Chapter 43: Arriving at the Frost Village.

"Hello there! We have something of yours!"

I shouted to the guards at the gate to the village; then I pointed to Ichiro, unconscious on one of Naruto's clones' backs. He appeared to be still knocked out, but the exchange would be his best time to escape, so we were all still on high alert.

The gate to the Frost Village was similar to the Leaf's but less guarded, given that the Frost Village itself was about a third the size of the Leaf. There were two shinobi guards, both males, wearing the Frost uniform, blue winter jackets with white fur, sunglasses, heavy pants, snow boots and the Frost headband, which displayed four small circles orbiting equidistant around a larger circle. Ichiro and his people had worn the same garb when we fought them, but the circles on their headbands were filled in red rather than hollow.

I gestured to the real Naruto, and he lifted Ichiro's head from his clone's shoulder, showing his gas-masked face and headband.

"We give you Ichiro, the Ice Man. He's still alive for now, but if you don't want him, we will be forced to either kill him or let him go free. I suggest you inform your Kage..."

I was a little fuzzy on their history. Still, I believed years ago, our ANBU and their village fought after their previous Kage failed to negotiate an alliance between the Land of Fire and the Land of Frost, resulting in the death of their feudal lord and Shimokage. I thought the Foundation then installed some Leaf-friendly ninjas to lead the village. However, since feudal lords are hereditary, I believed the Foundation had to assassinate the rest of the family till a Leaf-friendly Frost Lord was next in line. That last part was purely speculation, though.

One of the guards seemed to take offence at me ordering them around.

"You don't give us orders, Leaf bitch! And you don't have the right to arrest Frost citizens!"

He spat out, then raised a kunai. Just as it looked like it would get ugly, his fellow gate guard hastily pulled down his weapon arm and tried to de-escalate.

"Calm down, Haru! This is above our pay grade. Go inform the captain!"

The angry guard, Haru, looked annoyed but stormed off through the gate. The calmer guard gave me an apologetic look.

"Sorry about him. I'm Kouta."

"Sakura." I introduced myself with a seductive smile, but the rest of my squad stayed silent.

"You... don't seem dressed for our land." Kouta gestured to my outfit—my sheer black lace lingerie, floor-length black fur coat, and thigh-high boots—then looked over me at Hinata, "Her either," and nodded to her matching white ensemble.

We were both wearing identical outfits, only in different colours—me in black, her in white—with our headbands tied around our necks like chokers.

"We're fine." I waved it off.

I wasn't going to explain anything, and he didn't expect me to. For all he knew, our exhibitionist apparel was tied to our tactics or jutsu, and I would let him continue to wonder if it was.

"So..." I began to ask as I approached him, "How long will we have to wait to enter the village? This guy could wake up or die at any moment. We don't know how his body works or how to sedate him properly."

I didn't see any reason to lie about that.

"No idea!" He laughed nervously as I got within embracing distance. "I've only been a guard for a few weeks; we were just told to turn away anyone without papers, detain anyone suspicious, or call our superiors if anything unusual came up. You're the first foreign ninja I've seen try to enter."

This guy was either an idiot, really a rookie or trying to make me think he was in an attempt to get me to lower my guard. He was talking way too much, letting me get too close and giving away weaknesses in their village security. If what he said was true, I now knew that they were running low on adequately trained ninjas and equipment, if they didn't have any radios and needed to send someone to get his boss physically.

His eyes occasionally drifted to my tits—visible through the sheer black lace of my bra—as he spoke, so maybe he was just gushing info due to being flustered by my appearance. That still told me he was not being adequately trained, and his village was desperate for competent guards.

"Kouta, why was your friend so mean to me?" I pouted.

"Ha, well, some people don't like the Leaf, b-but not me. My father was a Leaf shinobi, my mother was a... hostess..."

So, his mother was a prostitute, and his father was probably part of the Leaf garrison stationed in the Frost Village during the Third Shinobi War. That would make him only a few years older than me and my classmates from the academy.

"Oh, really! Was he from a powerful clan?" I asked with fake excitement.

"Ah, I erm, can't say."

He seemed to remember I was a foreign ninja. Despite our two villages not being in open conflict, he was still supposed to keep state secrets. Being the bastard son of a noble Leaf clan could very well be one of them. If he had a powerful kekkei genkai, that could explain why an apparent idiot like him was somehow a chunin and posted as a gate guard.

"Oh, can you at least tell me—"

"Kouta, shut your mouth and get away from her!"

A loud, feminine voice cut me off. I took a step back from Kouta and looked in its direction to see a female Frost ninja walking up to us with the previous guard, Haru. She wore the same uniform and headband as Kouta and Haru, but with a jonin armband.

This must have been their guard squad captain. The woman didn't show much skin, but I could tell from her figure that she had an ample chest and long blond hair. With her commanding presence and appearance, she reminded me of my Master.

"Captain Shibuya! I was just—" Kouta tried to explain himself, but she just walked past him, pulled him back and shoved him towards Haru.

It was hard to tell due to the Frost ninja sunglasses they wore as part of their uniform, but it looked like she was glaring down at me. Oh, she was pretty tall for a woman.

"I will take the prisoner to our holding cells. Lord Shimokage would like to speak with you. You will surrender all your belongings and follow Haru to his office."

Well, it wasn't our mission to gain intel on the Frost Village. By rights, we shouldn't even have gone there, so I decided to drop trying to seduce intel out of them. It was just a force of habit.

"Well, he attacked us, and we caught him. We would rather just leave him with you and be on our way."

I explained, dropping the flirty tone I was using with Kouta.

She ground her teeth. "Lord Shimokage wants to speak with you. He wishes to thank you."

Well, I didn't want to start an international incident, so I decided to play along. We didn't have an embassy in the Frost Village, but maybe our actions here could lead to one being established. Or we could make things worse by disrespecting their Kage. I didn't think they would risk retaliation from the Leaf by harming us without cause, so I thought it was safe to accept.

I smiled up at Shibuya. "Very well." I took off my ninja belt and handed it to her.

It only contained a few kunai and shuriken, plus my medical supplies. I then looked back at my squad.

"We are going to meet their Kage, so we should hand over our gear."

The disarmament of guests was more symbolic than practical, left over from the days before ninja, as any competent ninja didn't need physical weapons to fight. Shino shook his head at me, handing over his gear to Haru and Kouta, then gesturing for the others to do the same. It seemed he was reluctant, yet he still trusted my judgment on diplomatic matters. After all, that was my primary role in this team; I was just negotiating with the Frost rather than the Cloud.

...

After a specialised team of prison guards arrived to restrain Ichiro, Shibuya led them away to the holding cells, and Haru and Kouta led us into the village and to the Shimokage's office.

The prison guards took our gear, and we were told we would get everything back at the gate when we left. We walked in silence behind Haru and Kouta and got weird looks from the civilians and ninjas of the village, especially Hinata and me. I was used to it, and it looked like Hinata was getting better at dealing with both lecherous and disapproving glares.

Conversely, Naruto was glaring back and seemed to be getting mad. I decided to talk to him.

"What is it?" I asked in a whisper as I gently rubbed his arms while we walked side by side behind the Frost ninja escort.

"We caught one of their rogue ninjas for them, but they look like they hate us. You'd think they'd be more grateful."

"It's okay, sweetie. They don't know why we're here yet; they may think we were here to overthrow their village leadership or extort them somehow. Our village is a lot more powerful than theirs."

We had done so in the past, but it was important that we, as Leaf ninjas, didn't admit to doing so publicly. My words seemed to calm him down.

"I suppose you are right; they just don't know how awesome you two are yet!"

I gave him a quick kiss after he said that, which caused Kouta to look at me with an unmistakable look of disappointment on his face.

It wasn't long before we arrived at the Shimokage's office building. It was a lot smaller than our Hokage's and appeared to only have two floors. Apart from its size, it looked similar, with a blue-and-white colour scheme and the Frost Village symbol displayed on the wall above the entrance.

We were led into the lobby, and Haru spoke with the receptionist. She was a brunette woman, wearing a standard office worker blouse and pencil skirt, which would have shown a tasteful amount of skin from her decent-sized cleavage and thighs. However, she wore a skin-tight, dark blue thermal jumpsuit under it, so no part of her skin was visible below the neckline.

I guessed she wore the office lady get-up for fashion, but the jumpsuit to keep warm. I was really glad Hinata and I could stay warm no matter what we wore. I felt terrible for her; she clearly wanted to look good but needed to keep warm, yet her mismatched clothes just made her look goofy.

I was so busy scrutinising her outfit that I missed what Haru and Kouta said to her, but snapped out of it when she smiled at me and said, "Lord Shimokage will see you immediately. Please go through the double doors."

I gave her a sad smile, which seemed to confuse her. "Thanks, honey... don't worry, you'll figure something out. Maybe just try a nice parka."

She went to open her mouth, but my squad and I were hurried through the doors by Haru and Kouta. The doors behind us closed, and we were face-to-face with the Shimokage.