Obito-Sensei (A Sakura-Centric Naruto AU)

A large part of me wants this to have a (relatively) happy ending.
Another part of me is really scared that everything is somehow secretly worse off than canon somehow, despite Naruto having a family & no sand invasion.
This is something I've said before, but don't worry, I'm a happy ending guy! I just like a hellish journey to get there, lol (as my other fics indicate).

That said, there are already indications of how things can get worse, despite how things are "better" than in canon. Gaara is the big setpiece here: no one on Team 7 was in a position to empathize with him, and the one person who could, Kushina, was not in a position to affect real change for him. Because of those deeply unfortunate circumstances, Gaara, a person with enormous capacities for empathy and good, will remain trapped in a toxic situation with an abusive father, terrified siblings, and more pressure than ever to preform as a merciless monster after Sakura's public humiliation of him.

Unfortunately, things will only grow worse for him.
Exspecially if it isn't clear if the cynical evolution dudes or the idealistic revolution dudes got it correct
At the risk of sounding like a meme centrist, lol, this is the kinda thing where there is rarely a "correct" answer. That's why I wanted to explore it: because it's complicated and messy. Guess we'll see if I fuck it up.

Thanks for the comments, and thanks for reading!
 
I love how Rasa insulted his own son by not promoting the shinobi who defeated him. He basically said his son was so shit he was defeated by a genin, not someone who deserved to be promoted beyond where she was.
 
Chapter 26: B-Rank
The Toad Sage

Three days later, Sakura could walk without the assistance of crutches. She spent all of those days with her team, training to rebuild what strength she'd lost from her time in the hospital. A lot of that training was with the principles of the Rasengan. Obito had told her it would be a good place to start: she already had the basics in her Flowing Water Blade.

She took to it quickly. After three days, Sakura had already burst a water balloon with just her chakra. Being able to walk like a normal person, albeit with some pain, was the perfect accompaniment to that breakthrough.

The day after that, Team 7 received a new mission.

"This will be your first B-Rank." Sakura didn't know the man who was assigning them the mission. He was short and pale, with shaggy brown hair concealed under a bandana and a persistent cough. There was a sword slung over his back as well, and from that alone Sakura felt an irrational kinship with him. Maybe Tenten had been getting to her more than she'd given credit for.

"Other ninja?" Sasuke asked, all business, and the man, Hayato, shook his head.

"Not necessarily," he said, giving their sensei a surreptitious glance. "B-Rank only indicates the possibility of enemy shinobi." Sakura wondered what that meant. When it came to ninja, it ironically was unmistakable if they were involved or not. Then again, B-Ranks weren't uncommon. They probably covered a wide range of possible scenarios, like-

"Yeah yeah yeah." Naruto snatched the scroll out of the man's hand, and Sakura's train of thought with it, and the older ninja blew out a frustrated breath. "Everything we need to know here, right?"

"Yeah." Hayato gave a disgusted wave. "Yeah, everything you need. Get out of here."

When Team Seven left the building, Obito took them aside.

"We've been specially selected for this mission," he said, and Sasuke snorted.

"You've been specially selected for this mission," he said, and Sakura had to laugh at the honesty of it. "We're the tagalongs."

"Hey now, don't be so negative," their sensei said with a grin. "You guys have all more than proven yourself ready for a B-Rank like this."

"Course we have!" Naruto said. Always so confident, and Sakura adored that about him. "So, what're the details?" He unrolled the scroll, and scrunched up his nose at what was inside. The writing was jagged but organized, Sakura thought. "Hey, this is-"

"Sensei's handwriting," Obito confirmed. The Hokage's handwriting, Sakura thought. It fit him. Strange that she could think that about Naruto's father, but she tried not to overthink it. Naruto was her friend: of course she was familiar with his father.

"This mission's from my dad?" Naruto asked.

"Technically, he was given it by someone else," their sensei said wryly. "You were there when it happened."

"What, the Toads?" Naruto asked, and Obito nodded.

"Yup."

"Then… we're going looking for Jiraiya of the Sannin?" Sakura said, and Obito gave her a thumbs up.

"Perceptive as ever, Sakura. This is a tracking mission. Well, something between that and a VIP escort." Obito gestured, and Naruto handed the scroll over. He cleared his throat and read from it in an overly formal tone. "Your mission is to ascertain the whereabouts of and make contact with Jiraiya of the Sannin, and should he blah blah blah." He trailed off, handing the scroll back to Naruto, who tucked it in his pants. "You get it. Our mission is to locate a legendary ninja and, if able, bring him back to Konoha."

"And that's… B-Rank?" Sakura asked, and Sasuke snorted.

"This is gonna end up just like that first C-Rank," he said, and Obito scoffed. "A Sannin? That invites all sorts of trouble."

"There's only so many rogue ninja to go around you know, Sasuke," Obito said in good humor. "Even you can't be that unlucky."

Sasuke smirked. "When are we leaving?"

"Two hours," Obito said. "This could be a long term mission; it's at least a day's journey to the first destination, and tracking missions always run longer than expected, so pack appropriately. Grab all your stuff, meet at the front gate. Familiar, right?"

Weirdly familiar. Sakura said her goodbyes and went home, mostly anonymous in the streets once more. She still got the occasional glance, but the whispers were gone. She was thankful for that. She couldn't imagine how it would feel to have people whisper about you wherever you went.

When she was almost home, she bumped into Team Eight coming out of a restaurant. Just finishing brunch, probably. Hinata waved, and Sakura's eyes were drawn to her missing finger.

"Sakura!" she called, and from Kiba's side Akamaru barked. He was getting bigger, Sakura noted, almost up to the boy's knees now. "How are you?" Kiba lazily waved as well; Shino, like usual, was still and silent, regarding Sakura with an unreadable expression from behind his opaque glasses.

"Hey!" Sakura called, slowing down just a little as she passed them. "We've got a new mission: I'm going home for some stuff."

"Mind if we walk with you?" Kiba asked, and Sakura didn't have any reason to say no. She went on her way, with three new companions. It felt nice to walk with someone at her side. "What kind of mission is it?"

"B-Rank VIP," Sakura said, and Kiba whistled.

"Wow, you guys are pricey nowadays," he said, and Sakura laughed. He flashed his teeth, sharing in the humor. "Though I guess with your flashy stuff during the exam, that's no surprise."

"It's well deserved," Shino said quietly, and like usual Sakura almost jumped at how sudden and soft his voice was. "Team Seven preformed admirably. Higher ranked missions are the natural consequence of that performance."

"...thanks, Shino," Sakura said, deciding to accept the strangely neutral compliment, and the odd boy gave her a slight nod.

"We said it in the hospital, Sakura," Hinata said, and Sakura smiled at her. "But we really… really wanted to thank you. For fighting Gaara. It helped our…"

"Our pride!" Kiba said indignantly. "We all owe you for giving that crapsack the beating you did. You ever need anything, Team Eight is gonna be one-hundred percent behind you!"

I didn't fight him for you, Sakura thought, even as she smiled and humbly accepted the promise. I fought him for myself. I got so angry for all your sakes, but in the end I didn't remember any of that. I just wanted to hurt him for myself.

She felt two-faced, and her stomach churned. Before any of them knew it, they'd reached her house.

"Guess this is it," Sakura said, trying to squash the queasy feeling. "Hope we see you guys after the mission."

"Hey!" Kiba said, nudging Hinata, and the girl blushed and shied away. "Aren't you gonna-?"

"KIba," Shino said, and the boy gave him a perplexed look.

"What? At this rate she's never gonna give it up!" Sakura watched with amusement as Team Eight descended into bickering. Eventually, Hinata stomped her feet, red in the face.

"Stop it!" she said, and Kiba over at her, almost nose to nose with Shino. The Aburame had refused to flinch. Somehow, she got even redder. "I'll… I'll do it."

She reached into her jacket, and drew out a small container. There was a piece of paper, folded many times, taped to the top of it. Hinata gingerly extended her hand out towards Sakura, and she took it with a bemused feeling.

"What's this?" she asked. "For me?" She didn't think it would be possible, but Hinata was only getting more flustered. She looked like she was going to explode out of embarrassment.

"N-no," the girl said, tripping over the word. "That's for, uh…"

"One of my teammates?" Sakura asked, and Hinata nodded. She'd never seen the other girl get so worked up. "Naruto, or Sasuke?"

Hinata choked, unable to speak, and held up two of her four fingers. Sakura smiled, hoping the girl wouldn't collapse on her.

"Alright," she said, and Hinata deflated like one of the balloon's Sakura had spent the last couple days destroying. "I'll get it to him."

"Thank you!" Hinata said, and just about ran away. Kiba chased after her with a laugh, but Shino stayed for a moment.

"I appreciate it," he said, and Sakura nodded, not sure what to say. "Hinata appreciates it too, even if she doesn't have the words for it." Then he turned and left too, and Sakura was left alone at her home.

She shrugged, pocketed the container, and went inside.

Her home was quiet. The spark of life that is usually contained was gone.

"Sakura?" her father called, and Sakura went upstairs without a word. She slipped into her own room, looking around. It was still getting colder: they'd be traveling a long distance. She silently opened her closet, a ghost in her own home. She had a couple different jackets. One of them was red and had some cute pink frills around the waist, the same color as her hair. Sakura had never worn it before. She'd thought it looked silly.

No, that was a lie. She'd thought that other people might think it looked silly.

'You wanna leave the village looking like that?' Sakura reached out and tried the jacket on. It was thick and warm, and like all clothes made with ninja in mind, very easy to move in. It even rested comfortably over the sheath of her sword, concealing the hilt.

It was like Kushina had said, she thought. She'd stabbed a Jinchuriki. Who cared if someone thought her jacket looked silly? She liked it.

"Sakura?" She turned and found her father in the doorway. "Hey, you're wearing… it looks good."

"I've got a mission," she said, getting back to gathering her things. This felt familiar, she thought. Like her first C-Rank. But everything was wrong. She didn't feel any warmth and excitement. Just resentment.

"I heard," Kizashi said, and Sakura wondered who had told him. Probably her sensei, right? "You're up for it?"

Her arm and leg still ached, but she didn't want her father to know that, so she shrugged. "I'm up for it."

"Okay." What had happened to them? Sakura felt an itch in her chest. Talking to her father had never been like this. It had always been natural and warm. It felt like they were two puppets going through a half-hearted play. She hated it. "Well…"

Her father hesitated. "Sakura, your mother and I, we're both really…"

Sakura should have felt a breath of relief, but instead something burned in her heart. She felt her nose twitch into a sneer. That was the best they could do?

"Sorry?" she asked, and her father closed his mouth, stricken. "You're both sorry?"

"Hey now," her father said, a little stricter. Not nearly enough to dissuade her. "I'm being honest. We didn't mean to hurt your feelings. We were so worried about you-"

"You shouldn't have been," Sakura said, turning her back on him and organizing her backpack. "I was fine."

"He broke your arm and leg," Kizashi said quietly. Sakura flinched at his tone. "You would have died if it weren't for the Kage. I know you're not that stupid, that you'd say 'I was fine' and mean it."

Sakura didn't say anything, stubbornly packing her bag in silence. After a minute, her father blew out a breath.

"I don't want it to be like this, honey," he said, and Sakura grit her teeth. "We just want to talk to you. It's like you're not even here any more. We're proud of you. We're incredibly proud of you. You're becoming an amazing ninja. We don't want that to mean you can't be our daughter anymore."

Sakura didn't know what to say, so she stayed quiet, the silence growing more and more oppressive until the room was so thick with it that neither of them could breathe.

"Okay." Her father gave up, and Sakura felt something crack inside her at the defeat in his voice.

'Why don't you say something?'

"Stay safe on your mission, okay?" he said, and then he left.

'You're just going to let him leave?'

She did.

Sakura listened to her father walk down the stairs, trembling. He was letting his footsteps make noise, letting her know he really was going. She stood there trying to control her shaking. Why hadn't she said something? Why wasn't she saying something? Just because she didn't know what to say? Surely something would be better than nothing, right?

But she stayed mute, and it was only when her father settled down in the living room that she resumed packing. When Sakura left about ten minutes later, wearing her jacket, her sword, and her pack, her father didn't rise to send her off. She stopped at the door, struggling to say something.

"Sorry," she eventually whispered, and then she left.

###

Just like that first C-Rank, Sakura met her team at the front gate. But this time, they didn't set out immediately. Someone else was there besides the normal passerbys, who were staring as she and Obito had a passionate conversation.

"How stupid are you?" Rin Nohara asked, and Obito rubbed the back of his head with a look in between embarrassment and anger. Naruto and Sasuke were both behind him, snickering at his reaction. "You thought you could take one of my patients out of the village without me knowing?" She was dressed in combat gear; Sakura had never seen her like that before. She had a flak vest on, and the same kind of protective arm-bands that Obito wore. They were almost a matching pair, but Rin had fewer scars.

And, Sakura noticed with some amusement, almost an inch on him. It was especially obvious with him face to face with her, the both of them red.

"She hasn't been your patient for like, two weeks!" Obito declared. They both looked over at Sakura as she arrived, and she blushed when she realized she was the subject of their conversation. "She's perfectly fine!"

"Oh, I must have missed you taking my job Obito!" Rin laughed, walking over to Sakura. She watched her come with apprehension, and the older woman grinned at her. "Hey Sakura. How you doing?"

"Good?" Sakura said cautiously, and Naruto laughed.

"She's good, Rin-sensei!" he said, and Rin grinned at the appellation. "There's nothing to worry about?"

"That's great, but it's my job to worry," Rin said with a smile. She removed a letter from her jacket. "That's why I got special orders right here."

"Gimme that." Obito tried to snatch the paper from Rin's hand and she danced around him with an unfading smile. "You seriously went to sensei?"

"I got asked to," Rin said, her smile dropping. "And I took it seriously. That's why I'm going to be tagging along with you guys."

That was weird, Sakura immediately thought. Even if Rin wanted to keep an eye on her to make sure she was healing fine, she was still a jonin. Her coming along was anything but normal. Right away, the mission was strange.

"The more the merrier," Sasuke said dryly. He gestured to the open gate. "What's the point in arguing about it, sensei? Let's get going. We've got a long trip ahead of us."

Obito grumbled. "It would be nice to have someone else along," he muttered. "Just wish you hadn't gone behind my back."

"I didn't," Rin said with a sweet smile. "I just couldn't find you, so I figured I'd ask sensei first."

Obito snorted. "Forgiveness or permission, huh?" He laughed. "C'mon then." They both started heading for the gate, and Sakura followed, trying to understand what she'd just seen. There was another conversation here that was invisible to her, and it was sparking an old curiosity in her, the one that had first appeared when she'd first seen Rin a hundred years ago.

"Hey!" Naruto fell in at her side, and before they were even out the gate they'd formed a rough formation with Sasuke at the front, the adults in the center, and Sakura and Naruto bringing up the rear. It really was incredible, Sakura thought, that something like that happened without any of them thinking about it. It was just trained into their bones. "Is that jacket new? It's cool!"

"Not that new." Sakura smiled. "Just hadn't worn it before." Naruto nodded, and she tilted her head towards Obito and Rin. "What's up with them?"

"Oh," Naruto scoffed. "Obito's acting annoyed, but he's happy. Rin showed up and said my dad told her to come with us to keep an eye on you, cause you're still healing and all." He laughed. "As if. You're fine, right?"

"Yeah," Sakura said, trying to believe it as her arm ached again. "You don't think that's the real reason?"

Naruto waggled his eyebrows, and Sakura noticed their sensei glancing back at them. She smiled at him, and he grinned, before Rin nudged him in the shoulder and they were drawn back into their muttered conversation.

"Remember what I told you, way back? When we were fixing up that bridge?" he said, and Sakura nodded. "Rin's not just a crazy good medic ninja; when she goes on missions, they're really important."

Sakura narrowed her eyes. "Then why send us, if it's that important? We're still just genin. Why make it a B-Rank?"

"Yeah…" Naruto said, looking thoughtful. "I dunno. But something's definitely weird, right?"

"Yeah," Sakura said, looking back at her sensei's back and wondering what he was thinking. She rested her hand on her sword's hilt, and felt calm creeping up her arm as she felt the non-weight of the chakra saturated blade. She sighed.

"Definitely."

###

Obito stayed at the front of his team's formation for the duration of the first leg of their journey, making small talk with Rin and keeping an eye on his kids. For him, it was an incredible feeling. He often led a lonely life, but the last month and some had been extreme even for him. He'd spent almost every day with Sakura and Asuma, agonizing over her training.

Sakura hadn't seen it, and neither had Asuma, but every day had been torture for him. He hadn't had a good night's sleep in the last month. Every waking moment was spent coaching Sakura, and when he slept, he dreamt of her death.

He looked back at her, marveling at her vitality, the fact that she was alive and kicking. It had been so easy to see Kakashi in her place, hear his last gasp every time she spoke. Too easy, if he was being honest with himself.

His sensei was right, as usual. His only issue was confidence. Gaara had been frightening, but at heart he'd just been a homicidal bully. He hadn't had near as much to lose as Sakura had, and that was why she'd humiliated him. He hadn't put enough faith in his own student, even after working with her every day for a month.

"Hey, what're you getting all morose about?" Rin asked, and Obito shook his head, trying to dispel his mood with a smile. He looked over at her, trying to appear carefree.

"Just glad you're here," he said, and Rin snorted. They were pretty far outside the village now, traversing the hidden paths through the forests that only Leaf shinobi were supposed to know. It was peaceful out here, with nothing but the creatures and trees for company.

"You always were a crappy liar," she said, and Obito rolled his eyes.

"I'm not lying," he said, and Rin gave him a grin. "I am glad you're here." He looked back at Sakura again, and this time she caught his eye. Nice jacket, he noted. Far too many pockets, but what shinobi would complain about that? "I'm still wondering why."

"For Sakura," Rin said, already knowing the words were perfunctory, and Obito gave her an unimpressed look. She laughed. "Okay, as bait? How else are you going to draw the old man out?"

"Gross," Obito grimaced, and Rin laughed again. "Plus, that's not how sensei thinks." He got a little more serious. "I think he thinks I'll need some backup."

"Pfft." Rin made it clear how unlikely she thought that was. "Sensei's always had just about infinite faith in you, Obito. There's no way."

"Sure," Obito said. "How about this: what'd he tell you the reason was?"

Their game was coming to an end, and Rin could feel it. She sobered up. "He told me to watch out for you guys," she said, and Obito frowned, crossing his arms. "He didn't tell me why, or what I was watching for."

"That doesn't make any sense," Obito said, and Rin shook her head.

"The only explanation is that he was worried about being too specific," she said, and Obito stiffened, a sudden understanding crashing down on him. "Who might overhear."

Obito slowed down as he processed what Rin had just said. Behind him, Naruto and Sakura noticed. They started catching up with him and Rin, and Naruto called out.

"Something up?" he asked, and Obito picked up the pace again, drawing back into the center of their triangular formation.

"All good!" he called back, and Naruto gave him a curious look and a nod. Sakura was just peering at him. They both knew something was up, Obito was sure, but Sakura was growing more and more frightening in her perceptive ability.

Why were they here, he thought, if sensei was worried about that? He fell silent, digesting everything Rin had told him.

'A shinobi is one who sacrifices.'

That wasn't something to consider, he thought. No matter how kind he was, sensei wouldn't hesitate to put his own son, or his son's teammates, in danger. Not if he thought the potential payoff would be worth it for the village.

Bait. A B-Rank. Jiraiya. Overhearing.

"Are we being followed?" he asked, and Rin shook her head.

"If we are, I couldn't tell," she said, and Obito grunted. That didn't mean anything by itself. There were plenty of means to pursue them without him or Rin noticing, no matter how careful they were. After all, a mouse rarely realized that a snake was after it.

If his suspicions were right, a headless snake would soon be after them all.

Obito's hands curled into fists.

"This really isn't what I wanted for a B-Rank," he said, and Rin shrugged.

"It's what sensei wanted," she said. Obito sighed and nodded. "And besides, maybe he's just overreacting. This could all go according to plan."

Obito laughed. "When's the last time sensei overreacted?" he asked. Rin pursed her lips, considering the question honestly.

"Been, uh…" she said, pausing. "Well, never."

"Yeah," Obito said, a little glum. "Never. If things get messy, you watch Sakura. I'll get Naruto."

"What about Sasuke?" Rin asked, looking forward at their vanguard, and Obito chuckled.

"He learned on our first C-Rank that sometimes you should just run away," he said, and Rin raised an eyebrow. "I hope he'll remember that lesson."

"He won't," Rin said. "He's too much like you."

"Yeah…" Obito shook his head. "Crap."

"Cheer up!" Rin demanded. "It's been forever since we went on a mission together. You're not allowed to be grumpy the whole time!" She looked so sincere; Obito felt his heart speed up a little. The way her smile tugged at the tattoos on her cheeks...

Obito suppressed the feeling and laughed, and they resumed their journey away from the village. But the silence just allowed his thoughts to creep back in.

Sensei trusted you with his son, and more, he thought.

You better not let him down.

They traveled for another hour and some before, to his surprise, Sakura drew closer to the both of them, contracting the triangle, and struck up a conversation with Rin. Eventually, Naruto joined them.

Before long, the conversation turned to him.

"How long have you known Obito-sensei, Rin-sensei?" Sakura asked. Obito gave her a inquisitive look at the question. She was the picture of innocence… and she clearly knew it, which meant she was anything but. Obito had never seen a sneaky side to Sakura before. She'd always been sincere and honest, painfully so. She'd even immediately told Naruto about the offer from Haku and the Akatsuki.

He wondered what could have possibly brought out that slyness in her.

"Oh, since we were kids," Rin said, and Obito felt a surge of horror when he realized she was wearing the same sly look. "He used to follow me around all the time, you know."

"Really?" Naruto asked, and Obito coughed. "That's really creepy, sensei," he said frankly, and the cough transformed into a gag.

"It wasn't like that!" Obito declared. Naruto laughed, clearly not believing him. "We were teammates, you know!"

"It wasn't like that," Rin confirmed, and Obito let out an internal sigh of relief. "He was just watching out for me. We had to watch out for each other, really. We were both chunin by the time we were your age."

"That's lucky," Naruto grumbled, but Sakura shook her head.

"It's not," she said, and once more Obito wondered just how much she knew that she didn't let on. "They had to fight in the Third War, remember?"

"Even genin fought in that war," Rin said, her tone even. "But because we were chunin, we were given more dangerous missions. That's true enough."

"Which one of you was the team leader?" Naruto asked a question he'd never raised before, and Obito gave Rin a look. Her shoulders slumped. Her smile shrunk.

"Kakashi Hatake," Obito said, and Naruto's smile faded as well. "Our teammate. He was a jonin before we even made chunin, and our team leader on missions."

"Oh." Naruto clearly didn't know what to say. "I didn't know." He thought it over. "I'm sorry."

"It's not something you should be sorry for, Naruto," Rin said. Sasuke had dropped back, Obito noticed; he was obviously eavesdropping on them. He gave his younger cousin a look.

'Care to join us?'

Sasuke shot back an amused look that carried just as obvious an answer. Obito shrugged.

'Suit yourself.'

"What was Kakashi like?" Sakura asked, and Rin cocked her head. "He was your guy's teammate, right? You must miss him."

"He was a genius," Obito said, surprised at how easy it was to say. "He could have whooped all you guys when he was ten years old."

"No way," Naruto said. "You're exaggerating."

"He's not," Rin said. "Kakashi was a once in a generation kind of guy. He made chunin when he was six, when we had all just graduated, and then jonin when he was your age. He invented his own elemental jutsu: the Chidori."

"Wait, you guys graduated when you were six?" Naruto asked, and Rin laughed, shaking her head.

"We were seven," she said, patting Obito's shoulder. He ignored the jolt that shot down his spine. "Kakashi was a year younger than us."

"Seven? That's still crazy," Naruto said.

"It was just before the war," Obito explained. He'd never considered this, but Naruto had no conception of what that time had been like. "They were pushing as many genin out as they could, especially promising ones. Both Rin and I showed aptitude in ninjutsu, so we were allowed to graduate early."

"Still nuts," Naruto said. "And he had his own jutsu? What was the Chidori? It sounds cool."

"It was a little like the Rasengan, actually," Obito said, drifting back to the past. Not a better time, if he was at all honest. "He probably took inspiration. It was a sheath of lightning around his hand. He used it like a spear: it could pierce through just about anything." Was he feeling nostalgia, or yearning for something that had never been? "He developed it to punch through all the hardcore defensive Earth jutsu that Stone had under its belt."

"Yeah," Rin laughed. "It was a great idea. Just one problem though."

Obito chuckled. "God, I'd almost forgotten."

"What?" Sakura asked, and Rin turned to her, still chuckling. "Was it too exhausting for him or something?"

"Not quite. I dunno exactly how it worked, but the lightning chakra sped him up," she said. "So he had a jutsu that could cut through anything…" She broke down laughing, not quite able to finish the sentence.

"But he couldn't see where he was going," Obito sniggered, on the edge of open laughter too. The bittersweet memory overwhelmed him. "He'd take off like a damn lightning bolt, his hand screaming with all the chakra, and not have a damn idea where his target was. He'd just destroy everything in the way until he landed a hit."

"He only needed the one though," Rin said. "That was a hell of one-hit kill."

"That sounds like an awesome jutsu!" Naruto's enthusiasm was infectious, as usual. "But… he didn't pass it on to anyone?"

"Maybe your dad, but I doubt it," Obito said. Rin nodded.

"Kakashi was a private kid," she said. "He was quiet, and didn't share anything. I doubt he gave anyone that jutsu." She scoffed. "He didn't even let anyone see his face."

"His face?" Sakura asked, and Obito brought his hand up, covering everything below his nose.

"He wore a mask, like this, all the time." He glanced at Rin. "Even when he was sleeping, or bathing. We checked."

"...why?" Naruto asked. Obito shrugged.

"Why'd we check, or…?"

Naruto laughed. "Why the mask?"

"Dunno," Obito said. "But the way he went about it, he probably would have worn that mask till the day he died." He paused, feeling a jab of pain in his chest. "Well… I guess he did."

Naruto went quiet, but Sakura seemed possessed of an insatiable curiosity. "What happened to him?" she asked, and then realized exactly what she said after a moment. "Sorry. I-"

"That's alright," Obito said, glancing at Rin for confirmation. Light coming through the canopy played across her face, and for a moment he couldn't breathe. "He saved us."

"I got grabbed by some ninja from Stone when we were on a mission near their borders," Rin said. "They interrogated me, but Obito and Kakashi showed up and saved me." She gave the boy a sour smile. "But the Iwa-nin was a sore loser: he dropped a whole cave on top of us before we could escape. Obito saved Kakashi, and got his arm broken for his trouble… and then Kakashi saved him, and got crushed."

Neither Naruto nor Sakura had anything to say to that. Instead, Sasuke spoke up from in front of them.

"You have his sword," he said, as calm as a shinobi should be. "The White Fang." Perceptive punk, Obito thought.

"He gave it to me as he was dying," Obito said. "Told me to kill as many ninja from Stone as I could." He narrowed his eyes. "So I did."

"That was the day he became Mangekyo no Obito," Rin said. "We didn't realize it till afterwards, but his Sharingan evolved when Kakashi died. That was the only reason either of us survived." She was looking oddly wistful now, and Obit marveled at how that day had completely changed both their lives. "There were at least twenty Stone ninja outside, and Obito killed every single one of them. I was in shock; I couldn't do anything." Obito remembered the feeling of his fingers shattering, a sword in his teeth. He didn't have any regrets.

Rin smiled at him. "But he was always like that. Before that day, and since then… he's always been a reliable guy."

Obito smiled back, the compliment washing over him like a warm wind, and noticed Sakura giving Rin an odd look.

"Twenty guys? For real?" Naruto asked, a little subdued. "That's…"

"It was them or us," Obito said. "I couldn't hesitate." He looked down at his student. "If someone killed Sasuke, would you?"

"No one's gonna kill Sasuke," Naruto said, and Obito left him with the thought, not wanting to pursue it further. Kakashi had been everything Sasuke was and more, and he'd died under a rock like anyone else. He was sure Naruto knew that too. "Anyway… are we almost there? What'd you call the place?"

"Tanzaku Gai," Obito said, pivoting off the subject with a gratifying amount of grace. "Jiraiya is supposed to maintain several dead drops throughout the Land of Fire, and the one there is the nearest; he's always outside of the village, so that's the Hokage's way of keeping tabs on him."

"Why's he always out of Konoha?" Sakura asked, and Obito pondered how to approach the question.

"He has a lot of responsibilities." He decided to go with most of the truth. "And he prefers to work alone."

"He's one of the Sannin, but he prefers to work alone?" Sasuke asked, and Obito frowned.

"They were a legendary group, but they don't get along anymore," he said.

"Why's that?"

"That's their business," Rin said, and Naruto scoffed. "Anyway, we're going to check that drop first. If we're lucky, it'll set us on the right path."

"And if it doesn't?" Sakura asked.

"Then we check the next one," Obito grinned. "We'll either find him eventually, or the mission will fail."

"Don't want to fail a mission," Naruto grumbled.

"Then you better hope he's given us some indication of where to go!" Obito said cheerfully. "If Jiraiya wanted to go totally off the grid, he's gonna be gone, and we won't be able to do anything about it."

Naruto groaned but didn't contribute anything more, and they continued on through the forest. Obito tried to identify where the happiness in him was bubbling up from, but he couldn't quite manage.

Maybe, he thought, it was just as simple as being with his team, and with Rin. It had been a while since they'd taken a mission together. It was like Rin had said. It was best not to question the feeling.

Best to enjoy it while he could.

###

When they arrived at Tanzaku Gai, the sun was painting the horizon red. Team Seven and Rin slipped into the town like most shinobi did, completely innocuous in the flood of tourists, travelers, gamblers, and locals. The town was large, jumbled with buildings and streets that couldn't decide if they wanted to go straight, and surrounded by a tall wall that did nothing to keep anyone out.

"Whoa, they have a castle?" Naruto asked, pointing to the huge fortified citadel that stood at the center of the town, casting its shadow over everything inside the walls. He looked it up and down and let out an exaggerated whistle. "No wonder people come to see it, that's crazy."

"It's old," Obito said, and Sasuke snorted.

"Really?" he asked. Sakura couldn't help but grin at his tone. "You think?"

"It's from back during the Era of Warring Clans, you know." Obito gave them an unimpressed look. "Castles like this were the centers of power for local governments back then. They needed something that couldn't be knocked over by a wandering clan of shinobi, you know."

"But they don't build castles anymore," Sakura said, staring up at the huge stone edifice. It really was impressive; had the builders hired people who could manipulate chakra, or had they just used tools themselves? She could barely conceive of it. The castle had layers of walls and towers, like a multilayered origami folded out and pressed flat to reveal all its myriad complexities. It would be challenging to assault even with the ability to walk on walls.

"No." Obito gave her an amused look. "Nowadays it takes a lot more than a single clan to overthrow a government."

Sakura mused on that as Rin gave an exaggerated stretch, her arms twisting over her head. "So, we stopping here for the night?" she asked, looking around the crowded streets. "Seems like a nice enough place."

"Let's check the drop first," Obito said. "There probably won't be anything there; we'll find a place to stay after that." They wandered through the streets, and Sakura marveled at the atmosphere of the town. Everywhere she looked something interesting was happening; someone juggling flames, a card trick, some strange food she hadn't seen before. Tanzaku Gai wasn't like any other town she'd visited, neither small nor huge nor carefully curated. It was full of the dregs of every nation mingling with rich tourists and clever gamblers, and it created a kind of place she'd never imagined before.

"Naruto, don't." Sasuke grabbed his friend, keeping him from wandering off to try a card game. "It's rigged."

"Course it's rigged!" Naruto grinned. "I'm gonna rig it back."

"No rigging any games," Rin said. Obito gave her a thankful look. "Shinobi are already unpopular enough in places like this; no need to piss off the locals."

"Unpopular?" Naruto asked, but Sakura could see the truth of it. They drew stares everywhere they went in their obvious five-man formation; that, and their headbands. Tanzaku Gai was in the Land of Fire, and ninjas from Konoha were no doubt a common sight, but people still regarded them cautiously.

What had Obito said on their first C-Rank, so long ago? Ninjas were a sign of trouble? This town had clearly learned that lesson.

For some reason, that reminded her of the little container in her jacket. Sakura dug into one of her pockets, feeling around for it. Naruto gave her a curious look as she drew it out.

"Wassat?" he asked, tilting his head to get a better look, and Sakura told him the truth.

"I don't have a clue," she said, picking up her pace a little to draw up alongside Sasuke. She raised up the container, and he tilted his head, plucking it out of her hand. "It's from Hinata."

"Eh?" Naruto tried to pull up alongside Sasuke as well, and the other boy sped up, rapidly unwrapping the little note on top of the container. "Hey, what is it?!" Their speed kept increasing until Sasuke escalated, leaping up onto a nearby roof. Naruto followed him, the both of them approaching a full run. "Sasuke, c'mon!"

Sasuke fully unwrapped the note and Sakura saw his eyes flash red. Then, there was another flash: the paper crumbled to ash, and Sasuke came to a stop, Naruto almost slamming into his back.

"Really?" Naruto demanded, and Sasuke smirked. His Sharingan was active. "That's cheating!"

"You don't even know what it was," Sasuke pointed out, and Sakura leapt up as well to join them.

"It was a letter or something!" Naruto declared. Sasuke shrugged.

"Maybe it was just some paper," he said. Sakura raised an eyebrow, and he rolled his eyes. "Regardless, it's none of your business."

"What's in the box?" Sakura asked, and Sasuke flipped the container open to reveal some sort of cream.

"It's a balm," he said. "That's all."

"That's it?" Naruto asked, grabbing the box out of Sasuke's hand. He stuck an experimental finger into the cream, and then stuck the same finger in his mouth with a thoughtful expression. "Man, she always was a weirdo."

Sakura looked at the cream, and then up at Sasuke. It had definitely been a note, and he'd memorized it with his Sharingan before destroying it.

The pieces clicked in her mind immediately, and she smirked.

Maybe it was because of what she'd realized, or because Sakura didn't smirk very often, but she was able to see some of the color drain out of Sasuke's face in real time.

"Sasuke…" she said sweetly. Naruto gave her a confused look. "Do you have something to tell us?"

"Uh, Sakura-" Sasuke started to speak, but Obito called up at them from the street below before he could get beyond her name.

"Stop messing around!" their sensei said. "You're making a scene!" People were staring, it was true. But here, outside the village, Sakura found that she didn't care nearly as much what some random tourists thought of her.

Sasuke took the excuse in an instant, leaping back down to the street and falling in alongside Obito as if nothing had happened. Sakura lingered with Naruto on the roof for another moment.

"What?" Naruto asked, and Sakura giggled. "You don't think-?"

"Who knows?" Sakura asked, feeling some delightfully childish glee. "We'll just have to keep pestering him." They jumped down to join their comrades, and continued deeper into Tanzaku Gai while doing just that.

Their destination ended up being a dumpy motel close to the castle, the kind of place that could offer substandard service because of its prime location. Sasuke gave the cracked walls and faded paint a justifiably suspicious look as their sensei came to a stop. He put his hands on his hips.

"Yup, this is the place!" he declared, pushing through the front door. Its rusted hinges shrieked, and Sakura winced.

"This?" she asked, not sure what she'd been expecting.

"Hoping for something glamorous?" Rin asked with a laugh. "Believe it or not, this kind of place was always the Toad Sage's natural habitat."

Naruto stuck out his tongue. "Then he's got shitty taste, huh?"

"Hey, being a legendary ninja's got nothing to do with your taste," Rin pointed out, following Obito in. "But yeah, you're right about that." There was the tinny ring of a bell, and the shinobi went inside.

They found Obito at the front desk, waiting as his fingers drummed on the cheap and scarred wood. The bell he'd rung hardly looked better, the metal dinged in places. They waited for twenty seconds, with no one appearing.

"Crappy service too," Sasuke observed, and then someone appeared from the door behind the counter; a tall, fat man, with black hair and an unattractive smirk. His outfit was the best looking thing about the entire motel.

"Welcome, shinobi!" he said in a reedy voice. "Looking for a room?" He glanced around, taking in their composition, and smiled widely. "Or perhaps several?"

"Yeah, we're not really interested in that," Obito said, and the man's smile disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.

"Figures," he grunted. "You ninja love to waste people's time. Well, what-?"

"Mostly, we're curious if the hot springs are cold this time of year," Obito said, and Sakura blinked as the nonsense sentence flipped an invisible switch in the fat man's demeanor. He straightened up; the fat instantly became muscle, the smirk calculating and critical. He almost looked like a different person, such was the change in posture and attitude.

"You've come at a good time, Lord Uchiha," he said, and this time Sakura could feel her whole team take a collective blink. Even the man's voice had changed to something deeper and more respectful. He nodded towards the door he'd come from. "If you would?"

Obito inclined his head and followed after the men, and Team Seven had no choice but to follow. The room beyond the front desk was much the same, dumpy and filled with old paper and older furniture. The man approached one of the corners and bent down, fiddling with a mechanism that Sakura couldn't see. A second later, a section of the floor smoothly swung up on invisible hinges, and the man grandly gestured.

"Everything you'll need is down there," he said with a slight bow. "The room is sealed; feel free to speak as you will."

"We appreciate it," Obito said, and he took a roll of nearly ten thousand Ryo from one of his pockets as casually as he would a knife. He tossed the cash to the man, who bowed once more and retreated back to the front of the motel.

"Bwuh?" Naruto asked, and Obito shook his head.

"Inside," he said, and they made their way down a narrow set of dark wooden stairs to the hidden room below. The room was nice, far nicer than the motel above. It was barely fifteen feet from wall to wall, and unerringly square. The walls were dominated by countless shelves and bookcases, and there was a neat steel desk in the center of the room, upon which were spread dozens of scrolls, pieces of paper, and books with broken spines. There were no electric lights: candles were placed everywhere, providing faint omnipresent illumination.

"What is this place?" Sasuke asked, and the door closed behind them.

"Jiraiya-sensei is the Sage of Toads," Obito-sensei said, approaching the desk. "But even now, he is Konoha's foremost spy master. There's probably hundreds of places just like this all across the Nations."

"Then that guy upstairs is one of his spies?" Sakura asked, and Obito shrugged.

"Well, if he was his spy you'd hope he'd pay him," he said with a laugh. "When it comes to spying on shinobi and nations, you can't be that direct. Think of them more as gossiping acquaintances. He'll probably be telling someone else that we came by soon enough, after all."

"This seems a little much for some gossip," Rin said, raising an eyebrow, and Obito grinned and waved her off.

"Anyway," he said. "Let's see when the old man last dropped by." He started rummaging through the scrolls on the desk by some order only he could divine.

"Huh," he said, and started clearing the paper with some urgency. Sakura jogged over, trying to help her sensei. "What are the chances?"

There was a paper stuck to the desk, Sakura realized after a moment. There was a date on it, scrawled in a thick and heavy hand with ink that fit both descriptions: 2]10]60.

"Barely a week ago," Obito explained, but Sakura was more curious about the characters beneath the date. The others crowded around, including Rin, to get a look at the message.

W4 - T10 - II320613.

"Eh?" Sasuke asked rather intelligently. Sakura turned to her sensei, expecting him to say something, but he was totally silent, staring at the code.

"Sensei?" she asked, and Obito shook his head a little, resetting himself. He was frowning furiously. "What's wrong?"

"It's a code," he said.

"Duh," Naruto said. "What's it mean?"

"That, we need to do some research for," Obito said. He took his pack off and reached into it, coming out with a couple books.

"Oh!" Rin said with an evil grin. "I didn't know you were into those kinds of things, Obito." Sakura leaned over, getting a better look at the books. She couldn't help but blink at the titles. Icha Icha Violence, Innocence, Island Paradise, Desert Palm

"They're not mine!" Obito protested. "This code's pretty simple, but it's also just an excuse for that guy to sell more of his damn books!" Behind him, Naruto and Sasuke were laughing. "Look, that thing means…" He rummaged through the books, putting the rest back in the pack and leaving one out. "Book three, Icha Icha Innocence."

"How'd you know that's book three?" Sasuke asked innocently, and Obito groaned.

"For the code!" he insisted. "It's an easy code if you understand it. Book three, page two-oh-six, line thirteen. If he was keeping it that easy, he must have been in a hurry; he would have wanted anyone who found this to be able to read it."

"Yeah," Naruto snickered, "anyone carrying around a library of dirty books."

"But what do the other things mean then?" Sakura asked as her sensei flipped through the little green book, searching for his page. "The letters and numbers?"

"I can answer that one," Rin said, and Team Seven shifted their attention to her and left their blushing sensei to himself. "Those are both intelligence codes for Konoha, just as simple. This whole thing was done in a rush… but I can see why." She crossed her arms, looking as serious as Sakura had ever seen her. "T10, that's Takigakure, the Village Hidden in the Waterfalls. It's a minor village to the north."

It was strange, Sakura thought, that all the minor villages she knew of shared their name with their nations. Takigakure was in the Land of Waterfalls, which bordered the Fire, Earth, and the Nation of Rain. It was about a day away, maybe less if they pushed themselves. Why did the Land of Waterfalls have a Hidden Village named after it, while Fire had the Leaf, Lightning Cloud, and so on? Just because they'd come first?

"And W4?" Sasuke asked, and Rin shifted, glancing at Obito. Their sensei looked up, his mouth set in a line, and nodded.

"That's Weasel," Rin said, and Sasuke cocked his head. "Another code, referring to Konoha's most infamous rogue ninja."

Sasuke's eyes went wide, and Rin nodded. "Yeah. Itachi Uchiha."

Sakura felt her chest collapse as she remembered the cold red eyes of Sasuke's brother. She could see her teammate trembling; Naruto put his hand on Sasuke's shoulder, trying to keep him steady.

"What's the word, Obito?" Rin asked, and Obito snapped the book shut, tapping his finger on the spine anxiously.

"'She's hunting a real beast,'" he quoted, and Rin choked. Sakura looked back and forth between the two adults, not understanding their reaction.

"What?" she asked, and Naruto echoed her. Sasuke was too absorbed in his own world to say anything. "What's that mean?"

"It means we've got to go," Obito said. "We're not walking; we're using the Kamui. C'mon, link up."

"Seriously, at least tell us why we're in a hurry," Sasuke said, and Obito gave him a cold look.

"I'm taking you guys home," he said, and Naruto snarled. "Then, Rin and I are going to stop that bastard."

"Like hell!" Naruto declared, and Obito shook his head.

"It's not debatable," he said, the dim light of the candles reflecting off his Sharingan with an eerie red glow. "This is gonna be too dangerous for you guys."

"Itachi's not going to kill me," Sasuke said quietly. "That's not what he's interested in."

"Doesn't matter," Obito said, and Sakura felt something like the anger that had driven her to attack Gaara welling up inside her. She stepped forward, her heart thrumming.

"Sensei," she said. "The only way we can grow is missions like this." Obito gave her an uncomprehending look, and Sakura steeled her resolve. "I would never have been able to fight Gaara if we hadn't gone on that C-Rank. I might not even have been able to be a ninja. I didn't trust myself." She slammed her fist into her open palm. "But this time, we know what's coming. Itachi didn't hurt us too bad last time; he was obsessed with Sasuke. All of us together, we could definitely take him."

"Ha!" Rin laughed. "Well, she's right about something. Obito, if you're trying to draw Itachi out, Sasuke will be the perfect bait. You can't deny that."

Obito looked at all of them one by one, and Sakura saw a gradual change come over him. To her horror, she recognized it. She'd gone through it herself.

Her sensei was terrified, she thought. He'd been terrified all the time. For them, for himself? She couldn't tell. But as Sakura watched, as he stood there with his hand extended, Sharingan whirling, her sensei discarded his fear. He straightened up; his whole existence sharpened, like a knife too dangerous to touch.

"Okay," he said, locking eyes with Sasuke. Her teammate nodded. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure," Sasuke said, taking Obito's hand. Naruto did next, and then Rin, and finally Sakura. They stood there in a circle, and Sakura felt an unbelievable amount of chakra coursing through her sensei's hand, and so much and so heavy that it seemed for a second like they would all sink into the floor.

"'She's hunting a real beast,'" Rin said, looking around at all of them as the world distorted. "Guess you guys don't take any half-hearted missions, huh?"

"Takigakure is the only minor village to possess a Tailed Beast," Obito said, and Sakura sucked in a breath as the Kamui devoured them. "Itachi's after the Nanabi."

Then they left the candle-lit room behind, with nothing to mark their passage but some scattered scrolls.
 
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I'm still trying to figure out if Hinata likes Sasuke in this world or if Sakura accidentally gave the gift to the wrong teammate. Sakura probably didn't misinterpret the signal but it's always a good idea to verbally confirm these kind of things.
 
"One of my teammates?" Sakura asked, and Hinata nodded. She'd never seen the other girl get so worked up. "Naruto, or Sasuke?"

Hinata choked, unable to speak, and held up two of her four fingers. Sakura smiled, hoping the girl wouldn't collapse on her.
Well then, that's an interesting twist. It's pretty easy to see how Naruto having a family could have prevented his canon encounter with Hinata, and her resulting feelings, but I'm not sure what would have happened to draw her towards Sasuke. I doubt it's the loner genius bit from canon, both because he seems to suffer less of that in this fic and because of her relationship with Neji.

Hm. Now I'm wondering if it's a political thing, where she's been pushed towards him due to his status and the fact that she's probably not going to be chosen to lead the clan. Maybe as a way for her father to protect her, since a marriage to the next head of the Uchiha would be beneficial for the clan, but also incompatible with putting a seal on her forehead.

I'm still trying to figure out if Hinata likes Sasuke in this world or if Sakura accidentally gave the gift to the wrong teammate. Sakura probably didn't misinterpret the signal but it's always a good idea to verbally confirm these kind of things.
The signal seems to just be holding up the number two, to indicate the second person Sakura listed. While it's possible there was a misunderstanding, and a verbal confirmation would have been better, I don't think she was capable of it at the time and there wasn't too much ambiguity in her response.

That said, if Sakura got it wrong, Hinata will probably spontaneously combust due to terminal embarrassment, when they get back to Konoha, so the problem will sort itself out. 😝

Actually, now I'm wondering if it's possible for a ninja to die from embarrassment or similar emotional states. Chakra seems to be at least partially linked to emotions and mental state, so it seems concievable that a ninja could have an adverse reaction if they have particular poor chakra control, or their control has been abnormally taxed for other reasons, and they experience particularly strong and self destructive emotions.

Could someone be "allergic" to their chakra?
Her father hesitated. "Sakura, your mother and I, we're both really…"

Sakura should have felt a breath of relief, but instead something burned in her heart. She felt her nose twitch into a sneer. That was the best they could do?

"Sorry?" she asked, and her father closed his mouth, stricken. "You're both sorry?"

"Hey now," her father said, a little stricter. Not nearly enough to dissuade her. "I'm being honest. We didn't mean to hurt your feelings. We were so worried about you-"

"You shouldn't have been," Sakura said, turning her back on him and organizing her backpack. "I was fine."

Well, that's an interesting bit of ... not whiplash, but it's a bit unexpected. You've done a good job of showing off Sakura's messed up mental state throughout this fic, including its recent deterioration. We also got a hint that there was a fight between her and her parrents after the tournament, but she seemed to want to disassossiate from it or deny it, outside the context of her fighting. Here it seems more like she's holding a grudge and still actively angry at them. It makes me wonder if there's more going on that we haven't seen.

Obito's comments also seem to point in that direction. In particular:

They both knew something was up, Obito was sure, but Sakura was growing more and more frightening in her perceptive ability.

This is another instance of a character commenting on Sakura's surprising abilities and recent changes. However, I think its also one of the first times an experienced ninja has legitimately called them frightening. To be clear, I know "frighteningly perceptive" is a common turn of phrase, but this seems more than that. He had already noted that both Sakura and Naruto realized something was going on, but he juxtaposed her's observational skills as something beyond that and of a much higher magnitude. (She was growing "more and more frightening", rather than just "growing frighteningly perceptive.").

I'm still waiting to see how much of this is your take on her canon Inner!Sakura, how much of this is side-effects from her nature chakra contamination (and possible complications from the Jashin ritual), how much is the later being used to explain the former, and how much is something else entirely. I really do like the exploration of the more psychological and mental sides of things in this series.

"That's Weasel," Rin said, and Sasuke cocked his head. "Another code, referring to Konoha's most infamous rogue ninja."

Interesting that Itachi would be Konoha's most infamous rogue and not a rogue Sanin, especially when he didn't murder the entirety of his clan this time. So, does that mean Orochi isn't a rogue, isn't as infamous, or is no longer a problem in this continuity.

Then again, there was also Obito's comment about a "headless snake" potentially being after them. I don't know if that's a turn of phrase that I'm not familiar with, but if it's a reference then Kanoha certainly has one rather famous snake that keeps coming back even after he should be dead.

Also, I spotted a few errors. Please let me know if you'd rather I not point them out in the future.
t was especially obvious with him face to face with him, the both of them red
One of those probably shouldn't be a 'him'. The both of them being red also struggles to connect with the previous idea about their height and proximity, unless I'm missing something.
Obito stayed at the front of his team's formation for the duration of the first leg of their journey, making small talk with Rin and keeping an eye on his kids.
"Something up?" he asked, and Obito picked up the pace again, drawing back into the center of their triangular formation.
You describe Obito both as "staying at the front" of their formation and being in the middle of it.
Tanzaku Gai was in the Land of Fire, and no ninjas from Konoha were no doubt a common sight
Extra 'no'.
 
Could someone be "allergic" to their chakra?
Fun fact, this is actually a thing! We see it explicitly once or twice in canon when people take in other peoples chakra and have a severe reaction (mostly Kabuto and Danzo), and according to the databooks that are obligatory for all large shonen properties this is actually what killed Kimmimaro, that weird bone guy suffering from an unknown disease that even Orochimaru and Kabuto couldn't fix. He ended up allergic to his own chakra (probably cause of all the Kaguya inbreeding) and died when he used too much of it while fighting Gaara. You could make the educated guess that the same thing happened to Itachi in canon, I suppose, if you wanna follow the inbreeding theory. Chakra is absolutely terrifying, as ever.
Here it seems more like she's holding a grudge and still actively angry at them. It makes me wonder if there's more going on that we haven't seen.
Sakura is, not matter how mature she can sometimes act, a teenager, and being a teenager is confusing, lol. She's angry at her parents for doubting her but also desperate to reconnect with them, and those conflicting feelings are unfortunately coming out in contradictory (and mean) ways.
Interesting that Itachi would be Konoha's most infamous rogue and not a rogue Sanin, especially when he didn't murder the entirety of his clan this time. So, does that mean Orochi isn't a rogue, isn't as infamous, or is no longer a problem in this continuity.
Speaking of frighteningly perceptive...
Also, I spotted a few errors. Please let me know if you'd rather I not point them out in the future.
Please always point out any errors you find, my normal betas don't have time right now. I'm not a great proofreader, as you can tell. Thanks for grabbing those, and thanks for the comment!
 
Chapter 27: Penumbra
The Human Sacrifice

When Team Seven exited the Kamui, the sun had all but set: only a few wisps of red light crept over the horizon, casting the forest they'd appeared in in long, deep shadows. Sakura looked around; she had no idea where they were.

"Welcome to the Land of Waterfalls," Obito said, and Sakura felt a jolt at having crossed into another country for the first time in her life without any sort of fanfare. The Land of Waterfalls and Fire didn't seem too different. They did share a border, she thought. It was probably silly to think that things like the trees would change just because the country had.

'The borders are artificial anyway, right? Waterfall's a minor village in a minor nation. It exists to provide a buffer.'

Sakura ignored the cynical thought, turning to her teacher. "You know where Takigakure is, sensei?"

Obito shrugged. "I know where it isn't."

"Isn't that just a stupid way of saying you know where it is?" Naruto asked, and Obito smirked.

"Obito loves to sound smart," Rin said, and the smirk transformed into a protesting look. "But yeah, it is." She gestured around. "But with such a flashy entrance, their barrier team is gonna be on us any second. What're you thinking, Obito?"

"Quickest way in," Obito said with a shrug, and Rin laughed.

Barrier team? Sakura knew Konoha had a barrier, but nothing about it. It made sense that the other villages would have something similar, even a smaller one like Waterfall. How close had their sensei popped them out anyway?

"We can't afford to wait around," Sasuke said. He looked twitchy, and Sakura couldn't blame him. Obito laid an uncharacteristically heavy hand on his shoulder.

"Believe it or not, Sasuke, that's our best play right now," he said, and the younger Uchiha gave him an unbelieving look. "We're not gonna be able to outrun Itachi. Keep this in mind: we're going to be the ones playing defense here. That's one of the only reasons I'm willing to bring you along."

"VIP defense," Sasuke said eventually, and Obito nodded. "Even if we couldn't fight someone, we could yell real loud."

"That, and some other stuff," Obito said. Sakura's mouth twisted up. She didn't want to play defense. That wasn't at all why she'd pushed for them to continue the mission. "Now shut up. We're gonna have company in a second."

Sasuke went quiet, obviously listening for something. Sakura and Naruto did the same, trying to figure out what Obito had been talking about. So far as she could tell, they were alone. There were no sounds but the sounds of the forest passing from twilight into darkness, its nocturnal inhabitants coming out to live their lives, and no sights but the trees, bushes, grass, several small animals, and the distant rays of the vanishing sun.

Nevertheless, Obito and Rin both turned at something only they could hear, and Sakura followed their line of sight to find a new arrival. Sasuke had turned before her; she had to nudge Naruto to get him to do the same.

There was someone watching them from the trees: a woman with long brown hair and dull red eyes, wearing a deep blue cloak that covered her whole body. There was a hitai-ate on her forehead with a symbol Sakura didn't recognize, two jagged lines converging at an invisible point, like an downwards arrow without an end.

Were there others? Sakura looked around cautiously, but didn't find anyone else. They were ninja though. Not seeing anyone was no indication of the truth. Her instincts were screaming at her that they were surrounded. The woman crossed her arms, her cloak shifting and revealing a flak jacket festooned with a comical amount of knives.

"Leaf, huh?" she said, and Obito raised his hands, revealing nothing. "What a coincidence."

"How ya doin?" Rin called up, and the woman snorted incredulously.

"How about you answer this first," she said, and Rin shrugged. "Why has Mangekyo no Obito suddenly appeared near our village, without so much as a polite request?"

"Sorry for intruding!" Obito said. "We were in a hurry. I'm looking for Jiraiya of the Sannin!"

The woman shifted, growing more guarded. "What makes you think he's here?"

Obito shrugged. "Just a hunch," he said, and the shinobi from Waterfall raised an eyebrow.

"You should leave, Uchiha," she said. "You're not welcome here."

"How about this," Obito said, a little more seriously. He crossed his arms, mirroring the woman. "You run back and ask your elders. See what they have to say; if they can entertain another guest or not."

The shinobi considered, and Sakura tensed, ready for a denial. But after a second, the woman disappeared without a sound. Obito uncrossed his arms with a grin. Rin gave him an unimpressed look.

"Hey, that's step one," he said.

"Is this how you do it every time?" she asked. "Just show up on the doorstep and ask to be let inside?"

"Well, mostly, yeah," Obito said, and Rin laughed. "It usually works. Sometimes there's some extra screaming."

"What did you mean by elders, sensei?" Sakura asked, and Obito gave her a grin.

"Good question, Sakura," he said, giving Naruto a pointed look. The boy frowned back at him. "Takigakure doesn't have a Kage, or any sort of single leader like a lot of the other villages. It's led by a council of elders. They're not necessarily old, but that's often the case, cause they're the most experienced ninja in the village. They vote on all the major decisions."

"Huh, that's neat," Sakura said, and the next moment she felt something shift. Neither of the adults seemed to care, though they had definitely taken notice as well. She looked over her shoulder to find another Takigakure shinobi, wearing the same blue cloak. This one was a man. No, a teenager, probably only a couple years older than her.

"Hey," she said, and the boy stared at her. "How many of you are there?" The boy coughed.

"I'm not answering that," he said quietly. Naruto laughed.

"Was that your team leader up there?" he asked, and the boy didn't respond. "Then there's probably one or two more of you, right? You get to patrol outside the village often? That's pretty neat."

The boy gave Naruto a strange look, and the Hokage's son cocked his head. "What, shy or something? We're just ninja, it's not like we're gonna bite you."

"I thought there were some ninja from Konoha who bit people," the shinobi said, and Naruto laughed.

"I mean, yeah, maybe. I think Kiba bit me once. But we're not like that. We're just looking for that Sannin. And-"

Sasuke placed his hand over his friend's mouth, and then withdrew it in obvious disgust when Naruto licked it. "Sorry, he's always like this," he said, and the boy gave them both an incredulous look. "What's your name?"

"I'm not telling you that either," the Takigakure shinobi said, looking them up and down with a blank face, and Sasuke shrugged.

"That's fair," he said. He was trying to be calm, Sakura could tell, but beneath the facade he was practically vibrating, and she was sure the foriegn shinobi could tell.

"Hey, leave him alone," Rin said with a grin. "His squad leader left him to watch over two Uchiha, he's probably a little jumpy."

Naruto and Sasuke settled down, and Sakura looked around, trying to make a game of spotting the boy's companions. She couldn't see anyone else, but she eventually settled on a position a little to the south; there was an occasional rustle from over there, too subtle and stationary to be an animal, but too loud to be an experienced shinobi. Probably another younger one, like the one watching them. Maybe it really had been a case of a team like there's stuck on patrol around the village. It was weird to think of other ninja having the same patterns and behavior, but of course made sense.

A couple minutes later, the older woman returned. She made noise on purpose this time, alerting them of her approach, and settled in the same tree she'd departed from.

"We're to escort you in," she said, and Obito gave her an appreciative smile. "Tor, Osaka."

The boy from Takigakure stepped forward, and another girl, around his age, appeared at his side. She was wearing a long blue cloak, just like both her companions, and had her light blue hair tied up in a short ponytail.

"They're guests now," the older shinobi said, and both of the teenagers nodded. "Show them the way. I'll continue the patrol."

Tor, the boy, gestured, and Obito motioned for the rest of them to follow him. They set off through the forest, Tor at the front and Osaka behind them.

"Nice to meet you," Sakura said, at the back of the line Team Seven and Rin had formed. "I'm Sakura."

"Eyes forward," the girl said, and Sakura frowned.

"Just trying to be friendly…" she muttered, looking forward and ignoring the girl. They trooped through the dark forest in silence for several minutes, as the trees grew thinner and the night deeper. Before long, Sakura's ears picked up a distant roar, a steady white noise that they gradually made their way towards.

Eventually the forest broke and the source of the noise was revealed. Sakura almost stopped in shock, and she watched Naruto do the same in front of her; Sasuke was the only one among them who didn't hesitate.

There was an enormous plateau rising out of the forest, incredibly sheer and completely unnatural. Looking up, Sakura was unable to discern where the wall of earth ended and the sky began: the only clue was the shine of distant stars. She didn't have a clue where the sides were either. The plateau extended to both the left and right as far as she could see. Countless waterfalls coursed down the side of the massive mound of earth in hundreds of different places, coating its sides in rushing water and keeping much of it from sight. The water had been the white noise, hundreds and hundreds of waterfalls ranging from trickles to vertical floods rushing down into a river that surrounded the whole plateau, an enormous natural moat.

The scale of it was more than Sakura could comprehend.

Naruto whistled. "Damn," he said. "That's super cool."

"You know, Waterfalls never been successfully invaded," Rin said conversationally. Osaka gave her a cold look. "This is definitely part of why."

"It's because we don't produce weak shinobi," the girl from Waterfall said, and Rin laughed.

"Could be that too," she said with a smile, and Tor led them forward across the river. They walked over the water as naturally as they would earth, and Sakura didn't think anything of it. The boy brought them to one of the larger waterfalls, the spray of cold water against Sakura's face getting more aggressive the closer they got.

The quiet boy walked right through the water, hundreds of pounds of pressure beating against his head and back for a second, and Obito and Rin followed after him without hesitation. Sasuke looked back at Sakura and Naruto, shrugged, and went after them.

"C'mon," Naruto said, forging ahead and immediately regretting it. "Shit! It's cold!"

Sakura passed through the waterfall, the frigid water slamming into her for just a second. Somehow, it actually relaxed her. Water was her real weapon. Being surrounded by it, even if it was freezing cold and beating down on her, made her feel at peace and utterly safe, if only for a second.

There wasn't a solid wall on the other side of the waterfall: instead, Team Seven found themselves in a narrow tunnel, just wide and tall enough for two people to walk side by side if they pressed themselves flush to the wall. The tunnel carried them forward and up, sometimes so steep that they had to walk vertically as only shinobi could. Occasionally, the walls were not earth and stone, but something rougher, almost like bark. Sakura couldn't tell; the narrow space was so utterly black that she could barely see Naruto just a foot in front of her. No light penetrated down here.

The tunnel had been created by jutsu, and there were probably others like it. It was no wonder they needed a guide; there was no way she or anyone else would have been able to find their way through this thing, with its pitch darkness and branching pathways, without a native showing them the way. And even if by some miracle they did find the way, they were so completely vulnerable here that it set her heart racing. Trapped in the dark and the earth like this, it would only take a single person with a jutsu like their sensei's earth collapsing technique, the one he'd used to bury that undead bear, to crush them without a chance of escape. Or someone with a water jutsu, flooding the tunnel and leaving them to drown, or a cascade of fire, or…

But nothing like that happened, and Sakura and the rest of her team climbed through the tunnels in a silence even more oppressive than the darkness for what seemed like an hour.

"Here," Tor eventually said from up front, and Sakura heard him brush against something. A wall crumbled; light poured in. It was faint, just moon and starlight that could barely illuminate the night, but after what they'd traveled through it was practically blinding.

Sakura blinked, her eyes adjusting as she and her team stepped back out into the open air. Somehow, in the course of that timeless travel, they'd reached the top of the plateau. It was just as stunning as the base had been.

"I thought I was gonna flip," Naruto said at her side, his tone frank, and Sakura blew out a relieved breath.

"Me too," she said, too entranced by the vista before them to look at him. This was Takigakure, and it was a beautiful place.

The village had three distinct features, all of which Sakura took in in an instant. The lake, the waterfalls, and the tree.

The first. The entire village was set above a tremendous lake that surrounded it on every side. Takigakure was much smaller than Konoha, which was to be expected. It was by no means small though: the village probably housed at least a thousand people, maybe more. There were dozens of buildings of all shapes and sizes, most modest and made of wood, arrayed on a series of terraces. The terraces formed five concentric rings that led down to the shores of the lake, each more and more populated than the one above it, with five equally spaced main boulevards that traveled from the edges of the village up to its center. There were not many electric lights, and most of them were affixed to structures. The terraces almost looked like a ripple in motion, Sakura thought, carrying the village on its back.

The second. There were more waterfalls up here, on top of the plateau. Water poured down each of the terraces, hundreds of streams feeding down into the great lake from an unseen source. Many of those waterfalls fed through waterwheels, most of which were directly attached to houses, while others were left to travel freely. Were they generating power? Sakura couldn't imagine running electricity up to the top of the artificial plateau, so it seemed like the most natural solution. A natural solution at odds with the completely unnatural aspect of everything else about the village: Takigakure had been designed to exacting standards, the very earth ripped up to accommodate its creator's visions. Everything from the huge artificial plateau to the perfectly formed terraces with their artfully fed waterfalls screamed that out. This was the result of ambition and ninjutsu. Sakura had never seen anything like this done with chakra. It felt completely at odds with her vision of what shinobi were capable of.

This wasn't violence or destruction. It was beautiful.

The third. The most natural thing about the village, at odds with its artificiality and yet simultaneously so far beyond 'natural' that Sakura could only gape. The tree.

Calling it a 'tree' was like calling a tiger 'a cat.' Technically correct, but laughably incapable of bringing across what was being described. The tree was big. Really big. Really really big. It was almost a hundred feet wide, with protruding roots that were visible even at its base growing in every direction. Its trunk was thick and its bark gnarled, and it rose straight up like a sheer cliff of wood, shooting off into the sky like a spear and dwarfing the rest of the village. Over fifty feet up, it began sprouting equally huge branches that spiralled outward, covered in thick green leaves despite the cold February air. The branches grew thicker and thicker the higher up the tree they went, until they presented an untraceable tangle of wood and leaves, like a semi-solid ceiling hanging over the whole village.

Sakura craned her neck back, trying to take in the tree. How tall was it, she distantly thought. Six, seven hundred feet? Almost as tall as the Hokage's monument, she was sure. How could something like this grow on top of this huge artificial plateau? Its top must have been crowning nearly a kilometer into the sky.

"Keep moving." Osaka pushed her from behind, and Sakura stumbled forward, shooting the other girl a nasty glare. She looked around and found the rest of her team moving on as well, and fell in with them, trying to take in the whole village again and again. Even though it was late at night with the sun all but gone, the place was teaming with shinobi, and as Team Seven walked across the lake towards the terraces they began receiving strange looks. Mutters began following them.

When they reached the first ring, Sakura realized that she hadn't seen anyone who looked like a civilian. As far as they could see, everyone in Takigakure was a ninja.

"Heading to the center?" Obito asked up ahead as they ascended the second terrace. Tor responded with a grunt.

"The Sannin is meeting with the elders," the quiet boy said. "They were all ecstatic to receive him; big fans of his books."

"Really," Rin asked flatly, and the boy looked back, his face just as flat. He didn't respond. Sakura looked around, too struck by her surroundings to speak. Her teammates were doing the same thing. Takigakure should have been simple and small, especially compared to their home, but there was something about the place that captured their attention. This was a home for shinobi, built solely by and for them, and none of them had seen anything like it.

At the center of the five main boulevards, nestled in the roots of the tree, there was a long squat building with a sharp triangular roof. It dominated most of the fifth terrace, and when they mounted the final steps Sakura realized that this was the source of the waterfalls. There was another, smaller lake that the longhouse sat atop, fed by an unseen source.

Osaka pulled ahead of them and gestured. "Inside."

"Our gratitude," Obito said with a sincere smile, and the girl snorted.

"Don't get any funny ideas," she said, sneering. "You're surrounded by the best ninja in the world."

They let that one go, watching as both their escorts descended back into the village; several other shinobi went over to them, no doubt with questions about the ninja in their midst.

"Cocky bastards…" Naruto muttered, and Rin patted him on the shoulder.

"Prove them wrong later," she said. She nodded at Obito, and he led them to the longhouse, gently opening the door Osaka had gestured at. The inside of the building was much like the outside, mostly wood and softly lit with most electricity and fire. It was dead silent.

They padded forward, unsure where to go, but Obito confidently stayed at the front and guided them deeper into the building. The longhouse was divided into two sections, Sakura quickly realized: the first was essentially an antechamber that ringed the whole building. The inner sanctum was divided from the rest by another set of doors, a wide double set with colorful tapestry covered in kanji draped down either side.

The soundproofing inside the room must have been outright magic, because the moment Obito gently pulled the door open a cacophony of screaming assaulted them.

"Idiocy!" someone shouted as Team Seven slipped in through the door, and Sakura jumped. There were six people in the room, all seated around a huge table apparently carved from raw bark: two women and six men, with the youngest being in her thirties and the most elderly man probably even older than the Third Hokage. All were distinguished and powerful looking, lifelong shinobi at a single glance; one of the woman's hair was festooned with dozens of bells, and one of the men had a scar running from the crown of his head straight down the middle of his face, like a dividing stripe of gnarled tissue. He was the one who was shouting. "Takigakure has never been invaded!"

If these people had been debating, that time had long since passed. They were descending into a full-bore screaming match. Sakura followed her sensei's gaze to the man sitting at the head of the table; Obito was looking past the yelling, focused on their target.

He was tall, taller than anyone else in the room. Even seated, he towered over them, and his broad shoulders and red haori over a brown tunic only emphasized his width. His hair was long and white, spilling over his shoulders in countless spikes and extending all the way to the floor. It was the same color as his beard, a full and barely controlled thing that stretched from ear to ear. Despite the pale hair and a few wrinkles, the man looked powerful and hearty; he emanated the same quiet confidence the Yondaime did, looking around a room filled with five other shouting shinobi without a hint of concern.

This was Jiraiya. Sakura was one-hundred percent sure of it. His right eye was covered by a simple black eyepatch. His left eye was warm and dark, and it calmly slid from one ninja to the next as they bickered, eventually settling on Sakura's sensei, looking him dead in the eyes.

The others in the room took notice of them, but none of them cared. They were too busy amongst themselves. Sakura's team slipped around the edge of the room, coming alongside the Toad Sage, who watched them come with a slight quirk of his lips. Not quite a smile, but certainly not a frown.

"Jiraiya-sensei," Obito said. To Sakura's shock, he dropped to one knee. "We've come to assist you."

The man laughed, and the room quieted down somewhat as the elders of Takigakure looked them over with more appraising eyes.

"I'll take you," the man said, his voice deep and full of mirth. He glanced at Rin with a grin. "And I'll definitely take her. But what are your brats doing here?"

"We're here to help," Sasuke said, stepping forward, and the Toad Sage snorted.

"More foreign shinobi is not the solution," the woman with bells in her hair said, her voice melodic and cold. She leaned forward, settling both hands palm-down on the table. "Takigakure is more than capable of handling this. Your help is not welcome."

"That's just as foolish!" one of the men snapped; he was shorter than the others, with thick red hair and wide orange eyes. "Too prideful, too prideful Ayame!" He gave Obito a sly look. "Send an Uchiha to kill an Uchiha, what could be better?"

"Hrm." One of the older men with coal dark skin grunted. "It won't be that simple. Rogue ninja have been gathering; this will not be a case of a single ambition. We could have to endure a full invasion-"

"That can't happen!" the scarred man declared again. Sakura was amazed at how quickly the elders had dismissed them. The room was vibrating with their chakra. She could feel it pressing down on her like a nearly physical malice, making her bones ache. "Waterfall is impregnable!"

"Not if they have the right help!" the older woman declared. She was dressed in a very ornate rainbow kimono, riven with every color under the sun. "The grudge-!"

"This entire debate is ridiculous," the youngest man said with a sneer. He was wearing a blue vest and had two swords sheathed at his back, and as he spoke he pounded on the table with a clenched fist, leaving a dent in the bark, and jumped to his feet. "Why all this mess, for a single child? Throw her out! No power is worth this strife!"

"We could not let the Beast into another's hands!" the bell-woman, Ayame, yelled back. She leapt up as well, and the man laughed.

"Then kill her, and banish it!" he declared, and everyone in the room began yelling at him. He shouted back, raising his young voice above the rest. "What has that thing done, aside from bringing the eyes of greater powers to us?! Why maintain a weapon that only makes others consider you a threat?!"

"To defend against any threat!" the scarred man screamed back, and the whole room became a madhouse. Sakura shrunk back against the wall, desperately glad that she was under their notice, and her teammates followed her, watching the proceedings with wide eyes. The elders were practically at each other's throats; the young man in blue was laughing in the scarred man's face. Sakura wasn't sure what the Hokage meeting with his advisors looked like, but she was certain it would never resemble this.

Silently, Jiraiya detached from the madness and made his way over to them. He was even taller standing up, so much that Sakura felt engulfed by his presence. He nearly had a foot on Obito, and had to be half again as heavy. He looked over them with his arms crossed and an unimpressed expression.

"Quite the sight, huh?" he said, leaning against the wall at Obito's side, and they watched the room together as the elders argued. "But who could blame them."

"They're frightened," Obito noted. Jiraiya nodded with, Sakura noticed with some amusement, a sage expression. "What's changed?"

"Itachi's hired some flotsam," the man said, and Sakura couldn't decide which conversation she should focus on; her sensei's, or the elders'. "No one's sure how many, but it's at least several dozen. Enough to cause this zoo." If any of the elders could hear him, they ignored his harsh words; they were too busy screaming at one another. Two of them seemed ready to come to blows.

"Rogue ninja?" Sasuke asked, and Jiraiya leaned off the wall to look at him with a cocked eyebrow. "That's…"

"Something to add?" Jiraiya asked. Sasuke's lips pressed into a firm line.

"I was gonna say that's not like him," he grumbled, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms. "But nothing is."

Sakura wondered what he meant while Rin stroked her chin. "That many, huh. He must have a silver tongue."

"Hardly," Jiraiya snorted. "They're just particularly desperate. It's been a bad year for ninja outside the villages; a couple different sources of employment dried up for them, you know. That Gato character in particular… he was a big time underworld dealer, and the Rain flipped over his rock just a couple months ago. Naturally all the ants scattered."

Gato? For some reason, that rang a bell, but Sakura couldn't remember where she'd heard the name before. And Rain? What had Rain done that would make rogue shinobi desperate enough to attack a minor village? She managed to discard the question and ask another instead.

"So, what are we going to do?" she said. Jiraiya shifted his attention to her. His gaze was intense, Sakura thought. There was so much in that one eye. For the first time since her fight with Gaara, she felt small and worthy of judgement.

"You said you were here to help," he said. Smirked. "So, you'll help as best you can."

"Make up your mind," Obito said mildly, and Jiraiya laughed.

"You've always been so quick to take people out of danger, Obito," he said, turning to face the man directly. As he did, one of the bells that had rested in Ayame's hair embedded in the wooden wall where his head had been; the woman had hurled it out in a frenzy and missed her intended target. The whole room went quiet as the elders realized what had nearly happened, but Jiraiya didn't acknowledge them, didn't miss a beat. "It'll do them some good to stick around."

"What do you mean 'best we can'?" Naruto whined. "We can handle ourselves!"

"And you will," Jiraiya said with a grin, crouching down and bringing his head level with Naruto's. "Naruto, right? It's good to officially meet you!"

"Officially?" Naruto asked, and Jiraiya wrinkled his nose.

"We'll talk later, promise," he said, rising and leaving behind a baffled Naruto. "Rin, could I ask you for a favor?"

"Depends on the favor," Rin said skeptically, and Jiraiya snorted.

"Shuffle em out of here. Obito, you stay," he said, and both Sakura's teammates protested. Rin rolled her eyes and shoved them towards the door, and Sakura followed them, feeling the eyes of the room on her. "We got some things to discuss."

Rin pushed them out of the room and shut the door behind them, and once more the sound of the argument within was completely shut out. It couldn't just be simple soundproofing, Sakura thought. That had to be some sort of use of chakra. It was too stark not to be.

"C'mon!" Naruto protested as Rin gave him an unimpressed look. "Why can't we sit in?"

"Cause you have a big mouth," Rin said matter of factly. Sasuke snorted. "And cause it's none of your business anyway. We'll probably all get our role to play."

"Trust him, Naruto." Sasuke frowned. "Obito will-"

"How can you be saying that?" Naruto asked, and Sasuke flinched.

"Naruto, it's okay." Sakura stepped in, trying to squash the brewing argument. "We should just-"

"Hey!" The sudden voice snapped all of their heads to the right, and Sakura found someone jogging down the corridor towards them. Another shinobi: she had a Takigakure headband wrapped around her right arm.

The girl made an immediate impression, Sakura thought. She had striking teal hair, lovingly braided, and vibrant orange eyes that lacked pupils, almost like the Byakugan. Her outfit was plain, but definitely unique: a short white skirt and a vest that left her stomach bare, along with sleeves that only covered her forearms. But more than any of that, it was the girl's expression that immediately captivated Sakura. She was smiling, so genuinely and so brightly that it almost hurt to look at, and there wasn't a hint of anything but joy in her eyes.

Sakura blinked, not quite understanding what she was seeing. The closest comparison she could draw to that feeling of open trust was Rock Lee, but even Lee still had that sense of cunning that all shinobi tried to carry close to their chest. This girl had none of that. She was sincerity itself.

She couldn't trust that. Haku had given her a similar feeling. Immediately, Sakura was on edge.

"What's up? Who are you guys? Are you from Konoha?!" the girl asked, and Sasuke and Naruto both crumbled into silence under the barrage of questions. She waved at Sakura over their shoulder, and Sakura gave her an insincere smile in return. "I'm Fuu!"

"Fuu!" Another ninja, an older man with short black hair and a soft purple turtleneck, came around the corner and stopped at the sight of the corridor filled with ninja. "The elders aren't to be disturbed."

"I'm not bothering them, Yoro!" the girl said with her perpetual smile. "Look, ninja from Konoha, like the Toad Sage! Are they here to help too?"

"Yeah, we're here to help!" Naruto declared. He stuck out his hand. "I'm Naruto Namikaze!"

Fuu took his hand with so much enthusiasm that Naruto almost jumped. "Wow, Namikaze?" she said, shaking Naruto's hand like a dog would a bone. Sakura raised an eyebrow: the girl clearly didn't have much experience with handshaking. "Are you related to the Hokage? That's cool!"

"He's my dad!" Naruto confirmed, drawing his hand back and shaking it out. Fuu apparently had an iron grip. "A toad asked us to come help out that geezer in there, so we came here."

"Oh, so you got sent all the way out of the village? That's also cool!" Fuu asked, practically glowing, and Naruto nodded proudly. Sakura shared a glance with Sasuke, catching his amused smirk. They both felt the same way, she thought. Naruto and Fuu were like two suns colliding, just producing more energy and getting louder by the second. "I never get to-!"

"Fuu," the other man, Yoro, said, and for a second Fuu froze, her smile cracking like plaster. The moment passed; her cheerful reality reasserted itself. "We should get going."

"Oh yeah, probably," Fuu said, her shoulders sagging.

"Maybe we could come with." Rin stepped forward with a cheerful tone. Yoro glanced at her, and then gave her a double-take.

"You're Rin Nohara," he said, like that fact alone was remarkable, and Rin grinned at him.

"That's me!" she said. Sakura looked back and forth between the two adults; Naruto and Fuu had already returned to babbling at each other, but she could see Sasuke was thinking the same thing she was once more. The man had known Rin on sight, and he looked… uneasy. Not nervous, certainly not scared, just on edge. It was another piece in the puzzle, like Rin's presence on the mission.

"Ooh, can they come?" Fuu asked. Yoro started to shake his head before she ran him over with another verbal barrage. The girl had a peculiar way of speaking that left people defenseless. "It's just to the safehouse, and where are they going to go anyway if we just leave them here? They'll just sit outside the room until the elders are done, that could take hours! They could get bored and then you'd have a bunch of bored foriegn ninja in the middle of the village, that could be really bad!"

Naruto stirred. "Hey, what-?"

"And besides, it's Rin Nohara right, isn't she some legendary kunoichi? I wanna talk to her, I'm not allowed to leave but I'm definitely allowed to talk to people right Yoro? I mean it's just-!"

"Okay!" Yoro surrendered, shaking his head and raising his hand. "Okay, they can come with us. Let's just get going, okay?"

"Cool!" Fuu exulted. "C'mon, let's go!"

She led the way out of the longhouse, and Sakura nudged Sasuke as they stepped into the brisk night air. "Safehouse?" she muttered, and Sasuke nodded.

"She's a VIP," he said, his face thoughtful. "Not allowed to leave the village either. Related to an elder?"

"Maybe," Sakura said doubtfully, something gnawing at her mind. The suspicion was present but unformed, like smoke in the dark.

###

It took nearly five minutes for the longhouse to return to something resembling calm after Obito's students left. The elders squabbled, and Obito watched.

"Fuu cannot be surrendered." That was Hashin, the old man with the face-wide scar. Obito saw a vision of what could have been in the other man's face; his own scar ached. "It is out of the question. Takigakure has weathered worse."

"Worse?" Ayame, the woman festooned with bells, sneered. "Not for decades. The Takigakure of the First War and the Takigakure of now are different creatures, Hashin. See the reality of the situation. What the village is now has never faced something like Itachi Uchiha and whatever dregs he brings along with him. The danger-"

"Itachi is our problem," Jiraiya interrupted, effortlessly shifting the gravity of the room to him. He had done that constantly throughout, poking and prodding at the conversation just enough to keep it from turning back to hostilities. "That is why I am here, and why Obito is here. We will handle him. The legendary shinobi of Takigakure can surely crush the rest of the rogue ninja."

"Legendary?" The youngest elder, whom Obito had still not learned the name of, spoke up with a scoff. "Don't think you can worm your way in with flattery, you hack author."

"My!" Jiraiya said, putting a hand to his chest with a grin. "You've offended me! I was only acknowledging Waterfall's success."

"Watefall's success has come from secrecy and power," the oldest woman, Ku, said. "But our secrecy has vanished over time, leaving only our power." She leaned forward, steepling her hands and pinning Obito with a forceful look. "We are not a major village, and so that alone cannot be enough. We've long resisted becoming Leaf's ally, but that was out of stubbornness, not pragmatism."

"Ku!" Hashin barked. "That's-!"

"Foolish, yes yes," Ku said, waving him off with a tired expression. "Find another word, you old rat. Waterfall's pride has placed us in this situation." She shifted her attention to the young man in blue. "Though Eiji's solution is equally idiotic. Discarding the Bijuu would make us more attractive to some and less to others; our strength would lessen while our enemies would not. That is the inevitable fate of a minor village."

She wasn't wrong, Obito thought. Takigakure, Uzoshigakure, and Amegakure once upon a time had all proven the truth of minor villages being constant targets. They were used as battlegrounds between the major nations, and constantly considered an irritant by the Five Nations' governments. If the Nanabi was gone, someone like Itachi would no longer target the village, but plenty of others would.

But why was Itachi after the Nanabi anyway? It made no sense, and Jiraiya had confirmed earlier that he didn't know the Uchiha's motivation. Itachi had never been obsessed with power. He had survived for the last six years outside the villages without having to rely on something as crass as a Tailed Beast. Why now?

There had to be yet another actor here that Obito wasn't aware of. It was the only rational explanation for Itachi's behavior. But then, Itachi wasn't necessarily rational.

"Before the First War," he said slowly, and Jiraiya ceded the floor to him. "The First Hokage gifted Waterfall the Nanabi." Obito smiled. "If I recall correctly, because you had sent someone to assassinate him."

"Not us," Hashin grumbled. "The most foolish generation, and they paid for their mistakes."

"Regardless," Obito said with a wave, "Hashirama Senju saw that Taki lived in fear of the five new villages, and gifted them a Bijuu that had not been claimed to assuage those fears. The Nanabi is Hashirama's legacy, just like the Village Hidden in the Leaves." He narrowed his eyes. "So it's only natural we would do everything in our power to defend it."

"How sentimental," one of the elders snorted, and Obito glanced at him. He didn't need to activate the Sharingan for the man to flinch away from his gaze. Shinobi from Waterfall knew just as well as anyone that Obito's look could literally kill, even if they weren't aware of the terrible cost.

"Unless you intend to throw us off the plateau, you'll just have to accept that we're here to help," Jiraiya said with a genial grin. "How are you intending to keep Itachi out of the village?"

There was a pause, the elders shifting and looking at one another, and then, a clear moment of surrender. Ayame spoke, her bells tinkling.

"The barrier team will always be our first line of defense," she said. "It is constantly shifting-"

"Easy to see with the Sharingan, or any other doujutsu for that matter," Obito said, and the woman gave him a nasty look. What, did she not want him to be honest? "Itachi would be able to trivially avoid it. I assume climbing the plateau is not an option?"

"The Earth Defense Force is always monitoring the plateau," Eiji confirmed, leaning forward and resting his chin on his palm with a bored expression. "Any attempt to climb it would see you knocked off at best, crushed if you were unlucky."

"So the village's impregnable?" Jiraiya crossed his arms. "How impressive."

"No," Ku admitted. "No no, quite not the case. There would be two ways in." She pointed up, and then down. "By sky, bird, whatever you desired, or by the lake, the foundation, as you would put it."

Jiraiya flinched, and the woman gave him a sour smile. "The barrier watches both, but it is difficult for patrols to do so. Obvious reasons. The village cannot bury its lake, for they are one and the same, and the sky is everyone's, friend or foe."

"Well, Itachi can't fly," Obito said. "So that's out."

"Itachi is not alone. Ninja who can fly are rare but not nonexistent," Ayame pointed out. "We must consider all avenues."

"I will," Jiraiya said, fingers tapping against his shoulder. "Sage Mode will cover the gap."

Obito blinked, and the Waterfall elders took a collective breath as they realized what Jiraiya was offering them. It was one thing for the Toad Sage to turn up and offer his help, and completely another for him to put his ultimate technique on the table. Secrecy was power, as Ku had said.

"Sensei-," Obito started to ask, and Jiraiya shut him up with a glance.

"It's the perfect counter. My sensory range is not nearly so impressive as your barrier team," Jiraiya said, making eye contact with each elder, "but it's more than sufficient to cover the village. Your defenses will be the first line, as ever, and if they succeed we'll be all the happier for it. But if they're penetrated, even Itachi won't be able to evade my senjutsu. I'll track him down…" He pounded one huge fist into an open palm. "And crush him."

That could work, Obito distantly thought as the elders chattered excitedly. It was a simple plan, and that made it the most likely to succeed.

They stayed in that stifling room with its cracked wooden table for another half hour, speculating and talking strategy, until eventually the meeting dissolved. The elders said goodbye, rushing off to their own tasks, or perhaps bed, and Obito and Jiraiya found themselves outside, drinking in the brisk night air and staring out over the village they'd found themselves quite suddenly pledged to defend.

At least it was defensible, Obito noted. They could have been given a lot worse.

"You had some nice lines in there, Obito," Jiraiya said after a minute or two of them enjoying the silence. He thumped Obito on the back with an appreciative grin, and the Uchiha grunted: even a friendly slap from the giant man hit with a ton of force. "Minato been feeding you some Hokage material?"

"Just thought about what he'd say." Obito told the truth. "Not sure if it was enough."

"It'll be enough," Jiraiya said. "They're desperate. They're putting on a tough face, but the idea that Itachi's gunning for their best weapon has got them terrified."

"And why?" Obito asked. Jiraiya shook his head. "It doesn't make any sense."

"We can make sense of it afterwards. My source has never been wrong before." Jiraiya scratched his chin. "There's one thing I didn't mention. I won't be able to stay in Sage Mode long."

"What do you mean? Why not just summon the head toads?"

"I've been trying. Someone's been intercepting the summons."

"What, in the midst of their summoning? That's…"

"Extremely advanced ninjutsu, sure. But that doesn't sound like Itachi, right?"

"No," Obito had to admit. Itachi was a lot of things, but he'd never been a summoning specialist, and certainly not the kind who was skilled enough to catch one before it could teleport to Jiraiya's side. Obito didn't know enough about summoning ninjutsu to even know how that was possible. That must have been why that Toad had arrived at Myoboku with no memories of its mission, he realized with a jolt. But the person most likely responsible for that had to be Itachi.

"So there's a third party, probably connected to Itachi, keeping you from communicating with them," Obito muttered.

"Yup." Jiraiya almost sounded impressed. "Whoever it is must be incredibly knowledgeable, if they knew the secrets to my Sage Mode."

"I could go get them. With the Kamui," Obito said, and Jiraiya shook his head.

"You couldn't find your way to Myoboku, no matter the kind of directions I gave you. It's certainly sealed off from space-time jutsu like yours." He grinned. "And even if you did, the Toads might not listen to you. They can be picky like that."

"So, no summons, and limited senjutsu." Obito's face grew sour.

"Don't pout," Jiraiya laughed, and Obito straightened his face out. "It'll be more than enough. Not to mention, you brought Rin. I'm not worried."

"And my team?" Obito asked.

"They're tough. Everyone in that room could see that right away. They're real shinobi now." Jiraiya sat down, looking out over the village and the darkness beyond it, and Obito sank down next to him. "You must have done a great job with them. I'm impressed."

The compliment stung, and Obito began to shrink away from it. Jiraiya caught him, physically caught him by the collar. "Hey, don't be a punk. I already heard about the Chunin Exam. Some pretty incredible stuff."

"They're still not ready," Obito said, and Jiraiya let go of his collar.

"No one ever is," the Sage said with a chuckle. "That's what being a shinobi is." He gestured at his missing eye. "Even I wasn't ready, once or twice." He grew somber. "That's part of why I'm here you know."

"Your eye?" Obito asked dryly, and Jiraiya rolled his.

"You dolt. To improve relations with Waterfall. I don't want them to be just another subordinate to the Leaf, but…" Jiraiya leaned back on both arms. "Maybe another ally will cause less fighting, at least."

Obito didn't have anything to say to that, and so they sat quietly in the night, listening to the sound of the countless waterfalls and enjoying each other's company. Several minutes later, lights across the village began going out.

"This is as good a place as any," Jiraiya said, drawing his legs up as Obito glanced at him. "I'll start gathering natural energy."

"I appreciate this chance, you know," Obito said as his one-time teacher began concentrating. "To get revenge for my brother."

"Revenge is a fool's game, Obito," Jiraiya said, his voice quiet. He closed his eye. "Killing Itachi won't bring back anyone he's taken."

"It'll make me feel better about it," Obito pointed out. Jiraiya snorted. "Don't you think the same, about your eye?"

"There's a difference. That was a consequence I was willing to accept."

"They might have followed us here, you know," Obito said, and Jiraiya opened his eye. "Sensei's worried about that; that's why he sent Rin."

"Or to bait them out," Jiraiya said. Obito couldn't disagree.

The Sage smiled. It wasn't his normal friendly smile. It was all teeth.

"If they're stupid enough to come, let them. I won't let anyone harm this village."

Obito watched Jiraiya fall silent, going as still as a rock. He stood up.

"I'll be back," he said. "We'll wait out the night together. I'm just going to check on my team."

Jiraiya didn't say a word, and Obito strode off, a ghost vanishing into the ever-darkening night.

###

The safehouse ended up being much like the rest of the houses, if a little bigger and more obviously watched. Sakura felt countless eyes on them as her team and Fuu made their way into the building. The moment they passed the threshold, an electric shock traveled across her whole body; it wasn't an instinct, but the presence of an extremely powerful chakra that encircled the whole building.

"Wow," Naruto said. Fuu beamed at him. "That's a crazy strong barrier."

"Thanks!" she chirped. "I helped make it!"

"Really? You know Fuinjutsu?" Naruto asked, and Fuu shook her head. Sakura wondered why her escort hadn't stopped them before now. He clearly didn't approve of them talking to Fuu, but he refused to step in.

Maybe it was because of how obviously happy she was, but it could be something else. Something less obvious. Ninja, remember? Sakura tried to retrieve the cynicism that Fuu's demeanor had melted.

"Nah, that's way too complicated for me," Fuu said. "I just helped with the chakra! I have a lot, so-"

Yoro glanced at her, and once more Fuu went quiet prematurely. This time, Rin laughed.

"Oh c'mon," she said. "It's obvious. They'll need to know soon enough anyway."

"What?" Sakura asked. Rin cocked an eyebrow, but one of Sakura's teammates spoke up before the woman could say anything.

"She's a Jinchuriki, right?" Sasuke said, and Yoro and Fuu both gaped at him.

"How'd you know?" Fuu asked, her tone a little high, and Sasuke shrugged.

"I didn't. It was just a guess." He grinned. "Thanks for confirming it."

"Wait, you're a Jinchuriki?" Naruto asked. Fuu nodded, and his face twisted up in confusion. "But you're not a weirdo."

"Thanks!" Fuu said. "I think! Why would I be a weirdo?"

"We met the Jinchuriki from the Hidden Sand at the Chunin Exams a couple weeks ago," Naruto said, his voice softer. What was he remembering? The way Gaara had stared up at him, all malice and no humanity? Or the scream he'd let out before Sakura had lost consciousness in the arena? "He was super creepy. I guess I just figured… everyone like that, would be like that."

"Huh!" Fuu led them deeper into the safehouse, through an antechamber and into a living quarter. It was spartan, with two couches and a couple chairs and not much else. The walls were covered with paintings and carvings of ninja Sakura didn't recognize, resplendent in ornate armor and vibrant flowing cloth. "Well, I'm not a creep! I promise."

"Alright," Naruto said, accepting it like it was just that easy.

"You met Gaara of the Desert?" Yoro asked, taking a seat. He looked around, taking in the three of them with an impressed expression on his face. "He's already got a reputation in the other nations. Ruthless little bastard. Did you fight him?"

"Nah, just Sakura," Naruto said, flopping onto one of the couches and lazily pointing at Sakura as she leaned up against the wall, her sword pressing into her side for a second before she adjusted it. "She kicked his ass though!"

"Really?" Yoro gave Sakura a doubting look, and she returned it with a flat stare. Even just a month ago, that look would have made her shake, but now, she could only feel a dull antipathy. Did it matter if he believed Naruto or not? Certainly not to her.

"Don't underestimate them for their age," Rin said from the corner of the room. Yoro's eyes slid over towards her, growing more uncertain. He was alone with four ninja from Konoha with the Jinchuriki of Waterfall, Sakura thought. He might look uncertain, but there's no way he would have been trusted with Fuu if he couldn't handle himself. "They're all smart little ninja." She stretched out, loosening her flak jacket. "You guys got anything to drink around here?"

"Here," Yoro said, lifting himself out the chair. "I'll see if we have anything."

Rin wandered out of the room after him, and Sakura saw through the window behind her that lights across the village were going out. Sasuke noticed too; he turned to Fuu.

"What's up with that?" he asked, gesturing to the lights, and Fuu cocked her head. She'd taken a seat on the floor, in between all of them. "Blackout protocol?"

"What?" Fuu asked, obviously puzzled. "No, that's every night." Her face brightened up. "Oh! I've heard that in the major villages you've got all the electricity you could want! Is that true? You don't need to turn off the lights at night?"

"Yeah?" Naruto said, sounding confused, and Fuu clapped her hands and giggled.

"That's so cool!" she said, rocking back and forth in her seated position. "What's that like, all the lights at night? It's gotta be so bright!"

"Yeah," Sakura said, feeling her guard dropping and not entirely happy about it. "The whole village is lit up all the time. It's never totally asleep."

"Wow…" Fu said, grinning at her. "That sounds amazing. I'd love to see it someday." Her eyes wandered down, focusing on Sakura's hip and the sword resting there. "I like your jacket. And you've got a sword too? That's super neat. Are you a swordswoman Sakura?"

"Oh yeah, she's amazing!" Naruto declared, and Fuu nodded her head enthusiastically, taking the words as gospel. "She can cover it with water and cut through anything! It's a crazy jutsu!"

"Can I see?!" Fuu said, and then laughed and reconsidered. "Wait, not inside the safehouse! Yoro would kill me! What about you guys?" She turned to Naruto, who tried to look humble and failed. "You're the Yondaime's son, you must know all sorts of amazing jutsu!"

"Well duh," Naruto said. "But I've been trying to learn more fuinjutsu lately. My mom is super good with it and I thought it would be cool."

"It would be!" Fuu declared. "Fuinjutsu is amazing! I mean, I wouldn't even be me if it weren't for it!" She laughed and rapped her fist against her stomach before scooting around to face Sasuke, leaning forwards with both palms on the floor. "And what about you? You're an Uchiha, right Sasuke? Do you have the Sharingan? Can I see?"

It was really quite amazing, Sakura thought, that this wasn't raising every alarm that could possibly begin blaring in her head. Fuu was outright asking them their strengths, one by one, but even if her life depended on it Sakura couldn't have detected any craftiness from the enthusiastic girl. She was just too damn sincere.

"I do, yeah," Sasuke said, but his eyes didn't light up with a distinct red glow. "But I'd rather not show it off."

"Sure! It's your clan's big secret, after all!" Fuu said with a never-fading smile.

"What about you?" Sakura asked. She was behind Fuu now, and instead of turning around the girl leaned back until she was looking at Sakura with her head craned all the way back, the two of them peering at each other's upside-down faces. "What kind of ninja are you, Fuu?"

"Oh, I like ninjutsu!" the girl grinned. "Being a Jinchuriki helps! I can breathe dust and stuff."

"Dust?" Naruto asked doubtfully, and Fuu giggled.

"Yeah, I mean it's scales, but that's gross so I try not to think about it." She popped to her feet, and to her credit Sakura didn't flinch back. "And stuff like this! Watch!"

Without further preamble and with such a sudden motion that Sakura and her teammates could barely process it, Fuu grew wings.

"Bwuh?" Naruto asked, and Fuu giggled. There were four of them, diaphanous and bright orange, and they fluttered slightly as she laughed.

Oh, Sakura thought. So that was why she left her top only covering her, well, top. It would be inconvenient for stuff like sudden wings to rip through it, right?

"Do they… work?" Sasuke asked, and Fuu pouted. "They look pretty small."

"Of course they work!" the Jinchuriki declared, promptly fluttering off the ground. The wings beat so fast that they almost became invisible, vibrating in the air and kicking up sizable gusts of wind. "Not so good inside though…"

"Fuu!" Yoro stuck his head around the corner and was shortly followed by Rin. She'd found a can of beer somewhere and was shamelessly guzzling it; another three cans hung from her other hand. "No flying inside! Also, no revealing village secrets to other villages! We've been over this!"

"Oh c'mon!" Fuu complained. "So they know I can fly, big deal! The Leaf's not our enemy, right?"

"The Leaf isn't your enemy, but it's not your friend either," Rin said, leaning against the wall and taking another sip of beer. "Your village's been careful to keep it that way too. You're a big part of that, you know."

"Yeah." For a second, Fuu's smile slipped. "But you're not gonna be my enemy, right?"

Rin shrugged. "Hope not."

"No way!" Naruto said, drawing the room's attention to himself. "We came all the way here to help you with Itachi, there's no way we'd be your enemy."

"Itachi Uchiha?" Fuu asked, and Naruto jerked back, surprised. "Is that who's after me? The elders wouldn't tell me!"

In the back of the room, Yoro facepalmed, groaning beneath his hands, and Rin laughed at him.

"My brother," Sasuke said. "But the mission we were given was just to find Jiraiya. The rest is just…" His hands curled into fists.

"You're Itachi's brother?" Fuu asked. "Wow, I heard he was some famous rogue ninja. I didn't know he had a brother. Isn't that a pretty crazy coincidence, that you'd end up here when he's coming after me?"

As Sasuke mulled that over, Sakura spoke up. "You don't seem too surprised," she said. Fuu smirked at her, a mischievous change in expression.

"People are always interested in the Nanabi." She shrugged. "Rogue ninja have been after me since I was little. Stone once too. It's not that weird."

"Is that why you follow her around?" Naruto asked Yoro, and Fuu answered for him.

"Yup, Yoro's my bodyguard! I have others, but he's the main one." She laughed. "He follows me everywhere, even to the bathroom!"

"Gross!" Naruto gave the man a cross look, and Yoro raised an eyebrow.

"It's not like that," he said, and Naruto's glare intensified.

"It's alright!" Fuu declared. "I'm one of the village's best weapons. They have to watch me."

Sakura stared at the cheerful girl, her mind boiling.

'-shinobi were tools-'

She felt furious on Fuu's behalf. She felt anger that the girl seemed incapable of feeling. She was just sitting there on the floor smiling, even as she cheerfully threw her humanity away. As she just accepted that it was normal to be followed at all hours of the day, to be looked at like a sword or a bomb instead of a human being.

Jinchuriki; the power of human sacrifice. Sakura suddenly and completely understood the meaning behind the word.

Was this how Gaara had felt? The thought struck her like a bolt of lightning, and Sakura felt a shiver run through her whole body. Was that why he'd been so inhuman? Had he been told for as long as he'd had that demon inside him that he was something less than human now? That didn't explain his obsession with killing Naruto… or maybe it did. Naruto had been something Gaara couldn't been. He was the son of Konoha's Yondaime, but he was a person, alive and vibrant in a way that was impossible for Gaara. His father had treated him like a dog, calling him to heel at the training ground.

'He's a victim of circumstances beyond his control, y'know?'

Sakura's heart flipped over. She'd hated Gaara, even now. If she'd met him again, she would have tried to kill him, without a doubt. But the lightning bolt dried the hate up, and the residue it left made her sick and shaky. She'd tried to cut out his heart because of what she'd thought he'd been, but now, looking at Fuu, she saw the other side of the coin.

Fuu had been told she was a knife for the village, and put on a smiling face. Maybe she even felt genuine pride. Gaara had broken. Just like a knife, the only thing he could do was destroy.

No, not like a knife. Like a shinobi. Sakura fell deeper into herself, remembering the night in the forest in increasing clarity. Why was she just angry for Fuu? All shinobi were just weapons, in the end. The only thing they could spread was violence: wasn't that the definition of a weapon? If she were angry for Fuu, wouldn't it be hypocritical not to also be angry for Naruto, for Sasuke, and even for herself? Was she a hypocrite? But hadn't Watefall just shown her that ninja could accomplish more than-?

"That's stupid!" Naruto declared, and Sakura blinked as the world snapped back into focus. "You're a person, not a weapon!"

"Eh?" Fuu asked, and Naruto stormed up to her. Yoro pushed himself up off the couch, and Rin off the wall. The room was suddenly charged, the two adults eyeing each other suspiciously.

"Whoa! No, bad Yoro!" Fuu said, running up to him and away from Naruto. "It's fine!"

"Take it back!" Naruto demanded, and Fuu blinked.

"I'm a Jinchuriki," she said. "You know what that means, right Naruto?"

"Who cares?" Naruto asked. Sakura watched him; he was shining with indignant energy. "Saying something like that-!"

"Something like what?" Obito popped out of thin air. "I heard yelling. Everything alright?"

The room froze, its momentum knocked off kilter by the new arrival. After a heartbeat, Rin stepped forward.

"Just the kids," she said, offering a beer. Obito gave it a dubious look, and the woman smirked and withdrew it. "We spooking the guards?"

"A little," he said, and Sakura remembered that the safehouse was surrounded by more Waterfall shinobi. Naruto had been pretty loud; he'd probably put them on alert. "Probably more, now that I'm in here," he continued.

"What's the plan, sensei?" Sasuke asked, the calmest voice in the room. Obito gave him an amused look.

"We're having a sleepover," he said sardonically, and Naruto whooped. "Unfortunately we forgot to pack any sleeping bags, so Waterfall will be putting us up."

"Oh, so you're staying!" Fuu said, turning to Yoro. "Can they stay here?"

"That's definitely not-" Yoro started to say, but a thoughtful look crept across his face. "Would that be alright?" he said, turning to Obito and Rin. They shared a look and a shrug.

Oh, duh, Sakura thought. If they were together with Fuu, Obito would have more than one reason to keep an eye on the safehouse. Yoro was banking on their sensei's protective instinct.

It was sneaky, but not so sneaky that everyone in the room didn't immediately understand the Waterfall shinobi's goal. That meant when Obito went along with it, there was a shared chuckle.

"Sure," he said. "If there's room, it'd be perfect for them to stay here."

Fuu practically exploded with excitement, throwing herself onto a protesting Yoro, and Obito beckoned them over. Team Seven and Rin fell into an impromptu ring.

"Listen," he said, his tone and face dead serious. "Jiraiya is gonna be watching the village. By all rights, you three won't see any shinobi at all when things come to a head. The elders think Itachi is going to make his move soon." His eyes flitted over to the corner. "Stay close to Fuu. No matter what, don't leave her side."

"You're leaving us with the VIP?" Naruto asked, and then laughed at his own question. "I mean, duh, who better?"

"Not quite like that," Rin smirked. "Don't take this the wrong way, but most ways this plays out, the only way you three will see any action is if most of us are dead."

"Cheerful," Sasuke muttered, and Rin laughed.

"Waterfall is sealed up like the mother of all forts," she said. "The Toad Sage, Obito and I, and a couple hundred of the most badass shinobi on the planet are gonna be guarding every inch of it. If things pop off, you guys might hear some screaming. Be surprised if there's more than that."

"Are you going to get him?" Sasuke asked, and there wasn't any doubt about who he was talking about. Obito's lips pressed into a line.

"Itachi's gonna be my number one target," he said. "Jiraiya's too. The best way to keep the Jinchuriki and Waterfall safe is gonna be us hunting him down and killing him as quickly as possible. If he sticks his head out… I'll cut it off, Sasuke."

"Okay," Sasuke said quietly. He straightened up, his eyes cold. "If you have a shot… don't miss, okay?"

"I won't." Obito was just as quiet. The silence almost swallowed them all before Rin snorted.

"Boys," she said, rolling her eyes and taking another sip of beer. "You guys got it?"

"We've got it," Sakura said. "We won't leave her side."

There was more talking after that, but it passed by in a blur, and about a half hour later, Obito and Rin left together with Yoro following after them.

"None of you leave," he said, giving Fuu a particular look, and then the door closed behind him. Team Seven was left with no idea of what to do; they looked around at each other as Fuu vibrated with excitement.

"Well…" Naruto said after a second. "I'm kinda hungry. We skipped lunch. And dinner. Is there anything in here?"

"Oh sure!" Fuu chirped. "I'll show you!" She led them deeper into the house. Literally: they went down a hall and then set of stairs, descending into the earth. The stairs fed out into a huge storeroom, almost as big as the house. There wasn't any light down there; Sasuke snapped his fingers and a flame flickered into existence between them. Fuu gave him a grateful smile.

"Thanks!" she said, gesturing to the closest wall. There was a refrigerator there that ran the length of the room with huge, wide doors studded with iron bars. "There's probably some stuff in there; let's take a look!"

Naruto hauled the door open and revealed a veritable mountain of frozen food; meats, fish, fruits and vegetables, all covered in frost.

"So this stays on while the lights go off?" Sakura asked as Fuu rummaged through the fridge, gathering up an armful of ingredients.

"Yup!" she said, beaming at them. She was just so happy to be talking to people that it made Sakura's chest hurt. "It's like that for most of the village; we gotta save the power at night for the important stuff. Don't want food going bad!"

"Is there any heat?" Naruto said, rubbing his arms. "It's freezing down here."

"Heat?" Fuu asked. "Well, there's fireplaces. The safehouse doesn't have one though. Wait, do you guys have electric heat?!"

"Of course!" Naruto said. "You don't?"

"I don't think so!" Fuu said, looking confused. "That'd take so much power!" She beamed. "Now I wanna see Konoha even more."

"Well, maybe you can someday!" Naruto declared as they marched back up the stairs into the slightly warmer house. "After this, Waterfall will like the Leaf more, right? Maybe the elders would let you visit!"

"You really think so?" Fuu asked, and Naruto laughed.

"I've got no idea!" he said. "But it'd be cool, right?"

"Super cool!" Fuu said. "I should definitely ask after. Here, this way!"

She led them into the kitchen and laid down everything she'd gathered before grabbing some knives and other tools. Sakura knew a little about cooking, but clearly not as much as Fuu. She deboned several fish in seconds and tossed them into a large pan, starting to sear them on a gas stove-top, and then moved onto the vegetables. In less than a minute, a thick and colorful chop suey began taking shape.

"You can cook?" Sasuke asked, and Fuu gave him a funny look.

"You can't?" she asked, and Naruto cackled. She grew red, and Sakura couldn't help but giggle at the look. "I didn't mean it like that! I don't have much else to do, you know! It's just training otherwise, and that gets boring after a while! It's not like I can leave the village or anything."

"Makes perfect sense," Sakura said with a laugh. "Is there anything we can do to help?"

Fuu frowned as she cracked several eggs into another pan. "I, uh… I've never cooked with other people. I dunno what you guys would do."

Sakura didn't know how to respond to that, and while she hesitated Fuu moved from task to task with incredible efficiency. The kitchen filled up with delicious smelling steam, and after a couple minutes of small talk the meal was done.

"Okay!" Fuu laid out four plates on a small table in the corner, and Team Seven sank to their knees around it. "Sorry if it's bad!"

It wasn't. In fact, it was better than it had any right to be, considering that Fuu had barely used any seasoning. Maybe the ingredients were just high quality, or maybe it was because Sakura was starving, but the simple chop suey left her completely satisfied.

"Did you like it?" Fuu asked. They'd barely spoken while eating.

"It was fantastic," Sakura said with a smile, and Fuu smiled back so hard it almost broke her face. "We'll grab the dishes, okay?" She and her teammates cleared the table and washed the dishes, leaving them sparkling besides the kitchen sink. The water that came out of it was clear, but it smelled strongly of sulfur

"I'm really glad you liked it," Fuu said as they finished up. "I always thought…" She shifted, shuffling her feet.

"What?" Sasuke asked, picking up on the unusual behavior, and Fuu laughed.

"I thought if I could cook well, I might be able to make friends," she said. Sakura coughed, feeling like the simple and sad sentence had knocked the wind out of her.

"Is that what you want?" she asked, and Fuu grinned.

"Yeah. I don't think I have any real friends," she said. Sakura frowned. "I mean, as the Jinchuriki, that's not really my job. But I thought it would be a lot of fun, to have them." She laughed. "I don't even know what you'd do with friends. It just sounds neat."

"That's fucked," Naruto said bluntly, and Sasuke nodded.

"That's a really bad word," Fuu said with wide eyes and a wide grin. "Does the Hokage let you talk like that all the time?"

"No, he gets whacked every time," Sasuke said matter of factly, and Fuu laughed. "But what's he gonna do if we're in another village?"

"Fuck, that's a good point!" Fuu said, and then covered her mouth. "Crap. I'm in my village."

"Well, how about when you come to Konoha you can swear, and when I come here I can swear," Naruto said with an emphatic nod, and Fuu gave him an awestruck look.

"That's a really good idea," she said quietly. "I'd really like going to the Leaf. And swearing."

"Imma make it happen," Naruto said. "I'll just keep bothering my dad. He won't be able to duck me forever."

"He can teleport," Sakura pointed out, and Naruto stuck out his tongue. "He could probably avoid you forever if he wanted to."

"My mom wouldn't let him!" he declared. Sakura laughed and surrendered with a shrug.

"Does this mean we're friends?" Fuu asked, and Naruto looked at her like she was stupid.

"Of course!" he said, and Sakura heard an echo of her past in his voice. "You're cool, and you made us dinner! You're definitely our friend!"

Sakura found that she didn't mind being spoken for, and Sasuke seemed the same way. Fuu was so earnest that she couldn't help but like her. Even if the girl was a Jinchuriki…

And why would that matter anyway? She was just a person, even if she thought she was a weapon, even if there was a Bijuu inside her. Sakura crushed the thought into dust.

"That's…" Fuu blinked away a tear. "That's really nice. That's really nice of you to say." She stood there in the middle of the room, looking lost. "What do you… what do we do now? Is there like a special handshake or something?"

"Usually, friends just do stuff together," Sakura said. "What do you do around here when you aren't training or cooking, Fuu?"

Oh!" Fuu looked up. Yeah, she really was about to cry. Sakura should have felt more awkward at that, but she felt nothing but sympathy. "I really like to, uh, look at the sky."

"The sky?" Naruto asked. Fuu nodded. "But we're not allowed outside."

"There's a skylight," Fuu said with a little laugh. "I broke it a little, so it can open up. Do you wanna see?"

She led them up to the second floor of the house and into an attic; it was clean and well maintained, like the rest of the house, and the tang of the chakra barrier that surrounded the whole building was the strongest it had been since they'd first passed through it. Just like she'd said, in the corner of the attic there was a wide skylight, dominating most of the wall. The glass was foggy and filled with cracks, and Sakura could hardly see beyond it. Fuu crept forward and eased it open, letting in the cool night air and revealing the sky beyond, and Sakura's heart froze in her chest.

The entire night sky, an endless vista, spread out before them. Here on top of the plateau, with no electric lights, the night was the clearest Sakura had ever seen it in her life. Fuu eased down into a seated position, but Sakura barely took notice of her. There were more stars than she'd ever imagined existed, crowding the dark sky with millions and millions of pinpricks of distant light. The canopy of the tree extended out into some of the darkness and the light of the stars and moon filtered through its thick branches, creating countless paths of clear illumination that lanced through the dark and shone down on the village in a kaleidoscope of dim white light.

"Wow," she whispered, unable to say anything else. Fuu looked back at her with a smile.

"I always thought it was pretty," she said, gesturing to the endless canopy of stars that was spread out over the world like the most beautiful blanket in existence. "I'm glad you think so too."

There weren't any words, and there didn't need to be. Team Seven sat there with Fuu and stared out at the gorgeous night sky as midnight approached and the moon grew higher. Sakura drank in the dark and quiet, the happiest she'd been in her life to sit beside her team and a new friend, and the moment stretched into infinity.

But eventually, it snapped, and Sakura returned to her body in a moment of clarity as she realized just how cold and tired she was. It was surely past midnight now; Naruto was practically dozing on his back, eyes sliding open and closed as he fought off sleep.

"We should go to bed," she said quietly, not wanting to leave the view. "We need to sleep."

"Yeah," Fuu said, and she rose and closed the window. "Thanks for coming up here with me."

She turned, and her smile was brighter than the moon behind her.

"I'm really glad I met you guys."

Team Seven and Fuu went downstairs and went to bed, Naruto and Sasuke in one room and Fuu and Sakura in another, and slept until the sun struck the plateau.

###

Hey, just wanted to stick an apology here, lol. Just a couple chapters ago I was talking about getting back on a weekly schedule, and then an almost month long hiatus! What a slap in the face. This chapter seriously kicked my ass for both writing and personal reasons, but it's finally done, and I'm excited to get going again. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!
 
Chapter 28: Antumbra
Inferno

In the pre-dawn light, Spotter deposited the rest of their team high in the great tree of Takigakure, which had a name they had not bothered to learn. Doll was the first to leap off their owl, and Venom the second. Spotter was the last, and as their feet stuck fast to the ancient bark of the tree the owl silently departed, doomed to fall apart in a welter of ink in the darkness beyond the village.

They glanced at each other. There was no need to speak, and no expressions to read behind the plain white masks that hid their faces. Communication was pointless, unless it was for the benefit of the mission. Spotter unslung their great bow, larger than their own body, and settled back against a nearby twisting branch, bracing it with an arm and a leg. They looked down at the village below.

It was only their steel discipline that kept their face from twisting in disgust beneath the mask. The whole village made their stomach turn.

Jiraiya the Toad Sage was down there, the most odious of the Sannin, the man who'd slain their master in defense of the Nation he'd unwittingly help create. He sat beneath the great tree, legs crossed, body still, heart barely beating, bubbling with sage chakra, straining to protect a place that was not his home. He was failing, Spotter could already see; his senjutsu senses could not reach far enough to detect their team up in the tree, or the rogue ninja converging on the village from every direction. Spotter's sight far outstripped it.

As they slowed their heart and drew an arrow, they searched for other targets, signaling to Venom and Doll with the slightest shift of their legs. It would start soon. They beckoned Doll over, and the man stood behind them, aligning their body and souls as they searched for a target.

A traitor to strike down. The thought sparked something that Spotter was loath to dwell on, but the notion would not leave them.

The whole village was about to become a festering boil of traitors, ready to burst.

Traitors: the children from Konoha, blissfully unconscious behind their barrier. Traitors: Obito Uchiha and Rin Nohara, the hands of the greatest traitor of all, the peace-addled Yondaime. Traitors: that loathsome Itachi Uchiha, more like a worm than a man, slinking into the depths of Waterfall's enormous lake from below. Traitors: the dozens of rogue ninja Itachi had bribed, blackmailed, brainwashed, following the instructions of the traitor with five hearts with religious reverence, skipping through the sensor net around the village with consummate ease. Weapons without handles or purpose, with no choice but to cut anything and everything around them. No greater purpose than continued existence. They were no longer shinobi, just human trash that hadn't yet realized they were dead.

Spotter was sure that those below would call them just another traitor hiding behind a mask, but the roots of a tree could not betray it, only correct its course.

But they would die before they would see that truth.

They settled on the most natural target, and waited for chaos to engulf the world.

###

How do you destroy a hidden village?

Waterfall may be a minor village among greater players, but it is still a large town. It houses over eleven-hundred people. Of those thousand and some, four-hundred and sixty-four of them are shinobi. Of those shinobi, two-hundred and twelve of them are out on missions of various importance and drama on that cold and dark February morning, leaving two-hundred and fifty-two to defend Takigakure. It may seem illogical that, knowing the threat, Waterfall would not withdraw all its shinobi to defend the village, but doing so would be economic suicide. More than two hundred shinobi in the village is, by itself, extremely unusual. Usually, barely a hundred shinobi are within Waterfall at any given time, with the rest on constant missions.

This tirelessness is responsible for Waterfall's incredible reputation for excellence, and one of the secrets to its strength. For indeed, Waterfall is strong. It has survived honest attempts by Sand, Stone, and Mist to end its existence. What this can tell you is that numbers alone can't be enough to destroy a minor village, especially one like Waterfall.

Shinobi may be superhuman, but all but a few can fall prey to the same failures that prey on ordinary human soldiers. Lack of information, lack of leadership, morale. In the past, Waterfall has always repelled attacks by cutting the head off the snake, their high quality shinobi striking out from the security of the village and slaying leadership elements with remarkable efficiency and brutality. It's the same plan they intend to use for Itachi Uchiha's attack, and it's a well proven one.

Now, that doesn't mean numbers aren't an innate advantage, or that Takigakure will always hold the edge in quality: only that it has in the past. From that, you could divine that if you cannot simply bury it in bodies, as Uzushiogakure was, the best way to destroy Waterfall is from within. If Waterfall is collapsing inward, it cannot send out shinobi to hunt leadership elements. If its excellent shinobi are too busy putting out fires, if they lose the initiative, it is just as vulnerable as any other town.

The best way to destroy any village, minor or not, will always be from within. To know its secrets ahead of time, to understand the battlefield, and if possible, to have people already on the inside.

Itachi Uchiha must have known that, because that was how he went about things.

There is more to it than that, of course. When the attack on Waterfall began in the minutes before dawn, Itachi is accompanied by thirty-two rogue ninja, a rather tremendous gathering, especially considering the rate at which Rain and other villages have been snapping them up over the last couple years. How could he have convinced such a collection of men and women who fought only for themselves to assault a minor village with Waterfall's reputation? No one knows, though some had suspicions that were nearly correct; the Sharingan was known for its hypnotic power, after all.

But put that aside. Regardless of how they'd been convinced, these ninja were going up against more than five times their numbers. Where did that boldness come from? What were they after?

What you have to understand is that all of these ninja have made names for themselves. They are all after money, or fame, or secret techniques, or the power of a trapped demon. They are all in it for themselves. All of them have accomplished something notable that could be a story in and of itself. All of them have trained their whole lives to kill.

And all but two of them will be dead within the next twenty minutes.

They swim up through the central lake, crawl up past the sensor nest. This would have been completely impossible for them normally. Were it not for one among them, all of the attackers would have been detected by the sensor net or the Earth Defense Force and swarmed or crushed alive.

But Waterfall's greatest traitor is among them, practically leading them, carrying with him all of Waterfall's secrets, including some that the village itself had forgotten in the decades since he'd been banished, and his grudge carries the rogue ninja up into the village without a word in edgewise from Waterfall's peerless defenses.

When they reach the top of the plateau, there is no dramatic announcement. No one pauses to take a breath. In the depths of the lake, Itachi Uchiha simply puts his hand together. He releases his chakra, and up above, twenty-six shinobi of Takigakure jerk up, eyelids fluttering, hands twitching.

To them, the village bursts into flames.

Moments later, reality mirrors their delusion.

This is the best way to destroy a minor village. To crush it from inside and out.

###

Sakura woke to the sound of explosions.

She rolled out of bed, still mostly unconscious, her sword already in hand. The whole safehouse shook once, twice, and then several more times all at once. Fuu was up before her, already at the window.

"The village!" Fuu cried, and Sakura shook her head. It was still mostly dark outside, with only faint traces of sunlight, but there was a hungry brightness coming through the window. There were fires casting violent light with abandon. Many fires. "What's happening?!"

Sakura had no idea, and another explosion shook her bones. She staggered to the window, trying to wake up. They were under attack. She needed to get it together. She gripped her sword, trying to focus herself. More than twenty buildings had exploded, gutted from within, spreading flames throughout the entire village. People were screaming, shinobi were running everywhere. Some were using water jutsu to put out the fire. She watched it all blankly, trying to understand how it had happened so quickly.

From the safehouse's elevated position in the fourth ring, Sakura could see almost half the village. That meant that when she saw the first ninja from Takigakure torn to shreds by a bladed chain, she was able to instantly understand even through her sleep-addled eyes that Waterfall was under attack.

"Naruto!" She left Fuu at the window, pounding out of the room and looking around wildly. "Sasuke!" Right on cue, Naruto came tumbling down the stairs to a stop in front of her, half-dressed and eyes wide. "The village-!"

"Is blowing up!" he interrupted, scrambling to his feet. "We gotta-!"

"Stay here," Sasuke said, leaping to the bottom of the staircase. Unlike Naruto, he didn't look like he'd just fallen out of bed in a panic. "Obito told us to stay put."

"He's right," Sakura said. Center yourself. Calm down. She gripped her sword. "We gotta stay by Fuu-"

There was a tremendous crack, and Sakura's stomach flipped upside down as invisible weight vanished. She stumbled, and so did both her teammates. Naruto looked up with wide eyes.

"The barrier!" he shouted, and before the words had even fully left his mouth the kitchen wall exploded. Team Seven leapt back, and two figures barrelled through the debris. Sakura blinked. They were both shinobi from Takigakure, an older man and younger woman she didn't recognize.

What? She couldn't even voice her confusion. Had they attacked the barrier? Turned it off? They'd certainly blown up the wall. Why? It didn't make any sense.

"Where's Fuu!?" the woman demanded, her eyes wild, pupils huge. Naruto stepped forward, and the woman's head jerked towards him. She bared her teeth. "What have you done with her?!"

"I'm here!" Fuu said, rushing through the doorway. Somehow, she was smiling. "It's okay!"

The woman took one look at Fuu, her eyes somehow growing wider. Sakura felt her teeth grind. She unconsciously drew her blade, water dancing on its edge.

"You're not Fuu!" the woman from Waterfall screamed, and faster than Sakura could follow she flashed through over a dozen hand-signs and threw a razor storm of wind right at Fuu. The man at her side rushed forward behind the wind, also intent on the Jinchuriki.

Were they imposters, or rogue ninja in disguise? It didn't matter. Sakura stopped thinking and started swinging. Her blade rippled out. Sasuke was doing the same at her side, hurling a kunai without hesitation.

"No!" Fuu struck out, not at the shinobi attacking her, but at Sakura's water blade. Her arms were suddenly covered in a thick yellow chitin. Sakura's eyes widened, and she tried to divert her attack, but it was too late. Her Flowing Water Blade, which could cut down a tree without resistance, crashed right into Fuu's right forearm.

The blade shattered, falling apart in a spray of water that soaked the entire room, and Sakura fell forward in shock. Sasuke's kunai wasn't stopped, and it struck the male ninja in the shoulder. The man howled, and then Fuu moved, rushing the injured man as he turned towards Sasuke. She grew wings as she went, pushing herself faster, and struck the man in the back of the head so hard that he was unconscious before he hit the ground.

The woman let out the same mad howl and rushed the Jinchuriki, and Fuu turned to her, expressionless, and struck out. Three, four, five brutal punches that buried themselves deep in the woman's gut. She vomited and fell back, and Fuu's foot snapped out and crashed into her chin, snapping the woman's head back with a sick crack. She hit the ground and didn't rise.

Fuu slowly lowered her foot, standing there looking at both of the unconscious shinobi, and burst out crying.

"This isn't what I wanted!" she screamed at the downed ninja, tears streaming down her face. "I'm not meant to fight you!"

"Fuu," Sakura said, lowering her sword and stepping forward. "It's okay." She wasn't sure if that was true; she just wanted to calm the other girl down. "We'll be-"

THUNK. An arrow as long as Sakura's arm buried itself in the floor right in front of her, and she froze. Everyone in the room did, watching the quivering projectile without comprehension. Sakura looked up, the water around her sword violently vibrating. There was a hole in the roof, a patch of darkness in the ceiling. The arrow had penetrated straight through all three stories and nearly hit her.

Had it been luck, or-

Sakura blinked. Her eyes never opened back up.

Her body vanished. Her sword was gone. Her heartbeat disappeared.

Sakura would have screamed, but she had no mouth.

She was small. She was entirely enclosed in someone's hand, trapped and immobile.

Sakura had never been confined to the sixth sense that all shinobi had, the indefinable gravity of chakra that pressed down on them at all times. Unless you were a trained sensor, it was usually too subtle for even an experienced shinobi to rely on. The only time she'd been forced to notice it was during her fight with Gaara. The chakra of a Tailed Beast burned with a pressure that couldn't be ignored.

Now, in that interminable moment after blinking while staring up into the darkness beyond the safehouse, Sakura had no sight, smell, hearing, taste, or touch. She only had her chakra, enclosed within and emanating from her spirit. She was suddenly defined by utter absence.

She panicked, unable to thrash and scream and all the worse for it. She didn't know where she was. She didn't know what was happening. She was being held. The chakra of the person holding her was so cold it felt as though her soul would be frostbitten.

It was satisfied. It was murderous.

Sakura was in danger, and there was nothing she could do.

As she descended into incoherent dreadful silence, Sakura had a last gasp of clarity before she was submerged in total darkness.

'Where's your body?'

###

As Naruto watched, the water around Sakura's sword suddenly splashed off. His teammate staggered, her gaze shooting down to the blade.

"Sakura?" he asked, and she looked up at him, eyes wide. "You-?"

"We have to go!" she yelled, the sudden shout making Naruto jump. "We're sitting ducks here!" She sheathed her sword and started sprinting for the door, blowing past Sasuke.

"Sakura!" he called, chasing after her. "We're supposed to stay here! With Fuu!"

"Go!" Fuu cried out, kneeling over one of the unconscious shinobi. "I'll be fine! Follow her!"

Sasuke cursed, following Sakura out the door, and Naruto found himself following after his teammates. They burst out into the burning village; everything was light and heat and confusion, and everywhere he looked people seemed to be fighting or ready to burst into violence. People were screaming; the fire lit the village up as though it were midday, but the light couldn't penetrate the predawn darkness that hung just meters above the flames.

"Sakura!" he shouted, but his teammate didn't look back. They were running through the wildfire, dodging through bodies living and dead. Nothing made sense. All he could focus on was Sakura's back, her long flowing hair. "Where are we going?"

"We have to find Obito!" she called back, and something pricked in the back of Naruto's head. "He'll tell us what to do!"

"He already did!" Naruto said, but his words were drowned out by a nearby scream. A man stumbled out of a nearby alley, steaming and covered in burns, and stopped Naruto and Sasuke in their tracks.

He was wearing a Waterfall headband; as he turned towards them, eyes wide in confusion, a shuriken passed right through his throat and he fell to one knee, hands trying to stem the sudden explosion of blood. Sakura kept running, apparently unaware of the commotion behind her.

A woman leapt out of the alley after the dying man and jammed a kunai up to the hilt into his spine; the man stiffened and fell, and the woman reared up, staring at Naruto and Sasuke.

"Konoha?" she said. "That's…"

She smiled. No joy, all malice. For some reason, that clarified things for Naruto. Sakura was long gone. She hadn't turned around. Maybe the arrow had panicked her. He just didn't know. Not much made sense right now. But right there, there was an enemy in front of him, and Sasuke at his side. He couldn't focus on more than that.

"Perfect!" the woman shouted. She launched herself forward, her bloody kunai in one hand and the other crackling with blue flames. She stabbed out, and Naruto ducked backwards, going horizontal and catching himself with one hand behind him.

"Sasuke!" he shouted, kicking up to try and buy himself some room. The woman sneered and thrust down at him with her burning hand, and Naruto had to turn his kick into a hasty roll. The hand burned a small crater in the concrete beneath him, and he kept rolling as Sasuke jumped in to attack. He came back to his feet just in time to watch the woman kick his friend away. Sasuke hit the wall and landed on all fours with a snarl.

"We can't waste time here!" he said. "Let's end this quickly, Naruto!"

"Ha!" the woman laughed, the kunai in her hand burning up with more blue fire and falling to pieces. "Adorable!" Her laughter grew angry. "And typical!"

She went for Sasuke first. He didn't try to fight back right away; instead he retreated, his Sharingan whirling as he watched the burning fists. The woman chased after him in a fury, punching craters out of everything in her way.

"Hold still!" she shouted, and Sasuke snarled back as he scrambled out of the way of another fist.

"Where's my brother?" he said, and the woman laughed.

"That Uchiha?" she said. "Do you miss him? Don't worry, I'll make sure to kill him too when I'm done with you!" The battle was waging on around them, but it felt like they were trapped in the eye of a storm in the middle of this street, insulated from the heat and screams.

Naruto focused, trying to look for an opening. The woman was fast, and her fists were deadly, but she was reckless and cocky.

Right. No time to waste. Three shadow clones rushed in, trying to swarm the woman. She turned her attention from Sasuke, punching one out of existence. Naruto flinched; the memory alone was incredibly painful. The other clones dogpiled her, and Naruto dropped back, putting his hands together.

"What're you thinking, you little shit?!" the rogue ninja howled, and then Sasuke kicked her in the back of the leg. She dropped to one knee screaming and attacking wildly, and Sasuke skipped back with a hiss as both Naruto's clones died, a couple centimeters of skin clearly burned off his shoulder.

He should have retreated but instead, he swept in with the insane confidence that only his Sharingan could give him and caught her left arm in an iron grip, both his arms wrapping around the joint and immobilizing it. It was a suicidal move that left him completely defenseless.

"Naruto!" he shouted. The woman made to punch him in the face and burn a hole in his skull, but as she drew back her fist Naruto screamed and charged. He wasn't sure if it was him shouting or the sound of his jutsu, but the woman's head snapped towards him and keening Rasengan in his hand. Her eyes went wide in unmistakable fear.

Naruto thrust the Rasengan out like the world's deadliest handshake and the woman's remaining fist came down to meet him, trying to deflect the attack. Her flaming fist met the spiralling sphere, and for a second that didn't exist, stopped it dead in its tracks.

Then, Naruto's heart beat, time resumed, and the violent rotation of the Rasengan tore the woman's clenched fingers to pieces. Her hand was reduced to a stump. The rogue ninja shrieked in pain, and the Rasengan detonated from the pressure of her flaming chakra, sending Naruto tumbling backwards and badly wrenching his wrist. The shockwave traveled up her arm, grotesquely twisting it; the bones shattered, splintering through her thin purple jacket, and wrenched her whole torso sideways. The woman fell backwards, and Sasuke twisted.

There was a simultaneous pop and crack, and the woman's other arm dislocated at the shoulder and broke at the joint, swinging like a door with one hinge. The flame in her other hand guttered out and Sasuke kicked her away, and the rogue ninja hit the ground and rolled as though she were on fire. She shrieked, and it was the most painful sound Naruto had ever heard.

"Go!" Sasuke shouted, and they both continued down the street, sprinting through the chaos and leaving the crippled woman behind. Someone tried to stop them, a rogue ninja or one from Waterfall, Naruto couldn't tell, and they shoved the man out of the way. His hand stung; he looked down, and was shocked to find that his palm and all of his fingers were bright red, the top layer flaking off and revealing weeping raw skin beneath it. The woman had burned him even through the Rasengan. He clenched his fist, determined to ignore the pain, but he could already feel his hand tightening up, like what skin was left was a badly-fitted glove.

"Where's Sakura?" he shouted, and Sasuke shook his head.

"Gone. She was looking for Obito. But Naruto," he paused, raising a hand, and the both of them came to a stop just in time to avoid getting trampled by two squads of Waterfall ninja who barrelled down the ring yelling orders and firing water jutsu at a distant target. "I don't think that was Sakura."

"What?" Naruto asked, staring at him. "Of course it-"

He paused. The water had fallen off her sword. She'd left, even though Obito had told them to stay with Fuu. And she'd called Obito… just Obito, not Obito-sensei.

And...

Sakura wouldn't have left them to fight alone. Naruto felt a poisonous fury bubble up in his gut.

"You're right," he said. A light flickered on in his head; someone howled in pain somewhere close by, and almost derailed the thought. "It was right after that arrow came through the roof. That was when she got weird."

"We have to find her," Sasuke said, setting off again. Naruto took the lead this time, leaping up onto a roof and off the streets. The fire was growing wilder; he could no longer tell friend from foe. The only people he could trust were his team.

"And Obito," he said. "That's who she's after."

With a clear goal in sight, they hurled themselves into the chaos burning Waterfall to ash.

###

As Obito's arms tightened around the Takigakure ninja's neck, the man's hands beat a futile rhythm against them, scrabbling and trying to scratch through his steel armguards. He strained, tightening his grip: his legs were locked around the man's torso, holding him in place, and the maddened shinobi gagged and slammed him once again into the wall of the building to his back. The concrete cracked, but Obito didn't flinch.

"Go to sleep!" he grunted. The brainwashed man's movements were growing less frantic. Around both of them, the semi-circle of Waterfall shinobi pressed in, seven strong.

"Just give up, Keima!" one of the women shouted. "It's alright!"

"It's…" The man gasped, his eyes fluttering closed. Even a shinobi needed to breathe. "Burning… down…!"

He slumped, and Obito gingerly released him, making sure the man's head didn't smack to the stone floor. "Sorry," he said. "Even then, I couldn't break it."

The genjutsu snaring the crazed Waterfall shinobi was like nothing Obito had ever seen. The scale and strength of it was simply terrifying; more than two dozen of Waterfall's own ninja had turned against it, and they refused to leave the delusion no matter how much pain they were subject to, or how often their chakra was reset. It couldn't be anything but Itachi's work, but when had Itachi gotten this strong?

"It's okay," the woman said. Her comrades bound the unconscious man up and spirited him away. "Can you help us with the next one?"

"He can't resist," Rin said, running a glowing hand over Obito's chest and back. He felt a bruise on one of his ribs disappear, fading away under Rin's gentle touch. He gave her a smile. "Let's go."

They set off once more, this time with only four ninja from Waterfall accompanying them. Obito looked around the village, his Sharingan picking out everything in perfect detail. The fires were spreading with more and more ferocity, but the shinobi of Waterfall were fighting back with impossible determination, using water and earth jutsu to keep the flames at bay. Half the village had been given up, transformed into a firebreak of horrifying scale. It was, thankfully, not the half that contained the safehouse.

Obito was confident his team was okay. They wouldn't have disobeyed his orders, and the barriers around the safehouse were strong. Even if it was breached, Team Seven had a Jinchuriki as their ally: Fuu would be able to keep them safe from anyone short of Itachi.

And so far, Itachi hadn't shown up. He was certainly here, though; he wouldn't have been able to trigger the mass genjutsu upon the Takigakure shinobi without being close by, and his black flames had appeared as well. To Obito, they had been what had started the battle. He and Jiraiya had watched as Takigakure's lake had begun boiling, letting off steam, and they'd looked within to find the Amaterasu flickering in all defiance of reality at the bottom.

Jiraiya had dove to the bottom of the lake without hesitation. It was no good to save the village, he'd said, if it just boiled to death after. Obito hadn't seen him since. That just made him more sure Itachi was nearby; he'd known one of them would have to take care of the Amaterasu. It had been a ploy to separate them, for sure.

It was that thought that made him change course. "Can you take the next?" he called, having to raise his voice over the crackle of flames. There had been a lull in the attack as both the rogue ninja, the brainwashed shinobi, and Waterfall's elite took stock of the situation, and Obito could feel it coming to an end. "We're going to head to the safehouse!"

"The Jinchuriki?" the woman from Waterfall whose name Obito had not learned hesitated. "And your team. Go. We'll handle them." She called out as they changed direction. "Keep an eye out! Someone is hunting the elders!"

They split up, the Waterfall ninja making their way towards a madman weeping and flipping homes upside-down and burying them in earth, and Obito and Rin heading towards the upper ring.

"Don't worry," Rin called, and Obito looked back. There was sweat running down her cheek, past her tattoo, slipping down her neck; it made Obito's jaw lock up. That wasn't appropriate. He shook his head, and Rin gave him a funny look. "They're smart kids. They'll have stayed put."

They leapt through a wall of flames, the water of the third ring burning as if it were oil, and found Sakura on the other side.

Obito's brain short-circuited, and he stumbled when they landed. Sakura looked terrified; her sword was out, and her face was covered in ash. She was looking around, but there was no one else here; the battle had washed over this part of the village and left it a wasteland dotted with bodies and covered in puddles of blood and water that reflected the dancing flames.

Stupid, Obito. You're so goddamn stupid. They're barely thirteen. Why did you think that they wouldn't do anything stupid? That they'd just sit still? Had Naruto and Sasuke dragged her out into the fight? Where were they?

"Sakura!" he roared, and her head snapped towards him, relief flooding across it. "Over here!"

"Sensei!" she started running towards him, sword out.

"What were you thinking?!" he shouted, drawing closer. Rin was at his side. Her chakra was drawn in tight, vibrating, ready for a fight. Why? "I told you to stay put!"

"The safehouse was broken into!" Sakura screamed. "Someone was shooting at us! It wasn't safe!"

Broken into? Shooting at them? Then where were Naruto and Sasuke? They wouldn't have split up. Obito slowed down a fraction, his eyes narrowing at the impossibility. It was definitely Sakura. No illusion or disguise could fool his Sharingan. But something was wrong.

They were four feet apart now. Over Sakura's shoulder, Obito saw Naruto and Sasuke turn the corner, skidding past a sputtering building. He took a deep breath. It was okay. They were all alive.

Naruto's eyes went wide, and Obito blinked. His student threw his burned hand up, starting to scream.

There was a jolt. A flash of pain. The world slowed to a crawl, flames frozen, water like ice, Naruto's scream hanging in the air unheard.

Obito looked down, wondering why he was having a near death experience, and found Sakura's sword sinking into his chest. The phantom pressing ahead of the real blade created by his Sharingan's prediction only made it more surreal. He watched it with a detached academic fascination as it slid centimeter by centimeter in, passing through his vest with barely any resistance. It really was a fantastic sword. He felt it scrape past one of his ribs; the blow had been perfectly placed over his heart. In a blink, Sakura would have skewered his most vital organ. He would have bled out in less than a minute.

Kamui.

Obito breathed out, his body carried somewhere else, and Sakura passed through him, stumbling and swinging back. The blade passed through him once more, and Obito turned, reaching out. Sakura leapt back, as if to attack again, but instead, her sword came up to her own throat.

"You damn ghost," she hissed, and Obito's chest burned. The sword hadn't pierced his heart, he was sure, but the wound was deep and hurt like nothing else in the world. Because of its depth, or because it had come from Sakura's sword?

"You're not Sakura," Obito said, almost to himself, and whoever was wearing Sakura's body laughed.

"Brilliant," they said, the words full of a cruelty that Sakura wasn't capable of. "Take out your sword, Mangekyo no Obito. Kill yourself, and I might not kill your student." The hate filled eyes shifted to Rin. "You too, traitor. End your miserable life right here, or her head goes flying."

"That's a mind-body switch," Rin said calmly. Naruto and Sasuke were drawing closer. Rin and Obito had begun circling Sakura's body, and the person inside her was rotating as well, eyes darting back and forth. "You'd kill yourself as well."

"Not a good trade," Sakura's voice said, and her body shrugged. "But one I'd be willing to-"

Obito's eye burned, and Sakura's sword twisted out of existence. The world grew a little blurrier, and he felt a migraine coming on. Sakura's face twisted in hatred.

He leapt forward and brought Sakura down before she could claw out her own eyes, pinning the girl by all four limbs and leaning back as she tried to bite out his throat.

"I'm going to find you," he said, and the girl stilled, entranced by his Sharingan. "If you're smart, you'll start running now."

Sakura passed out, the genjutsu robbing her of consciousness, and Obito staggered back to his feet. He didn't have time to catch his breath.

"Obito! Above!" Sasuke shouted, and Obito looked up just in time to find an arrow hurtling right for his forehead. It passed through him without consequence, and his eyes narrowed. There were more coming, a half dozen. Not all of them were aimed at him. He ran through six hand signs, a boiling rage overcoming him.

'Hosenka.'

He spat a fireball that burst into a dozen individual jutsu, eating up the arrows without resistance and spreading yet more flames around the village. He looked to Rin, feeling his lips curling in disgust.

"They're in the tree," he said, and Rin cracked her knuckles.

"Then my mission's starting," she said, and Obito snarled.

"Too risky to go alone," he said. He whirled back towards his team. "Take Sakura. Go back to the safehouse. It's still the safest place in the village."

"The Kamui-" Sasuke started to say.

"The Kamui is going to be filled with all sorts of dangerous things in a minute," Obito said. "You'll be even worse off in there. Take her. Keep your heads down. Go."

Naruto picked up Sakura and both boys began running back the way they'd come. They wouldn't be safe, but nowhere would be right now. The pain was giving him clarity. Obito turned back to face the tree, and Rin offhandedly put a hand on his chest.

"Deep," she said casually as the wound stopped bleeding. "You could have died."

"If they were going to use Sakura like that, they needed to kill me in one shot," Obito said, and he began running. More arrows were coming: they thunked into the concrete around him, buried up to their shaft. They weren't trying to kill him, he thought. They were ignoring his students to strain his chakra by forcing him to maintain the Kamui. They knew exactly who they were after. He bared his teeth, a killing anger coursing through him.

"I won't forgive them."

He and Rin sprinted towards the base of the tree, passing through the two remaining rings. Three ninja took shots at them as they blew past, but Obito and Rin both ignored them: their focus was solely on the enemies above them now.

A moment later they reached the tree and began running straight up the side. As they did, more arrows rained down on them. Only one made contact, piercing straight through Rin's hand as she raised to block it. She didn't slow down, didn't lose a step: she broke the head off and ripped the shaft out in two fluid motions, the wound already closing.

"How many?" she asked, and Obito shook his head.

"Can't see them. At least two, probably a third. One archer, and the controller. They should still be out of commission-" Another set of arrows came, and Obito started. These ones were covered with something.

"Dodge!" he shouted, leaping off the tree to ricochet off a lower hanging branch, and Rin did the same. These arrows didn't just sink into the tree: as soon as they made contact the bark began rotting away, disintegrating before their eyes. Obito focused.

Insects, he realized. Insects so small that he could barely tell what they were. Only the intelligence with which they moved betrayed them. That meant…

"An Aburame, and a Yamanaka!" he said, leaping back to the tree. They were maybe a third of the way up now, and more arrows were sure to come soon. Vast swathes of bark had been stripped away below them; even if the Kamui kept him safe, he'd lose his footing if he didn't work to dodge those insect-covered arrows. "And the archer!"

"Got it!" Rin said. "I'll go around the back: see you at the top!"

Rin vanished out of sight behind the tree, and Obito focused on running. He could hear his heart beating in his ears. The village below him was an inferno, but the darkness around it was slowly being eaten away by the rising sun. More arrows came, melting away the tree, but they couldn't hope to slow him down.

A couple seconds later, he found his target. He could see two of them: one was the archer, still focused on him, waiting for him to slip up. Their bow was comically large. They were both wearing white cloaks and plain masks; weapons without ornamentation. Another arrow passed through his forehead. There was definitely a third, maybe more if they had someone to guard the mind-switcher. If they weren't here, they had probably gone around to deal with the Rin. Good plan on their part.

It wouldn't work.

He took a final leap, soaring up and straight through the tremendously thick branch they were perched upon. Both spun to watch him as he went through the branch. He reached up to grab another branch to slow himself down, and the archer nocked another arrow in her greatbow.

So they at least knew he had to release the entire jutsu to touch anything. That could be trouble. Obito feinted, but the archer didn't shoot. It was only when he actually reached out that they released.

His Sharingan told him the path of the arrow, and instead of piercing through his side it only skimmed him, leaving a red trail just below his flak vest. Obito swung around the branch, slamming into the bark and sticking there like a spider. There was a sudden detente. He stared down at the ninja and they up at him, neither willing to make the first move. A drop of his blood dripped down and struck the branch with a silent plop.

"You really are scum," he said, feeling his face twitching. "You really picked now to try and kill me? Why not help Waterfall?"

"Waterfall is not Konoha's ally," the archer said. It was a woman, and her voice was frostbite. "There is no point in assisting it."

"It could be." Obito grit his teeth. "This is why you ROOT morons always failed. You can't see a good opportunity right in front of you."

"Watch your words," the other one said, a man with long pale blond hair. The Yamanaka, if Obito was given to stereotyping. "And stay where you are." He raised up a little wooden doll in his hands, and Obito gave it an uncomprehending look. "Your student is still ours."

Obito looked at the doll, really looked at it. The little wooden idol was saturated in Sakura's chakra. As he watched, it shook slightly, a tremor from within. She was struggling, even without a body to struggle with.

He thought he might explode.

"Interesting technique," was what came out of his mouth. "So you place her in there, instead of just suppressing her."

"It makes breaking free impossible," the ROOT agent said. "Much like your situation." He removed a knife from his pack. "All damage will reflect to her, naturally."

"What, this again?" Obito said, and the archer nocked once more, her whole body bending with the bow. "Why would you kill her? She's as loyal as they come."

"No one who was truly loyal would be approached by Rain," the man said, his fist tightening around the knife at the doll's neck. "She's an obvious liability." Obito could imagine the man sneering behind his mask. "And you won't be able to pull the same trick twice, Uchiha."

Obito considered the situation, the smoke from the village below watering his eyes. What was left of ROOT clearly knew more about the Kamui than he was comfortable with. From the way they were acting, they were banking on him not being able to use both of his Mangekyo at the same time. He could put Sakura in the Kamui, without a doubt, but that would leave him vulnerable to an arrow through the skull.

You can protect yourself or you can protect others, Obito. That's how it's always been.

He needed help. He needed Rin. He needed to stall. But how to stall a bunch of amoral murderers? The smoke from the village below was making its way up in larger waves by the minute, trapped by the canopy and choking them all. Charge, Sakura died. Stay still, Sakura died. Unacceptable.

Only thing to do was give them what they wanted.

"Well, that sucks," he said. He dropped down off the branch, coming level with the enemy. Ten feet between them. Not close enough. The knife pressed in, resting against the doll. Obito sighed. "How would you prefer I kill myself?"

"Take out your sword." The Yamanaka repeated what he'd said below, and Obito complied. "Up through your jaw, into your brain. Do not damage your eyes. Do that, and we won't kill her."

"No way to know if you're telling the truth," Obito said mildly as he reached behind his back. The knife dug into the doll, scraping away a curl of wood, and he flinched. That would be a nasty cut.

"We are not liars," the archer said. "Do it."

He unsheathed the White Fang's blade, giving it a considerate look, and placed it against his own neck.

"Now-" the Yamanaka said, his grip relaxing just slightly.

Obito snarled, his eyes burning, and the man's elbow twisted out of existence. The doll fell, plunging through the smoke and darkness still clenched in the severed hand's grip. The forearm bounced when it hit the bark. The ROOT agent gasped, his blood soaking the branch, and stumbled forward.

But even as Obito's eye tore the man's arm off, the archer released her shot. The White Fang flashed up, cleaving a silver trace through the smoke. The blade knocked the arrow off course, but not far enough. Instead of taking Obito through the heart, it pierced clean through his shoulder, punching right out the other side with a meaty THUNK. Obito tumbled backwards, holding back a scream as the shaft jostled against the branch.

He rolled to the side. His arm didn't matter: Sakura did. He and the Yamanaka raced for the doll lying between them, two men with one arm scrambling towards one another. He was the first to reach it, but as his hand wrapped around the doll, another arrow blasted right through his bicep, pinning his arm to the tree.

Obito yelped, and the Yamanaka kicked him in the face. The blow passed through him, and he tumbled back, free of the arrow in his arm. His shoulder was still incapacitated, but Sakura was at least safe. Safe as she could be trapped in a tiny wooden doll, anyway. Another arrow followed him, looking for an opening and finding none. Obito scrambled back to his feet with a laugh.

"Gotcha!" he yelled, and then the branch beneath his feet collapsed as an arrow tore through it. He fell with a yelp, reaching out before he realized that his only working hand was holding Sakura. He almost smashed her against the tree, barely managing to catch himself by sticking his knuckles to what was left of the bark. He looked down, watching his sword fall into the village, a silver streak twirling hundreds of feet away into the fire below.

The whole tree shook, leaves and sticks raining down on the both of them. The ROOT agents looked up, and so did Obito. There was a sudden hole in the canopy.

Rin, covered in blood and backlit by the setting moon, was perhaps the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. His teammate flew through the air, landing about thirty feet away, and as she did the third ROOT agent appeared as well. The man was gasping; his mask had been torn off, revealing yet another face covering under it that concealed everything but his chin.

"Venom!" the Yamanaka shouted, and the man threw out his hand.

"Get back!" he yelled, and Rin launched herself forward. "She-!"

'Has a hangover,' Obito thought, and then Rin punched. Her fist made contact with the branch beneath the man's feet, and the whole thing exploded. One moment it was a branch thicker than most trees, and the next it was nothing but splinters; the ROOT agent was sent hurling away, slamming hard into a brace of spiraling leaves and spitting up blood.

Obito grinned, trying to haul himself up.

The Aburame wasn't done, not nearly. Even as he groaned and struggled back to his feet, he pulled his shirt off, revealing crawling purple skin beneath it. More insects, Obito was sure: the man was coated in them, like venomous armor. He ran forward, trying to make contact with Rin. His teammate snarled and leapt away. Whatever the man touched corroded away into nothing in moments. Even with her enormous strength, Rin was at a disadvantage.

"Obito!" she called.

"Little busy!" he called back as the archer dropped their bow, charging straight at him. He let her first attack sail right through his chest, and then struck out with a counterkick to her kidney. The blow landed true, but the woman happily took it. The second it landed, burying itself deep in her side, the Yamanaka came from the side with his knife, ignoring his missing arm. Obito barely avoided the counterattack that would have torn a hole in his throat.

With both arms, with less holes in his body, this wouldn't have been a challenge. But Obito was nowhere close to one-hundred percent, and Sakura was keeping his remaining hand occupied. He fell back, but both ROOT agents pursued him without mercy, attacking constantly.

His chakra wouldn't last at this rate. Obito struck back, trying to knock the archer unconscious with a high kick. The kick landed, snapping the woman's head back so hard Obito heard something crack, but she struck back with the same unerring accuracy of her arrows at the same moment, punching up into the meat of his thigh.

It was a light strike, not even enough to throw him off balance, and yet Obito's whole right leg suddenly became dead weight. He lost all control of it, and almost fell as he tried to right himself. The woman fell onto her back, her mask cracked down the middle and blood running down her chin.

What? How? He limped back, unable to escape, feeling his chakra drain even faster. Two of his tenketsu had been blasted open; his chakra was pouring out of his leg like blood from an open wound.

A jutsu? No, he was an idiot. The woman had been a perfect shot, able to track him across the village and up the tree. She'd been able to read him like an open book the whole time, always striking just when the Kamui dropped.

The only explanation was Gentle Fist.

An Aburame, a Yamanaka, and a Hyuuga. He and Jiraiya had merited an impressive kill team. It was almost flattering.

He limped back, and the archer shouted as she shakily rolled to her feet. "Venom! He's slow; do it now!"

The Aburame above them grunted, leaping away from Rin. She made to follow, but the man slammed his hands down into the tree below him. He was nearly at the top now, just a couple feet from the crown.

A jutsu formula spiraled out from his hands, and Obito's eyes went wide. They'd sprinted right up into the enemy's trap.

The top of the tree split open like a grotesque egg with a sick retching sound, and an uncountable number of the microscopic insects the Aburame was covered in spilled out in a purple flood.

They'd been nesting there, Obito thought, his heart overcome with dread. They'd been grown with both the man's chakra and the tree for sustenance: he'd seen other Aburame use similar techniques, but nothing on this scale. The insects poured down in a great tide, blocking out the starlight, and Obito dropped, launching himself down the tree with one leg to buy himself some space. He could Kamui through, but what about Rin? What about the village? Fire below, and insects above: the center of Waterfall would be completely annihilated if the flood of disintegrating insects hit it.

The other two ROOT agents were chasing him, apparently suicidal. He had no idea where the third one had gone, or Rin. He could feel the Kamui fluttering; between the fight and the Hyuuga's draining technique he was quickly running dry, like an animal cut and left to bleed.

The Hyuuga struck at his back and he ducked to ignore her killing hands, instincts screaming at him. He spun, trying to kick her off the tree. His foot struck her in the hand, crushing several of her fingers, but the Yamanaka was already there. He stabbed forward, putting all his weight behind the blow. The Kamui flickered, and the knife went into Obito's forearm, barely missing Sakura's doll. His hand went slack, and the Yamanaka released the knife and caught the doll as it fell.

"Gotcha," the man hissed. He and the woman leapt off the tree, but before they could fall to their death the Hyuuga removed a book from her pack. Her mask had continued to crack from the force of Obito's blow, further fragmenting as blood ran down her face. She scrawled in the book with her own blood, and something dark and red erupted out of it. It had wings, and it caught both the falling ROOT agents, retreating in the dark.

Obito choked. Sakura was gone. They were keeping her as a hostage. His chakra crackled around him, coalescing into a dark orange shadow. It felt like his head would split open, but he only had one option now.

"Obito!" Rin landed next to him, panting and bleeding from the shoulder. Obito jerked towards her, the gathering chakra around him fluttering, and she slapped something in his hand. He looked down at it. His heart restarted, a furnace that filled his whole body with fire at once.

The insects were still racing down at them, barely fifteen feet away now. Rin punched out at the tree beneath their own feet, once, twice. Her monstrous blows blew enormous craters in the trunk; the tree shuddered. Obito kicked as well, adding his meager force to her blows.

Whether by coincidence or because of that tiny bit of help, the top sixty feet or so of the tree began tipping, swinging in an arc away from them with a tremendous sound of cracking bark and whooshing air. Obito saw the Aburame now: he was still up there, in amongst his insects.

"FUCK OFF!" Rin screamed, and she kicked out at the tree with both feet, bracing herself with both hands between the severed trunk and the toppling tip.

There was a deep crack as the tree gave up. Everything above them exploded away, over fifty feet of decaying wood shooting off towards the horizon like a shot from a bow. It carried the Aburame and his deadly payload with it; some of microscopic insects rained down on Obito and Rin, eating undetectable holes in their clothes and skin. It was painful, but not nearly enough to kill them.

As Rin kicked, Obito threw. He hurled the kunai that Rin had thrust into his hand as hard as he could directly at the blood-bird the Hyuuga had summoned. The woman was ready for it; she was already reaching back to draw one of her last arrows, but her crushed fingers fumbled. The shaft slipped and she had to catch it with her chakra, and by then the kunai was too close.

It missed, soaring past the Yamanaka's head by more than a foot. The man flinched away, swinging out instinctively with his missing arm. It fell short. A kunai missing you by more than a foot was usually nothing to worry about.

But this kunai had two prongs.

One second, the Yamanaka was alive, breathing heavily, blood still dripping from his forearm and mixing with the bird, remaining hand tightening around Sakura's doll in a last bid to crush it.

Then he was dead, his skull pierced by the knife.

The Hyuuga had commendable reflexes, and abandoned her ally without hesitation. She fell off the bird in the same instant he died, not even bothering to jump. Her haste wasn't quite enough; falling just meant that instead of being decapitated, her throat was only deeply cut. She was still moving as she fell, her blood flying out in a crescent arc, red as the rising sun.

The bird began evaporating; Sakura's doll fell. Obito didn't care. The second the Yamanaka had died, Sakura's chakra had vanished out of the doll. His jutsu had gone with him. Even if it was a twist on the standard Shintenshin, Obito was sure that his student's mind was back where it belonged.

The man that had killed one ROOT agent and cut the throat of another in the time it took to blink fell as well, and then threw the same knife Obito had right back at him. It was covered in blood now; it struck the tree next to Obito and then-

Minato Namikaze was there. There was a spot of blood on both his hands; he was wearing pale white pajamas and yellow slippers, and his hair was a mess of blond spikes. Whether he'd been padding around in the early morning or still in bed, Obito had no way of knowing.

But it didn't matter. He'd come at the call without hesitation, as he'd always said he would.

"ROOT?" the Fourth Hokage asked. Obito nodded.

'He killed them without even knowing who they were.' That was just how much his sensei trusted him. Why didn't that make him feel better?

Minato looked around, out at the crowning sun, down at the burning village, at both his students. "Rin," he nodded, and Rin smiled back.

"Sorry we wouldn't manage it without you," she said. Minato frowned.

"Looks like a real mess. What's the situation?" The Yondaime flickered out of existence for a second, again, a third time. After the third flicker he was wearing his flak jacket over his pajamas, and had four knives instead of one.

"More than twenty rogue ninja, and at least that many Waterfall shinobi went crazy and started attacking the rest," Obito said. "Itachi's nowhere to be seen. Jiraiya's here; still down there."

"Good. You're both alright? Your team?" Obito both admired the man's discipline in not saying his son's name and felt a cold jolt at it.

"We're fine. So are they, last time we saw them. They're with the Jinchuriki; they should keep each other safe."

"Should," Minato said with a slight nod. "If that's all, let's get down here and clean up."

They started sprinting down the tree, Rin healing Obito sporadically as they went. He felt some of his strength return as the tenketsu in his leg closed back up. His arm was still useless; it would take more than some on-the-run medical jutsu to fix up the hole in his shoulder, even from someone as amazing as Rin.

"He's definitely down there, sensei," he said, and Minato glanced at him. Obito grinned. "It's like you said. Kushina's not here. It'll be different this time."

They reached the base of the tree. Obito looked around, but his sword was nowhere in sight. It could have fallen anywhere in the village; he couldn't count on locating it until things had calmed down.

Minato looked around the village, taking in the chaos. There were still fights flaring up throughout Takigakure, but the tempo had calmed. It seemed that for now, Waterfall was winning. The Hokage was calm; the destruction washed over him without leaving any impression.

"The village can handle the rest. Where's the Jinchuriki?" Minato decided. Rin pointed.

"The safehouse is right over there," she said. The spot she was pointing at promptly exploded.

It was a flash of steam and angry orange energy, erupting dozens of meters straight up into the sky. A blast of crushing chakra washed over all of Takigakure in a physical wave that knocked Obito back a step, and he squinted and clenched his teeth as his heart missed a beat.

Fear. Hatred. Desperation. Were those his own feelings, or had it been carried by the chakra that had nearly knocked him down? Obito couldn't be sure as he surged back to his feet.

The safehouse, and a fraction of the village along with it, was gone. A huge insect with the body of a beetle and seven luminous orange wings rose up out of the ruins, casting a shadow over all of Waterfall; even the great tree seemed small next to it.

Nanabi. The Tailed Beast had been unleashed. There were five figures on the monster's back, four fighting, one watching. Even at the distance, Obito's Sharingan could pick out all their chakra with perfect clarity.

His team, and Itachi. Even as they were carried away on the back of the Beast, Team Seven was fighting with all the strength they had.

The fifth person, Obito didn't recognize. As he started to focus, to bring the Kamui to bear on Itachi as the man spun and slipped among his students' wild attacks, the fifth shinobi leapt off the Beast right at him; whether by their own instincts or Itachi's instruction, Obito couldn't say. He shifted his focus, and the man threw a bolt of lightning at him, the ninjutsu so sudden and violent that even with his Sharingan, Obito couldn't hope to dodge.

Minato stepped in front of him, so fast there was no moment of motion, and met the lightning with a Rasengan. Both jutsu burst, blowing the Hokage back into Obito, and they crashed to the ground. As the lightning exploded, the enemy in the air was intercepted by someone from the ground, coming from the direction of the safehouse. They crashed into each other, grappling in mid-air, and then were sent hurtled away from each other by an unknown force.

It was Jiraiya. He landed next to Obito with a grunt, turning towards him. He was covered in burns, and patches of his huge mane of hair and beard were missing. His eyepatch was gone, revealing an empty socket.

"Minato?" the Sage asked, and the Yondaime gave him a short nod. The Nanabi was rising, up and away, moving away from the epicenter of the explosion and gaining speed. It was fast for its size; even its current sedate passage was deafening, seven wings buzzing with more and more vigor.

"Sensei," Minato said. "We can't let it get away."

"No chance." The enemy ninja was striding towards them; a black cloak covered his whole body and a black mask his face, but his voice was like a gravel factory and his eyes were flat green circles. "That's my paycheck."

Rin advanced, and it was a line of four ninja against one. The man looked over them all with obvious disdain.

"The Yellow Flash," he said. "Did you know they don't even bother with a bounty for you anymore?"

"Kakuzu the Immortal," Jiraiya grunted, spitting up a gob of blood. "He's working with Itachi. I couldn't stop them in time."

S-Ranked missing ninja. From Waterfall, if Obito recalled correctly. No wonder the other rogue ninja had gotten in with such ease. Itachi had found the perfect ally.

"Sensei," Rin said, pounding her fists together. The Nanabi was picking up speed; it would clear the plateau in seconds. "You and Obito go after Itachi. You have the best chance against him and that Beast. We'll handle this."

Obito looked back at her, and she nodded.

'Go.'

"Let's go." The Yondaime took off. Obito followed him, arm swinging limply at his side. Kakuzu watched them go, one eye focusing on them and the other on Rin and Jiraiya.

"That's fine," he ground out as they passed him, focusing all of his attention on his new opponents. "You two are worth plenty."

The Nanabi cleared the plateau, soaring out towards the sunrise as Team Seven continued to struggle on its back. Obito and his sensei picked up speed, sprinting through the burning village and across its outer ring, and jumped. They leapt out into the open air, flying for a moment like the monster they were chasing, and left Waterfall behind.
 
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Chapter 29: Truth
The Second Test

When the ROOT agent died high above, Sakura returned to her body with a painful jerk. The transition came without warning; she went from being held in a cruel hand to breathing, seeing, hearing. She gagged, suddenly aware of how much space her tongue took up in her mouth. She was being carried once more, this time over Naruto's shoulder. Her sword was gone: the sheath was empty.

'Useless. Someone took your body and lost your sword. You're worthless.'

"Sakura!" Naruto's voice almost managed to drown out her thoughts. "You're awake!" He and Sasuke skidded to a stop, setting her down and looking her over. Sakura looked around; less of the village was on fire than she remembered.

"Keep going," Sasuke said, starting to move again. "We're almost there."

"What happened?" Naruto asked as Sakura tried to figure out where they were. Close to the safehouse, she was pretty sure. It looked a little different with several of the buildings collapsed and with the sun barely up, but the rings made everything distinctive. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," she said. It felt strange to run, like her whole body was asleep. Everything tingled and vibrated uncomfortably. "I don't know what happened."

"You're you, right? Whoever was in you tried to stab Obito-"

"What?!" Sakura nearly tripped, but Naruto caught her, pushing her on. The safehouse came into view and they rounded one of the ring's corners. It was still in one piece, though she knew there was a hole in the wall on the other side. The barrier had come back up; they passed through it with the same heavy ozone tang.

'I tried to stab Obito? That's worse than worthless.'

"You didn't get him!" Naruto clarified. "He went right through your sword, you know! Then he went after the guys who'd controlled you; he must have gotten them, right?"

Sakura nodded, trying to control herself. Nothing had made sense in the doll, but the sensation of being thrown around and passed between hands had been unmistakable. The warm chakra with a cold bite that she'd felt must have been Obito's. She'd been snatched back, and then…

The person who'd controlled her had died. Her sensei must have gotten him. She felt a vicious satisfaction at the idea. She hoped he hadn't died quickly.

"He got them," she said, and Naruto grinned. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-"

"Nothing to apologize for!" he assured her without thinking about it. In front of them, Sasuke threw the safehouse door open, barreling inside. "We just gotta stick with Fuu, alright?"

"Right," Sakura said as they turned the corner past the kitchen, heading into the main living room. "Where's my sword?"

"Oh, Obito has it. He-" Naruto started to say, and then he ran right into Sasuke's back. He stumbled backwards; Sasuke hadn't even flinched.

"Sasuke?" Sakura asked, running up to his side. She stopped just as Naruto had, chakra rooting her to the floor and cancelling all her momentum instantly.

Fuu was in the center of the room, squirming on the floor under a thick grid of spiraling fuinjutsu symbols, cast over her like a spider's web. Two of the village elders were there as well; the woman whose hair was full of bells, Ayame, and the man with dark skin whose name Sakura hadn't learned. They were both lying on the floor in a pool of their own blood. Ayame's arm had been torn off at the shoulder: she was still moving, but not in any coherent way. The man was facedown, with no wounds apparent on his back, but there was far more blood around him.

There were two men standing there as well, both tall and wearing long black cloaks. They looked over to Team Seven as they stood stock still in the entryway like animals that had suddenly realized predators were nearby.

One of them was Itachi Uchiha. Sakura had no idea who the other was; his whole face was covered, and even the skin that showed on his hands and forehead was unnaturally black and reflected no light.

"More brats," the unknown man grumbled. Without taking his iridescent green eyes off them, he thrust his inky hand down through Ayame's back. The woman cried out, thick dark blood dribbling out of her mouth, and then went still. The man clenched his hand; there was a crack, and he withdrew it clenching something small and dark in his fist.

'Her heart,' Sakura thought faintly, reaching for a sword that wasn't there. 'He ripped out her heart.'

"Kakuzu, leave them. They're mine," Itachi said, his tone mild, and the man shrugged. "I'll take the Jinchuriki and meet you at that place tomorrow."

"I'd prefer more of a guarantee," Kakuzu growled, and the heart disappeared from his hand like a magic trick.

"You have plenty of my secrets, and my deposit," Itachi said. "Isn't that enough?"

"For now," the man relented. As they'd been talking, Sasuke had taken a step forward. Now, a second. Naruto followed him, and Sakura had no choice but to mirror him. Her teammate's face was stuck in a rictus of hatred; he'd bared his teeth, eyes wide.

"Sasuke," Itachi said. "Good to see you. But now isn't the best time-"

Sasuke's Sharingan spiraled out, and Itachi's face shifted. He cocked his head, lips tightening.

He smiled.

"Three already?" he said, glancing at Kakuzu. The man lifted an eyebrow and stepped back with an amused grunt. "How impressive. That was quick, even for you."

Sasuke charged without a word, and Naruto and Sakura followed after, attacking from three different directions. Kakuzu watched with an amused air as Itachi slipped past all their attacks, ducking Naruto's Rasengan, kicking away Sasuke's roundhouse, and twisting Sakura's punch to flip her to a hard landing behind him.

"One second," he said as the team circled, looking for an opening. Naruto rotated over to Fuu, glancing down at the seal binding her, obviously trying to figure it out. "Let's move this somewhere else."

He made a ram seal, and Fuu started screaming, her whole body bucking and straining against the seal covering her.

"NO!" she shrieked, so loud and so obviously in pain that Sakura felt her blood go cold. She didn't think she could hate Itachi more after what he'd done to her team in the Forest of Death, but she'd been naive. "NO! CHOMEI, IT'LL BE OKAY!"

Fuu exploded. The seal on top of her shattered, and Sakura and her team were thrown back, bouncing off the walls and landing on their face. Sakura tried to roll to her feet, but the chakra washing over her stopped her in her tracks. It was just like the Exam, in the arena with Gaara. The chakra of a Tailed Beast, so heavy it kept her lying on her face.

She was being lifted into the air, Sakura realized. The chakra that was pressing down on her was also beneath her, so thick it was lifting her and solidifying beneath her, gaining shape and color. It was the same color as and harder than steel.

The safehouse erupted, splintering under the pressure, and Sakura covered her head as wood rained down on her. She looked up; Itachi was staring up at the sky, apparently unconcerned.

He looked down at her, the peculiar pattern of his Mangekyo glinting, and then around at her teammates, all of whom were pressed just as flat as her. Kakuzu was there as well, on one knee.

"A little heavy?" Itachi asked him with an amused smile, and the rogue ninja snarled. He looked out over the village, green eyes narrowing.

The pressure abated. Sakura didn't wonder why; she just surged to her feet, charging Itachi. He'd caused Fuu to transform somehow; maybe if they beat him, she'd go back to normal. It was the only thing she could think of after the rollercoaster of insanity that the last ten minutes had been. Her teammates did the same, all single-mindedly focused on Sasuke's brother.

Itachi tripped her without looking, dancing past Naruto's thrown kunai and catching Sasuke's fist in a bizarrely gentle grip. He intertwined his fingers with his brother's and swung him to a fro for a moment in a one-handed waltz; Sasuke threw a couple punches at his side, but the dance kept him at a distance, and he only had time to give Itachi a horrified look before his brother swung him right into Sakura, sending her tumbling backwards with a full-body bruise. She stuck herself to the monster beneath them; she couldn't afford to fall off now.

"You did well," he said, swinging Sasuke at Naruto; the Uchiha tucked himself in, keeping one flailing foot from clipping Naruto's face. As Sakura rolled back to her feet, feeling her lips swell up, Kakuzu leapt off of Fuu, down into the village below with the sound of a thunderstrike. Sakura glanced after him as she staggered back to her feet, her entire body aching, and found her sensei and Rin down below. Jiraiya was with them as well, and-

The Fourth? Was that possible?

Her heart, already racing, kicked it up a gear. Naruto's father could take down Itachi for sure. They just needed to keep him busy until the Yondaime could catch up.

Fuu started moving away from the village, faster by the second; the sound of the Tailed Beast's wings beating was deafening, and the storm of wind they kicked up almost tossed Sakura right off its back. She clung on stubbornly, just like the rest of her team. Itachi looked around at all of them, barely shifting. He looked relaxed.

'How long can you hold on?'

Unwilling to consider that, Sakura attacked once again.

###

Sasuke didn't understand why his arm wasn't broken.

He'd improved since the exam. In just that short time, he'd become someone who could have trounced his previous self. His Sharingan had improved. His reflexes, ninjutsu, mindset, body, everything had improved in that month of determination.

But still, it...

Just.

Wasn't.

Enough.

Sasuke had realized it the moment he'd activated his Sharingan, back in the safehouse. The gap between him and Itachi had always been a cliff, an irrational sheer face like the plateau that Waterfall rested upon. When you started climbing that sort of cliff, fifty feet or five hundred felt exactly the same. No matter what, the summit was still out of reach.

He couldn't see the top. Despite how much he and Naruto and Sakura had improved, everything felt exactly the same.

Itachi was just playing with them. As they fought on top of the fleeing Bijuu, he kicked them back and forth, tossing them to the Beast's back and then letting them rise again. He knocked weapons away, left bruises, but never broke anything, never attacked them while they were prone. It was even more humiliating than a spar; this was like how his parents had fought him when he hadn't even been five, teaching him the basics of when to attack, what to block, what to dodge.

Was he trying to teach them a lesson too? Sasuke grit his teeth so hard he was sure they would crack.

"That's a bad habit," Itachi said as he stepped forward into a beautiful jab, punching Sasuke right in the face. The blow took him on forehead as he ducked back and flipped him like a top. Even his Sharingan's prediction couldn't save him; Itachi, stronger, faster, always adjusted for it before Sasuke could react.

They were getting farther away from the village. As Sasuke flipped backwards, his stomach turning, throat filled with bile, he saw that they had cleared Takigakure's plateau. The village was a wreck; the top of the tree was missing. Obito and Naruto's father were after them, keeping pace with the Bijuu but unable to close the gap. They fell into the forest and out of sight, but he was sure they were still chasing.

He hit the hard shell below him, the impact shaking his whole body, and rolled backwards, trying to get some distance. Itachi was already there: he kicked Sasuke in the side, sending him skittering away with a flash of white fire and right into Naruto, sending his teammate tumbling over him.

"Why are you doing this?!" Sakura screamed. She was behind Itachi now, forming a straight line from herself to Sasuke and Naruto. She'd drawn a kunai and was trying to form her water blade around it, but the blade wasn't chakra conductive: she didn't have the control to keep it cohesive, and it lost water faster than it could grow deadly. She circled, waiting for Sasuke and Naruto to get back up. Itachi cocked his head.

"What do you mean? You attacked me," he asked, and Sakura spat. Her face was almost the same color as her hair, the green of her eyes popping out with unbelievable clarity. She looked just like when she'd fought Gaara.

"Fuu never did anything to you!" she snarled. "Leave her alone!"

"She's right!" Sasuke said, scrambling up and drawing a knife. "You're interested in me, not her! Why bother with this?!"

Itachi looked back and forth between them, and the world slowed down. Sasuke blinked, watching a drop of sweat run down his hand, stop go, stop go, like a faulty projector. Itachi's Mangekyo spun, the blades cutting through his own eyes time after time.

'Shit.'

"I don't have any interest in Fuu," he said, crossing his arms. Sasuke was paralyzed. They all were. By the tone of Itachi's voice, the reality of the situation, or genjutsu? The world crawled by around them, clouds filled with the red sun's flames burning across the sky. "Just in the Bijuu. If I could have one and not the other, I would."

"But if you take it out, she'll die." Naruto struggled through the molasses holding them all captive, one arm coming up, shaking. "You can't-"

"I'm not going to remove it," Itachi chuckled. He lifted one finger to his lips, an exaggerated shushing motion. "Can you keep a secret?"

Sasuke wanted to close his eyes, to not see this. The thing wearing his brother's face was so like him; it had the same terrible sense of humor, the same subtle wink. It was unbearable.

"I was hired to steal a Bijuu," he said, looking around appreciatively at his captive audience. "By the village who most desperately needs one."

What? Sasuke struggled to speak, the paradox of his not-brother muting him. Sakura was just listening, eyes sharp. The water-knife in her hand was even sharper. Naruto was the only one with the constitution to interrupt.

"You're stupid!" he said. "Who'd wanna start a war with Waterfall? If they figured out you were hired-!"

"The village that is most desperate for more power, of course," Itachi said with a shrug. "You're the son of the Hokage, Naruto, you should know this. People's fear, or ambition, drives them to do things they wouldn't dream of before." He smiled. "Even a village founded on such high pillars as Rain."

"That's not true." Sakura was speaking too, and Sasuke still couldn't. He could feel himself starting to hyperventilate. His mother's advice wasn't working. That was Itachi, it couldn't be someone pretending to be him. "Rain wouldn't do that."

"Believe me or not, it's the truth. But don't tell anyone, alright?" Itachi smiled. "I doubt they'd like that. I was hired because I'm the perfect deniable asset. I'm the crazy Uchiha, remember? No one will assume I'm acting rationally."

'Acquire the third.'

Why tell them? It didn't make any sense. Why look so happy about it? It didn't make any sense. He was lying. He had always been lying. Sasuke's hand creaked open, and Itachi's rotating gaze shifted towards him, pinning him in place. He felt his hands curl into claws.

"You told me…" he faltered, forgetting about the rest of his team. It was just him and his brother now, staring at each other on the back of a fleeing Beast, their hair whipping wildly in the gale generated by the huge creature's wings. "You told me I wasn't strong enough, last time."

"You're still not," Itachi noted, hand coming to his chin. He gave Sasuke his full attention, in a way he never had when they were both still children.

"But-"

"But you did get your third tomoe, that's true," Itachi acknowledged. "How did you do it?"

This is the man that killed your father, your cousins, half your family. Why are you just talking with him?

This is your brother. Why wouldn't you talk to him?

"When Naruto and I were fighting," Sasuke said, and Itachi nodded, eyes narrowing.

"Did you want to kill him?" he asked. Sasuke's eyes narrowed. The world sped up a little. It was a genjutsu, and it was straining now.

"Is that how you got yours? Wanting to kill a friend? Our family?" He shot the words like an arrow, but Itachi didn't even flinch. His eyes remained fixed on Sasuke; his face twisted into something between a grimace and a smile.

"Nothing like that," he said, either the truth or a flawless lie, like everything he said. "But that's how it usually is. But you…" He grinned. "You were having fun, huh?"

Sasuke wasn't like his brother, and Itachi saw something in him that confirmed his question.

"That's fantastic," he said, smiling, really smiling, an Itachi smile that barely moved his mouth but lit up his eyes. Sasuke felt something twist in his heart, threatening to break him in half. "Sasuke, that's amazing. You should be proud."

"Shut up." Sasuke closed his eyes, feeling the world around him bend more. He could beat this. Even if his brother had the more advanced eyes, even if he'd always been better, he could beat this, the same way a ninja with a knife could beat one with a sword. "Shut up."

"Well, that's a little rude," Itachi frowned. "But understandable."

Sasuke snapped, and tried to take the false time surrounding them with him.

"Why did you do it?!" he screamed, charging forward, leading with his knife. Naruto and Sakura were still paralyzed; it was just him and his brother, a completely hopeless fight. Itachi twisted past the knife like a man stepping through a thin curtain, and Sasuke spun, kicking out at him. Itachi met the kick with his own.

"Why?!" he shouted again, kicking out once more. Itachi countered again, their shins clashing one, two, three times, the impact ringing through Sasuke's body. "Just for my eyes?!"

Who cared if he was bigger, stronger, faster? Just keep attacking! It was idiotic, but it was all he could do. Sasuke barreled forward trying to carry his brother off his feet, and Itachi's hands came down on his shoulders. His brother shot up, over him, hands rooted in place, twisted, one hand releasing. Both his feet landed on Sasuke's back, and he was driven to his knees by the force of Itachi's kick, slamming his chin into the Beast's shell.

"For your eyes?" Itachi asked, and Sasuke snarled, trying to roll out from under his brother. Itachi let him go, even let him get back to his feet. "Don't be absurd."

"If not that, then why?!" Sasuke screamed, feeling the roughness in his throat. "You're still you!" The world blurred a little. Until his hand came up and found hot tears, he was sure it was more of the genjutsu. "So why-"

He closed his eyes. He'd lose even if they were open anyway. "Why would you kill them?"

Itachi didn't say anything for about five seconds, an eternity in the storm on the Beast's back. Sasuke opened his eyes to find his brother giving him a considerate look.

"You might be happier with a lie," he eventually said. Sasuke gagged. "The truth rarely brings comfort, or even clarity." His lips pressed into a line. "It might be better for you, Sasuke, to live with the reality that your brother just went crazy."

"But you're not," Sasuke insisted. "You're not crazy!"

"We're standing on top of a Tailed Beast I just stole-"

"Shut up!" Sasuke shouted, stomping his foot like a little kid. Had he just kicked Fuu? He couldn't think about that. "I don't want more lies! I want the truth!"

Itachi looked at him, like he was looking through him, trying to figure out if his sincerity was enough.

"Alright," he decided.

"The Uchiha were a clan of traitors."

"What?" Sasuke took a step back on pure reflex. He'd never heard genuine hatred in Itachi's voice before. Not until today.

"They were scum," Itachi said, as calm as the sea and just as deadly. "Most of the clan was planning to overthrow the village. That's why I killed them."

As Sasuke struggled to comprehend what he'd just said, Itachi looked down at the Bijuu below them, still carrying them away from Takigakure in slow motion. "They were planning to use the Mangekyo Sharingan to rip the Kyuubi out of Kushina Uzumaki…" He looked to Naruto, frozen but steadily regaining life. "Out of your mother, and imprisoning your father. Well, probably killing him. How could you imprison the Yellow Flash? Most likely they would have used his wife as a hostage and then killed him with the monster inside her." He was talking to them and himself at the same time, as though he were rehearsing something he'd never had a chance to say out loud.

That wasn't possible. "That's not possible," Sasuke said, feeling a step behind himself. "There's no way."

"Father and mother were the architects," Itachi said, remorseless, relentless. "They both wanted the clan to have more power. They weren't content with the police force, the prestige of being one of the founders. They wanted control of the village; they wanted to be Hokage." He sneered. "They wanted me to be Hokage for them."

Sasuke shook his head. "No."

"You wanted to know the truth," Itachi said matter of factly. "Why would you deny it now? Because you don't like it?"

"But..." Sasuke said. His father was a traitor? His mother was a traitor? That wasn't possible. His brother was crazy after all. He must have been lying. He was just saying these things to be cruel. It had to be. "Even if that's true… someone must have found out, then. Someone must have made you kill them." He stepped forward, his heart beating out of his chest. "That was it, right? Someone forced you to-!"

"Don't be ridiculous." Itachi crossed his arms. "No one found out. I made sure of that." His Sharingan was spinning faster now, the genjutsu struggling to keep time slowed down. "There wasn't anyone else, Sasuke. It was just me."

Sasuke choked on the finality of his brother's words.

"There were two options, Sasuke." Itachi started pacing, hands opening and closing at his sides. "I could become a traitor to my village, or a traitor to my clan. What kind of choice was that? Who could ever have made the first?" His face twisted into a snarl. "Our worthless parents, who desired power at the sake of all else? That's not what being a shinobi is!"

He stopped, standing his ground against the whole world at his back. "A shinobi is one who sacrifices! Between you and Konoha and the rest of my family, that was a sacrifice I was willing to make without hesitation! That anyone should be willing to!"

He started moving again, driven by murderous animus. "Everyone who'd supported the coup, I killed. Father, I killed. Mother, I couldn't finish her before the Hokage arrived."

Sasuke remembered the room full of blood, the screaming, how Obito had flown across the room. He flinched, and Itachi gave him a sorrowful look.

"And Shisui…" Itachi trailed off with a pained look. "He was the only one I regretted. He was the only one who wouldn't get out of my way." He swayed on his feet, somewhere else entirely. "He tried to use his Mangekyo on me, you know. That Kotoamatsukami of his." He laughed, stricken. "Protect your family, he told me. What the hell did he think I was doing?"

Sasuke had no idea what that meant, and Itachi wasn't interested in telling him more.

"Itachi…" He didn't know what to say. No, he couldn't say anything; his whole body was trembling uncontrollably, overwhelmed with chakra and a thousand conflicting feelings.

"Sasuke, I had to do it." Itachi almost sounded like he was pleading now. Had he ever told anyone? If this was the truth, had he lived the last six years of his life hiding it, telling no one, on the run every day? How could it not have burst out of him sooner?

'Sacrifice.'

"It had to be me. I had to… I was the only one who could have." Itachi's face steadily morphed into something more and more deranged. "Do you think Konoha would have forgiven our clan, knowing that so much of it desired to betray it? To rule its ashes? Of course not! 'How did you let it even get this far?' they would have asked, and rightfully so! They would have judged our clanmates and us, the guilty and the innocent, with the same eyes: they couldn't have afforded not to! We would have been too valuable to exile, an entire clan of ungrateful lunatics with dangerous eyes; 'Uchiha' would have become the most bitter curse, and we all would have been executed for our madness. Even the children, even you, for fear you would want to take revenge! They would have taken the Sharingan and left everything else to rot!"

Itachi stepped forward, and Sasuke was unable to back away from the horrible dream that had crept into reality. His brother placed a hand on his shoulder, staring into his eyes, burning him with his sincerity.

"The clan was sick, Sasuke. There was a cancer at its heart, and our parents were the source of it." His grip grew stronger, more painful. "You can't negotiate with cancer. You can't try to find a middle ground, or convince people to live with it. It will kill you no matter what."

His eyes were wide, alive.

"All you can do is cut it out. That's the only way."

He leaned in.

"I did it all for you, Sasuke."

Sasuke didn't have anything to say. He couldn't even scream.

He stabbed forward with the knife in his hand, and the blade sunk an inch into Itachi's chest before his brother slammed him down, the blade flying out of sight. The genjutsu shattered. The world resumed its normal operation. Naruto and Sakura both flew forwards.

Itachi looked down in the half-second before Naruto tackled him, and Sasuke was shocked at how betrayed his brother looked. Not even angry. Just disappointed.

Naruto's tackle carried his brother off and Sasuke tried to roll to his feet, but he found himself stuck in his brother's shadow. A Nara jutsu? He thrashed, struggling to escape, but Itachi's shadow held him in place for the critical second necessary for his brother to shuck Naruto off his back and deliver a tremendous kick to Sasuke's gut. He skidded across the Beast's back, wheezing, and Sakura came in even as Naruto rolled away.

She slashed out with her water knife, the blade stabilizing even as she attacked, and Itachi's hand gently met hers, locking her in place. Sakura reached down and lashed out with her empty sheath. Water poured out of it in an endless stream, and Itachi caught her other hand as it splashed across his face; he didn't even blink. His hands twisted, and both the knife and sheath spiraled away. More water splattered everywhere, and Sasuke blinked as a drop flew into his eye. In the time it took his eyes to open back up, Itachi broke Sakura's wrist.

"Glad you don't have your sword," he noted, before driving a knee into Sakura's stomach so hard she lifted up into the air. Sakura collapsed, retching, and Itachi stepped back as she breathlessly clawed at his ankles with her good hand.

Sasuke breathed out a fireball as soon as his brother was clear of Sakura, and Itachi didn't even turn to meet it. He flickered, and the fireball broke into pieces, splattering across Fuu's back. Ssauke couldn't see his brother in the wake of the flames.

'Did I get him?'

"Look." Itachi tapped him on the shoulder, and Sasuke spun into a kick. His brother stepped over it and caught the follow-up punch, pointing a thumb back over his shoulder. "They're catching up."

Sasuke looked, wide-eyed; Obito and the Fourth Hokage were still chasing them from the treetops of the forest hundreds of meters below, a blur even to his Sharingan. They were kicking up a wake of destroyed branches in their wake, knocking the canopy of the forest apart with the speed of their passage. They were maybe a hundred meters away now, with the village a pillar of smoke kilometers behind them, and gaining with impressive speed. Somehow, impossibly, they were faster than the giant insect.

"Do you think they want me, or the Bijuu, or you guys?" Itachi asked with a somber expression. "The most, I mean." His chakra surged.

The Tailed Beast started to turn in midair, its momentum and direction unchanging, and Sasuke looked down in horror to find an enormous buildup of chakra below his feet. The pressure returned, trying to push him down, but he stayed standing, staring at the Bijuu's front. It was facing Obito and the Fourth now, flying backwards; thousands of tiny balls of chakra were coming together in front of its mouth.

Sasuke watched, fascinated, as the chakra began combining, forming a huge orb that shone with an inner darkness, growing larger by the second. It was almost like the Rasengan, he thought, but to an utterly insane level. The pressure of the clashing chakra inside the ball was unimaginable, and the sheer amount of it was terrifying.

"Bijuudama," Itachi said. The whole Bijuu quivered, aching to release the chakra bomb. Obito slowed down; the Yondaime didn't.

"You…" Sasuke coughed, his heart beating faster than he could track. "What are you doing?! You'll kill them!" It made no sense. Kill his family for the village, and then kill the Yondaime? Insane. His brother was actually insane.

Itachi quirked an eyebrow. "I just need to slow them down," he said, and stomped his foot. The Bijuudama launched, screaming into a sonic boom. It wasn't aimed directly at his sensei, Sasuke realized, but at distant Takigakure. Despite that, it tore a huge hole in the forest, ripping up everything below it with its inexorable gravity.

Far below, the Yondaime came to a stop, tossing something up into the air, too small for Sasuke to see at the distance. He threw both his arms out, concentrating, and golden chakra exploded out of him, a jutsu grid forming out of the naked air in front of his hands.

The Bijuudama hit an invisible wall and sank in with deliberate speed, slowly slipping out of sight. The moment it vanished, there was a tremendous explosion miles behind The Village Hidden in the Waterfall; it almost eclipsed the rising sun. It would have erased the entire village twice over.

Itachi turned back to him with a grin. Their pursuers were almost a kilometer away now, just from their brief pause. "See? That's the Hokage for you."

Naruto came out of nowhere, Rasengan screaming, and Itachi seized his arm, throwing him over his shoulder. The Rasengan exploded, the residual force blowing a ragged hole in Itachi's cloak, and Naruto went sailing off the Bijuu, plummeting towards the forest below.

"Naruto!" Sakura screamed out; Sasuke was too shocked to even move. Before he could do a thing, Itachi was at his teammate's side. As he and Sakura both turned, desperate to act, Itachi kicked her in the side, hard; Sakura shot sideways like a rag doll, bouncing once and falling right off the Beast as well.

"No!" The scream tore itself out, and Sasuke rushed forward, too little, too late. Itachi caught him by the throat, lifting him up as he kicked in a blind rage.

"You know what happened now," he said. "Do you feel better?"

"You're lying! You must be!" Sasuke couldn't say anything coherent. It was just him and his brother now, and he didn't know what he wanted; to kill the man or question him more.

"Ask mother, if that makes you feel better," Itachi said, tossing him to his feet. Sasuke stumbled, almost falling on his butt; the wind hitting his front was like a solid object. "Just be ready for her to try and justify herself."

Sasuke's mouth moved, but nothing came out. His brother stepped forward.

"I'm really proud of you, Sasuke." He smiled. "For wanting to know the truth. Even if it hurts now… it'll be better next time. Promise."

He reached forward, two fingers settling on Sasuke's forehead, over his hitai-ate. Sasuke stiffened, ready to strike out.

Itachi pushed. It wasn't gentle; Sasuke was sent flying backwards, right off the Nanabi. He tumbled into the open sky.

The world spun, green and blue and brown and white and red changing places so quickly that Sasuke couldn't right himself. He tried to find up from down, but was blinded by tears. Where was everyone? He caught a glimpse of the Beast retreating, cutting a swathe through the clouds as it gained altitude, Itachi still clinging to its back. The ground was drawing closer and closer. He had to stabilize himself. Even with his chakra-reinforced body, if he hit the forest at terminal velocity it could kill him. Why would Itachi have-?

Sasuke didn't see Obito appear. He was just there, as sudden and sure as the sunrise. They were still several hundred feet above the ground; his teacher had popped out of the thin air from the Kamui.

He wrapped his blood-soaked arms around Sasuke, and they flickered through a cold world before crashing to the forest floor. Sasuke scrambled away, unable to handle being held, and vomited in the grass, his whole body shaking.

"Sasuke." Obito grabbed his shoulder, and Sasuke threw his arm off. "Are you okay?"

"No!" Sasuke said, the sound emerging from him indistinguishable from laughter or crying. "Where're they?!" He was starting to hyperventilate, totally unable to control himself.

"Minato's got them," Obito said. Sasuke collapsed, wheezing. "They're safe."

"Okay." He started shaking more violently. "Okay…"

Not okay.

Sasuke started crying, truly crying, his whole body shuddering as he gasped for air.

"What happened up there?" Obito asked. He didn't reach for him, knowing he'd be smacked away once more. "Sasuke? Did he hurt you?"

"I thought-" Sasuke gasped, desperate to speak. He had to let out what was inside him. "I thought- I hoped it would be something else. Someone else." He laughed, high and mirthless.

"What?" Obito frowned, his mismatched Sharingan shining.

"I didn't think he could have done it." Sasuke whispered. "The whole time… even when I was hating him, I thought that was impossible." He tried to stagger upright and failed, his heart trying to burst out of his chest. "I thought someone forced him, or it was a disguise, or he was controlled, or went crazy, or something." He gasped, his whole face painfully contorting. He felt like he was going to shatter. "I thought that if I got to him, that if I got strong, found out the truth, it would all make sense!"

Sasuke doubled over, trying to scream the world away. "But there wasn't anything like that! It was just him!"

Obito startled back, and Sasuke fell to his knees, the scream pouring out of him in one long breath.

"He killed father! He tried to kill mom too! He killed Shisui because he got in the way! That's all it was!"

Sasuke collapsed, emptied out. He couldn't scream anymore. All he could manage was a hoarse whisper.

"It was just him," he said, closing his eyes as more tears leaked out. He had to accept it. He didn't have a choice.

Itachi was a murderer, not a liar.

"That's all it ever was."
 
I really like this take of Itachi.

Far below, the Yondaime came to a stop, tossing something up into the air, too small for Sasuke to see at the distance. He threw both his arms out, concentrating, and golden chakra exploded out of him, a jutsu grid forming out of the naked air in front of his hands.

The Bijuudama hit an invisible wall and sank in with deliberate speed, slowly slipping out of sight. The moment it vanished, there was a tremendous explosion miles behind The Village Hidden in the Waterfall; it almost eclipsed the rising sun. It would have erased the entire village twice over.

Itachi turned back to him with a grin. Their pursuers were almost a kilometer away now, just from their brief pause. "See? That's the Hokage for you."
There are many reasons Minato is my favorite Naruto character. His personality, his drive, but I can't deny his badass powers are one of them.
 
Well, Sasuke knows the truth (or at least most of it because given the AU who knows what might have changed). I hope he comes out better than he did in canon. Also, poor Fu, getting the short end of the stick in this AU as well as in canon. Also hello Kakuzu our poster child for ninja abandoned for failing at the near impossible task (good luck killing Hashirama at his prime) who goes crazy. Wonder how well Itachi and Kakuzu get along because seeing Itachi and Kisame interact was heartwarming even though you knew just what they had done and what they were capable of.
 
I love all the changes that have spiraled out with Obito having survived without getting crushed.

Minato as the 4th for much longer. Yahiko, Konan, and Nagato having survived with their original vision of the Akatsuki intact. Jiraya being maimed but still badass. How Obito is still rather powerful even without those Zetsu implants, but lacks the implacable confidence Tobi had. Another thing that I like is how you've still followed tropes from cannon/fannon, but made changes and twists to them that made them fresh and interesting.

The disastrous first C-rank? Check, except this time instead of Zabuza and Haku, its an utterly unpleasant encounter with Hidan and his cult.

S-rank missing nin, Konohas most infamous with an interest in Sasuke? Check, except this time its Itachi.

Showdown with Garra during the chunin exans? Check, but its not Suaske or Naruto, its Sakura. And Garra doesn't get a life changing speech from her. Instead, he gets knocked out of any complacency he had and pushed further down the road of being an utter monster. Which one doesn't see often, but I'm curious as to how it turns out.

And now this most recent chapter. Itachi still purged his clan...but it wasn't on Danzo's* orders, nor the councils, nor the Hokages. And he didn't go for all of them, he went for those who were behind the coup...or, well, get stopped before he could get them all. So he's still snapped and gone crazy, but out of love for his village. He's still utterly terrifying as well, given how he singlehandedly put down the coup before it could get off the ground, and rendered the surviving Uhciha unable to do anything but be at peace with the rest of the village.

I also like the take on the Akatsuki so far. Very nice.

*Mostly because I'm pretty sure Danzo's dead, via ROOT actually being disbanded this time around. Presumably by force.
 
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*Mostly because I'm pretty sure Danzo's dead, via ROOT actually being disbanded this time around. Presumably by force.
...Did you miss the three ROOT agents in the last chapter somehow, despite them being the main focus of it? I'm sure Danzo isn't still in Konoha, and he may even genuinely be dead, but the dismantling of ROOT was still a failure.
 
...Did you miss the three ROOT agents in the last chapter somehow, despite them being the main focus of it? I'm sure Danzo isn't still in Konoha, and he may even genuinely be dead, but the dismantling of ROOT was still a failure.
No, I didn't.

I simply assumed that why they were there, and their pov mentioning Minato as being a traitor, was that they had been disbanded. And not in the way that the Third did, but by checking and making sure. Leading to ROOT being...well, downsizsed might be a good word.

Its remnants being Rouge might be another.
 
Hey can someone remind me why Obito's sharingan are described as mismatched? I remember he kept his left eye closed a lot but nothing more than that. Thanks
 
Hey can someone remind me why Obito's sharingan are described as mismatched? I remember he kept his left eye closed a lot but nothing more than that. Thanks
I'm not sure if that's actually been made explicit yet, but it's been implied several times so I don't feel bad about saying that Shisui was Obito's close relative/brother in this AU and Obito has one of his eyes, but not the other. So he has one Eternal and one standard Mangekyo, which is why he almost never uses the long distance Kamui and, to this point, has never used the Susano'o.

Thanks for your comments, everyone! Sorry for the janky update schedule: we live in interesting times.
 
And now this most recent chapter. Itachi still purged his clan...but it wasn't on Danzo's* orders, nor the councils, nor the Hokages. And he didn't go for all of them, he went for those who were behind the coup...or, well, get stopped before he could get them all. So he's still snapped and gone crazy, but out of love for his village. He's still utterly terrifying as well, given how he singlehandedly put down the coup before it could get off the ground, and rendered the surviving Uhciha unable to do anything but be at peace with the rest of the village.

I also love how Itachi revealing his "Altruistic" motivations for killing his family members didn't automatically win him Sasuke's sympathy: good intentions or not, he still murdered people Sasuke loved...and did so (seemingly) for reasons that are so starkly pragmatic they warp around to being inhuman.
 
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I also love how Itachi revealing his "Altruistic" motivations for killing his family members didn't automatically win him Sasuke's sympathy: good intentions or not, he still murdered people Sasuke loved...and did so (seemingly) for reasons that are starkly pragmatic they warp around to being inhuman.
Oh absolutely.

It helps, I imagine, that he still has family members waiting for him back home. The clan wasn't down to him and Itachi, theres still plenty left. Poor Sauske has learned that his brother really is a good shinobi...in all the ways that matter for the villages. As Itachi said, it might've been better for him to think he was crazy, power obsessed. Not...this.

Though I am rather curious what his reaction will be once parts of his souls stop shriveling up and dying. It felt like it was implied that he did belive Itachi, however reluctantly, that some of the clan really were traitors.
 
Chapter 30: Roots
Victim of Success

When Team Seven returned to Konoha, not even three hours had passed since Fuu had been kidnapped. The sun hadn't fully risen, which only made the nightmare they were all trapped in more surreal. They stumbled into existence inside the Hokage's office, and Minato tousled Naruto's hair like it was any other day, as if he hadn't just carried them across the country in an instant with his Hiraishin. Naruto stared at his father, silent.

"Be back," the Hokage said before he vanished again, presumably to put on some real clothes.

Sakura looked at her teammates, and they at her, and none of them had anything to say.

"Take a minute," Rin said, plopping right down on the floor in a cross-legged position and examining her hand. There was a scar there, Sakura saw, a pale splotch in the center of her palm. All of Rin's scars were like that, so faint you wouldn't notice them unless you were looking. They weren't obvious like Obito's.

Obito settled down as well with a sigh. "I'm the sensei here," he said faintly. Even after three hours of rest he was clearly exhausted. There was still a bit of dried blood below his left eye that he'd neglected to wipe away. "But that's a good idea. Sit down, guys."

For lack of anything better, Team Seven joined the adults on the floor of the Hokage's office. Sakura looked around, the quiet of the situation deafening. This was worse than the battle had been; that hadn't begged to be filled with something to distract her, at least.

Naruto was the first to speak up, though it took him a minute.

"What's gonna happen to Fuu?" he asked. Subdued, tired. God, they were all so tired. Sasuke's eyes were red, and his hand shook occasionally. Sakura looked down at her wrist. Rin had healed her first-thing; the break had been clean, like Sasuke's arm had been. Itachi hadn't been interested in hurting them, at least not permanently.

'A clan of traitors.'

None of them had told the Hokage about that. Why? Because they were scared it was true?

"Depends," Rin said, frank as always. "If Itachi was telling the truth and she's going to Rain, she'll probably be alright. She's a fully trained Jinchuriki; they'd be morons to take the Beast out of her. Most likely-"

"He was telling the truth," Sasuke said quietly. Rin glanced at him, and then Obito.

"Sasuke," their sensei said gingerly. "You can't take that for granted. You were in a genjutsu. Itachi could have made anything seem real-"

"I know my brother." Sasuke was abrupt, his voice fatal. He looked up, and his eyes were red from both his tears and his Sharingan. "I tried to spend every day with him, when he was still here. I know when he was lying. He was never good at it, not with me."

"I never heard about anything like what Itachi talked about, Sasuke." Obito was being careful; Sakura could feel that Sasuke was on a hair-trigger, and she was sure their sensei was even more aware. "Some sort of coup; it never came up." He sat up a bit straighter, trying to engage Sasuke earnestly. "I would have been approached, if there was."

"You weren't military police." Sasuke had been thinking about this, Sakura could tell. He hadn't stopped since they'd been thrown off the Bijuu; he'd been running the scenario in his head, over and over, trying to figure out Itachi's words. She wasn't even an Uchiha and she'd been doing the same. "You didn't live in the compound. You were the Hokage's student." He chuckled. "Most of them didn't like you. The ones that died, even."

"Okay," Rin said, holding up a hand. "We could do this all day, we don't know if anything Itachi said to you guys was true. Ba-!" she interjected, pointing at Sasuke as he made to speak again. "We're finishing Naruto's question! Assuming Fuu ends up in Rain, she'll be fine. Ninja being stolen from other villages like that is uncommon, but not unheard of. Depending on how attached she was to Waterfall…" Rin snorted. "She might fit right in."

That didn't sound so bad to Sakura. Well, getting kidnapped wouldn't be good. And that Rain would actually have hired Itachi to cause the kind of destruction he had in the Village Hidden in the Waterfall… that left a deeply sour taste in her mouth.

'The thing that shinobi supply is violence.'

Was she being naive again? She was too tired to know. Naruto nodded, his mouth pressed into a firm line.

"Waterfall won't try to get her back?" he asked, and Obito shook his head.

"From Rain?" he said. "No. They don't have the strength, especially now. They'll be running missions non-stop to stay on their feet."

Fifty-two ninja dead, and many more wounded. It seemed a small number when Sakura put it to herself that way, but it was a significant chunk of Waterfall's strength, and four of them had been the village elders. Waterfall had been practically decapitated by that man with green eyes, Kakuzu the Immortal.

Jiraiya and Rin had killed him once each, and he'd still gotten away. Sakura didn't know what to think of that. It reminded her of Hidan, an old and crusty memory even though their first C-Rank had been less than a year before. It seemed there was more than one ninja running around out there that could ignore death.

"Who were…" Sakura started to ask, before trailing off. Compared to what had happened to Sasuke, to Fuu, her kidnapping seemed small and pointless to talk about. But Obito shifted towards her, and his expectant look drew the rest of the question out of her. "Who took me?"

Obito and Rin shared a look; whatever had happened to Sakura hadn't come up when Jiraiya and Minato had been conferring with what was left of Waterfall's leadership.

"That's a little complicated," Obito said. Rin nodded. "Technically, they were-"

"Traitors." Everyone in the room jumped. Even Obito and Rin hadn't heard Jiraiya enter; the man was completely silent, despite his size.

"Having a little pow-wow here, huh?" He eased down. "Mind if I join?"

"Sensei," Obito said. "Where the hell did you come from?"

"Minato ditched me too," the Sannin said with a grunt. "I figured I'd come find the rest of you. I'm still your mission, aren't I?"

He made it sound innocuous, but his look was too casual. His gaze flitted over each of them in turn, committing to no one. "Wanted to see what you were doing with your brats."

"Traitors?" Sakura was too tired to give the man any deference, no matter his age or experience. Jiraiya gave her an appraising look. At least she had her sword back; she thought, irrationally, that it helped her look more put together. "What do you mean?"

"To Konoha," Jiraiya said.

Rin laughed. "There's a lot of people who'd say the same thing about you, you know," she said, and Jiraiya chuckled good-naturedly.

"Well, you know, the traitor is the guy who punches first," he said. Sasuke shifted, looking down, staring at the carpet and seeing nothing. "After that, if you hit back, you're just giving just dues."

"What the hell are you guys talking about?" Naruto said, looking ready to burst to his feet. "Who the fuck messed with Sakura? It was like someone took her over. Was that one of the rogue ninja?"

"ROOT," Obito said. Naruto gave him an uncomprehending look, the word meaningless to him and Sakura both. "Don't look at me like that, I think it's an anagram for something, I don't know what. Like ANBU. They also went by The Foundation."

"Obito, you suck at this. Here's a history lesson for you kids," Rin said, scooting forward and ignoring Obito's hurt look. "Before Naruto's dad, the Third Hokage was in charge. You know that." They all nodded, wondering why they were being given a lesson reserved for four year-olds. "What a lot of people didn't know was that the Third had a right hand, Danzo Shimura. He was called Konoha's Shadow, just like how the Third was Fire's."

Naruto nodded, actually paying full attention to a history lesson for what was probably the first time in his life. Sakura thought he looked kind of cute, his face scrunching up as he followed the new names.

"Danzo ran an offshoot of Black Ops, exempt from the Hokage's supervision," Rin continued. "That was ROOT, Foundation, whatever they wanted to call it. It started out as a way for the Third to maintain deniability for anything Konoha needed to get done, but couldn't advertise."

Naruto and Sasuke both took that without question, but the assumption made Sakura want to wretch.

"However, it turned out a lot worse than that," Rin said, her face darkening. "ROOT was rotten to the core. With no one to keep watch on Danzo and his people, they started exploring stuff that was a lot worse than assassination or torture: human experimention, murder, outright undermining the Hokage. But because the Third trusted Danzo, 'cause he'd been his teammate, this all went undiscovered for a long time."

It sounded convenient, Sakura thought, that a disbanded organization would have been responsible for so many terrible things when they'd first been founded to get stuff done that Konoha couldn't. It sounded like something a kid would yell when they shoved an incriminating item into someone else's hand.

"How'd they get found out?" Naruto asked. Obito shifted, but Jiraiya was the one who spoke.

"I killed Danzo," he said. "It all came out from there." Naruto blinked at his harsh tone.

"You killed the Third's teammate?" he asked, the gears obviously turning. "Wait, wasn't he your sensei? You killed your sensei's teammate?"

Jiraiya grinned. "He hasn't spoken to me since."

"What…" Sakura asked. "What happened? What caused that?"

'What made them decide to target me?'

"Danzo often conducted operations outside of the Land of Fire," Obito said, so clinical, as if he wasn't talking about people getting murdered. "One of ROOT's last ops was in the Land of Rain. This was about… fifteen years ago, I think."

"Rain," Sasuke muttered. The whole room turned to him in surprise. "It always comes back to Rain…"

"In this case, yes," Obito said. "Danzo allied himself with Hanzo, which I'm sure plenty of people found hilarious, to destroy an organization he'd decided was a potential threat to Konoha."

Sakura felt her spine prickle, remembering another conversation with her sensei, her time with Haku, the ridiculous books from the library, Jiraiya's apparent reputation. The past crystalized her in a moment of frightening clarity.

"The Akatsuki," she said. Obito nodded, and she looked at Jiraiya, eyes wide. "He went after your students."

The Sage didn't say anything at first, just watched her with his dark eye. He'd done just the same as Obito would, she thought. They were more alike than they looked.

"It wasn't my first thought. We tried to talk it out," he said after a moment, his lips quirking up into a non-smile. He gestured at his missing eye. "It didn't end well."

For some reason it was that simple acknowledgement, more than anything else that had happened that day, that made Sakura feel all too young and stupid. The Third's student had killed a Hokage's teammate and right hand man in defense of his own students, orphans from another land. It was all so tragic and absurd.

"So they were after you," she said. Jiraiya nodded. "And you?" she asked Obito. He rubbed the back of his head. "That's why they used me, to get you to drop your guard. And that's why Rin was along on the mission…"

"ROOT needed a lot of cleaning up once Danzo was gone," Obito said. "The Yondaime wasn't sure who to trust, so he turned to me." He shifted, drawing his legs in. "I became his shadow. Anyone who was left would doubtlessly hold a grudge. And there were plenty left; no one was sure who was part of the Foundation or not, so plenty went underground. Like those three: they must have been waiting for a team to lead them to Jiraiya for years."

"And they chose that time to do it?" Naruto asked. "Did they want Waterfall to… did they want that to happen?"

"They didn't care," Rin said. "Waterfall didn't matter to them; our mission even less. They just needed to kill Obito, and Jiraiya, and me. That was the kind of shinobi ROOT created. Weapons that would focus on the mission, and nothing else."

Team Seven digested that in silence, each of them absorbed in their own thoughts.

"You trained the Rain guys, right." Once again, Naruto was the one to break the silence. This time, his question was directed at Jiraiya. His father's master turned to face him, giving Naruto his full attention. "Do you think Itachi told us the truth? That Rain hired him to steal Fuu?"

Naruto's focus was clear, and Sakura couldn't blame him. He and Fuu had connected instantly; her being snatched away with such violence had hurt him the most of all.

Jiraiya scratched his beard. "Hmm." He grunted. "It doesn't make me look good to say, but I don't know."

He sat up. "I didn't train them to be better shinobi, like I did your pouty little Uchiha here." Obito protested, and Sakura felt something that could have been a laugh on any other day in her chest. "I saw three kids who were in a bad situation and tried to give them the tools to get out of it. Power, sure, enough to protect themselves, but also understanding."

"Understanding?" Naruto cocked his head.

"Understanding the consequences of that power," Jiraiya said. "What they could use it for besides creating more war, more hatred. I tried to teach them about Ninshu, the original shinobi creed. And when they founded the Akatsuki, I thought I'd succeeded, that they were trying to build something new."

Ninshu? Sakura had never heard the term before, but the way Rin and Obito looked at each other made it clear this was an old discussion.

Jiraiya blew out a breath. "But the past few years have made it clear that was just another failure."

"Don't be so dramatic," Rin rolled her eyes. The Sage gave her an unamused look.

"The Akatsuki that I killed Danzo to save is gone," he said. "It drowned in its own self importance." Sakura blinked, realizing the chain of ideology that had led Haku to her had started with the man in front of her. She was overcome with the urge to talk to him. This was the source of Haku's ideals, she thought. Jiraiya of the Sannin had passed his ideas onto the original Akatsuki, and they to Haku, and him to her. It was bizarre to consider the circle she was participating in, sitting in this room and trying to overcome the shock of the morning.

Jiraiya was still talking as Sakura tried to figure out what she would even say to him if she worked up the courage. "Rain has become just another great village spreading disaster after disaster. They accumulate power, debt, and hatred like there's no bottom to it, no consequence. Snatching up rogue ninja, giving them sanctuary and acting as a lightning rod for the other villages' spite, trying to recruit promising young shinobi…" He gave Sakura a loaded glance and frowned. "Because they're convinced that I gave them a mission, that that mission is more important than everything else in the world, they've become willing to do anything to accomplish it."

He sneered. "Why worry about creating more hatred, when you're going to solve it anyway?"

"What's Ninshu?" Sakura asked, deciding on her plan of attack.

"Sensei," Obito said with a warning glance. Jiraiya snorted.

"Your sensei doesn't want me infecting more young minds with my nonsense," he said with a wry look. "But you were already approached by Rain, weren't you Sakura? She's already been pricked."

"I haven't heard of that either though," Naruto said, scooting forward. "And you said you were gonna talk to me later anyway. How about you tell me?"

Sakura gave him an appreciative look. Jiraiya looked to Obito for apparent permission, and their sensei gave him a helpless shrug.

"I'm the one who named you, you know," Jiraiya said, and Naruto started back.

"What?" he asked. "My dad named me." He thought about it. "Hey, you're trying to change the subject!"

"I'm the one who gave your dad that name," Jiraiya said with a bit of mean glee. "And you're right about that. Do you want to know more about your name, or Ninshu?"

"How about you just tell me both?" Naruto said, crossing his arms and looking unimpressed.

"Tch. Greedy kid, aren't you," Jiraiya said. "Ninshu was the original shinobi creed."

"You already said that," Naruto grumbled, and the Sage laughed.

"My, you're just like your father. So impatient!" he said. Naruto perked up. "There's a legend that the first man to control chakra intended to spread Ninshu as a new way of living. He was called the Sage of the Six Paths, and he grew up in an age of terrible conflict." Jiraiya got a far off look, staring out the windows at the clear blue skies hanging over the village. "His idea was that with chakra people could become more compassionate, understand and help each other, instead of fighting and killing each other all the time. He traveled around, spreading that creed and trying to create lasting peace."

"But eventually, people's worse natures won out. Or at least, a couple peoples' did." The old man looked sad, far too sad for an old story. "Ninshu became Ninjutsu, a creed of violence, supremacy. And the problem with something like that is that once one person is practicing Ninjutsu, everyone around them only has two choices: take up Ninjutsu themselves, or have their life held at the whim of those who have."

"That's the way of ninja in the world today. No one can stand against them. To deal with ninja, more ninja are required. And so long as Ninjutsu is widely practiced, that will always be the case."

Obito leaned forward. "We've done this before, Jiraiya. It's already out of the bottle."

"I know," the man grunted. "That's why I'm looking for a new solution. When the old one doesn't work, you don't just give up. You innovate. The same process that created this new way could also destroy it."

Sakura wondered what Naruto and Sasuke were thinking: she couldn't read their faces. Sasuke was still staring at the carpet, while Naruto was tilting his head. Was he understanding what Jiraiya was saying, or was it just washing over him?

"I get why you're disappointed then," he said suddenly. Yeah, he understood, Sakura thought. "Cause what the Akautski became, they don't think like that. They want to change some things, like getting rid of Hanzo, but they don't want to change the whole thing. They're just more ninja, when you wanted to get rid of that kinda thing." He looked down, pursing his lips. "So you were lying earlier. You do know. You think they would have stolen Fuu."

Jiraiya gave him a silent stare, and Naruto looked up at him fearlessly.

"Is he usually like that?" the Sannin quietly asked Obito. Their sensei shook his head.

"It's been an interesting day," he said, rubbing his shoulder.

"I'm right, right?" Naruto asked.

"You're right," Jiraiya said. "Rain possessing a Bijuu is the natural next step for them." He frowned. "But hiring Itachi is not. Even if they have no compunction about accepting rogues into their ranks, Itachi is on another level of notoriety. They couldn't have just assumed that no one would find out; that would be too reckless of them."

"So… you think they'd do it, but you can't be sure Itachi wasn't lying," Naruto said. Jiraiya nodded.

"It could go either way. And either way, it's dangerous. If Rain has a Jinchuriki, they'll grow that much bolder. If Itachi, for some reason, stole a Bijuu for his own purposes…" Jiraiya laughed. "That might be even worse."

"How could we find out?" Sakura asked.

"Find Itachi," Obito said. Sasuke growled as their sensei continued. "Get hard intel out of Rain. Both of those are hard. That's the Hokage's business, not yours." Their sensei stood up, stretching. "Here's the hardest part of a mission like this," he said, a little grim. "You succeeded. Congratulations."

'This doesn't feel like success,' Sakura thought, tasting some of Takigakure's smoke and ash in her mouth.

'I don't ever want to feel like this again.'

###

Her mother was there when Sakura got home, and she wasn't sure how to feel about that. She crept through the door, wondering why she was there. The Hokage had returned and told them all to get some rest; there would be another debriefing later in the day, apparently, though Sakura wasn't sure what it could be for. What was there left to say?

She wasn't sure why she'd gone home. Probably because it had felt like she didn't have anywhere else to go, even though that wasn't true. That lack of direction was what caused her to sneak into her own house as though she were a criminal.

Her mother was reading a book on the couch in the living room, just off of the main entrance, and she didn't notice Sakura enter right away. On any other day, she would have marveled at that. Mebuki was a trained ninja, after all, and Sakura had never been able to sneak up on her before. Even if her mother was distracted, slipping past her would be an impressive benchmark.

But Sakura took a shaky breath, her concentration and confidence more fragile than ever, and her mother's head snapped up at the sudden sound. She spun, the book coming up in a ready position, and froze at the sight of her daughter.

"Sakura?" she asked, perplexed. "You're already back?"

Sakura stared, no words coming to mind. She'd thought for a second that her mom might hurl the book at her head. Chakra Thermodynamics and the New Ninjutsu. It was pretty thick and was bound in a dull blue leather. Maybe it would knock her out, if her mom threw it hard enough.

"What gives? It's only been a day. Did you forget something?" Mebuki frowned, rolling over the back of the couch and faultlessly coming to her feet. "What's with your face?"

Rin had helped, but the full-body bruise Itachi had given her was still there, Sakura realized. She'd already grown used to the constant dull ache, but she was still a little swollen, for sure.

Were they still not talking? Is that why she was mute? Sakura felt her lip quiver.

Her mother stepped closer. She could tell something was wrong.

"Sakura…" she said, and Sakura coughed.

"We succeeded in our mission," she said, surprised at how lifeless she sounded. Her mother jerked back, the same surprise written across her face. "So we're back."

"In one day? I heard it was a B-rank retrieval. They were that easy to find?" Mebuki crossed her arms.

'She thinks you're lying.'

Would her mother really think that, or was she lying to herself? Impossible to tell.

"One of the Sannin," Sakura said. Her mother laughed. "Jiraiya."

"Well, well done then!" she said. "But if that's the case, why're you fretting?"

'She thinks you're lying, and now she's being sarcastic.'

Sakura wished she could shut herself up, the way she'd been able to after the exam. She'd been able to shut that voice down after stabbing Gaara, after her anger had burned all other concern away. But now…

She felt herself tear up. Her mother's attitude shifted instantly; she stepped forward again, hands up. "Sakura," she said, tone firmer. "What happened?"

"I don't know if I'm even allowed to tell you," Sakura sobbed, her whole body shaking as she tried to control herself. Don't cry, what are you, still a little girl? Someone who fought Itachi Uchiha on top of a Tailed Beast shouldn't go home and cry about it. "The Hokage brought us back here-"

If her mother hesitated at that, she didn't show it. "If he sent you off knowing you might go home, he would have known you might talk about your mission. And he would have trusted your judgement." She gestured, curt, no room for argument or resistance. "Let's sit down and talk about it, okay?"

As soon as Sakura's back hit the couch, she started weeping. The whole story of their mission poured out of her in one long tidal wave, as though she were a breached dam. Tanzaku Gai, Takigakure, ROOT, Itachi. The only thing she was able to hold back was what Sasuke's brother had told them about the Uchiha. She was self-aware enough to know that that wasn't appropriate to talk about. Not yet, maybe not ever.

Her mother watched her the whole time with wide, compassionate eyes, interrupting infrequently, asking for clarification, comforting her, mouth pressed thinner and thinner. When Sakura was finished, they both sat there, silent but for Sakura's occasional gasping.

Eventually, her mother scooted over and put her arm around her. Sakura froze. Distantly, she thought that she'd treated both her parents poorly. That she needed to earn back their love, because she hadn't even apologized for screaming at them after the exam, in the hospital. That she'd been so quiet, not because she hated them but because she didn't know what to say, how to apologize, and she was sure that they would have perceived malice in that silence, because it was what she would have seen.

But Mebuki hugged her, practically crushed her to her side, and there wasn't any sense of needing to earn anything in her touch. Sakura's mother accepted her unconditionally, and that realization just made her cry more.

They stayed like that with no sense of time, until Sakura pulled back, and her mother let her go.

"Sakura," she said with a sad smile. "It seems you're doomed to an interesting life."

That made Sakura laugh, and the sound of her own laughter punctured the grey gauze that the morning had stretched over the world. It was a stupid, sudden thing, but she could breathe again, see color again, look to the future again. If she could laugh, she was still alive; she could move forward. It meant she could get back on her feet. It meant that this wasn't the end of the world.

It meant that if she found it within herself, she could save Fuu.

"I'm really sorry," she said. Her mother grinned. "I don't know why I got so mad, with you and dad. I don't know…"

"You're a teenager," her mom said. "You're going to do stupid things. So long as you recognize that, you'll be alright."

"Is he here? He was here yesterday," Sakura asked, and her mom nodded.

"He's in town. We'll do something later, okay?" she said. "For now, let's just stay here, alright? You've had a tough morning."

Sakura nodded, overcome by sudden exhaustion. She slumped against her mother's side, and Mebuki picked her book back up and began reading it in a low accented voice, the kind of voice she only used when reading aloud.

Chakra theory was normally a subject Sakura was fascinated by, but today she could barely keep her eyes opened. She slumped, the words dragging her down, and eventually fell asleep at her mother's side.

###

"Sasuke," Obito said, and Sasuke narrowed his eyes. "You can't rush into this."

"Oh?" Sasuke said. He didn't mean for it to come out as anything, but it manifested as a threat. Everything was a threat now. He felt like a blade without a handle. "Why not?"

"This is something that needs to be handled delicately," his sensei said. Obito had caught him on the way back home, and now they were talking above the street, away from curious ears.

"You're afraid it's true," Sasuke said. It was obvious to him. Obito had always been overcautious, and now his whole body was tense, waiting to spring into action. Even though the man was family, his sensei, his superior, Sasuke couldn't feel any respect for him right now. He couldn't respect anyone who'd try to stop him.

"Because I understand the consequences," he said. "Sasuke, if Itachi was right, if that gets out, the whole village would have no choice but to act. The military police would be dissolved, at best. The clan would be-"

"I don't care," Sasuke said bluntly. Obito's face went flat. They stared at each other, and for a mad second Sasuke thought he might strike him.

"You know I don't have much love for the clan," Obito said. His face twitched. "But I'm still saying this. Get it through your head." He took a step forward, and Sasuke stared defiantly up at him. "This isn't just about your brother anymore. There are a lot of people's lives on the line now; the rest of your family's."

His mouth pressed into a flat line. "You wouldn't be careless with them. That's not the kind of person you are."

Sasuke struggled, torn between a contrarian attack and the truth. He tried to breathe, to center himself, but that was impossible. Itachi had destroyed his center, and now he could only teeter from one extreme to the other.

"We'll go together then," he decided, switching from confrontary to concillarity on a dime. Obito raised an eyebrow at the change. Sasuke knew it wasn't like him, but he didn't know what he was anymore. "We're the only two who know. We'll go talk to mom together."

"That's what I was hoping," Obito said cautiously. "It'll be cleanest that way." He turned to go, gesturing for Sasuke to follow.

"But Obito," he asked, and his teacher paused. "What'll you do when she confirms it?"

It was an ugly thing to say, and Obito didn't bother responding. He whirled out of existence, and Sasuke was left alone in the middle of the village.

"Tch," he said to himself. "He'll beat me there."

He took a mild pace, knowing that no matter how fast he went his teacher would be waiting for him by the time he got to the compound. The journey, familiar and rote, now seemed to carry some extra import. All of the other clans lived close to Konoha's center, Sasuke thought, but the Uchiha and military police compound was far to the east, almost beyond the walls and isolated from everyone else.

In the past, he'd barely thought about it; of course the police needed a separate district. That was only natural. Now, it was strange. Why so separate, when they had been one of the founding clans? Why so distant, when it was their job to protect the village? If it had been the Uchiha's decision, that spoke to an unpleasant ego. And if it hadn't been…

Sasuke was so absorbed in his own thoughts that the village passed by in a flash. When someone called out his name, it took a moment for him to register it.

"Hey! Sasuke!" His name repeated once more. He looked back and found Kiba Inuzuka chasing him across the rooftops, running along an electrical cable that bridged a street.

He considered stopping. He had no idea why Kiba would be chasing him. The boy had a determined look on his face.

"Hinata said you were back!" the boy called, and Sasuke twitched. "It's only been a day! What gives?"

Right. The balm. The note.

Sasuke felt something in his heart calcify.

"Leave me alone," he said, coming to a stop but not turning around. He looked away before he could see Kiba's face shift, staring ahead. His home was only a couple miles away.

"What the hell?" Kiba called. Sasuke heard his shoes scuff against the concrete of the roof behind him as the boy came to a stop. "What's wrong with you?"

"I don't have time," Sasuke said. He couldn't control his tone; each word came out blunt and cold, like a hammerstrike. "Go away."

"Jeez, what crawled up your ass?" Kiba said as he approached. Sasuke twitched. He didn't want the boy to get closer. "Hinata asked me to check on you. She said-"

"I don't want anyone checking on me," Sasuke spat out. He spun, and Kiba took a step back. His classmate looked shocked; what did he look like right now, Sasuke wondered. The world was painted in every color under the sun with invisible energy. His Sharingan had activated without him even thinking about it. "And even if I did, that's not her job." He took a step forward, jabbing a finger at Kiba's chest. "Go away. And tell her not to spy on me again."

Kiba considered him, a grimace gradually twisting his face. "Asshole," he growled. "I don't know why she bothers caring."

Sasuke stared at him. He didn't feel a thing beyond some disgusted pride at keeping such a cold face despite everything. After a moment, Kiba's eyes narrowed, and he turned.

"See ya," he grunted. Sasuke didn't watch him leave. He just went on his way, back towards his home. He couldn't feel the sun on his face and back; everything seemed cold and listless. Nothing changed when he arrived at the compound.

There were two Uchiha at the front gate: Eiji and Ari. Sasuke knew all of his clansmens' names, even if he wasn't friends with most of them. Eiji was an older man with a gray toothbrush mustache, a member of the military police; Ari was a young girl, only five years old and, unusually for an Uchiha, had long blonde hair. She'd been born after the massacre; one of her parents was from outside the clan.

Watching the entrance was something all Uchiha took shifts on, even if it was only a formality. Sasuke had considered it a fun tradition, but now like everything else it took on an ominous aspect.

"Sasuke!" Eiji called, and Sasuke gave him a nod. "Back so soon! As expected of you!"

Sasuke came to a stop before the both of them, glancing between the two. Ari gave him a shy grin, peeking out from beneath her bangs. "Has Obito come through?" he asked, and she shook her head.

"Uncle Obito? We didn't see him," she said. A lot of the younger Uchiha called Obito that. They hadn't had time to take in the rest of the clan's ambivalence towards him.

Had that been because he was the Yondaime's student?

"He might have popped up inside though," Eiji said. He scratched his chin and laughed. "You know how that ghost is."

"Of course," Sasuke said, rushing past them into the compound. They gave him a quizzical look; he was getting good at ignoring those.

His Sharingan was still one, he realized. It felt like he couldn't turn it off. It was usually as simple as flipping a switch, channeling the chakra from his core to his eyes; now, even that felt like a live wire that he couldn't dare touch.

He darted through the streets, afraid of meeting anyone else. Cold concrete, imposing architecture. Privacy, intimidation, and security over all. More pieces for the puzzle his mind couldn't stop working. Within the minute, he was home.

True to his prediction, Obito was already there. He and Sasuke's mother were seated on mats on opposite ends of a table on the back porch. When Sasuke pushed through the final door, they were locked in a silent staring match, and barely seemed to notice his arrival.

"Mom," Sasuke said, and Mikoto shifted to glance at him. A smile lit up her face.

"Sasuke-" she started to say. He cut her off, looking to Obito.

"Did you say anything?" he asked. His teacher frowned and crossed his arms. He'd found the time to scrub away the dried blood on his face.

"Not yet," he said, and Mikoto looked back to him, still smiling. "But she knows we have to talk."

"Itachi was there," Sasuke said without preamble. His mother nodded.

"Obito told me," she said. "I'm glad you're okay-"

"He told me the truth," Sasuke said, and his mother's smile disappeared so quickly that it was like it had never been there. Her burn scars shifted, flattening out, but the fury Sasuke always felt at seeing them refused to make itself known. "Or his version of it. About the massacre."

He stood up, trying to look older, wiser, less confused and angry, and failed miserably. Even with his mother seated, he couldn't delude himself as to the gap between them. "He told me to ask you."

Mikoto considered him, and then Obito, and then Sasuke again. The comfortable silence of his house dragged itself out into something dreadful. She stood up, closing her eyes.

"We should have this conversation somewhere else," she said. Sasuke's heart broke. He'd still been in denial, deep down.

"That's not what you were supposed to say," he said, feeling his whole face twitch. Was he going to cry? Twice in one day? Was he that pathetic? "You were supposed to say-"

"Whatever he told you, it was a lie?" Mikoto asked gently. Sasuke couldn't even nod. "Let's go, both of you. I figured this would happen someday."

She led them out of the house, to the very edges of the Uchiha's territory. Through the forests, which grew thicker and darker. No one had maintained these woods in decades, and once you were a hundred feet into them, it felt as though you were a hundred miles away from civilization.

None of them said anything for the duration of the journey. After several minutes, they arrived at their destination.

Sasuke recognized it; this was Nakano Shrine, a small building with two wings and a tall red torii gate washed out from years of neglect at the entrance. It was the southernmost property belonging to the Uchiha, and had never been used as long as he remembered. There were other shrines in the compound for people to think of their family, ancestors, and whatever spirits they deemed worthy of paying respect to, and after the massacre there hadn't been enough people to bother using the more distant buildings.

"Inside," his mother gestured, sliding open one of the front doors. She waited until Obito and Sasuke were in and then slipped it shut behind them. The moment it closed, Sasuke felt a twinge. Just like the safehouse in Waterfall, there was a barrier around this shrine, though it wasn't nearly as strong.

"Mikoto-" Obito said, and she shushed him, gesturing to the east wing of the shrine.

"The seventh mat," she said. Obito quirked an eyebrow. There were dozens of mats lining the shrine, facing towards graves, idols, and empty space. "Lift it up for me, would you?"

Obito hesitated, and Sasuke didn't have any patience. He ran ahead, kicking the heavy mat aside. It slammed into the wall with a dusty thump. Instead of more scuffed hardwood below it, there was a heavy stone slab, as dark as obsidian. Sasuke tapped it with his foot; it felt like stainless steel, but looked like nothing he'd ever seen before. There was a three-tomoe Sharingan carved into the center.

"Stand back," Mikoto said. She began running through hand-seals with slow deliberation. Ten, fifteen, twenty, more seals than Sasuke had ever seen for a single jutsu. When she finished the twenty-third, there was a pop, a crackle of ozone: the slab lifted up in defiance of gravity, settling on its side and staying upright.

A barrier had broken, Sasuke thought. The slab was only the obvious part of it. Below the dark stone, there was a staircase descending into a inky black that even his Sharingan couldn't pierce.

"Down," Mikoto said matter of factly, leading the way down the stairs. There were about seventy of them, and they were steep; when they came to an end, depositing them into a small flat room, Sasuke was sure they'd gone down about forty feet. His mother snapped her fingers, and the room lit up, torches that were fueled by chakra instead of oil around the perimeter springing to life.

He and Obito looked around, taking in the mysterious basement. Far above them, the stone seal slammed shut. Sasuke felt the hair on his neck stand up as the powerful chakra barrier snapped back into place. The room was larger than he'd first thought; about thirty feet wide and fifty long, covered in mats and the odd chair. At the end of it was a stone tablet set on a pedestal.

"Impressive," Obito said. "I couldn't find this place even with the Kamui."

"This place was created by Madara Uchiha," Mikoto said, walking forward and taking a seat in the center of the room. "There's nowhere in the village that's more secure."

She looked at them and gave a patient gesture, waiting for them to sit as well. Obito did, but Sasuke couldn't bring himself to. He stared at the two adults, mute. Now that he was here, he had no idea what to say.

"So," Mikoto eventually said when it became clear he was struck dumb. "What did Itachi tell you?"

"He…" Sasuke faltered. It had been so easy to be angry and determined with Obito, but this was his mother looking at him so sincerely as she waited for his answer. All his courage dried up, and he was left with a sore throat and tired eyes. Surely she already knew, right? Why else would they have come down here, a place so secret even Obito didn't know about it?

"He told Sasuke that this was a clan of traitors," Obito said. He didn't ask for permission, but Sasuke could see he was cursed with the same curiosity and dread. He and Obito had been feeling the same, they thought. His teacher was just better at hiding it. "That you and Fugaku and the rest of the leadership, had been planning a coup, intending to supplant the Hokage."

He sat back. "So please, Mikoto. Tell us he was lying."

Sasuke's mother frowned, took a deep breath. Paused. Shook her head.

'No.'

"He put it in an unfortunate way," she decided.

"You're not denying it?" Sasuke muttered. Something snapped. "It's unfortunate?"

"Mikoto…" Obito said. "You're not serious, right?"

"No, she's serious," Sasuke bit out before his mother could respond. "Look at her." He started pacing. "You were planning a coup, and it made Itachi decide to kill you, and that's unfortunate?"

"Do you want to know what happened, or do you want to be indignant?" Mikoto asked. How could she be so calm? His mother has always kept her composure, but this was something else. Sasuke's hands curled into fists. "I doubt Itachi told you the whole story."

"If you won't deny the most important part, what's the point of the rest?!" Sasuke shouted, coming to a stop. "Did you think we'd sympathize with you?!" He pointed at her, his finger shaking. "You've been thinking this would happen for a while; did you fantasize that I'd be on your side? Is that why you kept telling me Itachi was after my eyes?! Hoping I wouldn't question him?! That I'd just accept that my brother was insane?!" He laughed. "No point in thinking about it anymore! That would have been nice for you!"

"Sasuke," Mikoto said with a shake of her head. "I was not trying to manipulate you. We didn't tell you…" She paused. "Or you, Obito, we didn't tell either of you the truth to protect you."

"The same thing that Itachi said…" Obito said. "If anyone found out, we'd all be under suspicion."

"Exactly," Mikoto implored, spreading her hands. Sasuke shook, not understanding why Obito was as calm as his mother. It was like they were discussing training instead of treason.

"And Sasuke, we suspected that Itachi knew about our plan from what he said while he murdered your father." Mikoto said it so matter of factly that Sasuke almost didn't notice her flinch. "But that motive alone never matched up with his actions." His mother's voice was calm and melodic, and Sasuke couldn't help but listen as she spoke, desperate for some clarity.

"Itachi murdered several Uchiha that night that were not sympathetic to the 'coup,' as you'd call it." Mikoto drummed her fingers against the mat, lost in the past. "Including Shisui. He stole one of Shisui's eyes, leaving only one for Obito. And Sasuke, though you probably don't remember this, he attempted to use his Tsukuyomi on you. You were so young… if the Yondaime had not saved you, who knows what would have happened."

She sat up, frowning. "He had already achieved his Mangekyo before the massacre, but did not tell us, and no one close to him had died to our knowledge. I concluded long ago that there were additional motivations that made your brother suspect. He was your age, Sasuke. When you're that young, things can't be that simple."

Her calm look slipped away for the first time and revealed gut-wrenching sorrow. "That was why I told you what I did. I'm sorry."

Sasuke didn't have anything to say; he didn't know if he could trust a word of it. Once more, Obito stepped into the gap.

"So Shisui was against your scheme?" he said mildly, and Mikoto laughed.

"Of course," she said. "However, your brother was brought in early on because of his Mangekyo."

"But I wasn't. And Shisui was the picture of loyalty," Obito said thoughtfully. "You couldn't have believed he'd go along with whatever you were planning."

"To explain that, perhaps I should explain the 'scheme,' as you called it," Mikoto said with a somber look. "If you don't mind."

Obito nodded, and looked at Sasuke. He still didn't know what to do, so he nodded in turn. Maybe knowing his mother's truth as well would help him understand his brother's. Maybe then he'd feel less lost.

"It started with money," Mikoto said, settling in, "but it became much more than that. And ironically, it was all born from Konoha's prosperity."

"It's no secret that the Leaf has enjoyed a period of never before seen peace and wealth. That started just before you were born, Sasuke, so you've never known anything else. The Third War pitted the Land of Fire against the world, and in the end, we came out on top. That was thanks in part to the Uchiha, of course; Shisui and Fugaku, and of course you Obito, you were just some of the legendary shinobi whose accomplishments helped Konoha dictate the terms of trade and borders that put us in such a strong position. But the Uchiha have always been pigeonholed, ever since they were given the honor of the duty of military police by the Nidaime."

A bitter smile.

"So, despite those incredible accomplishments the name of the Uchiha did not grow more famous, in or out of the village. Fugaku was not the man who had almost single-handedly won the Battle of Ten Rivers: he was still just the head of the KMPF. When it came time to pick the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze was picked over two of the Sandaime's own students and my own husband. A good choice, to be sure, but not the one the clan wanted or expected."

"Not this again…" Obito muttered, and Mikoto frowned.

"It's important," she said softly. "Don't you think it's strange that of the four Hokage, two were the Senju's leaders, and then their student, and then their student's student? The Uchiha joined with the Senju to create Konoha, and their achievements have always been just as incredible." She smiled. "Perhaps moreso, since we remain where they have died out. Isn't it interesting then, that there has never been an Uchiha Hokage?"

"So the clan made the same mistake that Madara did all those years ago," Obito sneered as Sasuke struggled to keep up. For some reason he hadn't expected this kind of lecture. "Throwing away their loyalty because they were dissatisfied with the power they already had."

"No," Mikoto said. "As with most things, Madara had the right idea, but he was a fool. His hatred of the Senju blinded him to what he could have achieved even as Hashirama's right hand man. We did not hate the village, didn't even really resent it. We just wanted to make it better, in a way that the Yondaime never could. Konoha was and is the most prosperous Hidden Village in the world, and Minato Namikaze was content to maintain that status quo."

"What we wanted to do was seize the advantage."

"In peacetime, as usual, the budget of the military police swelled. With less enemies without, the village focused its efforts within, and gave us the wealth and influence to accomplish its vision. Before, we had always taken this without question, but now, it seemed silly. Money thrown after money, when we already had more than enough. The Hokage and the village wanted us to accomplish more, but we'd reached the limit of our mandate. There were no more laws that could be tightened up, no point in training more officers. We were too good at our job to continue on our current path."

"So naturally, Fugaku and I looked at expanding that mandate."

"There was nothing in Konoha's history to draw from for inspiration. What we wanted to do wasn't in the playbook, as it were. So sure we could do more than maintain a holding pattern, we looked outwards beyond the village for inspiration. And we found it…"

Mikoto grimaced. "In the Nation of Rain."

Sasuke twitched.

'It always comes back to Rain.'

"Rain was a minor village, but it contained a small and powerful cadre of ninja. That small group expanded its influence and recruitment tools and, with several charismatic leaders, took from the country several of the duties that fell to the Daimyo to enforce; its borders, its laws outside of the village, the very sovereignty that defined it. It transformed it into a nation, and swelled in power and prestige, gobbling up everyone willing to join it and transforming from a minor village into something that the Five Great Villages had no choice but to pay attention to."

Mikoto smiled. Itachi's sly look had come from her, not their dour father. "Does any of that sound familiar?"

"So…" Sasuke said quietly. "You wanted to do the same."

"We did not want to depose the Daimyo," Mikoto said. "Or the Hokage, for that matter. That was too dramatic, and would draw retribution without a doubt. But we did want to replace the Hokage with someone who would stand up to the Daimyo: someone who would be bold enough to expand the duties of the military police beyond the walls of Konoha. With the Land of Fire under our aegis, everyone would prosper. The country would grow safer, the village more respected, and the Uchiha more powerful. Everyone would have won."

"You sound like you really believed this would have worked," Obito noted, and Mikoto nodded. "But it's absurd. There were less than three hundred military police, even before Itachi killed so many. They couldn't possibly have covered the whole country."

"It's absurd to think that we could have replaced all of Fire's law enforcement," Mikoto laughed. "But that was never the plan; we simply wanted the authority to act alongside them. Outside of Konoha, Uchiha are just glorified guard dogs; they have no legal authority. If that had changed, our clan would finally have the power it had earned. We would have been a national organization at the right hand of the Daimyo; the influence Konoha could have accrued was unthinkable."

"And in that language..." Obito said. "If Shisui had believed you really were doing it for Konoha…" He mulled that, apparently considering what his brother was really capable of.

"What's the difference between deposing and replacing the Hokage? It's semantics," Sasuke asked, shaking his head. He didn't know or care anything about law enforcement. He'd never been interested in joining the KMPF.

"How politely you ask, that's all," his mother said. "In the end, none of this could happen until Fugaku became Hokage. To accomplish that, there were a couple methods available to us. All of them hinged on the Mangekyo available to the clan. One was Shisui using his Kotoamatsuki to force Minato to step down-"

"He'd never," Obito grunted.

"You're right," Mikoto nodded. "But that left our less elegant options, and Shisui knew that. I think he was probably going down a similar path to Itachi's purported one, in the end; feeling like he had to decide between us and the village."

"And he never told me?" Obito asked. Mikoto frowned.

"I couldn't claim to know why. Perhaps he was worried you'd be assassinated. The military police knew it was playing with fire, and it knew your weaknesses before you took your brother's eye. It's not inconceivable."

"What were the other options?" Sasuke asked. Something clicked. "They were what Itachi knew, weren't they. He told me that you and father were going to go after Naruto's mom. That you were going to take the Kyuubi from her to defeat the Hokage."

Mikoto bit her lip. "Your brother could only ever see the worst in people. Perhaps that's what made him such an incredible ninja. Kushina was and is one of my closest friends. Killing her was never part of the equation."

She shifted, her head dropping a little. "But the Beast inside her… Fugaku's Mangekyo could control it. He had the strength of will, and the experience. He'd faced a Tailed Beast before; he was confident."

"So you would have turned Kushina into a slave." Obito's voice was a knife. "A bargaining chip to force sensei to back down."

Silence for five, ten, fifteen seconds. Sasuke stared at his mother, eyes growing narrower. He could feel his heart beating in his chest, crushed by the lack of sound, her stillness.

"Yes," she eventually said, so quietly that they had to strain to hear. "She is a Jinchuriki; it was always her job to serve the village at all costs. If that meant being used as a bargaining chip against her husband… that was just part of her duty."

Obito's hand shot out and he seized Mikoto by the collar, dragging her forward. His eyes were wide, Mangekyo active.

"Hey-!" Sasuke said. His sensei glanced at him, and he froze. The man looked inhuman.

"It would have been a pleasant dream for her," Mikoto said, fearlessly staring into Obito's eyes. "She wouldn't have known anything else."

Obito seethed, his grip tightening.

"You don't regret it," he spat, actually spat, and Mikoto didn't flinch as his spit landed on her burned cheek. "Even after losing half the clan, your husband, your damn face, you don't look back on it with anything but some sad satisfaction."

"Would you prefer I cry?" Mikoto asked. Her composure refused to crack. Her hands were still held in her lap, and despite Obito dragging her forward her posture was still perfect. "Wail about how unfair it was? How much I miss my husband, my son, your brother, all the others that died? We are Konoha's greatest clan. It was always our duty to make it as strong as possible. This was the best way."

"You said that Madara was the fool, but from where I stand you're the real idiots," Obito growled. "You were so sure that sensei wouldn't agree with your plan. Were you really so greedy for an Uchiha to be Hokage? Fugaku, Shisui, or even Itachi, their time would have come-!"

"In years," Mikoto said steadfastly, "when the opportunity for Konoha to truly crush all the other villages would be long gone. Minato is happy to kill without thought, but he has no stomach for changing the world. You call it patience, I call it missing the window. If you stand still in a fight, you are not patient, you are waiting to be stabbed."

She pursed her lips. "And note that you didn't list your name there, Obito. You were our greatest hope for Hokage. You were strong. You were famous. The prize student of the Yondaime, the most powerful Mangekyo ever recorded. If you had stepped up, even asked your teacher, no one would have questioned you."

She started reaching up with one hand.

"But you were too weak to recognize the opportunity."

Obito flinched, and Mikoto gently pried his hand from her collar. "Your failure, your lack of confidence, was one of the main factors that sent the clan down this path. But now, none of that matters. Whether Itachi assumed the worst and decided only he could be trusted to solve the problem his family had become or due to some other motivation, the result was the same. We wanted to empower Konoha, and in return he slaughtered us. That is why I can no longer call him Sasuke's brother."

She looked at him with a grimace. "No son of mine could have been so stupid."

Obito pushed her away with a disgusted look, and Mikoto almost toppled onto her back, barely catching herself with one hand. "You can deny it if you want, but you would be the fool," she said. "Hate me if you will for having the strength to bring Konoha to the top, but this will always be the Uchiha's fate." She stabbed out at the stone slab at the end of the room. "It's all there, our history and our destiny! If you turn away from that, you don't belong in this clan!"

"I have nothing to say to you," Obito snarled. His arm shot out towards Sasuke. "Sasuke. We're leaving."

Sasuke hesitated, looking between his sensei and his mother. His eyes wandered towards the stone slab at the back of the room. What could be on it that could make his mother say something so absolute?

"Now," Obito said, and Sasuke resolved to settle it later. His blood was pounding through his head, deafening him. Everything had turned out so much worse than he'd thought. He stepped forward and took Obito's hand.

The hidden room beneath Nakano Shrine whirled away, and they were suddenly alone within the Kamui.

Obito looked around at his world and sighed. Sasuke looked up at him, his whole body shaking with unspent adrenaline. Obito glanced down at him, and closed his eyes.

"Fuck."

###

AN: Had an uncomfortable conversation with your family lately?

Happy New Year!
 
I really do like the way so many objectively bad things not happening; Obito not dying and becoming Madara's slave, Naruto's parents surviving, Sasuke having a mum and a lot of his clan still alive, has led to other objectively bad stuff happening. Really well done Ser. Something most fans don't think of is that if Naruto and Sasuke never have all the bad stuff happen to them, they may never find any reason to try and change the world. Madra and Tobi too, may have been evil, but they were trying to change the world. Now it seems like everyone is content with the way things are. Full of violence, pain and death.

Brilliant chapter. Mikoto has agency, she wasn't dragged, she didn't even do it out of "duty" to her husband, she weighed the options alongside him and they chose their path together, and she doesn't regret choosing it, only that she failed. Being married myself, that's very realistic and actually healthy thing for a couple to do. It also leaves possibility for her now, we don't know what she's capable of, but it's more than "passive wallflower mum". She's a Jounin, and you've done a great job showing her as smart, capable and powerful, all without her even doing a jutsu.

You know, sometimes I think of writing my own fan fiction. Then I read stuff like this and just feel like giving up. Highest praise.
 
Tfw the chapters so good that by the time your finished reading 10K words you go "wait thats it?"

But yes, very lovely chapter. Saskue desperately trying to process all of this and getting repeated gut punches is really quite something. I was a little surprised that team 7 told Obito and Rin about what Itachi said. But, in hindsight, they really don't have any reason not too. Well, beyond not wanting to talk about such an incredibly weighty bombshell. At this point, I don't really know whats going to happen to the Uchiha now. Or, at least, Mikoto. I've little doubt that is Sauske wasn't there those two might've gone at it.

Also, its nice to know how ROOT got taken down. Jiraiya doing it to protect his students is very fitting. As is, evidenced by Jiraiya having only one eye, that Danzo didn't go down easy. You've made the very tired and familiar road that is the Uchiha massacre and made it into something thats kept me on the edge of my seat. Seeing Itachi and Mikotos views on it...its no longer so cut and dry. Though, tbh, it does make Mikoto feel more slimey. But hey, shes a ninja like the rest of 'em.

I think another thing that might be a gut punch to poor old Sauske is that Itachi did warn him about their mother trying to justify herself....while in the middle of trying to justify himself. Hm.
 
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