Hazō quickly weighed retreat versus advance. If there was a friendly ninja over there, and one in enough danger to use exploding tags, then there was no time to lose. By the time Team Kurosawa reported back to base and got backup, the person in need of help would almost certainly be dead. And on the off-chance that it was a neutral ninja (perhaps the inhabitant of that mysterious shelter from earlier), rescuing them from a threat would be a great way to establish first contact.

But if it was an enemy... well, if it was an enemy, then they'd need to find out as fast as possible so they could warn the base. And the enemy couldn't be that tough if they were being forced to use exploding tags against the local wildlife—something even Hazō's genin team hadn't needed to do so far. Of course, if Hazō's assumptions were wrong, then he and his team would die horribly. Just like most missions.

Oh. There was one more possibility.

"Dispel!"

Nothing happened, which was definitely for the best. A genjutsu user would mean a chūnin or jōnin enemy.

Hazō quickly made a series of hand signals. Primary. Stealth. Secondary. Speed. Pincer Formation Three. He didn't know the sign for the Water Clone Technique, but improvised. Water. Clone. Take Point.

Wakahisa's two clones moved to the front of the formation, and the party began to move.

After a few seconds, Mori, still facing forward, suddenly moved her hand out towards Wakahisa, and made a series of signs. Abort. Ninjutsu. Risk of Exposure.

The movement being in Wakahisa's peripheral vision, it took him a second to notice and react. In that second, one of his clones moved too close to a clearly visible banshee lizard, and the creature let loose one of its characteristic paralytic shrieks before vanishing into the water.

Damn damn damn. Hazō had overlooked, and Wakahisa had failed to remind him, that water clones only had a small fraction of the original's skill and power—and Wakahisa's sneaking skills were already the minimum required to qualify as a genin. Now anything in the target area (and quite a large range nearby) would know that they were coming.

The team abandoned any pretence of stealth, and ran.

o-o-o-o

Of course, the area was completely empty.

"Great job," a frustrated and humiliated Hazō told Wakahisa. "I thought Mist didn't use distraction genin anymore, but since I'm clearly wrong, I'll get Shikigami-sensei to issue you the standard black pyjamas."

"Oh, yeah?" Wakahisa shot back, his face a vivid shade of pink. "Well, maybe it is my fault—for trusting our glorious leader to pay attention when giving orders. You're supposed to know your teammates' abilities off by heart instead of—"

"Boys."

If looks could kill, Mori would never have been assigned to Logistics & Support.

"Moving on..." Hazō said once the petrification had worn off, "we need to fan out and look for clues as to what happened here. Five minutes, then we report back to Shikigami-sensei."

The source of the explosion wasn't hard to find. There was a big, roughly spherical dent in a nearby ridge, the remaining soil covered with blood. If there were any other remains, Hazō suspected, they were somewhere deep under the water, and would probably be consumed by the local fauna before any detailed investigation could locate them.

What was odd was that there were no other signs of battle. No ninjutsu damage, no kunai or shuriken sticking out of any surfaces, no lesser predators drawn by blood in the water. Could it be that—

"Kurosawa, Wakahisa, you need to see this."

Mori led them to a nearby tree. Something glinted in the sunlight among the branches. No, not something. A forehead protector, its location about right for a small object thrown clear by the explosion.

The sight of its torn blue cloth sent a chill down Hazō's spine in a way that the splatter of blood on the ridge had not. Forehead protectors were an easily-replaced and rarely-useful piece of armour, but they were also sacred. The forehead protector was the spirit of a ninja; it was what you brought back when you couldn't retrieve the body.

And the symbol this one bore consisted of five lines. The four wavy lines of water-unbound-by-form, slashed by the sharp horizontal line of the missing-nin. Hazō's mother had explained to him once, in a particularly morose mood, that some missing-nin kept their forehead protectors the same, indicating that they had been forced to leave the village but were loyal in spirit. Others put a slash through theirs as if cutting away their past, faking the original marking only when an objective demanded it. To them, wearing an unaltered forehead protector was like wearing a dead lover's clothing.

What the forehead protector said, in short, was that an ally had died here.

"Check it out, but don't move it. The location might be important," Hazō said softly.

Wakahisa quickly found himself something else to investigate, while Mori obediently climbed up.

Her face was completely expressionless when she climbed down.

"I know this one."

At Hazō's questioning look, she elaborated. "Inoue-sensei told me that the scratch in the lower left-hand corner was from when a Hidden Rock sniper nearly killed her. She often tells. Told. She often told that story because of what she did to the sniper afterwards."

There was someone nearby powerful enough to take out Inoue-sensei. No prizes for guessing who.

"Well," the voice came from behind him. "So far, all according to plan."

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Hazō whirled around, a kunai already in his hand. But what he saw froze him in his tracks.

Inoue-sensei, completely unharmed, gave him a friendly smile. "I knew you wouldn't have any trouble with those steelbacks."

Hazō's mind went into overdrive. If Inoue-sensei was dead, this was an impostor. But an impostor wouldn't pretend to be her right when they found evidence of her death. Therefore Inoue-sensei wasn't dead.

If Inoue-sensei wasn't dead but it looked like she was, then she'd faked her own death. If she'd faked her own death, she wouldn't want any witnesses saying she was alive. That meant she was about to kill them. Talking to them first was odd, but it fit her character. She'd been their teacher, if only briefly, and that meant she'd want to say goodbye.

Knowing he was probably already dead, Hazō threw the kunai anyway.

It passed right through Inoue-sensei as if she were a ghost.

"Dispel!"

Everything stayed exactly the same. Hazō stared at his hands, still in the sealing position, as if they'd turned into venomous serpents.

"Dispel! Dispel! Dispel!"

Nothing.

"Good reflexes, Hazō!" Inoue-sensei beamed, unconcerned. "Here's the thing, though. A genjutsu mistress facing three genin who only just learned the technique? From that same mistress, no less? I can just overwhelm you with pure chakra. It's not something that comes up very much, because if you're that much stronger than the enemy, you don't normally need to bother with genjutsu in the first place."

Then there was only silence. No background noise of lethal swamp monsters seeking their prey. No bubbling of random gases escaping the water. Not even a breath of wind disturbing the leaves on the few nearby trees. Just silence.

"Will you kill us?" Even now, Mori's voice was barely audible.

"Come on, kids. If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn't stop for a chat first." Inoue-sensei rolled her eyes.

"Then…" Mori's eyes widened with some peculiar combination of fear and hope. "You intend to to ask us to flee with you!"

"You see? This is why I love my Mori!" In a blur of unreal motion, Inoue-sensei appeared in front of Mori, and wrapped her arms around the girl in an affectionate hug.

Mori went completely still, her arms down at her sides and her expression blank. Inoue-sensei winced, quickly disengaged and took a step back.

"Anyway, you've got it in one."

Wakahisa frowned sceptically. "Why would you want to run away? You and Shikigami-sensei gave that whole speech about how we had everything covered."

"Shikigami, huh?" Inoue-sensei sighed. "You know, when he described his plan to me and Kanna back in Mist, it all sounded perfect. Save lives, avoid the coming war, found a new village based on new ideals, do this, do that, contingency plans for absolutely everything…

"But I don't think he can pull it off anymore. Leaf is coming for us, Captain Zabuza is coming for us, and Shikigami doesn't have control of the big picture the way he thought he would. His plan to beat Captain Zabuza ? It's suicide, and even if it works, it doesn't solve anything. So Captain Zabuza dies. All that's going to happen is that the Mizukage is suddenly going to take us a lot more seriously. And I don't need to tell you why that would be bad.

"I don't want to die, kids. Rarely have, never will. But I'm an infiltration specialist. I know when to cut my losses and run, and I know how to make a clean getaway. That's why I've spent the last week pretending to pretend that I wasn't in despair. That's why I'm using up half the blood in my storage seals and why I've chosen a point on one of the more frequent patrol routes. When Captain Zabuza turns up, all he's going to get out of whoever he tortures is that I took my own life. Maybe he'll believe it and maybe he won't, but either way it beats sitting in that cave waiting to get killed."

"You really think we can't beat Captain Zabuza ?" Hazō asked.

"Come on now. You think the Mizukage is going to send one of his star jōnin alone against worse than three-to-one odds? I don't know what's coming any more than you do, but it's going to be worse than Shikigami claims. Maybe we can win with the defensible location and the knowledge of the swamp and its dangers, or maybe Captain Zabuza picks us off one by one and lets whoever is left in the cave to starve. I won't pretend I don't love gambling, but the Legendary Sucker herself wouldn't take those odds."

The logic, now Hazō looked at it, was inescapable. They'd only ever talked about facing Captain Zabuza himself, which would be scary but manageable with three jōnin against one, but they didn't really know anything about what Mist was going to do. For that matter, it was only an assumption that the Mizukage would send Captain Zabuza. It could be someone else, someone with abilities completely different to the ones Shikigami-sensei was preparing to counter.

"All right," he nodded. "Why us? You know we'd only get in your way."

Before Inoue-sensei could answer, Hazō's own mind abruptly filled in the blank on the answer sheet.

"You want us as sacrificial pawns to slow down pursuit."

"It's always a pleasure hearing a genin think like a ninja," Inoue-sensei told him. "But the truth is, maybe, despite our differences, I'm a little like Shikigami after all. He knew the mission was going to have a high casualty rate, and he could have bailed on his own, but instead he decided to save everyone he could. I can't do that, but I can at least save someone. And you guys? Well, Keiko here is the most adorable thing ever, and I get the feeling that if I invited just her, she'd ask me to bring you guys along anyway.

"Not that I mind too much. Mako and I go way back—went way back—and I'd feel bad if I let her one of her genin trainees die."

Warned by some primal instinct, Hazō tried to dodge the inevitable. But Inoue-sensei cheated, and the very fabric of unreality twisted and warped around his head, ruffling his hair while Inoue-sensei remained at long range. Hazō scowled, and made a note to brush up on his Dispelling Technique.

"And Noburi? I want to see if you can fulfil your potential. You could be a real ladykiller one day, if you can just learn how to use your tongue properly—and rest assured, that's something I can teach you in detail." She gave Wakahisa a mischievous wink, causing the latter to do his best beetroot imitation.

Then the smile dropped off her face. "Serious time now. The way I see it, you've got four options. You can come with me. I won't lie to you: it won't be easy. Small groups of missing-nin get taken out all the time. But on the other hand, I'm the best when it comes to going unnoticed, and in my plan we won't be hanging around next door to the world's strongest ninja village going, 'Hey, we're a great big potential threat, come and deal with us.' As an extra layer of paranoia, I won't tell you where I'm going unless you're coming with, but I can sum it up in five words. The. Hell. Away. From. Here.

"Option two: you throw yourselves on Captain Zabuza's mercy. If you walk out into the swamp making it really clear that you're just three genin trying to surrender, he might be generous. Mist must be pissed at the loss of manpower, and getting some of it back will earn Captain Zabuza brownie points with the Mizukage. You will have to tell him every tiniest detail about the base and the rest of the group, meaning you'll be signing their death sentence, but if you're OK with that, and if you play up the 'we were forced into it by a bunch of scary jōnin' angle, Mist may take you back into the fold.

"Option three: you start a rebellion. I'm not the only ninja questioning Shikigami's strategy, just the only one with the guts to take action. I'm not saying you try to fight Shikigami head-on, because the man is a combat monster, but if you and a bunch of others decide to straight-up walk out of there, what's he going to do? Kill you himself? Of course, a bigger group is also more likely to run into trouble on their way out.

"Final option: you follow Shikigami. He thinks he can take on all comers until he can strike some kind of deal with Leaf. I don't. Even if he manages to deal with Mist, Leaf has a hundred reasons to wipe us out and maybe a dozen to let us live. Hidden Swamp was a beautiful idea, and maybe if things were different it might even have worked. But we fled from a village whose ruler will do anything to eliminate traitors, and we chose to hide next door to a village so powerful that we can only exist at its mercy.

"Still, it's your life, and it's your decision."

She blinked as if remembering something. "Oh, yeah. Whatever you choose, I won't hurt you. You're in a forbidden genjutsu called Truth Lost in the Fog. As long as I'm willing to pay the price, I can choose for you to wake up as if you were dreaming, and forget everything you saw and heard.

"Now, make your choice. I have to be gone before the next patrol arrives."