"Tsunade-sama!" Shizune burst through the door, nearly stumbling into the Hokage's office. The fifth finished her sip of sake and looked up from her papers, a bit peeved.
"What is it, Shizune?" Tonton ran from Shizune's side and leaped into Tsunade's arms as Shizune struggled to catch her breath.
"Please…come. Quickly!"
"I'm busy. What could possibly be so importa- Hey! Are you listening? Shizune!" Tsunade got up and ran after the woman who had run down the hall without letting her finish her sentence.
"Forgive me, Lady Tsunade. I came as fast as I could," said the pink-haired kunoichi as she stood in front of the Hokage's desk, "What did you need me for?" The fifth glared into Sakura's jade eyes with a terrifyingly serious expression. Her chin was leaning on her folded hands, which were being held up by her elbows against the desk top.
"Corpses. Four corpses." Sakura's eyes widened in shock at her master's words.
"C-Corpses? You mean…do you need me to assist the nin at the hospital? Has there been an accident?"
"No. No accident. A squad of jonin were murdered on their way back from a mission."
"I-I don't understand," Sakura said in shock, "Who did this? Why has this happened?"
"We are unaware of the specific details. One of the ninja made it back alive and gave us intel, however, he died within minutes from blood loss," she began unfolding a map, and placed her finger on an area just around the borders of the Land of Fire, "They were ambushed somewhere around here. We have concluded that the attack had nothing to do with the mission the squad had been on," she turned to Sakura, "I need you to form a group and head out to this area in pursuit of the attackers." Sakura stared at the Hokage in shock.
"Forgive me, master, but why me? I'm only of chuunin level! Wouldn't it be safer to have someone like Shikamaru accompany me? And we hardly have any information! We'd just be going out on a whim! It'd practically be a suicide mission!" Tsunade paused for a moment before speaking.
"I know. I'm aware of the circumstances. You'd have to be crazy to go along with this," she looked up at her pupil with a smirk on her face, "which is why I chose you. Normally, I'd have Shikamaru or another jonin carry this out, however, we fear that this attack wasn't just something random. There have been no reports of something like this happening in any other village, which means whoever did this is after the leaf. We need our higher-level shinobi here to protect the village." The fifth handed the kunoichi a piece of parchment containing a list of shinobi. "These are all of the ninja available for this mission. Take whoever you see fit and head out within an hour." Sakura nodded, quickly reading over the list of names. She clenched the paper in her hands tightly. Leading a mission of this rank? And with Naruto gone…
She started for the door, but stopped at the sound of Tsunade's voice.
"And Sakura," the Hokage said, arms crossed.
"Yes?"
"I know you won't let me down."
Sakura smirked, her face full of determination.
"Right!"
