Oda Makoto was busily reminding himself that - in complete contrast to her generally amiable personality on this mission - his partner was a well-known, if charming, bitch. It was why being in the same room with her was a mildly terrifying experience. Despite a full week's worth of digging around the syndicate's building picking up as much minor information he could steal from their databanks, and being a manly ninja of the leaf. Sumire always smelled like smoke and alcohol, with a top note of sweet, floral smell from her hair. She never spoke to him about exactly what it was she was doing in those many hours, just wrote it down on a scroll for later. Where was this 'passionate hatred of all things lower than she' he'd heard about? Wasn't she going to seduce him? Didn't she seduce every male that came within five feet of her?

Why was he being ignored?!

He wrote down what he'd memorized during this afternoon's gleaning. He'd heard several secretaries talking about the 'contact folio'. But, there seemed to be more than one copy, or at least separated so you couldn't get all the contacts at one time, and they were all locked in the head secretaries' desks. The building itself was like a paranoid's dream, with more checkpoints then the ones you needed to get down into the subbasements at home.

In short, the building was a veritable fortress. He frowned and wrote another few observations down, then closed his book and sat back to pinch his nose. This was exhausting. Unless Murakami somehow fished a keycard from the target, so they could access all the folios at once (or just one! If they got just one, this would be a wham-bam-thank you, ma'am kinda mission) and see just who was betraying what village... Hell, they'd have enough information for a whole encyclopedia of Bingo Books.

Hatake could have a goddamned field day trying to get himself killed.

Everyone would win.

Oda was just about to settle himself in and prepare his plan of action for the next day, when Murakami entered, threw a scroll at his face, and stomped off into the tiny motel's bathroom. Maybe those chuunin mailgirls were right after all...

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When she came out a few minutes later, smelling less like alcohol and more like a normal person, Sumire elaborated on the thrown scroll. "I lifted those from Fukuzawa's assistant when I left this evening. See if there's anything important, will you? I'm dead tired." Sumire announced in that same calm and slightly imperialistic tone she used. Oda's work was strewn on the desk.
She picked up a paper and glanced over it.

"On the other hand... does it really look this bad?" Sumire murmured.

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"Yeah, it is. They're smart enough to not talk about the Master File, but... getting out five or six books would be a pain in the ass. Besides that, they are all holed up in a keycard room. It's like they're just begging someone to come in and try." Oda scrubbed a hand through his hair. Thinking about all this was going to give him an ulcer for sure. "I'm pretty sure one of us can lift the card, but--"

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Sumire cut him off, "You know, Fukuzawa hates ninja?" She put the paper down. Oda looked confused, the poor dear. "Sorry for jumping subjects, but he took me to a drinking meeting tonight with some of his colleagues. It came up." In fact, every member of Yonaga's board hated ninja for one reason or another. Some had lost friends and children to ninja. Brothers, sisters, whole chunks of family. They all seemed to agree: Ninja, with their jutsus and chakra-laden strength and speed, were keeping the rest of humanity from developing.

Therefore, they were a threat that needed to be systematically destroyed.

"One would imagine that the gathering of so many villages secrets would be a key element." Sumire sat down on the edge of her bed, and rested her chin in her hands. "Secondly, it isn't as though we could go to other villages and tell them that they're being betrayed without exposing ourselves to the fact that we have their information. Leaking a little about this village to that village, stirring up old war wounds and breaking all those vital ties we made during the last war."

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Oda nodded. "So, it's a catch-22. The only way to get any good out of this is to have someone else take the evidence, or, take it for ourselves and be rat bastards about how we use it." Damn, it really was a piece of work. At least this was keeping his mind off the fact that she was still dressed like a hostess.

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"Yeah, that would be the whole of it." Sumire tapped her brightly colored fingernails against her left wrist. "As much as I don't mind having a heavy advantage, this might be one that comes back to bite us in the ass." Which would, inevitably, lead them to another war. A war her village couldn't afford in the least. Sumire sighed slightly, upsetting the stylish tilt of her bangs. "So what do you think we should do, Oda?"

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"Yonaga will still be there in the morning, right? We'll plan it then. You're tired, I'm tired and we're both expected to do our jobs." Oda suggested and smiled grimly.

Shit, he hadn't thought about so many other implications. Fuck. His partner retired back into the bathroom to finish her ritual, and he cleaned up the little desk. When he finally hit the hay, he was still thinking about being forced to send children into battle.

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