IT'S ALL FOR A MISSION

Prologue

Tsunade was pissed off for some reason. Being trapped in your office nine hours non-stop on a hot summer day isn't exactly the best plan ever. To top it off, she was stuck with thick piles of paperwork, and then, to make things worse than imaginable. Shizune had taken her drink from her so that she'd finish writing the document that should have been finished three days ago.

"Hokage-sama, Team Eight is already back!" That was Shizune's announcement as she rushed in through the door, the wood hitting the wall behind it, creating a small crack.

What now? Damn, I need a break, give me a fucking break! There's no drink, no good cooling system in the entire Konoha and then there's these damn documents, Tsunade sighed looking at the door as it hit said wall.

"Send them in," Tsunade ordered tiredly. How come they are already back? Did the mission fail? It sure looks like it, she thought cautiously inspecting the appearance of the three members of Team Eight as they entered the room. Kiba looked frustrated, Hinata seemed to be a bit tired and Shino . . . well, he looked like usual, his mysterious aura adding more worry and frustration to Tsunade. She frowned.

They look fine, but what's the matter? They're my best team when it comes to tracking enemies, at least out of all the Chūnin, she thought and studied them from head to toe.

The three ninjas were sent to The Land of Waves to locate and capture a group of rogue civilians. There wasn't enough information about them, and Team Eight's tracking abilities came in handy for this kind of mission. Their last report mentioned that the group were heading to a civilian village located in the land of waves. It was two weeks ago, so what had exactly happened since then? The mission had been assigned to last for over ten months.

"Hokage-sama?" This brought Tsunade's attention to Shino, the captain of Team Eight for this mission: Kurenai being home with her child, who had been given birth three months ago.

"Why are you already back? By the look on your faces, the mission is a failure," She said, it wasn't visible on the outside that she was worried, but her insides were as uneasy as a rock balancing on a stick. She cared for all her ninjas. If these mercenaries aren't captured; they're going to be in deep trouble.

The mission is an A-ranked mission, with the collaboration of the sand village, the stone village and the leaf village. The Sand village found out that these mercenaries were buying and stealing dangerous weapons and jutsu scrolls, they didn't know if the mercenaries were selling them or keeping them for their own needs. It started with them losing a precious jutsu scroll two months ago, and then it continued like that for every week passing by; every time more scrolls were being stolen.

The Stone Village had been the ones to become aware of this and noticed the strange behaviour of their inns' owners; they hadn't registered at least twenty customers during the past two months. The people's identity is unknown.

The biggest problem right now though, is that Stone Village is usually being visited a lot by foreigners during the summer months - people are fascinated by the rocks and waterfalls in the village, and will thereby visit it during its best - so there are thousands of tourists there, making it hard to find the culprits. For some reason though, strange things started to happen during late May and all of it started in the stone village, but then it spread to more villages. The northwest parts of the country were the most exposed, and the only villages they hadn't searched in were the ones that were not shinobi villages.

It was because of this that the stone village finally asked for the sand village's and leaf village's help. It didn't take long for them to find out that some of the mercenaries were identified as missing ninjas from the lea as well as Iwagakure thanks to the way the scrolls and weapons were stolen.