A Little More Time [S-Rank]

[Shiruko Makoto]

Eighteen Years Old

"I still don't see why the medics need us to escort them down there," Makoto complained as he and his teammates checked over their gear. "Last I checked, they were also qualified to fight off anyone who might try and cause them trouble. And who would attack a bunch of medics, anyway? That's a pretty quick way to get a bounty on your head."

"We went over this," the team leader whose name he had already forgotten said. "We're being cautious, since this is such an important job. And plenty of people would attack medics, especially if they were carrying something valuable."

He sighed noisily, but went back to putting together his gear. He didn't look up when the medical team entered and the squad leader went over to greet them, but he did at the sound of a familiar voice in response.

"Oh, hell no," he muttered, straightening up and turning to face his least favourite person in the world.

Shiruko Saito

Moon Healer

Saito knew this was an important mission. He didn't always exactly agree with all of his superiors when it came to what missions were important--or for that matter, necessary--and what weren't, but this one definitely was.

The farming community nearest the southern tip of the island had sent word they had a bad outbreak of an unknown illness that involved a fever and vomiting, and required medics. There were few chakra-capable healers outside of the city itself, much less that remotely, so the Shrine had decided it was best to send a team, rather than lose a whole clump of settlements to a disease.

Saito suspected something else was going on, but he had to get there in order to confirm it. But then, he often suspected something else was going on--and was right, more often than not. He was just glad they were getting a Warden squad sent along with them for extra backup. Whatever was happening, he didn't think it was a Shrine plot. No matter what some people of his family believed, there were definitely more than two factions on the island.

He was also glad he had been put in charge of this particular mission on the medical side. He'd left Kasumi in charge of his normal duties; he didn't have any difficult patients at the moment and she could handle what he did.

He hadn't expected his little brother to be one of the Wardens involved, but it wasn't surprising. Since he'd solved that major framing case the previous year, the higher-ups no doubt had their eye on him for traveling missions. If Makoto had been a little more politically savvy, he might have noticed it.

The dismayed reaction also wasn't surprising. He wasn't exactly his little brother's favourite person in the world, for varied reasons Saito hoped he eventually grew out of, and not just for personal reasons.

"Is there a particular reason he's here?" Makoto half-demanded with a surprisingly low amount of petulance, and more of a tiny of righteous indignation. The other Wardens exchanged glances, like they had no idea how to control him. This included the squad leader, unfortunately.

The only reason they'd ever delay him for any kind of special assignment, Saito thought, keeping his expression placid. Which is a poor judgment call on their parts, but never mind that.

Since none of the Wardens appeared to know what to say, and his own team were deliberately skirting causing any trouble for the moment, he answered for everyone else. "I'm in charge of the medical squad. You don't need to worry about it."

I can fight, too, he didn't say, because while he could, he certainly didn't much like to. This was compared to both his brothers, who excelled at it.

Makoto pulled a face and went back to sorting through his weapons and other equipment. His actions were measured, because he'd always done well with that sort of repression, but Saito knew he wasn't happy.

The other Wardens followed his lead, seemingly unconsciously. Including, again, the ostensible leader. Saito had always had a good eye for people, and he could have said this person was not an effective leader in this situation. Perhaps with a more cooperative full squad, but you couldn't rely on that sort of thing. When someone lower-ranking had the more forceful personality, you had to deal with that or you'd lose authority.

Then again, the Wardens frequently seemed to favour seniority over actual leadership skills despite all posturing in their branch assessment files, so the fact that this cropped up a lot from what he knew was also relatively predictable.

Makoto was the first to finish checking his equipment, and seemed to cast an eye over his teammates' and find their preparations wanting, but clamped his mouth shut, lacking the authority to do so. He wasn't the most junior member of the team, but he wasn't in a position to give orders.

Silly, really. He has a better idea of this than they do.

Once while the Wardens were preparing, he caught one of his already-ready medics shuffling indecisively, and cast them a look silently requesting a bit of patience. Most of the Healers were not big on weapons and did not properly understand that these sorts of things were, in fact, necessary. The Healer subsided. Saito wished he could have brought Kasumi and her endless well of patience on this mission, but he really had needed her to handle his normal tasks...

Finally, they were done. The Warden leader announced, with a delayed reaction, this fact, and Makoto pushed off of the wall where he'd been leaning with an unwavering scowl on his face to silently fall-in, despite the fact he was obviously fuming.

Saito really hoped they could at least partially patch things up on the mission. His little brother could smolder over a grudge for an impressively long time, but that wouldn't help at all.

~

They took a boat to the southern tip, or at least to the town near it with a dock. It was much quicker than going on land, especially with Saito devoting his focus on the way over to shaping the currents in favour of their boat. It didn't require much, admittedly, since the waters around the island were smooth most of the year, but it was something to do while he thought of how to approach his prickliest relative.

Or even if he should yet, for that matter. Perhaps it would be better if he simply waited things out, until Makoto got older, preferably old enough to know that just because he himself rarely required the services of medics did not make them worthless or only handy for civilians. Or wherever it was this disdain of his had come from.

(A subconscious impression left by his possessing spirit? Or due to it? Saito had poked and prodded perhaps more than strictly necessary when Makoto was 'ill' as a child, trying to make sure there was no harm done. He really couldn't tell, having never spoken with the being.)

They disembarked and made the short trek to the village, which had been effectively quarantined to all but necessary personnel. Saito hated quarantine zones like this one, where it seemed like the people enforcing it had all but given up on those inside. It felt like walking into a prematurely-declared mass grave.

He was the one who had to have words with the guards, though. They had a road barrier down on the path to block bicycles and, at this distance out from any major cities, horses. There were two guards stationed, one on either side of the road; Saito chose to approach the one who looked calmer as that was (hopefully) the superior officer. She was a short woman with close-cropped red hair underneath her blue local law enforcement hat, and as he'd hoped, stopped him before he reached the barrier.

"This is an active quarantine zone. Without identification, I can't allow you and your party to proceed."

Smiling slightly, Saito reached into his deep blue cloak, drawing his medical ID from an inner pocket and holding it up. She allowed him to approach with it, then checked it over when he handed it to her.

"It's not a problem," he said, letting calm into his voice. "We're the medical team sent to deal with this."

She drew a notebook out of her pocket and looked between it and his ID, then handed the latter back to him and pocketed the book. She made a gesture to the man standing across the road, and he went to shift aside the roadblock. (Saito wasn't actually sure if the block was high enough to stop a determined horse and rider from jumping it, plus the area around had a lot of flatlands that one could traverse, but he supposed it was the thought that counted. There were probably countermeasures around for that, anyway.)

The small medical and guard team followed him in. A glance backward showed that the Wardens had at least fallen in around the Healers, weapons out on those who had them and hands tensed and ready on the one who didn't. Makoto had his main weapon out, that deceptively tough light blue parasol of his, the silver spokes glinting in the sunlight. It felt like it should have been foggy for a scenario such as this, but no, they lived on a tropical island, and the sun shone brightly in the sky as they proceeded toward a village full of people slowly dying of, among other things, dehydration from the symptoms they knew of.

Saito had not heard of a disease with this rapid level of infection that could hit around 90% of a town before with the symptoms the file had listed.

He had heard of an awful lot of diseases.

That was one of the reasons something felt fishy.

He hadn't voiced any of this to his medical team, though. If they picked up on it themselves, good. If they didn't, then it would be good to get another perspective in case he was wrong.

The risk of a disease that targeted a normal population affecting trained ninja--especially mednins--was minimal. Ninja tended to have highly robust immune systems. They had to, in order to prevent infections from the cuts and scrapes they got all the time. That was one reason Saito figured that his family didn't tend to fall ill very easily; many of them back and back had been career ninja after all. A few of the other Wardens might have been at risk, but early stages of diseases could be flushed out by chakra control, so all they would have to do to protect themselves was check every now and again.

Later stages...were a different story.

There seemed to be a general air of malaise around the village once they reached it, which made sense. The few people up and around looked fatigued, and Saito nudged the most junior medic to go and help the ones not displaying symptoms to rest. Those would either be the few that recovered, or the lucky immune. One of the Wardens detached from the group and trotted after the medic after an awkward word from the team leader.

He led the rest of their small group to the village's medical center, a small building clearly not designed to handle this sort of patient load. Most smaller villages only had the facilities to handle day to day things like small disease outbreaks of a few children picking up chicken pox, broken bones, the odd childbirth, and other such things. Something like this was far beyond their capacity.

When they entered the building, Saito was already pulling medical supplies from his pack, the others in the team taking the cue to do so as well. The Warden leader awkwardly gestured his people to guard positions. Makoto took point at the sparse inner office and started rifling through the files sitting on the unoccupied desk, since the leader had already excused himself to another guard position.

I do hope they promote him or start giving him real assignments soon, instead of just letting him stumble into them. This sort of thing is a waste of talent.

Saito turned his attention to the line of patients with two beleaguered nurses hanging around them. One of his medics was already handling the nurses, so he ignored those and turned to the patient at the head of the line. There were vomit buckets by the head of each bed, not all of them empty. This particular woman looked ill and nauseous, like she felt the urge to throw up in her stomach.

"Don't fight it," he said softly as he activated a medical jutsu, running his cool-blue enveloped hand over her forehead. "If you need to throw up, there's a bucket. It might help." Probably not, if it was an illness, but there were water glasses on every bedside table too. At least they were being kept hydrated as well as possibly could be managed in a facility without access to IVs and saline drips.

He frowned internally at the results the diagnostic jutsu was giving him. Up til now, he had been hoping against hope that the report sent to them had been inaccurate, and these symptoms corresponded to something he already knew about, but that didn't seem to be the case. In addition to the nausea and fever, the woman was exhibiting occasional muscle spasms and what was probably a building general pain in her stomach.

She was looking particularly pale and shaky just then, so Saito absently reached over as she leaned over to the bucket to support her head and hold back her hair as she threw up.

He glanced over to one side, having detected a presence there, to spot Makoto with a disgusted and unnerved look on his face. He'd never liked being around sick or injured people.

He was, however, holding a file folder in his hand. He'd found something, then.

"You're not going to like this," Makoto said as Saito eased the woman back onto the bed. "The chief healer here was researching the symptoms before he fell ill too, and, well..."

"Yes, I know," he said distantly. "He probably came to the same conclusion I did."

His brother's tone and expression were frustrated, although subtly enough most wouldn't pick up on it. "Which is? 'I don't know of any disease like this, and can't find any references to one,' is some kind of medical code, I suppose?"

"No," Saito said with a heavy sigh. "These people aren't sick at all. They've been poisoned."

 

[Shiruko Makoto]

"Poisoned?" Makoto said, his voice cracking a bit. "Who would poison a whole town?"

That was a question, wasn't it. Fortunately, Saito's other occupation provided him with multiple answers.

"Someone looking to do damage," he said. "Or someone who wanted to get at someone here, and didn't care about collateral damage. There are also people who would do this sort of thing as a threat, or an experiment. And if we can find anything else around, it might be the work of someone trying to get the attention of law enforcement, for some reason. If that's the case, it could be the first step in some sort of deliberate puzzle."

Personally, he found the second option most likely, but he knew his brother would prefer to get all of the options he could think of listed up front. Otherwise, he'd accuse Saito of holding back information and get snippy if something else turned out to be the case, or when he inevitably worked a few other possibilities out himself. That was not the sort of thing he needed to bog this down.

"For now though, we need to work on healing these people," he added. "Once the townspeople are out of danger, we can start investigating."

"You have to finish work on healing," Makoto retorted. "It's part of my job to investigate things."

"Your current job is to act as a guard and ensure the medical team finishes their work," Saito said evenly, already preparing a System Shock for the first patient. "After we're done here, then you can go investigate."

A twitch, that probably would have come out verbally as a frustrated noise if it were anyone else. "An entire town has just been affected by a mass poisoner, and you want to potentially let them get away?"

"It's not my job to catch criminals. It's my job to heal the people they hurt."

He counted down in his head. 3, 2, 1... and applied the shock to the woman in the end bed. Her colour immediately improved, but she shook a bit and he wasn't surprised when she leaned over to throw up into the basin again. Makoto flinched back as she did so, which Saito ignored, keeping his eye on the patient. When she came back up, she didn't look nearly as sickly. He moved to check her again; the vomiting in response to the shock wasn't unexpected in a civilian, and most likely was her body's way of purging the poisons completely.

"It's my job to catch them," Makoto said after a strangled pause. "I'm going."

"You're not in charge of the Warden squad here," he said gently, though knowing his tone wouldn't help here. "Your leader would say to follow orders, if he thought he could keep a handle on you."

He didn't object to going rogue, exactly--with his family, it would be difficult to do. He even did it fairly often himself. But it had to be a calculated risk, and not just to prove a point, or as a matter of pride.

"Even if we told him it was poison?" his brother challenged.

"Probably, yes. It's more important to save these people first." The woman on the end bed was upright enough to drink her glass of water--slowly, fortunately. "You might not respect him much, but he has the experience to know that. And now that we have at least one semi-lucid witness, I think you should really stop questioning my authority."

He kept the rebuke as mild as he could, and Makoto accordingly seemed to keep his temper reeled in.

"You don't need me here," he said. "And I'm not questioning your authority--you're in a different chain of command."

"I have to devote all my attention to the patients," he said gently. "We do need a guard in here. But if you're so anxious to run around, you can send someone else in and go find the other medics to tell them it's poison a System Shock will clear out."

Makoto hesitated, then waved the file. "I'll explain this to my team leader and then do that, then."

Saito didn't want to push the fact that since this was primarily a medical mission, he was capable of overriding the lead Warden if necessary. But pushing didn't help with Makoto; trying to out-stubborn each other here would accomplish nothing but letting people suffer while they argued. He'd bring it up later, if needed.

Hopefully it wouldn't be needed.

Makoto left, with the file, and Saito moved on to the next patient. System Shock, wait and see if they vomited or not, move on, repeat. He was methodical about it, not taking more than a minute or two on each patient. After the second was done, the lead Warden wandered back in and waited until he finished with the next to speak to him.

"I sent him off to your other medics," he said. "Or, well, he went. And I alerted the ones in the other rooms here. The nurses seemed surprised."

Not unexpected. He doubted they would have tested for poison on something that looked like a disease outbreak.

"That file," Saito said distractedly. "You have it, right? Do you think you could send one of your team to find the man who wrote it? I expected him in the patients here but he doesn't seem to be, and I didn't see anyone with authority dealing with the nurses." Most of whom had, it seemed, enough chakra training to fight off a weak poison...

It seems whoever it was may not have intended to kill all these people. That's something, at least. So we can add 'distraction' and 'diversion' to the list of possible motives.

"I can, yes," the man confirmed, and his footsteps sounded again, apparently going to talk to one of his team.

If he'd been recommended for the leadership track, whoever had made that call was either very wrong, or had very low standards. He seemed only too happy to defer to anyone.

Since he was in the main room, there were more patients there. The two medics handling the nurses and the side room (children, he thought, or at least that was most likely for candidates in a smaller side room) joined him when he was around halfway through and got to work on the other side while the nurses tended to the patients he'd purged of poison.

I suppose it's also possible this is an accident. I'll have to check their water source to see if it was something leaking in. He wasn't optimistic about that, though.

By the time he and the other medics had finished checking everyone in the clinic, Makoto had apparently returned with one medic in tow. The final member of his own team was probably still dealing with civilians, but the expression on his brother's face was not promising about the potential to push things.

Just as well, probably. Dredging up family issues on this mission didn't seem like a good idea.

"The clinic is fine in the hands of the nurses," he said to the assembled team. "Let's make our way around town. This is going to be a long day. If any of the Wardens have basic medical training in the form of the System Shock jutsu, you could be very valuable here."

"Or Energy Transfer, to replenish the medics, if you don't," Makoto added. His expression was still impassive to anyone who didn't know him, but reading of mild irritation to those who did.

By the expression on the lead Warden's face, he hadn't thought of that. He did, however, get it together enough to question his present team members one whether they had either. Saito tuned out the conversation as he supervised his team packing their supplies. One of them was running low on a specific herb type, confirming she's been administering it to children in the other room--System Shock could cause a lot of damage in people under a certain age or body weight, and this needed to be dealt with immediately so it didn't become permanent.

Something vulnerable only to chakra breaking it down by force...I really do need to check the water source for the town. Probably a well of some kind; this town isn't large enough for a water tower. Only the largest town in the area would be.

"All of you go around and heal everyone you can find," Saito said to his team when they were done packing up. "Airi, you go with Meiko just in case she needs to restock her kit." Airi was a competent herbologist, and carried extra of most natural remedies in her medical kit. "I'm going to go and check the town's water supply; it's the most likely place for this to have been introduced."

He'd fortunately already confirmed with the nurses earlier that they were using supplied bottled water from one of the supply drops from a neighboring town at the moment, so there ought to be no more relapses. Apparently they had already decided that the infection was likely to have spread that way when they thought it to be one; it was a common disease vector in towns like this, after all.

"I'm going to go and look for our last three team members," Makoto said, his voice clear and carrying. "One medic and two Wardens are still unaccounted for, after all." We might run into them in our trip around town and we might not, he didn't say. They might have found something, he didn't say. But Saito heard it all the same. He wondered if anyone else did.

"All right, go ahead," the Warden leader said, then sighed when Makoto left halfway through his sentence. He turned to the other two members of his team. "Go with the medics...I'll go along on the investigation."

By the looks of it, he wanted to talk to Saito. All right, that was both expected and fine.

A brief questioning of the nurses directed them to where the town well was, and a few more roundabout inquiries confirmed that everyone who hadn't fallen ill had a bit of chakra training at least. Did they think that was suspicious? Honestly, no, they hadn't seen the pattern. How long had it been since they had seen their supervisor? No more than a day, surely. Did they think a disease with nearly a hundred percent infection rate was unusual? Yes, but they really didn't have time to think about why...

"If you're done, I'd like to check the ground water now," Saito said when the head Warden appeared to run out of questions. "And purify it, if necessary, but first I'd like to see if I can determine what poison was used."

"Right," the Warden responded. "If this is a poisoning case, I don't think any of them are suspects anyway."

"Probably not," he agreed noncommittally, but he hadn't ruled out anyone yet. Couldn't, without a motive. But he wasn't supposed to have the knowledge of espionage he did, so he didn't say anything. "Come on."

There were fewer people milling around when they got outside, most of them either resting or retreating indoors. Saito would have made a note to check on the animals, since it was a farming community in part, but animals would be able to smell anything toxic and would have avoided it. Indeed, a number of cats were visible skulking about here and there, perfectly fine. And wild animals wouldn't be drinking well water, anyway.

"So, your brother," the Warden started as they headed toward where the nurses had told them the well was, "is there...any way to deal with him, or is he just having a bad day?"

Saito considered family loyalty, getting the mission done, and not wanting to give an overly unfavourable impression. In the end, he went with, "No, he's always like that. You have to earn his respect for him to be willing to listen to you."

Which you can't if you're a medic, or if he perhaps has feelings of resentment toward you coming from something he doesn't seem to quite remember properly. One or the other, really.

"Easier said than done," the man said, clearly frustrated, running a hand through his short-cropped brown hair. "He has ridiculously high standards. If he didn't get results all the time, he'd have been busted for insubordination by now."

That would be a waste.

"He listens to our brother, and would do better working with a captain with a forceful personality to match his," Saito said after a second. "Otherwise, I'm afraid I can't be of much help. He doesn't like me very much."

Maybe for good reason, but no one needs to know that part. I don't need to out my little brother as an unaware Jinchuuriki, after all.

They were nearly at the dip in the road that marked the fork in the path to the well when Makoto intercepted them, tugging along a wide-eyed other Warden. Saito absently recognized them as the one who had been sent out to look for the chief healer in the town and hadn't returned for their meeting. His insides did a funny twist, because he could make guesses as to what that expression meant. None of them were good.

"This one has something to show us that he can't seem to actually use words for," Makoto said, disgust dripping from his tone. "He insists on showing all of us."

Had he not picked up on the shock? A question for some other time. Saito gently took the panicking Warden by the arm and tapped a bit of medical chakra into him--enough to calm a bit.

"Can you manage to tell us what has you so spooked?" he asked softly. "It's all right if you just have to show us, or tell us where to go."

Mostly, he just wanted confirmation of what he already suspected.

The boost seemed to help enough, as the Warden swallowed, then began. "Well...I was looking for the chief healer around here, like senpai told me to, but..."

"Did you find him?" Saito coaxed. "What did he say?"

The Warden's expression crumpled. "He didn't say anything--he's dead!"

Yes, that sounded about right. The odds of this being a deliberate poisoning had just gone up to about a hundred percent.

 

[Shiruko Makoto]

By the way the smell of decomposition had yet to hit anyone, even standing three feet away, Saito knew that the nurses' guess of their chief healer being unaccounted for less than a day was probably accurate.

The rest of their team, including the Warden/Healer pair shuffling around town helping tired people, had been sent on two tasks: the healers to finish fixing everyone up and then assist the nurses, and the Wardens to cordon off the town so the poisoner didn't get away. Or, rather, two of the Wardens had been sent to cordon off the town. Their leader and Makoto came with Saito, following the one who had found the body. After he led them there, the latter requested permission to go assist the rest of the team in a strangled voice, and scampered off when granted it.

"What kind of Warden can't handle a dead body?" Makoto said scornfully, seemingly having no problem stepping into the room himself. "Useless."

Saito didn't respond to this, instead kneeling over the dead man. There was no pretense of poisoning here; there was a deep cut straight across his throat. Blood had ceased pouring out of the wound, but a bit still puddled in it that hadn't yet dripped out onto the floor. The blood on the floor had gone dark brown and tacky already, Moon Country's heat speeding it along. He reached out lightly with a gloved hand to put a touch of pressure on the cheek; the skin had yet to start stiffening. That did take a while longer in people with a touch of chakra training sometimes, and he had to adjust for the amount of air that would have also been in the blood due to the location of the cut, but...

"Less than twelve hours, more than two," he said after a second. "I can't get any more specific than that without proper forensics done, sorry."

"There's a pile of paper shredded by chakra in the corner," Makoto reported. Saito glanced over at him. "I think that gives us a reasonable guess as to what happened here."

Saito nodded absently, studying the cut on the body's throat. It was very deep, probably done from behind, and hadn't so much narrowly missed the spine as chipped a piece of it. By the looks of it, the blade had been serrated, but gone in clean; the man had been handily overpowered. Bruising on the arms indicated it hadn't been by surprise; someone had gripped the man's bare arm tightly with one hand and slit his throat. Probably from behind.

"Which would be?" the Warden leader said after a minute when he seemed to realize he was the only one who hadn't worked it out.

Makoto sighed, and began in an even tone just shy of patronizing. "He met with someone to confront them about the poisoning. Someone he suspected, but likely wished to give a chance to come clean to. Unfortunately, he was correct in his suspicions. The person overpowered him--easily, by the look of it--cut his throat, and then destroyed the evidence." He gestured to the pile of what resembled confetti. "With wind chakra by the look of it. I can nail down the timeframe a little more from that; it hasn't been more than six hours."

"So we're probably looking for a ninja?" the Warden leader asked, and then heaved a sigh. "That makes things more difficult."

I doubt they've left. If their agenda could be accomplished by leaving, they wouldn't have bothered being around to confront in the first place. He didn't say that out loud, instead standing and brushing off his gloves lightly on his blue cloak. And if they'd tried to leave since we got here, we'd know.

"Two to six hours, then," he said, as if it wasn't important. Now that the people of the town were mostly all right, it was, but it was also none of his business to deal with. "I'd still like to have a look at that well. Determining what poison was used could also give us a clue to the person, and possibly even a trail. And once we have that, I'll be able to purify it."

Makoto looked at him like he was crazy.

"All right," the Warden leader said. "Makoto-kun, why don't you, uh..."

"Track down the poisoner," his brother prompted. "Yes, I think I will."

"Not alone--"

"I'm not taking someone who can't handle a dead body," he said flatly. "Or a medic. You're already going with him," he jerked his head at Saito, who had decided to quietly stay out of this particular argument, "so who does that leave? I'm going to look, and the rest of you can babysit the healers."

He didn't storm out; that was too rough and violent a word for any motion Makoto usually made. But he did sweep out rapidly but gracefully, his bubble of condescension going with him.

He really needs to learn to stop expecting so much from other people, Saito thought as he exchanged a (faked, on his end) exasperated look with the other team leader. Most other families don't take this life so seriously. At this point, it's doubtful my half of the team is in much danger. But there are still too many potential motives up in the air to be sure.

Frustratingly, he couldn't do much of anything about them, even though this was almost certainly the work of one of the third party factions trying to destabilize either his clan or the Shrine. Most likely the latter, since there was no particular important to any of the villages in this cluster from his family's perspective. If there hadn't been a Warden team with his, he could have shepherded his team around into 'accidentally' solving the whole thing. But he had to contend with a Warden leader who likely would have been somewhat helpful normally having his authority disrupted by an unruly underling and therefore losing enough confidence to be spectacularly unhelpful...

No, that wasn't fair to Makoto. The people in charge of mission squads should never have assigned him to this team leader.

Though, there was every possibility that this squad had specifically been assigned for Makoto to do the bulk of the investigative work, without any team members who could impede him, while not officially placing him in charge of one at his age... Saito considered this theory and mentally shrugged. He didn't know who had put this team together. That was something to check into after the fact.

They reached the well, finally. A lone medic was hanging around waiting for them; Saito sent them to guard the body they'd found.

Just in case. He was feeling paranoid.

"I don't feel good about sending a single team member to do anything," the head Warden said lowly as Saito stepped up to the well.

"In this particular case, it's unavoidable," he said calmly. "I'm going to draw a bucket up and test it, then grab another sample for further testing if we need to. After that I'll head down there to purify it."

"Down--" the Warden leader started, but cut himself off, evidently deciding to wait and see.

Saito pulled a bucket of water up and studied it visually before preliminary testing. There were no obvious impurities; it was as clear as any well water he'd ever seen before. Dipping his finger in, though, told a different story.

He'd always had a particular affinity with water. Some would believe that wasn't uncommon, on an island community, but in actual fact fire and wind seemed to be far more common elements in Moon Country. That wasn't to say he was the only water user on the whole island, but he was definitely one of those more attuned to the natural end of that element. So he really was the best choice for examining water contamination. If it was something he didn't recognize, then it would be some kind of synthesized poison. But the important part of this was that these people had been poisoned.

He took off one glove and sunk his finger into the water so he could get a better read on it. The results were...puzzling.

Why would you put both poison and medicine in...? Or did someone else put the medicine in? Did the chief healer do that before confronting the poisoner? No, that didn't make sense. The medicine that was used didn't seem to help much. Although, maybe it had kept people alive? But the medicine used didn't seem to treat any of the symptoms. It wasn't an anti-nausea medication or something to keep fever down--in fact, this particular tonic was most commonly used to treat heat rashes, internal burns from specific jutsu, and internal bleeding, among other problems. Was that part an accident? And I don't recognize this other foreign compound at all. It must be the poison. But it doesn't seem to be organic at all...a synthesized poison?

He frowned down at the water. He had very little chance of working out what a synthesized poison was, or was meant to do, without proper lab equipment.

"What's wrong?" the Warden leader asked. A few of the medics had gathered, Saito realized belatedly; his entire team sans the one he'd sent to guard the body were there.

"I don't recognize the poison," he said simply, making the other Healers stir. "Also, there's diluted medicine in here. Enough to abate some symptoms, but not ones that were displayed."

Why would anyone do that? Well, if I were so inclined to do something like this, what would I put medicine in for...? It was a useful trick, going at it in reverse. Saito's first instinct was usually 'I wouldn't do something this horrible,' but once he got past that it was surprisingly effective. It's not to prevent people from suffering, because if I cared about that I wouldn't have done this in the first place. Or to alleviate the symptoms, because this medication does nothing for fevers or vomiting; it can make nausea worse in some people even.

"What medicine is in there?" Meiko asked after a second.

"White thimbleweed extract," he said distantly. "Which certainly wouldn't help anyone with the nausea, but if you wanted to make the vomiting worse there's much stronger emetics."

...but what if I only wanted to alleviate some of the symptoms, so people would have a harder time treating the victims? Then I might pick something that did that while making one of the more dangerous symptoms worse. So what can cause nausea, vomiting, fever, and potentially internal bleeding, heat rashes, internal burns, organ damage, or maybe some or all of that?

Saito was not the sort of person who typically swore. He especially tried not to in front of his juniors; of all the various personnel around Moon, Healers were supposed to appear the gentlest and most caring, and foul language detracted from that. His family, also, were not big on it. Still, a few curses escaped him, very quietly, before he caught himself and turned to the other medics.

"Head back to the main medical building and tell them to get everyone who was affected onto antibiotics," he ordered. Airi's orange eyes widened in surprise before she nodded and scurried off toward the clinic.

He pulled a glass vial out of the inside of his cloak, scooped up a sample of the water, and handed it to Meiko, who was ready to take it with a cap. Saito turned back to the well, putting his glove back on, and prepared to shift liquid state. He had to get in there and cleanse that. So the cats had been avoiding the well water from the thimbleweed, not the same thing poisoning the people--thimbleweed was toxic to cats. Lucky for them, since the actual cause of the illness would have done in a cat for sure, even if the medicine hadn't.

"What is it?" the Warden leader asked urgently from behind him. "Are we all in danger? Should I call my team in?"

"Physically and currently, no; medically, the civilians are worse off than I thought." A nasty trap, too; even if the people had been cured of the initial affliction, without checking the well water and understanding the problem many of them likely would have suffered severe infections down the road. "We were partially mistaken--that is to say, it's a sort of poisoning, but not the traditional sort."

"Some kind that requires antibiotics?" the Warden asked, sounding bewildered.

"Senpai," Airi called as she jogged back up. "The nurses are doing it, but they want to know why. It's not exactly a standard poisoning treatment..."

Saito sighed and turned around, resting one hand on the well. "It's not a normal physical poison, no. Someone has deliberately dosed this well with radiation chakra--it's diluted enough to not affect people whose chakra systems are stronger, but anyone without training would be overwhelmed within a day or two, at most. Children more quickly. That abnormality in the water isn't a poison, which is why I didn't recognize it at first, but if you add the symptoms milkweed treats to what the population is displaying..."

"...you get radiation poisoning," Airi finished, then swallowed. "Um. How much?"

"Can't say. Whatever dosage, a System Shock still broke it up fine." He shook his head. "We'll discuss this when I come back. Go back and tell them."

She ran back again. He could hear the Warden leader swearing behind him as he dissolved into water and dove into the well.

I know how you feel.

Another part of him twinged. Radiation jutsu were extremely dangerous in combat.

...Is Makoto going to be okay?

 

[Shiruko Makoto]

Saito didn't have time to worry about his little brother facing off against someone dangerous, but that didn't stop a running thread of concern from harping on the danger at the back of his mind. Still, most of his mind was occupied with the transition to water and then, when he splashed into the well, back into his normal form.

(His clothes were getting wet, soaked even, but that was so much not a concern for someone who could turn all of themselves into water that it didn't even register.)

A bit of the water itself had tried to mingle with him as it usually did when he was in liquid state in a larger body of water, but it didn't take much effort to gently push it away. There was no faint glow from the radiation chakra like he might have expected, but then he didn't have much experience with that element. He really only knew what was going on due to the symptoms; otherwise he'd not have figured it out.

Usually, he used the particular skill he was charging to cleanse true poisons from liquid. But System Shock was used for cleansing poisons and it had worked to purge the radiation from people, so hopefully his purification technique would work on the same principles. That wasn't a given, he knew; System Shock might simply have defined poison differently than purification did, but it was a good place to go off. Besides, he'd know if it didn't take.

A cool blue spread out from him, the colour of his chakra seeping into the well water. Now it was glowing, shimmering like the sea around the island. That meant it was taking, at least. And his purification technique was stronger than System Shock, so it wouldn't fail. Indeed, when he tested the water after the glow had subsided the contamination was gone.

He tilted his head back and was about to call out for some help out of the (rather deep) well, since even he couldn't tread water indefinitely, but the bucket for it was hovering slightly above him. He blinked. It had been up at the top before. Figuring the others had lowered it, he jumped up, shifted to water again, and dove as water into the bucket, shedding the excess liquid making his clothes wet on the way.

Once he hit the bucket he felt it being pulled up. His senses were slightly off in that state, but he could still see, hear, and feel properly, and somehow his proprioception didn't completely take a hike. He'd never bothered asking why, he was just glad it didn't.

When he reached the open air, he jumped out of the bucket and shifted back in midair, landing in a crouch on the ground. The Warden squad leader was there, but the area was otherwise deserted of their personnel.

"Sent everyone who came to loiter over here off to do something useful," he explained tersely. Clearly the news of what the poison had been had rattled him. "Your medic that was here before to help at the clinic, the Wardens that thought they were done patrolling after your brother."

"He won't thank you for that," Saito murmured, but he himself was a little relieved. If nothing else, there was safety in numbers. "Did anyone who came by have any sort of lead...?"

"No." The man looked sour. "I suspect Makoto-kun is the only one who does--he's the designated tracker for any squad he ends up on, and he's good enough that they never bother to assign someone else with that specialty to the squad. I don't even have anyone with a secondary in it; the rest of us just have the basic Chakra Sense jutsu."

Personality issues aside, Saito was actually quite proud that his little brother was that good. "I see. I suppose we'll have to improvise. I don't mean to step on you, but we need to get this wrapped up as soon as we can."

"You're telling me." The man ran a hand through his short brown hair. "...Do you think he kept anything from us back at the body?"

"That's a hard thing to tell. He's not easy to read." Saito thought back to the room. He'd been mostly focused on the body himself, not the rest of the evidence. His usual cues for body language didn't tend to work on most of his family, his brothers less than anyone else. He could usually tell with his twin, but Makoto had learned the art of completely shutting down and ignoring his emotions rather than simply burying them temporarily as Kanashimi did, and was correspondingly more thorough about it.

But come to think of it, he'd been rather cagey about that paper.

"My best guess is that he managed to read something off the note, either by temporary piecing together the remains or from sensing," he said after a moment of thought. "And then didn't trust anyone else to act on it so he went to handle the trail alone."

"Did he storm off to distract us from the fact he'd investigated more thoroughly?" the Warden asked curiously, but Saito shook his head. It was a gambit he might have used himself were he of a more unpleasant and abrasive personality, but Makoto did not play emotional games.

"No, he was probably just in a hurry. I know he's worked with older trails, but he probably wanted to catch up to the killer." Saito gave a small sigh. "Which he might or might not have, by now. No way to tell."

People with a degree of Taijutsu training moved faster than those without it. Makoto had it, quite extensively, as did their whole family. The killer might or might not, depending--but given that they had at least three elements to work with, given that Wind chakra wasn't involved in the radiation element (that he knew of, anyway), there was a strong possibility they did not. But there was no way to tell how much they did or didn't have until their group caught up.

"How much Taijutsu training does each of your squad have?" Saito asked, making the decision to head back toward the site where they'd found the body. Judging by the way the Warden had turned the same way at almost the same time, he'd come to the same conclusion.

"Well, aside from me and Makoto-kun...very little." He grimaced. "I usually prefer to run a more Taijutsu-heavy team on longer trips like this, but I didn't think it would be a problem since we were coming by boat. Until we found out this wasn't a milk run, of course."

Of course. "So just the basics, then."

"Pretty much." He shrugged loosely. "I tried to get Fukuzawa Hana-chan, but she was on another assignment. A shame; she's apparently worked with your brother before, and well at that. Everyone I did manage to get only has the basic groundings in Taijutsu, and basic standard gear." He patted the scabbard on his hip. "I have a sword myself, and that about covers it."

So none of those others can catch up to Makoto. Fantastic. He managed not to sigh aloud though, and soon they reached the location where the body was. Two medics were hovering around outside; Healers weren't much for guard duty, so they were doing so obviously and nervously.

Saito nodded to each of them as the two of them passed through the door. With difficulty, he ignored the body--he'd already investigated it, and there were no intact notes in the clothes--and went for the pile of scrap in the corner. The Warden paused to search the body briefly, but apparently came to the same conclusion and went over to assist him.

"I'm not sure how anyone without a specialty in paper jutsu could reassemble that," the Warden said skeptically, studying the pile of scraps. "He must have just gotten a chakra signature."

"There are a number of ways to fake skills you don't have well enough," Saito said absently. The problem they had here wasn't a lack of skill with paper jutsu, but a lack of Makoto's general creativity. He didn't like to admit it out loud, nor did anyone else, but his little brother was a veritable genius. Moreover, just because he could solve that puzzle didn't mean Saito could; he might not have the means to do so. But he might be able to spoof it.

There were bits of ink visible on the scraps. He had a hard time believing Makoto would have just glanced at them and then not tried to read whatever had been on the paper without at least an attempt. However, he couldn't think of how.

"Can you Chakra Sense this?" he asked the Warden, standing up and backing off to give the man some room. "I can't figure out how he would have assembled the note, but I'm sure he would have tried."

"I can try," the man said doubtfully. "But a six hour trail is too much for me when working with a random object the person didn't own."

"I don't want you to sense the killer," Saito said, shaking his head. "Makoto definitely touched this. I want you to sense him. If you can do it without the paper since he's on your squad or for whatever other reason, go ahead, but..."

The Warden blinked at him, as if the thought hadn't occurred to him. "Half an hour I can do, yeah. Hang on a moment."

He dropped his hand to the pile and scrunched his face up. "Well, he used chakra here, definitely. He has that weird signature that's easy to pick up on. I'm not sure what though it wasn't a very strong jutsu, but I can get a trail from this."

"Good." He only hoped they could catch up.

~

They could.

The trail ended out in the farmlands, on the long stretch of road between this village cluster and the next to the north. Rather, they were able to pick up the sights and sounds of fighting before actually losing the trail. They had not passed any other Wardens. ("Probably went back to patrolling the town," the leader said dismissively. "I'll deal with them later.")

Ninjutsu-heavy battles were always flashy. Some people in Moon called a Ninjutsu-heavy style 'crash and bang,' and it was apt. Elements depending, things could get very loud. But they usually didn't last very long, unless one or both parties were stalling. Makoto was capable of stalling far longer than most Ninjutsu fighters, but even he couldn't indefinitely. Unless he was focusing on Taijutsu and only supplementing with Ninjutsu.

As they crested the hill to see the full view of the battle, the area was a bit of a mess.

Makoto was on the near side, parasol in one hand and a set of blue-green hexagonal chakra shields spinning around him. Mud Clones were reforming themselves from their puddles of muck, though one was still mobile. It looked as if he was trying to limit himself to things that wouldn't damage the farmlands too much.

His opponent, on the other hand, didn't seem to have that sort of restraint. Their weapon--Saito couldn't tell if it was a flat-chested woman or a man with very long deep purple hair--seemed to be a scythe made out of actual wind, with further pale green wind chakra wrapped around it. Channeling, he guessed. At least they couldn't fling off any more radiation with that out, but they were swinging it with reckless abandon, and there was what could only be a poison jutsu fogging up the air around various parts of the battlefield.

"Took you long enough," Makoto said, with only a half-second glance backward. "They practically signed their work."

"We actually tracked you down; we couldn't read the note," Saito said preparing his own defensive measures. If he took over there, the two Wardens could handle offense much better. "How did you do it?"

"Quick Combination Transformation to put it back together for long enough to read it, then it fell apart again when I dropped the jutsu," Makoto said off-handedly. As if the level of fine control needed to do that, never mind coming up with it in the first place, was something that anyone could just come up with and execute in seconds."

"Have you done that before?" the Warden leader asked, sounding a bit startled, as if he also hadn't thought of it. At least he'd drawn his sword, a flamberge of some type.

Saito could have told him the answer on that one, but Makoto didn't spare either of them a glance to give his reply, a simple, "No." Then he moved forward, the mud clones having been distracting the killer admirably while they talked.

In a battle, he wasn't much use on offense. The same could not be said for Makoto. By the time Saito had decided what to do and summoned a local Rain Dance to inhibit the potential casting of radiation jutsu, his brother was already on the move, blurring forward with handseals to make spinning chakra shuriken rain down. The Warden leader had moved forward as well, sword drawn, pumping chakra into himself to enhance his movements.

Saito settled back into a support role that he was more comfortable with. This wasn't liable to go quickly.

 

[Shiruko Makoto]

Saito hated fighting. This was no secret to anyone who knew him. In his family, it wasn't quite a mark of shame, but it was close. They were, after all, all taught to fight from the moment they could hold a weapon.

He had gravitated toward bows and other ranged weapons early, which was unusual but perfectly accepted. It had been a natural thing to make a bow for his main weapon during the creation ceremony shortly after his thirteenth birthday. In that respect, he was actually the most normal of his brothers; the other two had done unconventional grounds-up designs. (He had, however, heard their mother Tsukiko despair, "Can't any of them be normal?" Meaning normal for their clan, of course; their clan hardly did things normally as far as anyone else was concerned.) Still, the bow served him well. It was carbon, rather than fibreglass or wood, and handled the temperature shifts that could hit the island much better. It would have been difficult for him to make if he wasn't a ninja, due to the process involved in making the carbon fibres in the first place, plus getting it into the proper recurve shape. But, it was tough, and he still had it.

It was also imbued with his main element, and he could quickly and easily establish a channel through it. He drew it then, letting the water flow out over it. It wouldn't inhibit his casting of healing or support in any way, either; his water jutsu could heal if he wanted.

Though, the hardest part in a fight like this was not hitting your allies, and staying on target with all your attacks. But his years of archery and ranged Ninjutsu gave him an edge in visually keeping track of things.

He still didn't like fighting.

Absently, he noted the Warden leader's sword was a curved short sword, probably a wakizashi, with the detachment of someone born into a family of bladesmiths. It was at a disadvantage against something like a scythe unless he was fast enough to get inside the scythe's cutting range. With teamwork and the high defensive capabilities of Makoto's parasol, it might be possible...but he didn't see a lot of teamwork in them.

'Teamwork' was a four letter word to his brother, he knew. Well, to both his brothers, but his twin could at least swallow his pride sometimes.

Still, it was three on one. Three on one was good odds. He didn't have to do much more than lead their foe off.

Makoto didn't seem to be having any issues, despite the fact he'd already exchanged at least a couple of sets of attacks with the poisoner before they had showed up to help. He'd apparently already worked out the range shadow issue, and was working on exploiting it. His own weapon had one as well, but a more flexibly-sized handle that let him fix it on the fly, letting him close in.

The poisoner swiped at Makoto with the scythe, but he blocked. Wind chakra splashed over his parasol, but his own blue-green pushed it back off. The Warden leader darted in, the faint orange of fire chakra coating his blade, to aim a blow at their foe. The poisoner turned suddenly, combat reflexes apparently kicking in, but a scythe was not a fast weapon and they weren't able to deflect the bulk of the blow, nor turn the blade to get a hit in.

Scowling, the poisoner flung a wind jutsu outward off their weapon that hit both of the Wardens. Saito took advantage of the distraction to loose a channeled Grand Waterfall from just above the poisoner's head. They jerked, as if sensing or hearing the rush of water, but it crashed down on them. Makoto punctuated this with a quick set of handseals from his free hand. A loud bang punctuated a lightning attack Saito vaguely recognized as a Gigavolt Cannon. Difficult to aim, but nearly impossible to miss with at that range, especially on a soaked target.

Lightning normally wouldn't have been advisable with the rain Saito had summoned onto the field earlier, but Makoto didn't have to worry about such difficulties of course.

(If he'd known the Warden leader favoured fire, he might not have done that. But he seemed more comfortable with Taijutsu anyway; the element seemed like it might have been chosen for the minor advantage over the poisoner's wind.

And that was...still odd, wind didn't factor into radiation. Did it? Had he gotten his elements mixed up? Something wasn't right here...)

The Warden leader danced in the instant the lightning stopped and scored another glancing blow. Neither of them had drawn blood yet, but everyone involved was fighting with no regards to simple containment, so it was only a matter of time. Saito supposed that someone who had poisoned a whole town and killed someone escaping had forfeited their right to be taken alive, not that he really liked the ease with which his team went for that.

He loosed a free shots, since no one needed healing at the moment, keeping the poisoner off balance to allow the Warden leader to not get hit while he was busy distracting their foe from Makoto's attack. His handsigns were rapid in his unusual one-handed variant, and seemed to be for something powerful.

Sure enough, a large amount of the water in the area suddenly drew together and formed into three swift-flying dragons. The first smashed into the poisoner just after the Warden leader drew blood with a deep gash, knocking them back. The Warden leader snap-rolled out of range right as the second dragon slammed the poisoner backward, knocking their scythe away. Being a created weapon, it only got a few feet into the air before evaporating completely.

The poisoner rolled to their feet, staggering, but the final water dragon wrapped tightly around them, and that seemed to be that.

Makoto's mud clones fell apart as Saito canceled the rain; the clones weren't the only reason the area had gotten muddy. He stepped over to the others and sheathed his bow, picking through the area to retrieve his loosed arrows. There didn't seem to be much in the way of damage to them. Mostly, he didn't want to watch an interrogation--or, possibly, an execution.

It was only due to his keen archer's eyes that when he looked up, he was drawn not to the scene of questioning directly in front of him, but a blur of movement in the distance. This was the flatlands, but neither of the others had as good senses as he did, and they were focused on their current target.

The elements hadn't added up to him because he had been thinking of it in terms of one person. But if the muscle and the poisoner were two different people...

In an instant, his bow was back in his hand, and Saito strung and released one of his retrieved arrows without conscious thought. It sailed over the heads of both Wardens and prisoner in the direction of the incoming assailant.

The actual poisoner, probably. The real radiation user, almost definitely.

"Saito, what are you even shooting--" Makoto started, but then cut himself off and turned to look in the direction the arrow had gone. This was just in time for him to catch a glimpse of something that seemed to alarm him, since the still-active hexagonal chakra shields that had been whirling around the battlefield zoomed over to him to form up in multiple layers, far enough out to block for all four of them

Which was a good thing, as a sickly green beam impacted them, ripping through the shields down to the last one, which barely blocked the last of the beam. It was in bad shape though, flickering to indicate heavy damage.

(Saito was mostly amazed how it had taken half an instinctive second for Makoto to react to and counter a long-range threat like that. The easily-readable and indicative way his shields reacted spoke of nearly as much control as his earlier reveal of tracking methods did.)

Makoto frowned, looking like this wasn't even the worst problem he'd dealt with all day, and let the damaged shield fail completely before recasting the jutsu. Four fresh shields popped up, but the first set had done their job, and the radiation user was now in attack range and exposed.

"Good catch," he said off-handedly and somewhat awkwardly before flipping out his knives and darting forward. "Can you..."

It was fortunate that Makoto had used a water jutsu, because that let Saito work with its components. "Yes," he said, moving forward to touch the serpent. Since they were siblings, there was enough similarity in their chakra to transfer control of his element to him. It was complicated a bit by the non-elemental tint to all of his brother's ninjutsu, but that part slid away when he released it to Saito's control.

The Warden leader watched this with some astonishment. "Well. We'll leave this to you, then." He then moved after Makoto.

He gave a slight nod. Maintaining a water jutsu was as easy for him as breathing. Or breathing underwater, even, which was also something he was capable of.

Meanwhile, Makoto had already engaged the poisoner. Just how much energy did he have, anyway? He'd been in combat the longest of any of them. Saito thought it was probably his own dislike of and general aversion to fighting that was making him think that, though; objectively, the fight with the wind scythe user hadn't really lasted very long at all.

The newcomer was a woman, assuredly. She was tall, with a shapely figure and long, bright orange hair. Her hands were wrapped in bandages, though it was the kind fist fighters used rather than ones that seemed particularly indicative of injury to his eye. As he watched, not feeling he should do too much other than ensure the bind held, she flung an attack at Makoto, who blocked and redirected the bulk of it with his blades crossed in front of him before moving in closer. This particular opponent lacked a range shadow, but knives tended to outmatch fists for extreme close range.

It became obvious in only a moment why the wind user had been along as muscle. The true poisoner wasn't much of a fighter at all. The distraction Makoto provided easily allowed the Warden leader to score hits, and when she turned to deal with him Makoto nailed her over the head with the flat of his blades, hard. She went down clutching her head and whimpering, which allowed the Warden leader to cuff her hands behind her back. Makoto still kept a sharp eye out, probably in case she decided to channel, but it was over.

~

Once the real poisoner was caught, the wind user folded rapidly. The poisoner had huddled up miserably, not protesting when they hauled her along, and her hired muscle had immediately started babbling. (Another woman, as it turned out--apparently, they were siblings, from the way they acted. Saito recognized the signs.) The poisoner hadn't stopped her, occasionally whimpering as they tugged her along. He caught a glmpse of blood trickling down her scalp; Makoto had apparently hit her quite hard.

They had made it back to the village in good time, considering they were hauling two prisoners along. By that time, the wind user had confessed to her murder of the chief healer, and finally run out of things to spill before falling silent again.

"The main question is 'why?'," the Warden leader said, when they had the whole team and several villagers gathered. "You've gone into great detail on the how, but you haven't mentioned why."

"It was an accident," the poisoner mumbled.

"No," Saito said, almost reflexively. "I saw the water; that wasn't an accident. You deliberately masked some symptoms while worsening others. This was intentional."

"Saw the water," the wind user said, peering at him. She suddenly looked even more nervous. "Kiko-tan--"

The poisoner shushed her.

The Warden leader exchanged glances with most of his squad while Makoto's eyes were narrowed, calculating. "Well. I think that is enough for us to get Kiyomizu to interrogate them when we get back. This looks like a thread to follow. Erm, could I get you to submit a water report..."

"Certainly," Saito said. "I assume you use a similar format for reports that we do."

"Are we really thinking conspiracy?" one of the other Wardens asked skeptically. "Because I know this is Moon Country, but not everything is a conspiracy. Right?"

"You must be newer than you look," Makoto said. "Eventually you'll learn--yes, it is."

Saito remained silent, knowing he oughtn't to weigh in on that in front of non-family.

"You were the least useless one here," he added to Saito, seemingly as an afterthought. "Presumably, for the medical side, you were considerably more than that. But I suppose it's a good thing you aren't a Warden. Your deduction time was terrible."

"We tracked you from your chakra use, actually," he said mildly, not at all put out by the backhanded compliment. His brother's digs just didn't bother him. "And you really shouldn't dismiss people because they don't have the same skillset as you."

"I don't mind that," Makoto said, shaking his head. "I just prefer them to be good at what it is they choose to do. And you? Should really not be doing investigative work."

Saito shrugged loosely, drawing his cloak around himself. "It's not my job," he half-lied. Investigative work was certainly part of spy work. But that type of it he was good at.

His brother gave him a look as if to say, 'good.' Clearly, he didn't think much of Saito's skillset. But he also just as clearly thought even less of everyone else around.

That, more than any other trait of his little brother's, could actually somewhat grate on him--his standards. They were far, far too high. He had a natural aptitude for chakra control that was only enhanced by his intelligence, and seemed to regard anyone who couldn't find some sort of way to keep up as incompetent in the field.

He needed to fix that. But there was nothing Saito could do to help him.

"I suppose I'll leave that thread to all of you to unravel," he said to the Warden leader as they loaded everyone, prisoners included, onto the boat back to the city. "My mission, at least, is done."

"Yes," the man agreed. "If anything comes of this, it will be a Warden affair. Oh and uh, thank you. Both for your direct help on the investigation and what you could do to wrangle your brother."

"Wrangling isn't what should be done with him," Saito said quietly. "I'm sure there are some people in the Wardens he can work with. You should probably recommend he work with them only."

"Not a bad call," the Warden leader agreed. "Though, you I wouldn't mind working with on joint missions in the future, if necessary."

Saito could work with just about anyone, so he could agree readily enough to that. But the entire ride back, he kept glancing over at his prickliest relative.

Something needs to be done for him eventually...but I have no idea what.

Then he thought of who in the Wardens he knew to usually handle investigative long-range work like this, and internally smiled. Now there was someone he knew Makoto could work with.

Ball's in your court now most likely, Kana-kun. Have fun with it.