Hoshigaki

The Weak Are Meat

"I'll go," Sakura offered. She stood to grab a pitcher of water from the fridge and poured three cups and a bowl. For a split second, she paused. "But if I'm going to talk about what I'm really capable of, everyone in this room is to swear nothing said tonight leaves this apartment."

Shino paused himself, his hand hovering over his meal. Her voice was light but its undercurrent was so serious that he didn't know what to make of it. Would it be some insight to her past? Perhaps some information on her origins? Kiba, predictably, stayed unfazed and steadily gnawed his pork.

"I swear on my life," he announced, and Shino did a double take. It was that important? Fine. Then he'd make it so. As Sakura sat back down at the table, he sent a stream of black insects down his chair, across the floor, up the walls, and through all the cracks the dingy apartment had to offer.

"If what you're going to say is as covert as you make it to be, I'll need them stationed in and around the complex," he responded to Sakura's quirked eyebrow and Kiba's flail of surprise. "Why, you ask? To prevent eavesdroppers, of course. Any suspicious activity will be reported to me." He surveyed their expressions. "And I swear on my life as well."

Kiba opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and shoved some bitter melon into his mouth before pointing his chopsticks across the table. "You're a little insane. But low-key awesome. Because being able to do something like that is freakin' cool."

"It is," agreed Sakura. She drew her interested eyes away from the spots wandering about her apartment. "So, what you want to know..." she trailed off. She stirred her bowl of soup with a spoon. "Where should I start?" Tapping her fingers against her chin, she came to a decision. If she was going to make something of herself, she couldn't do it alone, much less keep it hidden from the people she would be spending every waking day for the next year or more. "I'll start from the beginning."

Kiba perked up. "From Ame?" She didn't talk too much about it, and all he picked up from her vague stories were her mysterious single father and his dangerous co-workers.

"From Ame," she assented. "Let's see... I was born and raised in Amegakure. My mother died when I was born so I never met her, and my father is a powerful shinobi from what I've known. Before I started to talk, he taught me the Top 50 Shinobi from the Bingo Book."

Shino tilted his head curiously. "He catered to your window of opportunity."

"Precisely," she nodded, turning to look at Kiba. "It's the time in a child's development where they learn best—basically the time before they turn five." Sakura returned to explaining everything as a whole. "Once I was able to walk, he started training me in the shinobi arts. We went to the fields at night where no one could come across us and went back home before dawn and before the village woke up. My father's boss knew about me—had known about me since I was a couple months old—and gave me a series of tests when I was seven. My father didn't think I knew what was going on, but I did. I was supposed to be like him."

Slowly, Shino and Kiba were coming to the same conclusion. Sakura's background was so much more than an orphan who happened to come to Konoha. Her so-far short explanation suggested a far more dangerous background. Shino chewed on a piece of tofu, mulling over his thoughts, before he asked the one question burning in the air.

"Your father... was he a missing-nin?"

"He is." Is. Present term. That was revealing enough itself. She would never tell them where he was truly from or what he'd done because that was plain incriminating.

A quiet fell over the table as everyone ate their fill and helped clean off the table. She decided to give them time to think—to digest; what she confirmed from their reactions would let her know how to proceed.