Chapter 1: Everything but Restraint

Sakura Uchiha's last meeting of the day was at 10 pm. When she entered the staff room, she was struck by how few of her people were there. After the Fourth Shinobi War ended, every bed and hallway was filled with the wounded and dying, and staff meetings were standing-room-only. Now, nearly half a year later, the only ones working the overnight shift were the charge nurses, a couple of genin trainees, and Doctor Uehara.

She sat at the head of the table. "Sad as it is to say, on nights like this I kind of miss the war." She nodded at Uehara. "Little past your bedtime, isn't it?"

Uehara put a sly grin on his wrinkled face. "I've gotten used to late nights, ma'am. I delivered you, you know. And your mother. And her mother, too. Not a one of you showed your faces before midnight." He glanced at his charts and then at the trainees. "Our patient is still at five centimeters and I upped the oxytocin. It shouldn't be too much longer."

One of the trainees yawned and rubbed her eyes. "Can't we just use some chakra and make the baby come out? Like with that lady last week?"

Uehara shook his head. "One small problem. Tonight's patient is a civilian." When the trainee gave him a groggy stare, he sighed. "Can't use ninjutsu in front of the civilians. Remember?"

The trainee sat up straight and opened her eyes wide, trying to clear the fog from her mind. "Yes! I mean, no! I mean, yes, I remember that, no, we can't do that. Like, ever."

The other trainee crossed his arms. "So how come? I mean, isn't being able to use chakra, like, genetic and stuff?"

Uehara sat back in his chair. "True story. Happened around the time when I was your age. There was this civilian. He witnessed the hand signs for a jutsu. Just once. Just one single time. Three days later – not years, mind you, but days – he had completely mastered the technique. So we can never take that chance. Never again."

The boy leaned toward him. "The guy. What happened after that?"

Uehara slid his finger across his throat. "Imagine the alternative. A civilian with a Shinobi's power but without a Shinobi's discipline?" He shuddered.

Sakura drummed her fingers on the table. "If storytime is over, I'd like to move on. I have a couple of announcements. The X-ray machine is still down for the count, but we should get its replacement delivered in a few days. And for the second thing, I, uh…" She paused for a long moment. "I'm going to take a few days off."

The room went silent.

She crossed her arms. "Oh, come on. You guys act like I never take any time off."

Everyone raised their eyebrows but kept their mouths shut.

She huffed. "Fine, then. Dismissed. Let's get back to work. I've got a mountain of paperwork to finish."

When the others left, Uehara remained in his seat. "Ma'am? May I speak freely?"

She narrowed her eyes. "When have you not?"

He nodded his head in concession. "How long has it been? Since you've taken a break from this?"

She sat back in her chair and rubbed her temples. "I just said that I'm taking some time off. And I took a whole day off for my wedding, like, four months ago. No, five months."

"And while you're off, ma'am, how many times will you stop by, just to check up? How often will you check your phone, just in case? And when you do, how many emails will you fire off?"

She frowned and looked away.

He leaned back in his chair again. "Another true story. Tsunade Senjuu, your mentor. I suppose that I should refer to her as the Fifth Hokage but, even these days, I still think of her as little Tsu-chan. She wasn't much older than you when they declared her a Sannin, a hero of the Second Shinobi War. After that, she was like you, always on-call, always working, never sleeping. Always fighting to save another life."

He looked down at the table. "But she couldn't save Dan, her fiancée. With his injuries, who could?" He shook his head. "Wonderful young man, a shame what happened. Anyway, Tsu-chan kept going, kept working, never stopping. Never taking time to grieve. After a while, she broke down. Split apart." He jabbed his finger at the center of his chest. "In here. Wasn't long after that, she left the village."

She groaned. "Got it. Life's hard, be harder, don't break. I'll put those on my action item list. Any other helpful advice?"

He sighed and rose to his feet. "Just one more thing, ma'am. It's the same thing I wanted to tell Tsu-chan all those years ago." He leaned toward her and tapped his finger on the table. "Sometimes, when you really want to hold on to what's precious to you, you've got to learn to let it go."

She watched him as he closed the door behind him. Had that been anyone else, she would have dressed him down. But in this village, where everyone fought hard and died young, Uehara was everybody's grandfather, much as the Third Hokage had once been.

She stifled a yawn and sat up straighter. Sorry, doctor, she thought, but life just isn't that simple any more. She looked down at her fist, the one that smashed Kaguya's skull a single moment before the Rabbit Goddess would have ended the world.

When Tsunade became a Sannin, it was for battling Hanzo the Salamander to a standstill. These days, she thought, Hanzo would only be a warm-up. Now, we have to battle gods and monsters for the fate of the entire world.

She leaned he head back and closed her eyes, hoping it would make the pounding in her head go away. She knew it was a dangerous thing to do, but as long as she kept her wits about her, she wouldn't fall asleep. Just stay focused, she thought, and you won't-

They were coming. The creatures, the ones as white as snow, the ones they called Zetsus. They swarmed into the makeshift field hospital, as they always did. Like always, she fought them off, pummeling them with her fist and cleaving them with the blade of her kunai. It didn't matter. One by one, the Zetsus carried them off, both the casualties and the medical ninjas treating them. Before long, it was only her, facing a hundred bloodthirsty monsters.

"You want my chakra, too? Then here it is!"

Summoning her energy into her fist, she smashed the ground at her feet. The force was like an earthquake. When the dust cleared, she was standing in a crater, surrounded by the bodies of her enemies.

The dream never ended there. As always, she saw Naruto and Sasuke begin their attack, the one that would seal Kaguya away forever. In their haste, they left themselves open to her counter-attack, which would destroy them before they could form the seal. She knew how this would go. Terrified, she would charge ahead, trying to make her final strike, the one that would save them. With each step, she moved more slowly and her body felt as heavy as lead. It was at this point, where she knew she couldn't save her friends or her world, that the dream ended.

But not this time. As she charged, another force swooped in behind Kaguya and tore her apart with a single strike. It then grabbed Naruto and Sasuke, and squeezed them until their bodies became as limp as ragdolls. Tossing them aside, it waved its mighty hand. The bodies of every Shinobi in the world burst into flames and was quickly consumed. A few moments later, their bodies were ash, which the winds carried away.

She tried to look into the face of this dark power but her fear overwhelmed her. All she could see was its vague shape, as solid as a mountain and as black as the night.

It was just them, she realized. Just her and the titan, the one who could slay gods and destroy worlds in an instant. This was it, the final war, between the last Shinobi and the infinite darkness.

At that moment, despite the waves of paralyzing fear that shot through her, she could feel her fingers curl into a fist and the corners of her mouth curl into an eager grin.

When she heard a cellphone, she snapped her eyes open "Who didn't turn off their goddamned ringer?" Then she remembered that she was alone. It was her own phone that was going off.

After she read the message, she didn't see the phone slip from her hand and fall to the floor, shattering the polished screen into a thousand pieces. She didn't remember running down the halls and bursting through the emergency exit. She didn't pay any mind to the icy wind and freezing rain as she raced through the streets of the Hidden Leaf Village. All she could feel was the pain tearing at her heart and the unutterable wish that the beating of that heart would cease, sparing her from her fate.

When she arrived at the main gate, she saw that a crowd had already started to gather. When that crowd saw her, it parted, revealing a horse-drawn carriage under the lone, yellow streetlight. The only person who dared to stand between her and the carriage was the Sixth Hokage, the current leader of their village.

She advanced toward him. "Get out of my way, Naruto."

He stood his ground. "Go home, Sakura. You don't want to see this."

She increased her pace. "Not asking you again."

"Let us handle it. You shouldn't-"

"Out of my way!"

They stood facing each other for a long moment. She held up her fist. "You can't stop me."

He allowed a tiny bit of the energy of Kurama, the nine-tailed fox-demon sealed inside him, to flow through his body. In the darkness, he glowed with its radiance.

The people in the crowd stepped back and held their breath. Even those who did not witness their battles during the Fourth Shinobi War knew how powerful these two Sannin were.

The watched her make a feint to his left and then slip around his right side. They saw him attempt to grab her but they all knew it would fail. His unrequited feelings for her were just as well-known as his power.

In the open bed of the carriage, she saw two bodies, both shrouded with stained, wet canvas. Between them was a large wooden chest, the naked blade of a long, straight sword, and, alongside the sword, a weapon unlike anything she had ever seen. It was as black as the night. There was writing engraved on the side. In the dim light, she could only make out one of the markings, a black equilateral triangle with the tip pointing up. The symbol of the Land of the Black Mountain.

Then she turned her attention to one of the bodies, the one whose feet bore the sandals she had given to her husband on New Year's Day.

She uncovered the body and then immediately wished she hadn't. She recognized the lean, muscular torso as that of Sasuke Uchiha, but the face was another matter. Except for a ragged hole at the temple, the left side of the face looked like that of husband. The right side, however, was so blown apart that it was unrecognizable.

The crowd was silent. Everyone watched her, waiting for the moment when she would fall to her knees and cry, or scream and shake her fists at the heavens.

Instead, she was calm but determined as she covered the body. She pointed at the other corpse. "So who the hell is that?"

An old man, his body shivering under his thin, wet robe, stepped toward her. "That's the man who killed him m'lady." He looked at her pink hair and green eyes. "You must be his wife. He talked about you. How he was coming home to-"

With one hand, she grabbed the collar of his robe and pulled him toward her. "What happened? Tell me!" When she saw that the old man was too frightened to speak, she cocked back her fist. "Tell me. Or I'll destroy you."

Then she felt a hand restrain her arm with strength that was as gentle as a summer breeze and as solid as a mountain. It was Naruto. "This isn't helping. Let him go."

She stood, still scowling at the old man's face. A few seconds later, she released her grip.

Naruto leapt upwards and landed on top of the chest. He reached down and tugged at the heavy lock as if testing its hold. Then he fished a key from his pocket.

He looked down at the old man. "Hey, Gramps. They ever tell you what was in these things?"

The old man put his hands together in supplication. "No, m'lord. They never! I swear!" Then he looked at the chest. "But it was never hard to guess."

Naruto unlocked the chest and lifted the lid. It was filled with newly-minted gold coins, which glowed in the yellow light of the streetlight. He grabbed a handful and hefted them, assessing their weight. Then he looked down at the body of Sasuke Uchiha. With a sad expression, he let the coins fall into the chest, one by one.

He closed the lid, locked it, and climbed down. He took the old man's hand; as he did, he pressed one of the coins into the old man's palm. Naruto looked into his eyes. "Thank you for bringing him home to us, Gramps."

He turned toward Morino Ibiki, head of the Interrogation and Torture Division, who had just arrived. Naruto pointed at the old man. "Ibiki! Get him someplace warm. He'll catch his death out here."

Ibiki laid his massive hand on the old man's bony shoulder. "Not to worry, Hokage-sama." He grinned. "It's always warm in the Honesty Room."

Naruto gave him a stern look. "You don't have to torture him. Just ask him a few questions."

Ibiki shook his head. "We never accept a civilian's statements without validating them. That's always been the Shinobi way." He looked down at the old man's face, taking in every subtle nuance of the man's fear. "The Honesty Room. Yes. That's where we shall perform our…validation."

Naruto crossed his arms. "Then tonight, the Shinobi way changes. Get him out of this weather and ask him about the attack. Nothing more."

Ibiki stared at the Hokage's face for a moment. Then he gestured for the old man to follow him. Through gritted teeth, he spoke. "Come with me, sir. Let us find you a comfy chair. Make you a cup of tea. Fluff your pillow."

As they left, several squads of medical ninjas arrived. When they saw Sakura, they stopped and saluted.

She did not return the gesture. Instead she pointed at Sasuke's body. "Get him to Autopsy Room A. Stat. Prep me an autopsy kit. I'm going to find out how this happened."

"Stop!"

The voice was that of Tsunade Senjuu, the Fifth Hokage, who had followed on the heels of the med squads. "You can't autopsy your own husband."

Sakura glanced at her over her shoulder. "This wasn't a bar fight in a gambling hall, old lady. This was an act of war. I need my best on this one. And right now, that's me."

Tsunade ran to Sakura as fast as her aching body would let her. "Don't do this. It's too much. No one could be expected to-"

Sakura scowled at her. "After what you put me through? I can handle anything."

Tsunade opened her mouth to argue but no words came out. Years ago, Sakura had begged to be taken on as her apprentice and learn the art of medical ninjutsu from its most famous practitioner. But Tsunade had agreed too quickly. To relieve herself of the responsibility, she made the training as difficult as possible. She made Sakura work for days without sleep, memorize entire books in hours, struggle treat the most impossible injuries, all while defending against full-force surprise attacks from one of the legendary Sannin.

Any sane person would have quit. But the girl suffered from the same naivety as Naruto: not able to realize that some things are simply impossible, they went and did them anyway.

Now, after years of teaching Sakura everything but restraint, Tsunade could only stare at the monster she had created.

Naruto turned to Tsunade. "Lady Fifth. Sorry to interrupt your retirement, but we could really use your services tonight."

Sakura glared at him. "No. It's my hospital. My decision."

He put his hands on his hips. "It's my village. And my command."

She stood for a moment. Then she turned to the medical squads and pointed her finger at the other body. "Take this thing to Autopsy Room B. And prep me a kit."

As she marched past Naruto, she returned his stern expression with one of her own. "I'm not the kind who just can sit around and do nothing. You know that."

Even in the daytime, the autopsy rooms were creepy. At night, when all of the other lights were turned off, the breeze from the cooler vents caused the exam lights to sway, lending odd motions to the shadows on the gray-green walls.

Sakura's first act was to don her autopsy gear. The thin fabric of the lab coat did little to block her wet clothes from the chilled air, and the plastic apron only covered her front and sides.

After her gloves were on, she reached up and switched on the voice recorder. "This is Doctor Uchiha, Autopsy Room B, and it is…" She looked up at the clock. "It's just after midnight, which makes this Monday, March 21st. First day of Spring."

She looked at the body on the stainless-steel table, covered with a white cloth. "This autopsy is being performed as part of the investigation of the murder of…" She tried to speak but the words would not come out.

Coward, she thought. Weakling. You are an Uchiha now. If this was reversed, if I was on the table and he was standing here, would he hesitate? Would he shy away? Would he let anything come between him and his vengeance?

She stood with her spine erect. "This is an investigation into the murder of Sasuke Uchiha. We need to find out how and why it happened." Her eyes narrowed. "We need to find out who is responsible for this."

She uncovered the top half of the body. She was not surprised that he was naked - she had seen that his clothes had been neatly stacked on a side table - but she was surprised by how ordinary the man looked. Long ago, she had noticed that high-level ninjas had a flair for the dramatic: face paint, exaggerated hairstyles, body modifications, and so forth. This man looked like a random person grabbed from the street.

"I'll begin the external examination. Doctor Uehara will be joining me after his current procedure is over. The subject is a white male in his late twenties, with brown hair and…" She opened his eyelids with her fingers. "And hazel eyes . A bit on the heavy side for a Shinobi." She poked his right bicep. "But there's good muscle tone under the layer of fat." She looked at his right hand, turning it so that his palm was exposed. "Judging from the rough skin on his palm, and the scarring on his hand and arm, he wasn't somebody who had lived a soft life."

She went to the left side of the body. "Tattoo on upper left arm. A black equilateral triangle with the tip pointed upwards. Beneath it are the words 'Black Legion' and inside is the single word "Thanos." She squinted at the jagged scars across the words. "I can't tell if these marks are from an accident or if it's part of the design." Then he turned to the open wound on his chest. "Anyway, moving on to the-"

Her words were cut off by the sound of a bone saw starting up next door. She waited patiently for a moment until she realized what should have been obvious: that the room next door was Autopsy Room A and that Tsunade was sawing through Sasuke's skull, preparing to dump everything her husband ever was into a metal pan.

She couldn't recall how, but a moment later, she found herself on top of the autopsy table, crouched over the corpse, growling like an animal. He left hand had grabbed his head; her right hand was a fist, cocked behind her, ready to strike. Only the thinnest restraint kept her from doing the only thing which made any sense at all.

Then the sawing stopped.

It took a long time for her to release the tension in her body but eventually her grip loosened, her fist unclenched, and her body straightened. She climbed down; as she did, she could feel her muscles jitter as her chakra flow began to normalize.

When she felt like she could speak again, she reached up and rewound the voice recorder until just before the sawing began. "Sorry, we had some...some noise in the next room. I'm going to continue on to the-"

The door sprung open and she nearly shrieked with fright. She clutched at her heart.

Doctor Uehara stepped through the doorway. "Did I ever tell you, ma'am? These autopsy rooms are really creepy at night."

She took a breath to calm herself.

Uehara stared at the corpse with a queer look. "Is that him? The man who did this horrible thing?" He shook his head. "I find that quite impossible, ma'am." When he could see that his words confused her, he pointed at the man's belly. "Examine his hara with your chakra. You'll see for yourself." He watched her make hand signs. "I've been doing this so long that I can tell straight away.".

Using her chakra, she probed his hara, the primary chakra point located just below his belly button. She spent several seconds in rapt concentration before moving on to the other major chakra points. When she was satisfied that Uehara was right, she stepped back and released her jutsu.

Uehara shook his head. "This makes no sense, ma'am."

She stared at the corpse for a long moment. Then she straightened her back. "No. It makes perfect sense." She whipped the sheet from the body, exposing it. "Let's finish up the external examination and then start on the internal organs. I've got to wrap up the report by 8 o'clock this morning."