes.
They don't come.
Ashige gets back first, lands on her shoulder, and they wait. And they wait.
"Fujita is on duty tonight, isn't he."
Ikusa grits her teeth. Fujita is a spineless yes-man who should never have been a ninja, only good to play mediator for office politics. No doubt he passed the bucket to the closest superior officer he could find, instead of making any decision of his own.
Uzumaki is rough with his teammates, bordering on violent, and Ikusa doesn't understand why neither of them resists. The girl should be punching the target for taking liberties, not spreading her legs. The traitor should be trying to kill them both for witnessing his shame, for seeing him bent over on his knees. They just keep looking drugged.
Ashige tilts his little head. "Weren't there legends about kitsune feeding on energies via sex?"
She starts swearing under her breath. "If that's what's happening here, by the time my support comes they'll both be dead. Damn it."
The traitor himself might not be a big loss, but the loss of his eyes will have people looking for someone to blame. The girl simply doesn't deserve it, it isn't like she chose her teammates, like the higher-ups were allowing people to warn her about what they are.
That'll teach those fluff-brained morons not to listen to her warnings. Hasn't she warned them enough already?
It's almost a half-hour later when two chuunin and a jounin land on the roof and slide into the observation room, and by then the Kyuubi boy has dragged his prey out of sight into some other room. She reports what she saw tersely, jaw clenched shut. She knows what's going to happen even before the jounin, Suzuki, opens his mouth.
"Well. He's not violent now. He might become so if we interrupt."
The younger of the chuunin, bless his innocent little heart, stiffens in offense. "So it's alright to let him keep raping them?"
The jounin scowls, using offense to hide unease. "We don't know that it's truly rape. They're teenagers. They're drunk. Those things happen."
The other chuunin -- a Branch Hyuuga in her thirties -- shapes a hand seal, squints through the walls, and then makes a disgusted grimace as she lets the jutsu go. "They're just having sex. And for god's sake don't make me look again."
Ikusa scowls. The Hyuuga barely looked thirty seconds, in the middle of the action; how can she determine whether it's consensual? Especially if drugs or Kitsune powers are involved.
"Either way, his behavior was clearly animalistic, and I didn't dream the fangs and the red eyes. If you'll review the reports you will notice the trend -- he's been increasingly agitated all week, and now with the alcohol who knows what could happen. He might--" she reminds herself to be diplomatic, keep going with the more widely accepted theory that the boy Naruto even exists as his own separate entity, "-- he might lose control and do something he might regret."
"Such as?" the jounin inquires, sarcastic.
Ikusa's upper lip curls. "Such as going for a lovebite and forgetting he has fangs. I might have forgotten to mention he has exhibited a marked tendency for throat and nape bites already." She didn't forget. She just doesn't think the man really understands what that behavior implies.
She stares at Suzuki. Suzuki stares back for a long moment, and then he lets out an explosive sigh and turns to his team to discuss it, neatly cutting her out of the discussion.
"We need permission from the Council."
"They're all asleep. They won't be happy to be woken up for nothing." The way Suzuki glances at Ikusa, what he thinks is clear -- he thinks she's paranoid, making mountains of molehills.
Ikusa has never known a mole to raze a whole village to the ground. She closes her eyes and prays for strength. Bureaucracy in inaction.
"We should request further instructions," Suzuki decides.
She summons a pigeon in pointed silence and hands it to them.
At least Suzuki isn't completely stupid; he also asks for support troops, just in case the situation suddenly escalates. They are, after all, in the middle of a housing district. Of course that means the higher-ups will be twice as scared to trigger a panic with an ill-timed intervention.
She waits and she waits, watching as her pigeons tremble and force against their instinct to even fly in the direction of her target's den. She thinks she might even feel the pulses of inhuman chakra brush against her skin, even from that distance.
The Hyuuga has gone grim, quiet between two reports on the state of his chakra. "Gold," she'll say, and then "Orange," more tersely, and relax with "White" or "Blue."
The blue state never lasts. Ikusa waits for the time when the flashes of orange will turn to flame red.
+
It takes the higher-ups another three full hours to decide to send a small team of powerful, competent people who the Kyuubi host might not want to annihilate on sight. At worst they can probably extract themselves. The first Ikusa hears about that is when Hatake Kakashi, Sarutobi Asuma and Mitarashi Anko walk into the small observation room.
Mitarashi is scowling, chewing almost viciously on a small wooden stick which splinters under her teeth. Sarutobi looks weary, or maybe half-asleep, it's hard to tell. Hatake doesn't show anything, not even a fake smile.
He asks for a detailed report. She gives it. He nods absently, thanks her without meaning it, and turns to the Hyuuga for more information.
Turns out in the meantime Team Seven have fallen asleep.
The tension in the room peters out. Ikusa even allows herself to relax a little. It's still not safe. He might wake up in the same state or worse. But at least for the moment nothing is happening.
The jounin spend the rest of the night playing cards. Ikusa keeps watch, and from time to time she allows herself to wonder if her aunt has slept well, whether she's had nightmares again. The neighbor knows how to take care of her, though. Aunt Kushuka will be fine.