Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. ~ Bertrand Russell

.

.

They said time flew when you were having fun. I wasn't exactly sure this counted as 'fun' but I was busy and that was almost the same. I wasn't the only one – Ino had taken a role in the Intelligence Division as well, and I knew that Team Kurenai and Team Gai had both been in and out of the village on missions.

"Where's Sasuke?" I yawned at sensei, bemused by the idea that he was here before my teammate. It was just wrong.

Kakashi-sensei shifted minutely. "He's doing some other training for a few weeks," he said. "He picked this up faster than you did."

"Of course he did," I said. I thought I was doing okay for not having a Sharingan and for having two hours every morning to train with. Sasuke spent every minute he wasn't on duty training. And that was no insignificant amount of time.

Kakashi-sensei crinkled his eye at me. Patronizingly. "A good blade makes up for a lot of deficits," he said sagely. "You'll manage."

Rude. Not untrue, probably, but rude. "You don't need to wake me up at five just to insult me," I grumped.

"Training, then," Sensei said, making a 'come on' gesture with his hand. "Use it this time."

I put back the plain sword he'd given me and took out the lightsaber instead. Up until now, I hadn't been training with it –starting at the basics and all that. Better to not build bad habits. Also, it was probably more dangerous if things went wrong.

But I couldn't stop the way the corner of my mouth kicked up when I ignited it. Kakashi-sensei drew his sword.

Two hours later, I hauled myself off the ground. Barely. "I regret everything," I said. "Why isn't Sasuke here to distract you? It's his duty."

Kakashi-sensei snorted softly. "Tough," he said. "You have a lot to learn and I'm not going to have a lot of time to teach you."

"You have a mission soon?" I asked, because he had been here every morning for a couple of weeks straight. Unless he was completing them really quickly he hadn't been out.

He hesitated, just a fraction. "Probably soon." He reached out, awkwardly, and patted my shoulder. "Later."

I blinked at the spot where he'd been, then decided it was just sensei being sensei, and trudged home. After breakfast there was sensory training which was – sometimes – less physically exerting but just as tiring in new and interesting ways. We'd upgraded from route exercises to practical applications which involved a lot of testing of ranges and sensitivities and trying to determine what jutsu had been used recently.

It took a lot of concentration. In a way, the chakra in the air that I'd been able to sense since birth was like a lot of white noise. There, in the background, but nothing I paid attention to on a regular basis. It was the large spikes of people's chakra signatures that I'd mostly focused on. And now I was trying to pick apart that white noise, to make it resolve into a picture of who and what and when.

In the Intel Division, I'd been upgraded from running coffees to helping field the influx of low priority, low classification reports – from people like Ami, mostly – that flooded in almost constantly. They were encoded – or encrypted, and yes, the two things were different – so they needed decoding. But we were also the first stop information handlers for them, responsible for making sure that the information was tagged relevantly for later searches, that it was passed along to the appropriate people and that personnel files were updated for reports received and that any skipped reports were noticed and investigated.

It didn't seem to fall under the context of the 'Cryptanalysis Team' but I was coming to find that job descriptions in Intel were either really freaking vague or deliberately wrong. There was a whole lot of unspoken 'you should just know' involved when trying to work out who should be signing what.

I had forgotten how much I hated petty office politics.

"Here," Aoba said, dropping a book down on the table in front of me. "The Bingo Books have finally been printed. This one is for you."

"Thank you," I said, picking it up to flick through. The Bingo Books went through print runs about once a year – and it was probably no surprise that those coincided with the Chunin Exams. While they had started off as a means for tracking missing ninja – and still mostly did – they had since expanded to a way of spreading information regarding skilled and dangerous ninja from other villages, and as promotional material for our own ninja.

Which was a bit of a double edged sword, because you could make anyone sound as amazing as you liked, but you were still putting out information on them.

"We'll probably get copies from the other villages soon," he continued, off hand. "The Special Jounin usually get together to go over them, if you wanted to join in."

I blinked, a little surprised at the offer. On one hand, I did not have the time. Like, at all. On the other, I also hadn't socialized with anyone of my new rank since being promoted and I really felt like I should. I'd been reminded that office politics were a thing and I should really be building good working relationships and all that. And a more work related topic was a better alternative than 'Friday night drinks' or whatever.

"Uhm, sure? Let me know when and I'll try and make it?" Which was really about the best that I could promise.

"Cool. Okay, so next week you'll probably be working with the Aviary, then after that I'll see if I can swing us some actual field work. Probably nothing hugely exciting but-"

The entire room suddenly went silent. The kind of silent where dozens of people cut themselves off in midword.

I'd sensed people arriving but people were always coming and going from the offices. We were working; it was busy. I didn't crane my head to look at the door, but only because whoever it was was coming this way.

"Aoba," Ibiki said, and no wonder everyone had gone completely silent. He cut an intimidating figure in his greys and black trench coat. "Shikako. Mind if I borrow her for a bit?" He raised an eyebrow.

Aoba opened his mouth. Closed it. Seemed to struggle for words for a second. "Sure. Go ahead. I will just … finish all this."

I slid out of my chair, puzzled. "Ibiki-taicho? Can I help you?"

He nodded. "Come with me," he said, and walked away, secure in the knowledge that I would follow.

I did. Was there a mission?

But we didn't go to the Hokage's office. Or to the briefing rooms. We went down. Down and down. And the further we went into unfamiliar territory, the more and more nervous I got. I really, really tried not to show it, or to think it, but there were so many ways this could go really wrong.

By the time I was sitting opposite him at a table in a blank, windowed room… sure 'nervous' didn't quite cover it. I was almost sick with it, stomach twisting like I'd been drinking battery acid.

What do they know, what do they know, whatdotheyknow…

It was folded up, hidden behind a wall of shadow, so I could maintain composure. I needed it. Desperately needed it right now. Whatever this was, it was walking a knife edge of danger.

Where did I slip up? What happened? Whatdotheyknow?

"Do you know why you're here?" Ibiki asked, calmly, leaning back in his chair.

I folded my hands on the table, clearly, visibly. "I'm afraid not, Ibiki-taicho," I said, letting my voice have a small amount of puzzlement but being otherwise calm. "Is there a mission?"

He waited.

I waited. I needed to wait. Just wait it out. Just wait it out. Don't say anything.

My mouth was dry but I couldn't swallow. That would look like a sign of nervousness. I couldn't, couldn't, look like I had anything to hide.

He set a Bingo Book down on the table. It wasn't the one Aoba had given me just earlier – there was a Rock symbol on the front cover. Clearly the other village books he'd been talking about.

But.

Of all the things I'd worried Ibiki would try and ask me about…

"A Rock Bingo Book?" I said, utterly uncertain. I glanced up at him. His face was impassive and gave nothing away.

I didn't have the script for this. I didn't know what was going on. At all.

"I'm sorry, Ibiki-taicho. I have no idea?"

He flipped it open. A picture of my own face stared back up at me. My name, next to it.

I looked up at him again. Still, impassive. Still, nothing.

"What's this?" he asked, finally breaking his silence, tapping at something halfway down the page.

I actually read it this time. My name. Epitaphs. (Dammit, Ino, I knew it would stick.) Rank. (And they would be annoyed to find that their information was out of date so fast, surely.) Team. Skills.

I paused, next to Ibiki's finger. "Interrogation?"

I looked at him, baffled. Like, his interest made slightly more sense right now, but also less sense because what.

"I'm very interested in any one who gets this designation in their Bingo Books," Ibiki said. "Especially when I haven't already heard about it."

Rock. Interrogation. I had thought the police chief was a Rock informant, hadn't I? "Land of Stone," I said. "It must have been. It would have been in my report, then?"

Ibiki leant back. He hadn't exactly been looming, but I felt the extra space acutely. Like an easing of pressure. "Oh? I'll make a note of it," he said. "Tell me what happened."

"It was hardly an interrogation," I said awkwardly. "We just needed a criminal to confess to a crime that he'd framed someone else for. I only scared him until he did."

"Scared him?" Ibiki repeated, questioningly. "How did you manage that?"

"Killing Intent," I supplied. "It mixes weird with Shadow Jutsu." I shrugged. Turns out that that hadn't been an unknown fact, it was just one of those quirks of jutsu that no one had really bothered with. The advantages weren't huge.

Ibiki looked contemplative. "Show me."

I swallowed. "Um." Killing Intent. On Ibiki? If anyone would get squished in that combination, it was me. Without a doubt.

But he didn't appear to be joking. So I closed my eyes and tried to recall that feeling, tried to set aside gut churning nervousness and sweaty palms and go back to a place where I had been confident and in control. Gosunkugi had been no threat. He'd been nothing. Contemptible.

I hadn't needed to kill him. But I could have.

And that feeling, right there. That detached ruthlessness. That thing that had been in Orochimaru's eyes, in Itachi's, that was what made it terrifying.

I spread it into my chakra, shivered it out into the air. I lifted my hands off the table, went through the seals of the Shadow Possession jutsu and connected to the person sitting across from me.

"Talk," I said.

My voice rang out into silence. I opened my eyes and the image in my head shattered – the belief, the knowledge that I was the most dangerous thing around was proven false. My Killing Intent faded away. I let the Shadow Possession fall.

I coughed. "Like that. Kinda."

"Just like that?" Ibiki asked.

I shifted in my seat, just a little, and tried not to feel really embarrassed. Killing Intent on Ibiki. What was I, an idiot? "Yeah well," I said, slightly too fast. "He wasn't a ninja or anything like that so it didn't take much. And, I mean, I don't know if everything he said was true, but we already had half the story from the guy that he framed, so I could make sure that that much lined up. And the police were going to look into everything else."

"Impressive," he said, after a long second. "You knew both the questions and the answers before you started. That's less common than you might think. And a bigger advantage, too."

I accepted that comment with a duck of my head, but didn't say anything.

"So, the real question," Ibiki went on, like they hadn't been all real questions, "is 'do you want to join the Torture and Interrogation Division?' You seem to have a handle on the Interrogation and we can easily educate you on the Torture." He smirked, darkly.

"Uhm," my mouth said. "No?"

I could have handled that better. I could absolutely have handled that better.

"And why not?" Ibiki asked, with what appeared to be genuine interest.

"I don't think it works," I said. To the Head of Torture and Interrogation. What was I doing?

My eyes slid off him, onto the back wall of the room.

"What was that?" Ibiki asked, sharply.

"I don't think it's a reliable method of gathering accurate intelligence," I said, woodenly. Apparently my survival instinct was on vacation today. Clearly informing the Head of T&I that I thought his entire job was useless was on my To Do List. It seemed I hadn't had my required dose of life threatening danger this week. "A person in pain will say whatever is required to get the pain to stop, whether that's true or false. And if you can't determine the difference then they've won and made you stop, or you have to keep going anyway – in which case they will just tell you more potentially false information."

My teeth clicked shut. Finally. Far too late. There was a long, resounding silence.

"Good," Ibiki said.

"What?"

He smiled. A real one, this time, not that dark thing I'd seen earlier. It dragged me sharply back to the Chunin Exams and that tenth question. A test?

"Good," he repeated. "Do you know why we're interested in people who are known to perform interrogations in the field?"

It was a leading question. 'Good' meant the answer was not, as I had assumed - been led to assume - 'to offer them a job'. What was it then? Why the interest? Why was he pleased I had turned it down? Turned it down and said those things about it?

"To see if 'interrogation' is just a cover for 'torture'?" I guessed.

"Correct," Ibiki said. "We're well aware that it is an inefficient process – and much more likely to be employed as a means of revenge than an actual attempt at gathering information. And that is not the type of thing that Konoha encourages."

I nodded. It had been a test. And now it didn't matter if I knew it was a test, because I also knew the truth. They're watching for it. They're watching you. "I see," I said.

And then, because I couldn't help it, I had to ask questions. "Obviously, the Yamanaka jutsu is ideal for gathering information from uncooperative subjects," I said, clinically, burying as many of my emotions as I could. "But what do you recommend in other circumstances?"

Ibiki looked at me, assessing. He'd been assessing the whole time, but this felt deeper still. Not just watching, but making a judgement. "Come with me," he said, for the second time.

We left the room, left the tower and strolled through the streets. I balled my hands up and shoved them in my pockets, because they wanted to shake so badly.

We weren't in a hurry, but there was still a distinct sense of people getting out of our way. It was a little unnerving and I was very aware of everyone watching us.

We went well out of the main town and towards the outskirts of the village, to where the prison was. The Konoha Secure Correctional Facility, as it was officially titled. The place that Mizuki had broken out of, months ago.

Ibiki let us in, locking the gates behind us. There were two Chunin standing guard, but we passed them with little more than a nod, heading towards the main building. There were more guards there, and I was signed in via a visitors logbook and given a lanyard with an identification card.

"Don't lose it," Ibiki warned. "You won't get out again."

I nodded, solemnly.

We didn't go down into the prison proper, into the cells, but to a more 'normal' looking section. The offices and workspaces of the ninja who staffed it, presumably. The room Ibiki took me to was not so different from the one we had come from in the tower, except that this one was on the other side of the one way mirror, allowing us to look into a cozy, casual looking office. There were stuffed couches and bookshelves and a solid, intimidating desk that was completely empty.

An older lady - maybe sixty, maybe seventy – with white hair in tidy curls sat in an armchair making notes on a clipboard. Her eyes flicked up to the mirror as we entered, but she didn't otherwise react.

"We're a few minutes early," Ibiki told me, then settled into a chair and prepared to wait. "That's Seki Hijiri. She's been working in this prison for as long as it's existed. She's one of our best interpersonal contact intelligence officers."

I sat next to him, not quite sure what we were waiting for, but willing to find out.

The door to the interrogation room – what else could it have been, really, no matter what it looked like – opened and two guards escorted a prisoner in.

"Hello, Tayuya," Seki said with a warm, grandmotherly smile. She set her clipboard down, the gesture deliberate and noticeable.

"Fuck you," the red haired girl spat in return. But it was lacking edge, lacking force, almost a route response.

I eyed her critically. I hadn't expected to see her again. We'd fought her and captured her and nearly killed her and that had been that. I'd known she had been taken to T&I – had escaped it when Mizuki had broken out and been dragged back by Jiraiya – but I had barely spared her another thought after that.

She looked… well. Unharmed. Not starving. Not sick. Not happy, clearly, but though she wrenched her wrists out of the guards grip and threw herself down a chair, she didn't attack. There were seals creeping across her skin that said it probably wouldn't work, if she did try.

All in all, if I had ever anticipated how I expected to see Tayuya again, this was probably a hundred times better.

"How are you today?" Seki asked.

"Rapport building," Ibiki explained to me. "It took some time to find an interrogator that she responded. Our initial attempts with masculine authority figures went very badly, including my own."

He didn't appear perturbed or dismayed by it, like it was simply a statement of fact. Something that sometimes happened, for whatever reason.

Tayuya glowered and sank lower in her chair. "You know how I am. Get on with it. Ask me about Orochimaru so I can tell you to fuck off and get back to digging fucking holes and trying to have a fucking shower while forty fucking pricks watch my every move."

Seki didn't appear at all daunted by the language or tirade. "What do you hope to accomplish by being uncooperative, Tayuya? Where do you see your future going from here?"

"Orochimaru-sama will take us back," Tayuya said. "He'll free us." She said it stubbornly, but I wasn't sure who she was trying to convince – Seki or herself.

Ibiki made a considering noise. "She's backsliding. It's not unexpected," he said. "All three of the team have been… willing to share information in exchange for being able to see each other – heavily monitored, of course. But it seems to have undone some progress."

The interview in the room below us went on. It was actually fascinating to watch, if … creepy. Seki was calm and warm and completely in control of the situation. She talked Tayuya round in circles, taking her from an angry and hostile enemy to a young girl who wanted to impress the person in front of her.

"She's still holding back quite a bit," Ibiki said, studying her. "I suspect it's simply to prolong the interest we have in her. None of them are quite sure of what we'll do once we have all the information they possess, but I don't imagine they're entertaining pleasant notions."

Well, I didn't really know what they would do with them, either, and I had a bit more trust in Konoha so yeah, I could guess why Tayuya worried about it. We wouldn't send them back to Orochimaru – and I suspected that even if we had that wouldn't have ended pleasantly for her – but in some ways they still made decent bargaining chips.

The interview finished. Tayuya was escorted out of the room by the guards, and Seki picked up her clipboard and left. Seconds later, the door to our room opened up and she entered.

"Ibiki," she said, flicking a curious look at me but didn't ask. "Something interest you?"

He shook his head. "I wasn't checking up on anything in particular. But what are your thoughts on the prisoner?"

"She's desperate to remain useful," she said, flicking through a few pages of notes. "Some of the information she's providing is not deliberately false, but almost certainly things she wasn't certain of herself – rumors and such like heard while she was there. I think we're still missing a few big pieces of critical information which are being deliberately excluded – the locations of the main bases, certainly – but between the three sources we have gathered a fairly detailed picture."

The locations of the bases Tayuya knew about might, or might not, have been critical information. If Orochimaru was smart, which he was, he would have abandoned them when his shinobi were captured. On the other hand, if he was arrogant, he might not, and the fact that Orochimaru was almost certainly at one of them would make us hesitate to attack anyway.

"I think we need to give some positive reinforcement," Seki went on. "I'm a little leery of giving her free-time, I think that would just result in a spiral of negative thinking. I'm officially suggesting a shift to private bathing facilities. Or private apart from guards," she amended, a little wryly.

Ibiki tapped his fingers on the table. "Do we have female guards stationed on her?"

"As many of them as we have," Seki said a little tartly, giving him a long suffering look. "But most of us are aged out of the condition needed to wrestle naked prisoners under control."

He acknowledged that almost wryly. "Make your recommendation. I'll sign off on it."

He bade her goodbye and rose out of the chair. I followed, tagging along as we went back to the entrance, signed out, and left the complex.

"Did that answer your question?" Ibiki asked me.

I considered it. How do you go about gathering information from people who don't want to give it? In nearly the same ways you went about gathering it from people who did, apparently. You talked to them, convinced them, gave them reasons to tell you or want to tell you.

And maybe sometimes it worked and maybe sometimes it didn't quite work but you had to make do with what you got. And then you cross referenced it against other things, just to make sure.

"Yes," I said. "Thank you, Ibiki-taicho."

He gave me an amused look. "Come back in a few years, and I might offer you a job again," he said. "Most of our interrogators are senior ninja or those retired from service. There's a certain value to age as an indicator of authority in these situations."

I paused. "Thank you," I said, rather than immediately going 'no' like I had earlier. It wasn't really a job I wanted, exactly, but no longer was it something that I was so fundamentally opposed to, either.

Unfortunately, I had to go back to work because my shift had only just barely begun. The way the room hushed when I stepped inside was eerily reminiscent of how it had been when I'd left. I ignored it, nodded to the people I passed and slid into my desk.

"What did I miss?" I asked Aoba quietly.

"You have to tell me what happened," he said, giving me a pleading look. "What did Ibiki want?"

I paused. "Just… to talk. He gave me a tour?" I added, because we'd been gone for a while and people absolutely had to have seen us leave. Ibiki hadn't said 'don't talk about it' but it was also clearly stuff that wasn't common knowledge. And it was a bit embarrassing on my part to bring up the bingo book entry.

He groaned. "Don't be like that. You're killing me."

I shrugged. "Sorry? It wasn't really a big deal."