When we were young and brave
We fought to save the one thing that we loved
We took a sacred vow
And signed our names in blood
And through it all, we kept on shining
We fought the doubt and faced the pain
We built it up from dust and ashes
To cheat the odds and rise again
~Lynyrd Skynyrd; Through It All
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I flew out the doors of the training hall.
There was shouting behind me, but I ignored it, dropping my training weight seals, and leaping upwards. I hit the side of the Academy, bounced to the roof, angled myself towards the mountain and pulled.
The world around me hazed with the lines of body flicker, and I dropped out of it in full sprint.
One step. Two.
And Sasuke was beside me with the whooshing of air that suggested he'd used a body flicker of his own.
"Slow down," he said lowly. "They can't keep up."
I grimaced, aware that Naruto couldn't match either of us for speed. Yet my feet didn't slow.
We had evacuated the kids to the mountain. We'd sent them there. And it wasn't safe at all.
One step. Two. My toes brushed the edge of the roof and I pulled, open air the only thing beneath me as I barrelled, uncontrolled, to the mountain.
I felt… compelled. Driven. We had to fix this before it became a disaster.
"Hey wait up!" Naruto's voice drifted faintly after us. "Ah! Summoning Jutsu!"
He sailed over our heads, riding on the back of a toad bigger than he was.
"Or that works," Sasuke conceded, matching me stride for stride. We hit the stairs, taking them four-five at a time, flying more than we were running.
Naruto was waiting for us, sliding off the back of his ride and peering into the dark tunnels of the mountain.
"Which way do we go?" He asked, an anxious curl twisting the corners of his eyes.
"Send out clones," I said. My breathing was a little too harsh, I'd pushed too hard. It didn't matter. "Lots of them. Tell the teachers that the evacuation drill is over."
They could probably return to the Academy if the tags had been deactivated. Better than telling them to go elsewhere and finding that that was just as dangerous.
"Start a branching search pattern," Sasuke added, hard on the heels of my comment. "Split a new clone at every intersection. We need to find Genno."
Naruto nodded, face set with concentration, and clapped his hands together. Orange spilled into the mountain, each and every face just as determined.
I could still feel the clock ticking.
If he knew- if he knew we knew- how long do we have- if he knows-
I closed my eyes, ignoring the pounding of my heart and whirling of my mind and tried to feel. Where was he?
There were too many-
I couldn't-
Naruto was like a river of light, blanking out everything around him. There was the low humming of a hundred children, all packed together. There was the village behind us, the familiar shapes of Shikamaru and Chouji almost out of reach. There were blurry smudges in the mountain, and oh, of course there were defences against sensors.
The muscles in my neck bunched and strained with tension. I wanted to shout. I wanted to stamp my feet.
I couldn't find him.
"The weakest points are going to be the places that people have to access frequently," Sasuke said bluntly, staring at the mountain with steely eyes. "Archive Library. The main entrances. The-"
"The construction," I said, words spilling out before I'd consciously put the information together. It seemed like my brain was being cut out of the decision making process, left quivering in the corner like the useless lump of flesh it was. I turned sideways and stared up at the half completed face of the Fifth Hokage. My lips pulled back over my teeth, annoyance at missing the blinding fucking obvious.
We dashed up the side of the mountain, feet sticking easily to the rock. Sasuke took point, eyes spinning Sharingan red to search for traps. There was nothing, and we landed lightly on the scaffolds set up around the sculpture.
"Where's the entrance?" Naruto asked, bouncing around the small working area. The wooden planks bounced underfoot as he went. "There has to be one, right?"
There was, probably. Somewhere for the workers to get out here, if they weren't ninja. Somewhere to store tools, to take a break.
I pressed my hand flat against the stone. It was hard and gritty, rough beneath my palms.
Everything I could sense was blurry, like looking through a frosted glass door. But less so here than it had been further along the path, rough and unfinished. The construction did nothing for the security of the things behind it. It wasn't much, but it was the difference between being able to tell 'someone' from 'nothing'…
"We've got an entrance," I said, and held my hands out towards the two of them.
We didn't have time to waste.
Sasuke hesitated a half beat of a second, eyes searching mine for assurance that I could do this. Then he stepped in close, arm wrapping like a steel band around my waist. I pulled Naruto in close and slammed us into the rock.
It was like fighting – an end and goal in sight and knowledge of how to get there, but needing the strength and will to do it. The stone was hard and unyielding, bitter and rough, clamping down around me when I needed it to give. It was a struggle. Not only was the stone so hard and difficult to move through, I was trying to drag two extra people with me. I'd never done that before.
By the time we surged out the other side, my lungs were working like bellows, trying to draw in oxygen. I was dizzy and sweating. My chakra levels had once again dropped to an almost alarming low.
Fast, yes. Efficient, not really. And the Earth Walking jutsu probably didn't do anything good for the integrity of the rock. Well, whatever. We were inside now.
"Genno!" Naruto exclaimed, pointing at the man waiting for us.
He spun around. "Ah, Konoha's number one most unpredictable ninja indeed! I led you here every step of the way, yet you still surprised me by finding another entrance." He eyed the wall behind us, which didn't, in any way imaginable, qualify as an 'entrance'.
Sasuke shifted his grip on me, lowering me so I could kneel instead of letting me simply collapse.
I wasn't done, not by a long shot, not really. But we didn't lose anything by letting Genno think I was. I tucked my chin close to my chest, peering at him only from beneath the fringe of my hair.
"Old man, you've gotta tell me that this is all a bit mistake," Naruto pleaded. "You didn't take those blueprints or set all those traps, right?"
I surreptitiously glanced around the room – cave? It was all hewn stone, did that count? – and made note of what I could see. There was a tripline trap on the entrance, a set of scattered tool boxes and a battered old trunk sealed with three explosive notes near the outer wall. There was a suspicious looking depression on the ground about a meter in front of Genno, like stone had been carved away. Maybe some kind of pressure activated trap, or maybe there was something buried there.
Be careful, be careful. We'd sprung the trap. Now we needed to survive it.
"Oho, so you found all my traps as well, did you?" Genno smiled. "You've surprised me again."
Naruto looked devastated.
"But why?" he demanded.
"I suppose you've never heard of the Kagero Village," Genno said thoughtfully.
My shadow was starting to creep along the walls. I didn't have the chakra to stretch it far, or hold it for long, but if he was distracted, then maybe he wouldn't notice it and I would be able to connect.
"I have, actually," I said, voice rough. "It was a small town in the Land of Mountains. It wasn't a Hidden Village, but it was home to at least one clan of shinobi and was considered close to one. It was destroyed sometime during the Second War."
Those kind of mid-way villages didn't really exist anymore. There were clans out there, certainly, ones that had decided against joining a Hidden Village, though even those were a dying breed. But as far as villages went, you were either a Hidden Village, or you had nothing to do with shinobi.
"That is correct," Genno mused. "It was nearly thirty years ago now. Our villages were at war with each other, you know. Or rather, we were on opposite sides of the war. I don't imagine my home was large enough to truly bother the Hidden Leaf. For good reason – one night, our ninja were lured out with a false alarm, and we returned to find our village burning to the ground. There were very few survivors, and they unanimously told us that it was the work of Leaf shinobi."
He didn't sound angry. Just distanced and dispassionate.
"The leader of the attack was your very own Hokage," he added. "Tsunade of the Senju was a name to be feared, in those days. Tsunade the Mountain Crusher, they called her. She was like an avalanche, fierce and unstoppable."
Naruto's face was stricken.
Beside me, Sasuke shifted lightly on his feet. "And what does that have to do with anything?"
"We could hardly let that go, could we?" Genno said mildly. "I was dispatched with the most critical mission of my career – to make Hidden Leaf regret what they did. I took it gladly too, for my wife and son, who both perished in the fire and ruin. For three months, I wandered this village, infiltrating it, placing explosive tags at every corner. It was different then – you had less security, fewer Anbu in the village, once I made it inside I could almost do as I pleased. I was supposed to detonate the tags while the rest of our forces attacked from the outside. We would have crushed you."
"Thirty years ago," I said. Obviously it hadn't happened. But were those still the same tags now? Had they been sitting there, waiting, for thirty goddamn years?
That was almost more horrifying than the rest of the story he was telling us.
"Yes. But it wasn't to be. While we were weak, we were attacked again, and this time there were no survivors. So my mission could never be completed."
"So why come back now, after all this time?" Naruto asked, aggrieved. His hands were clenching into fists at his side. "Is it just to fulfil your stupid mission?"
"Well," Genno replied. "It just seemed like such a waste. I thought they should be put to use."
My shadow crossed the last few inches, sneaking between two toolboxes and grounding itself on his shadow.
"Shadow Poss-" I began to say-
- And there was a sudden, blinding flash of light, so bright it was hot, searing straight into my eyes. I screamed, jerking backwards, arm flying up to cover my face. There had been no warning, no chance to turn away or protect myself.
Chakra activated trap, I realised numbly. I'd set it off with my chakra, not Genno. He knew who we were and what we could do, obviously. He was ready for us.
I flung myself sideways on the ground, moving to avoid any possible counterattack that I could no longer see to avoid.
I could feel the rushing of air, and the clattering of metal, and knew that I had only narrowly escaped.
My eyes were watering, and when I opened them, everything was dim and blurry. Spots danced in front of me. I squeezed them shut again.
Someone slapped their hand against the floor. "Motherfucker," Sasuke hissed.
Naruto staggered forward. "Genno!" he yelled. His chakra surged in a familiar pattern, ready to bring forth an army of clones.
Belatedly, I remembered the pressure plate. Would Naruto have noticed it? Would he remember to avoid it? The more people in the room, the more chance that someone would set the traps off.
Shit.
I threw a brace of kunai towards Genno, didn't wait for confirmation that they had hit or been deflected and moved sideways, clamping my hands over Naruto's and resisting his initial, instinctive move to throw me off. "Stop! You'll set off the traps!"
Sasuke was moving now, and I cracked my eyes open to watch him leap nimbly towards Genno, kunai in hand. His eyes were flat black, and there was a gleam of wetness on his cheeks, which indicated that Sharingan and flash bombs didn't mix.
Naruto stilled, and dropped his hands. "Crap," he said.
"Water Style; Water Bullet Jutsu," Sasuke said, shooting off a series of small, incredibly fast projectiles. Genno ducked and it wasn't until the first struck the wall behind him with a metallic clatter that I realised they weren't just water – like his Phoenix Flower Jutsu, they hid shuriken in their middles.
I was glad he hadn't used that one actually. Right now, light sounded like a bad idea.
"Oho, you're clever," Genno said approvingly, and launched a kunai not towards us, but the roof.
There was the slight wuffing of a spring releasing, a trap I hadn't even seen, and a set of weights were launched down, separating to reveal a net just in time to tangle dangerously around Sasuke, too fast to really be dodged at close range. If he'd had his Sharingan, he might have stood a chance, but he didn't.
He'd be okay, but he was also out of the fight for a few seconds.
Naruto leapt forward, thankfully over the pressure plate, and filled the gap that Sasuke had left. I circled around, attacking from the opposite side.
I was wary about trying Shadow Possession again, after last time.
"Are you serious?" Naruto cried. "You'd destroy this whole village just so everyone will know what you did 30 years ago?"
He landed an ugly uppercut to Genno's stomach that made the old man double over. I took the opening, with a snap kick to the back of his knees, and only narrowly missed with a knife hand strike to the back of his neck that would have made game over.
Genno coughed and pulled on something hidden in his sleeves. Thick purple smoke billowed out of his shirt, filling the room.
I held my breath, in case it was poison, and managed to hook my fingers into the back of Genno's jacket.
He rolled sideways, and I was pulled off balance, not anchored firmly enough to resist. My arm twisted and I had to let go.
There was a grinding sound, of a pressure plate depressing, and then Genno's chakra vanished with a replacement jutsu, leaving a log of wood to be tackled furiously by Naruto.
There was a heavy crash of stone, and the air inside the room seemed even heavier and more claustrophobic than before.
"Door's locked," Sasuke said tersely, having thrown off the trap. The smoke was thinning enough for me to see him, and I could make out the crumpled shape of his fuuma shuriken wedged underneath the stone slab blocking the entrance. He'd been fast enough to try and stop it closing, but not fast enough to escape.
"I'm going to Rasengan it," Naruto said, clenching his fists. "I can't believe him. That old man-"
"Wait!" I said, feeling like I was doing nothing but interrupting Naruto at every turn. "It'll be trapped. Use a clone."
"If Genno expected us to enter that way," Sasuke said, "the traps should be focused in the other direction."
I hoped so. But he'd got us good. He'd been one step ahead the entire way.
The door shattered under Naruto's Rasengan. The clone holding it dispelled almost instantly, though I couldn't tell if it had been hit by the shrapnel from the door, or from some other trap.
"Shadow clone jutsu!" Naruto cried, and sent a wave of clones down the hallway. The first exploded two steps down, and I ducked back, cringing.
"Well that's one way to do it," Sasuke said drolly.
It probably wasn't the best way. If there were exploding notes, or traps that did a lot of damage, or trip wires that set traps off somewhere else… then no, just setting everything off with an endless supply of disposable soldiers was not a great move.
But it would clear the hallway fast.
I felt like one of us should object out of habit, but Naruto was already charging into the chakra smoke.
I followed, falling into step with Sasuke.
The halls weren't well lit, but I could tell when we were getting closer to an exit by the lightning of the gloom. My eyes were aching, and I swiped at my cheeks to brush away the reflexive watering.
Stepping out into the sunlight was almost painful.
We were on the mountain plateau, overlooking the village from the tip of Tsunade's head. No wonder Genno had expected us to come from this direction – the door was close and obvious. If we'd bothered to look we would have found it in seconds.
I'd been expecting the rest of the team to be waiting for us. I'd been able to feel their chakra as we got closer to the exit – the muffling seals of the mountain doing their jobs well – and if they'd followed us, there was nowhere else that they were going to be.
Genno threw down another smoke bomb, but Tenten leapt high above it, soaring into the air and pulling out one of her weapons scrolls. A veritable rain of weapons pelted down, everything from kunai to kusarigama, a widespread scatter that was intended more to corner a target than aimed to kill. That was something interesting about Tenten – she was prized for her accuracy and she used that accuracy to not hit things.
Chouji's hands, partially expanded to be large as the rest of him was, clapped at the edge of the smoke cloud, catching the agile form of Genno between them as he tried to escape Tenten's barrage.
"So these are your friends, Naruto?" Genno asked, coughing slightly. "You work well together."
"Don't bother trying to distract us," Shikamaru drawled. "We've already disarmed the traps that you planted up here. You're finished, now."
"Oh, have you?" Genno asked, slyly as though he knew a secret. "This wasn't how I intended for this to go, I admit, but what a finale. It has been fun."
"Fun?!" Naruto shouted. He waved an arm out towards the village. "You call that fun? Hurting people and trying to blow things up? That's not fun!"
Genno chuckled dryly. "You have such a one track mind, my boy. Whoever said I wanted to blow them up? I merely said that I didn't want them to go to waste. A good trap can be put to use in other ways."
"What?" Naruto sounded confused.
"You didn't have even a little bit of fun?" Genno asked. "All my riddles, all the treasure for you to find… I have to admit, you exceeded all my expectations."
"No one was hurt," Sasuke said softly. He wasn't looking at Genno anymore. He was looking at Naruto.
Naruto who had insisted, all along, that Genno wasn't dangerous – right up until we'd caught him in the act. Who had been so betrayed.
"Well whatever your intention was," Shikamaru said, hands in his pockets. "You're still charged with the theft of important documents. I don't think there'll be any fun in your future for a very long while."
"There was a reason I came back now," Genno said. "I'm old, and sick. There is no fun in my future anyway. I had thought to claim my last piece of vengeance and put some old ghosts to rest…" he smiled. "But I think this was better in the end. It was just like old times. I think my son would be happier to know it ended like this."
"W-what?" Naruto stammered. "What are you saying, old man?"
"I came to Hidden Leaf with the intent of setting off all my traps. But then I met you, and you reminded me so strongly of my son," Genno said. "I just… didn't want to do it anymore. And there was no reason. Kagero village has been gone for years and when you get to my age, some wounds no longer bleed. Even the ones that you thought would last forever. So instead, I planned this treasure hunt for you, and turned my tags into part of the prize."
I let out a jagged breath, but didn't take my eyes off him. He seemed sincere, but I couldn't chase away the sharp spike of fear that had sent me racing away from the Academy.
No one had been hurt, that was true. But we'd spent a day fearing the absolute worst. There was a kind of damage in that.
No. It hadn't been fun. Maybe in time we'd be able to look back on it and laugh, but it hadn't been fun.
"Uh, can we wrap this up?" Chouji said, a little awkwardly. Given that he was still holding onto Genno with giant hands, it was probably a good reminder. I actually had no idea how long Chouji could hold his Partial Expansion Jutsu for.
Shikamaru sighed. "You going to come quietly?" he asked, jerking his chin towards Genno.
Tenten idly flipped a set of kunai in her hands, which demonstrated the idea that he really should without actually saying anything.
"Very quietly," Genno said, with that same amused smile. "Don't mind me at all." He closed his eyes and sighed. "It's all over."
.
.
The Hokage's Office was crowded. Koharu and Homura hovered behind Tsunade's shoulders, much to her apparent annoyance, and the twelve of us packed ourselves in how we could.
Hanabi and Sumiko had been thanked and sent home with the rest of the Hyuuga that had been rounded up to assist on short notice, a grim faced collection that had gone over Konoha with a fine comb.
"Preposterous," Koharu sniffed, at the explanation of Genno's motives. "Likely another trap itself. Once you let down your guard he will strike again."
"That will be difficult," Tsunade said dryly. "I already have a report from the prison pronouncing him dead. With certainty, this time."
Naruto made a shocked, upset sound.
"Initial diagnosis is a suicide pill, but it might not have mattered. He was showing signs of late stage terminal illness, which might have been what he was referring to. Even with medical intervention, he was unlikely to survive much longer."
Reactions to that were mixed. Naruto looked like he was going to cry, and Hinata patted him softly on the arm, but others weren't quite so invested.
I couldn't help the little petty 'good' that I thought, even if I was immediately ashamed.
"The chest in the mountain storage room contained all the missing blueprints," Shikamaru said, taking the attention away from Naruto. "Including the previous letter of recommendation that was missing from the foreman's house. Without something to compare it to, it's hard to tell, but it's highly likely that the original is also a fake, and was what Genno used to infiltrate the village the first time around."
Tsunade nodded. "We began to suspect something of the sort when we began retrieving the explosive notes," she admitted. "The Academy was clearly a new target, but many of the notes scattered throughout the village are of an old style that aren't in use anymore. If they were planted so long ago, that explains why."
"Yeah, that's what I don't get," Kiba said. "How can all those explosive notes have just been sitting there for so long? Someone ought to have noticed them."
I agreed. I really, really agreed. In this village full of ninja, it was nearly unbelievable to think that no one had stumbled across a single one, and then followed the fuses, in thirty years. There were hundreds of ninja in the village. Large swathes of it had been destroyed through the years, with the Chunin Exam Invasion, the Kyuubi Attack… had no one noticed then either?
Or… maybe people had.
There were, if you considered with very cold logic, benefits to having a last resort trap wired into your own village, if you could be certain that only you controlled it.
It was maybe the sort of thing that would only occur to people who looked for worst case scenarios. The kind of people who thought 'if I can't have it, no one else can either'.
There was someone that sprang to mind, when I considered it. Who would have taken something like that, hidden it, and waited for the moment to use it.
Who was a person that I really would not have wanted to have an explosive trap wired into the walls of my home.
"On the contrary," Shino said to Kiba. "It is easy to miss something that no one is looking for. As well hidden as they were, they would never have been spotted unless someone was using Byakugan in the right spot."
"That's why we have random sweeps," I said. "Spot checks. Audits. Inspections. So that we find things we don't know we're looking for."
Then I shut my mouth, the niggling conclusion still bouncing around in my head. I had no proof. I was maybe being paranoid.
But.
Was it so improbable?
I dropped back, and let the rest of the debriefing flow over me. We'd managed to sum up the main points, anyway. The Academy was fine, and the students none the worse for wear for traipsing up the mountain and back. The explosive tags had all been retrieved. The plans had all been retrieved. Security plans were in action to cover all the newly revealed holes and flaws.
"Naruto, Shino, Ino, Shikako. Stay behind. The rest of you are dismissed," Tsunade said and waited till everyone shuffled out. Even the two Elders left with disapproving sniffs.
"Congratulations, Nara," she smirked at me briefly. "You get what you wanted. For the next week and a half, you're taking over from Anko on day shifts with Yakumo Kurama."
I blinked. I hadn't considered that something I'd asked for at all.
"Thank you?" I said tentatively.
It wasn't bad. I just. Hadn't asked for that? I mean, yes, I had asked about Yakumo… but I hadn't expected the results I'd got in the first place, let alone more. And that was a bit of a downgrade, wasn't it, from Special Jounin to Genin? Maybe Tsunade considered the worst of the danger past.
I didn't really understand what the Hokage was trying to do here.
"You three are assigned to Anko for a B-rank mission to the Land of Sea," Tsunade continued, turning to the other three. "She's currently on an exterior patrol for the emergency response, so your departure time is at her discretion. I suggest you be prepared."
Naruto looked like he wasn't really paying that much attention. Given that he was still upset about Genno, I could see why. But I wasn't really worried about him.
Ino nodded sharply. "Understood, Hokage-sama," she said.
This would be her first real mission since the Sound Four. Since Orochimaru. I hoped she was ready for it.