Side Story: Yuuki & Nagisa's Greatest Hits

[AtlannianSpy]

PILES OF FILES

Yuuki Uchiha & Nagisa Kanazawa​

“Truth be told I’m pretty relieved we finally got someone in to handle all this backlog!”

The jonin leading Nagisa and Yuuki through the standby station was strangely cheerful, despite currently discussing the business of assassination: his gait was jaunty enough to send his silver ponytail bouncing from side to side and he spun a key ring around on one extended finger. “We’ve been running low on filing space for.. Oh gosh, weeks now, so we’ve kind of just been shoving all the assassination missions in a disused office. You’re welcome to use it as long as you need just… It’s a little untidy at the moment,”

“Wait exactly how many of these contracts are there?” Nagisa asked suspiciously, unfolding her arms from behind her head where they had been resting. “Nobushige said you only needed our help with a couple-”
Before Nagisa could finish her sentence the Jonin stopped in front of an old looking door and unlocked it with his key then stepped back nimbly as a veritable torrent of paper and dust poured out of the doorway, spreading out into the hallway.

“Holy-“ Yuuki jumped back a few steps, staring wide eyed at the avalanche that had greeted them. His father was usually far more organized than this… “How long have these even been in here?”

“Eh heh, some of these date back to before the mist invasion,” said the jonin, smiling haplessly and rubbing the back of his head.. “That’s when the backlog really started to pile up and it’s just been one thing after another since then! Anyway-great-of-you-to-helpusoutI’mgonnatakeoffnowBYE!”

With that the jonin disappeared with a body flicker, leaving the two teenagers behind. Nagisa watched him disappear with a sour expression and then gingerly stepped over the torrent of paper into the room, immediately coughing as her actions stirred up a cloud of long undisturbed dust.

“Oh for- It smells like a tomb in here!” Nagisa said, producing a handkerchief to cover her mouth and nose with. Rows and rows of filing cabinets dominated the room, with two tiny desks and chairs occupying the back wall. Most of the cabinets were stacked full, to the point that files were bursting out of them and many had been left open so that yet more files could be stacked in untidy piles on top of the shelved ones.

“There’s no way we’re working like this,” Nagisa muttered fiercely, wading over to the room’s only window and wrestling with its rusty mechanism to wrench it open. “YUUKI! Go back to that supply cabinet we passed and get… well, we’re pretty much going to need the whole thing. This is going to take a while,”

The Uchiha rubbed the back of his neck as he peered inside the disaster area of a room, immediately sneezing from the dust. “Think a tomb is cleaner than this…” Even with the two of them, it would probably take most of the day to get the mess back under control. “Didn’t the academy just have its graduation ceremony?” He mused, “Bet some new genin could use a D Ranked mission…”

“They won’t have clearance to look at this stuff,” Nagisa said shortly, bending down to shift some stacks of files to clear a path from one end of the room to the other. “If you want more hands make some clones,” with that Nagisa stood in the center of the room with her hands on her hips. “You can probably look through those files faster than me, right? So you’re on sorting duty, I’ll handle the cleaning up,”

“Right…” Yuuki sighed, scanning over the room once more. “Yeah, I’ll be right back then.” He vanished with a body flicker, returning moments later with clones and cleaning supplies. All of them had their noses covered to prevent the dust from attacking once more. “At least we don’t have to take all of these.”

“Is this really the only apron they had left...?” Nagisa said, taking the pink, frilly piece of cloth one of the clones was offering and picking up a feather duster. “Nevermind, let’s just get this over with,”

The next couple of hours passed by in a frenzied blur of dusting, scrubbing, sorting and sweeping. The foul smell in the room turned out to be largely the result of a nasty patch of mold hiding behind one of the filing cabinets and in a desperate attempt to get more air into the room Nagisa completely removed the window from its frame, losing twenty minutes as she got out her toolset and fixed the mechanism. But finally, the pair stood, panting in a clean, organized, though still rather cramped little office breathing relatively fresh air for the first time in far too long.

“Gah!” Nagisa groaned and then sat on the floor, stretching out her legs and arms. “I can’t believe how much crap was in here, I hope one of those was easy, I’m not in the mood for someone putting up a fight after all that,”

Yuuki had flopped onto the floor rather unceremoniously, covering his eyes with an arm. Clones weren’t exactly his strong suit, and when all the information the clones had gathered came crashing back it left him exhausted and with a massive headache. He pointed to a stack of files, the smallest out of all of them. “Those were all C Ranked.”

“Mmmmkay,” Nagisa said, pushing herself to her feet and padding silently out of the room, leaving Yuuki lying on the floor. The room was silent for a while and the first indication that Nagisa had returned was something circular and icy cold pressing into Yuuki’s brow. He flinched, uncovering his eyes to peer up at her.

“This one looks okay,” Nagisa said, leaving the can of soft drink she had fetched from the vending machine balanced on Yuuki’s forehead to flick through the stack of C rank contracts. Nagisa cleared her throat.


“A new doctor’s recently set up shop in our town, offering treatment at far lower prices than anyone’s ever seen in the area. This would be a great thing considering we’re a rather poor town that desperately needs a good doctor. Problem is, he’s a total quack and has already caused a few deaths with his ‘remedies.’ I’d run him out of town but what’s stopping the guy from setting up someplace else and getting more people killed? We need a more permanent solution…Think we can handle that?”

The sharp snap of the can opening, Yuuki skimmed the file from over her shoulder before wordlessly offering her the first drink. “It’ll be night by the time we get there, but looks quick and easy.”

“Where have I heard that before?” Nagisa said wryly before taking a sip. “Well, the sooner we get moving the sooner we’ll be done I guess,”

 

[AtlannianSpy]

DUCK HUNT​

Never the type to talk much on the job, the two fell into an easy, familiar silence during their journey to Nagatoro. The sun had only begun to set when the small village came into view. A small farming community, Nagatoro wasn’t much to look at. Many of the structures looked like the only things keeping them standing were good wishes.

“Jeez,” Yuuki muttered, peering out from his perch on a branch, “I know they said they were poor, but…”

“Tchh I hate places like this,” Nagisa muttered. “Nobody ever does anything except scrape by from day to day. They’d be better off cutting their losses and splitting up to live elsewhere but pride and stubborness’ll keep ‘em here until they die and their kids inherit their godforsaken patch of dirt. And then the whole cycle repeats. Whole generations doing nothing but kicking dirt,”

Nagisa was a little surprised with her own venom but she really did find this dingy little village… claustrophobic. The city she’d grown up in had been poor as well, but at least it had been a restless, energetic sort of poverty. There was gambling and get rich quick schemes and crime, desperate, grubby ambitions sure but at least they were ambitions. What did this place have?

“We might as well try to keep the client’s nose clean,” Nagisa said after thinking quietly for a few moments. “One of us can fake an injury for a while, distract him while the other takes something poisonous from his medical supplies and hides it in his food. The guy’s a quack right? I doubt it would surprise anyone if he somehow contaminated his own food,”

Yuuki studied Nagisa for a moment before nodding. There was more to that rant than met the eye. But he wasn’t going to press the issue. Not now. They had a mission to do first.

“You probably know more about poisons than I do.” He sighed, cracking his neck, “We’ll need something fast acting. Have to stick around until we’re sure the job’s done anyway.”

“We’ll have to see what this guy has, but if it’s making people sick enough of it will pretty quickly have some kind of effect,” Nagisa shrugged. “Well if it doesn’t pan out we can always stab him. Won’t be the end of the world,” Nagisa tapped one of her lightning flash seals and produced a makeup kit she had borrowed from Nobushige. “Now hold still, we need to make you look as sick as possible,”




Nagisa had a little fun with Yuuki’s transformation, picking out a sallow, pale base tone, adding dark shadows underneath his eyes to give him a fatigued look. Even more fun was making Yuuki run laps until he was hot and sweaty enough to give the illusion of running a fever. It wouldn’t fool a good doctor, but a quack? He’d be too busy counting their ryo to care.

“That should have taken a little longer,” Nagisa said dryly as Yuuki came to a halt. “Shouldn’t a jonin have better conditioning?”

Yuuki flipped her off, “Maybe if taijutsu was my specialty.”

Nagisa smirked. “Doesn’t matter what your specialty is if you run out of steam this quickly,” she slid off the wooden fence she’d been perched on while Yuuki ran and joined him. “Don’t worry too you can take it easy from here though, it’ll be more convincing if you lean on me the rest of the way,” she said, offering her shoulder.

He scoffed, but still leaned against her to sell their illusion. “Hey, I ran from our camp to the Hidden Whirlpool just fine, thank you.” Yuuki sniggered at the memory, “Sensei looked like he was about to drop dead though.”

“He at least has the excuse of being old, what’s yours?” Nagisa asked, putting the thought of how warm Yuuki was against her to the back of her mind.

He paused a beat, “I think he and Tsubaki are the same age…”


Doctor Takeuchi, as he went by here, lived and practiced out of a run-down shack he apparently rented from one of the less poor inhabitants of the village, it was easily identified by a wooden sign over the doorway optimistically identifying the shack as “Takeuchi Medical Clinic”

“PLEASE YOU’VE GOT TO HELP US!” Nagisa shouted with a good approximation of panic as she hammered on the flimsy door. “My….”

fuck, brother wouldn’t really be believable

“-Boyfriend- he’s sick, I don’t know what’s wrong with him!” She lied, turning her head slightly so that Yuuki couldn’t see her cheeks redden to match his.

Yuuki had closed his eyes, opting to keep quiet and focus on his breathing. It had grown shallow, ragged sounding. Again, it likely wouldn’t convince someone with proper training, but... He could hear a few nearby doors open, curious villagers peering out to see what all the commotion was about.

“Oho! A cust- Patient!” Boomed an excited voice from behind the door which was flung open in short order to reveal an excited, middle aged man notable for the white labcoat he was wearing and his shiny, slicked back hair. “Well come in! Come in! Hurry now!” said the man, practically manhandling Yuuki through the door, down a cramed corridor and into an examining room where he seated the shinobi down on a bench so that he could seize the side of his head to peer into his left ear.

“HMMmmHMM!” Said the “doctor” nodding emphatically and releasing Yuuki to stroke his thin moustache. “Frankly little lady you two were lucky you found me when you did! Worst case of lupus I’ve seen in decades and it’s a particularly nasty condition to begin with!”

little la-oh fuck you,

“And uh, you can cure this ‘Lupus’?” Nagisa asked, fighting heroically to keep her tone sounding anxious and panicky.

“Oh ho I’ve treated a case or two of lupus in my day don’t you worry, your boyfriend is in good hands,” Said the Doctor, attempting to wedge a wooden tongue depressor between Yuki’s lips to peer inside his mouth. “Of course owing to the high cost associated with my ingredients and the demand with which my skills are typically regarded there will be a modest fee…”

“We’ll pay however much we need to,” Nagisa said insistently, taking the opportunity while the Doctor had his back to her to quickly pocket a jar of… something. Nagisa had involuntarily made a face when she saw the ingredient list on the label, if this was what he’d been giving the villagers it was no wonder they were getting sick. Probably the only reason nobody had died yet was this guy being too cheap to actually give them full doses. Fortunately that was not a mistake Nagisa was going to make.

Distract him Nagisa mouthed at Yuuki over the doctor’s shoulder as she silently backed out of the room and headed for their target’s private quarters.

He could’ve picked something more believable… Yuuki jerked back, coughing violently as something was sprayed in his nose. Swear if I actually get sick from this guy. He cleared his throat, working to keep his voice raspy and weak. “So… just what is this treatment anyway…?”

“Why it’s a proprietary recipe of mine!” answered the Doctor enthusiastically, picking up a bottle to show Yuuki. The bottle had an inked picture of the doctor himself, although the artist had taken some sympathetic liberties with his features and apparent age. The liquid inside was a dark, tea brown and bubbled menacingly when the Doctor’s gesticulations disturbed it.

“Takeuchi’s Miracle Medical Elixir! Good for nausea, migraines, epilepsy, leprosy, broken bones, cancer, consumption, lupus and the common cold. I would explain the recipe and precise operation of the the formula but it’s a trade secret,” the doctor covered his mouth to speak conspiratorially. “Frankly there are certain unscrupulous fearmongers among the wider medical community who, if they discovered certain ingredients I make careful and considered use of would spread TOTALLY UNFOUNDED Hysteria among my potential patients!”


Meanwhile Nagisa had made her way into the Doctor’s living quarters. There wasn’t much to them, it was apparent the Doctor had yet to put down many roots in town and the tiny two rooms in the back served as his bedroom and kitchen. Nagisa had been planning to add her ‘borrowed’ medicine to some of the doctor’s food but when she unscrewed the bottle and got a whiff of the foul smell that emerged from it she decided that even Takeuchi would detect something wrong if he attempted to eat anything poisoned with this stuff.That was when Nagisa spotted the open jar of hair cream standing on the Doctor’s dresser and smiled. The hair cream was heavily perfumed and obviously he wasn’t going to be tasting it. It might take a while for the poison to soak in through skin but Takeuchi clearly wore the stuff all day, if he even bothered to wash his hair out at night. Moments later Nagisa reappeared in the examination room, folding her arms over her chest to wait patiently as Yuuki had the virtues of Takeuchi’s elixir extolled to him.

Yuuki sat silently, fighting to keep a straight face was the man went on and on about his miracle cure. It would’ve been so easy to kill him then and there. A Star Crossed seal on his chest and it’d be over, no blood or anything. That said, Nagisa had made the call and he’d stand by it. Hopefully whatever this stuff really was put him down quickly….

Or they’ll be camping out for awhile.

The Uchiha gave her a quick, questioning glance when Nagisa reappeared.

Nagisa nodded back and cleared her throat to attract the doctor’s attention. “We’ll buy as much as he’ll need and then find somewhere to rest and recover.”

If the doctor had any suspicions they were easily overcome by the wad of ryo notes Nagisa produced and handed over to him. For possibly the first time in her life she didn’t really bother to count out how much she was paying, reasoning that she could pick it up when they came back to confirm the kill and the generous payment was enough to get them on their way with directions to the only inn in the small town.


The Half Masu was about what Nagisa had expected: a rundown, dirty two storey wooden building, it didn’t even have the decency to be cheap the two shinobi discovered as soon as they entered and Nagisa asked about renting a room for the night.

“1000 ryo for this dump,” Nagisa hissed after the surly innkeeper had shown them to their room and then shut the door after himself. “See? This is why I hate these places, nobody ever comes here so there’s only one inn so when somebody finally has to actually use it there’s only one choice and they can charge whatever they want for this crap,”

“Yeah, this is pretty, uh…” Yuuki took in the room with a slight grimace. What little furniture was in there looked well worn, the fabric on the futons was faded and the tatami floor had begun to fray in some places. “At least it’s clean?” He offered, stepping further inside and taking off his jacket. The cuirass Nagisa had helped make was clearly visible, the dark fabric having held up well across several battles.

“When we get back you’re gonna have to give that to me so I can adjust the length,” Nagisa said, turning away and seating herself on the tatami mat with her back against one of the thin walls “I wasn’t sure it would happen but you’ve actually gotten a little taller,”

He rolled his eyes, “very funny.” Yuuki set his cuirass and gloves on top of his folded jacket before moving to try and get the makeup off his face. A long silence stretched out over the sound of running water before he finally cleared his throat, “so, uh… boyfriend, huh?”

“Th-That was!-” Nagisa flinched and turned her head away even further. “That was just the most plausible story! What else are people gonna think when they see a boy and a girl that don’t look related travelling together without anyone else? If we went with some other story they’d just think we were lying about it!”

Yuuki softly chuckled, “I didn’t say it was a bad thing.” He stepped back into view, his skin a more natural color once again. “Just… unexpected.”

“Lying is about ninety percent confirming people’s expectations,” Nagisa muttered. “Tell people what they secretly already think, or what they want to think and it doesn’t matter how far from the truth it actually is,”

“Heh, yeah I suppose that’s true.” Yuuki sat down on the floor across from Nagisa. Not that he was… against it staying just a cover story. Though actually approaching the subject was still iffy. “So what’d end up putting that stuff in of his anyway?”

“It was mostly arsenic by the smell of it,” Nagisa said, loosening up as the conversation turned to the safer and more mundane topic of deadly poisons. “Which I’d heard people used to treat umm.. Syphilis so if you’ve secretly been worried about that maybe the whole experience will have done you some good, I doubt it would help with lupus though.”

Yuuki raised an eyebrow, “preeetty sure Hideki’s more at risk for something like that than me…”

Nagisa sniggered. “Maybe we should bring some back for him? He might take it the wrong way if I try to give him something that poisonous though,” Nagisa broke suddenly as a yawn overtook her. “We might as well get some sleep, you’ve got a long day of pretending to be sick ahead of you,”


It ended up taking two days for the good doctor to succumb to the effects of a headful of poisoned hair cream, forcing Nagisa to sneak out of town and pick up some manga to keep the two of them occupied while surveilled him under the pretext of Yuuki recovering. The mission became something of a working holiday, as the pair of them whiled away the two days reading or talking as they took turns checking up on their victim. The dingy town they were stuck in even grew on them a little after the discovery of a surprisingly decent bakery not far from the inn. Still Nagisa was glad to leave when it came time to return to Konoha, having never been one for extended periods of inaction, although she was markedly less pleased upon their arrival at the temporary office that had been set aside for them…

“W-WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!?” Nagisa demanded of the silver haired jonin who had since introduced himself as Inefume, as she gestured angrily at the enormous and untidy pile of paperwork that had been dumped in the middle of the office they had worked so hard to clean up.

Ahhh that,” Inefume rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “I got inspired after I saw how well you guys organized the mess in here so I went into the basement to see if I could tidy it up a little and found a whole bunch more assassination contracts! I figured if I left them here you guys could sort them out as well seeing as we’re all still suuuuper busy,” He ducked nimbly as Nagisa sent a broom that been lying against the wall at his head and then retreated around the corner of the corridor. “SpeakingofbusyIreallygottago-’ he said hurriedly, waving goodbye. “I’msureyoucanhandleallthisGoodLuck!”

“DAMMIT!” Nagisa spat, sending a bucket futilely after the retreating jonin and then sighing.

With slumped shoulders, Yuuki started rifling through the messy stack and stopped. “Hey, Nagisa?” He held up a worn looking file, a large A had been stamped on it making the danger clear. “Remember this asshole?”

The shinobi detailed inside was a familiar masked face, Han’yo Moto of the Hidden Mist.

KageYuuki

 

[KageYuuki]

Target: Han'yo
Comfortably situated on the polished wooden floor, Yuuki idly juggled a kunai between his hands. A small black book was settled on his lap, he had it opened to a page detailing what was known on the Mist jounin Han’yo Moto. Were the two of them even remotely ready to take on a mission like this? Sure, they’d fought the man once before but they had the help of another jounin. Even then it was dumb luck that saved them before the fight turned from their favor.

“We aren’t the same as we were back then,” Nagisa was still busy tidying up the enormous pile of folders that had been dumped in their temporary office so she spoke without turning away from her work.

“Heh, no we definitely aren’t.” They’d both grown a lot over the last few years, on the verge of becoming jounin even. “But this guy is still pretty dangerous. Being able to use all five elements isn’t anything to scoff at.” Not to mention he’d already proven capable of fighting completely blind during their last encounter. “Will two chuunin be enough?”

“Who are these random chunin you’re talking about?” Nagisa asked, putting down the files she had been sorting and walking over to sit cross-legged in front of Yuuki, putting down Han’yo’s file between them. “We’re the ones who took the mission and we will be enough. Because we’re gonna sit down right now and figure out what it’s going to take and if we don’t have enough to do it between us right now then all we have to do is figure out what else we need to make it enough. We’re the ones coming after him this time, we don’t have some time limit or other objective. We can take as long as we need to get every advantage we possibly can. In fact-”

Nagisa hesitated and she seemed to feel the need to look away at Yuuki, staring up at the ceiling, before continuing. “There’s no way I’m letting you anywhere near him until we’ve at least done that much,”

Yuuki nodded, “Good,” he reached over to leaf through the file, comparing its contents to what was in his bingo book. A faint smile played on the Uchiha’s lips, “because I wouldn’t let you near him until then either.”

In terms of combat information, the file didn’t have anything new for them. Instead, it had amendment after amendment of last known locations and mission activity. Scouts had last seen him holed up in the Land of Waves, interfering with attempts to build a bridge that would open trade to the Land of Fire.

“That could be a route of attack,” Nagisa mused. “We could tag along with a delivery of materials… or disguise ourselves as workers? Bribe two of them to disappear and then take their places? We’d know he was coming to us and we could rig some traps in the building site,”

“Hiding with the construction crew might be the better option,” Yuuki jotted down a few notes before jumping up to retrieve a nearby map. “We’ll probably have to hire a boat to get out to the Land of Waves.”

“It would be a bit of a detour, but we would move on foot to the land of rivers and hire one there, a boat direct from the land of fire might attract his attention. And if possible we should take a regularly scheduled ferry or group up with some civilians rather than hire one all to ourselves,” Nagisa suggested. “If we can get into the general area under cover we can take as long as we need to observe his methods and set a trap,”

“Then we should probably get a move on then.”

AtlannianSpy