He impassively removed the Kusanagi blade from the stomach of the enemy ninja. The blonde ninja grunted as his legs buckled and he collapsed, clutching his wounded abdomen, blood trickling out of his mouth, his blue eyes wide in surprise and shock.
He stared down at the convulsing body of the enemy shinobi—no, not an enemy, he wasn't an enemy, he was my friend—the troublesome voice whispered in the back of his mind but he ignored it. He had long gotten used to it.
"SASUKE!" he heard a shriek of horror. He turned and smirked at the pale pink haired weakling. Her eyes were wide in shock and horror.
"Hello Sakura. Come to die with the Idiot?" he inquired as he gave Kusanagi a quick flick with his wrist, splattering the ground with the blood sticking to the blade.
Sasuke gasped as he jerked awake and struggled to retain control of his stomach contents and not vomit. He barely managed.
Panting, he wiped away the sweat beading on his brow. Too many bad memories. Memories that he desperately wanted to forget, he reached up to massage his neck. Where his Curse Seal had once resided.
Orochimaru, he bared his teeth in memory of the Snake Sanin. Orochimaru was nearly at the top of the list of people to kill. But as that was just primarily a selfish desire on his part, he had reluctantly placed Danzo, the Akatsuki, and Madara Uchiha as slightly higher priority on his little list.
He further decided not to use Battle Meditation again. It was an ancient shinobi exercise to replenish one's energies—the equivalent of both physical and mental rest akin to a period of six hours of deep sleep in about an hour—enabling ninjas to effectively operate for days. It was one of those tricks that enabled ninjas to ultimately prove victorious over samurai for extended campaigns.
Unfortunately, there were … side effects.
Battle Meditation often resulted in highly realistic hallucinatory experiences like incredibly realistic and detailed dreams of their more traumatic memories. And unlike most dreams, they did not forget them. They re-experienced them. Over and over and over again.
In gloriously graphic detail. Over and over and over again.
He shuddered as he quickly made a last minute check of his weapons. He could not afford to allow himself to be distracted. Not now. He had work to do.
He vanished in a swirl of leaves.
Sasuke's Redemption
Chapter Three: Treason Never Prospers
In some small way, Sarutobi had to admit very, very privately that he actually enjoyed his verbal repartees with Danzo. It was kind of an intellectual game of shoji. Move and countermove. Of course, that amusement was superseded by the fact that he often felt the overwhelming temptation to cave the bastard's skull in with a large blunt instrument. Repeatedly.
Danzo sneered, "Your precious pet Uchiha was clearly behind this horrible incident…"
"I make it a point to never assume anything Danzo, otherwise it tends to make an ass out of you and me."
Danzo snorted at the lame pun. "Joke all you want Sarutobi, but obviously you didn't take our warnings seriously enough! Itachi apparently felt threatened enough to take action!"
Sarutobi inclined his head, "And I am to believe that one ANBU Captain, no matter how skilled—was able to execute 15 Jounins, 41 Chunins, and 8 Genins in addition to approximately 74 civilians; a sizeable percentage of which consisted of retired ninjas. And without any of them being able to raise an alarm? Without attracting notice from the rest of the Village? It sounds more like … a group of people," and his eyes hardened as they flicked to the other two members of the trio, "decided to take matters into their own hands and seriously overstepped their authority."
Sarutobi saw Homura flinch slightly and his upset stomach congealed into ice. "If that is the case," Sarutobi's voice took on a growl and his killing intent flared, "then the word for that is treason," he hissed the last word. His eyes were cold as he glared at them as his killing intent ramped higher and higher, "And the penalty for that has not changed even since the Founding of this Village."
Both Homura and Koharu paled slightly. There were no further words needed to be said. They knew. As well did everyone else that there was one penalty for traitors.
Death.
And no bond of friendship would save them from Sarutobi's wrath if he found out they were indeed tied to the Uchiha Massacre. They would be just traitors and summarily executed.
About the best they could hope for was that Sarutobi would make it mercifully quick. Which was likely as Sarutobi did not go for humiliating people with drawn out and extended torture.
Many of the other Hidden Villages favored it as a deterrent; including having it done as publicly as possible. Most forced their ninja ranks to be present, a few strenuously encouraged the traitor's family relations—even their distant kin to attend to ensure that they didn't entertain similar thoughts.
Iwagakure actually demanded that the traitor's relatives assist in the torture session and were under strict orders that if they even thought of trying to show some mercy and helping finish off the traitor as quickly as possible—they would simply replace their traitorous relative as the torture subject.
This made those who did turn traitor; favor suicide or being killed in action rather than being captured. Not that it stopped their bodies from being grossly mutilated afterwards. Often, they would be strung up and left to rot in the center of the Village itself. Another fun little deterrent against turning traitor.
Homura had heard of another Hidden Village which would ritually disfigure and dismember a traitor's corpse and later return the pieces to their family, one piece at a time and over several months. Just as a little object lesson.
Homura personally thought that one was going too far and was just pointless cruelty. Showing compassion made you appear weak, but deliberate brutality and savagery didn't exactly win you lots of support and friends either.
Danzo appeared unaffected by Sarutobi's killing intent. In a bored tone of voice, he remarked, "An intriguing theory Hokage. But that's all it is. A theory. Do you have any evidence to back that up?"
Sarutobi inwardly grimaced at that innocuous inquiry. Because Danzo damn well knew that he didn't.
Danzo smirked as he saw Sarutobi groping for a counter argument and failing. Check and mate you old fool, he sneered. He felt the political power shifting itself, aligning with him. It was time, he decided gleefully, my time at last. The Council will have no choice but to force him to resign and…
Abruptly, there was a sound of running feet from the corridor outside and an ANBU burst into the room. "It's Sasuke Uchiha! He's come out of his coma!"
Itachi Uchiha finished retying the field dressings on his injuries. Although the wounds were healing, he would need to see a Medic Nin to make sure that he did not acquire any infections. He carefully repacked his medic field kit and seemingly unconcerned, he uncapped his canteen and sipped a mouthful of water.
He was being observed. He could feel it. The unknown observer was very good and very careful. But among his various abilities and skills, Itachi was also a minor Sensor. It was an ability that he had honed through extensive practice and training. And it was an ability that he had never demonstrated or revealed—not even to Danzo or the Hokage.
Years ago when he was still a Chunin, Itachi had faced a highly skilled Kiri Jonin Chozo Matsu—whose most famous apprentice was Momochi Zabuza. Matsu used his mastery of water-based jutsu to create a blinding mist and tried to kill Itachi. In the end, through clever bit of Substitution and Shadow Clones, Itachi managed to fatally wound Matsu—although he himself had been badly wounded, thankfully Matsu had been overconfident at the fact that Itachi possessed only a Chunin rank.
The battle however showed a distinct flaw in his fighting style that Itachi worked hard to overcome. He spent considerable time and effort to develop a subtle and passive sensory awareness of his surroundings. It wasn't foolproof, but Itachi was extraordinarily aware and possessed an uncanny situational degree of any person, objects, or chakra being used in approximately 18 feet of himself at all times. It proved extraordinarily useful in combat and enabled him to cover his "blind spot".
But Itachi could also "push" this bubble outward to about 200 feet—when he seemed to be meditating or was simply sitting down, apparently doing nothing more innocuous than drinking water from his canteen and checking to see if his tail was still there.
Itachi was very curious just as to who this spy was. This was the same spy who had him under surveillance—irregularly but for almost four years now. At first, he assumed it was a ROOT agent, but he now believed otherwise. He also did not believe it to be an agent of the Hokage nor the Uchiha Clan itself due to the length of time predated the current potential coupe d'état.
The length of time precluded anything but a long range operation which strongly suggested the support of either a Hidden Village or a Major Ninja Clan. While he supposed that one of the other Hidden Villages could have assigned someone as a permanent watcher—that presupposed a tremendous drain of resources both financial and time as well.
He could see such a possibility if he was a Clan Head or the Hokage, but technically speaking, Itachi was simply the Heir to the Current Clan Head—and unless something unforeseen occurred to his father, probably was at least a decade or more away from assuming the responsibilities; even then there was a strong probability that the Clan Elders would simply nominate someone else to the position due to his youth and current active ninja career. It would be simply too dangerous if he was captured by an enemy Hidden Village to have the Clan Head as a potential hostage.
Itachi took another swallow of water and then recapped his canteen and got to his feet.
For now, he was just going to have to wait and see just what his personal watcher was up to. He could already see the forests of Konoha. Almost home, he decided as he adjusted his rig slightly and took off at a leisurely pace.
Almost. It was almost time, the thing once known as Madara Uchiha thought eagerly as he peered from behind a large tree trunk, his sole Sharingan Eye narrowed as he watched his descendent moving towards the hated Konoha.
Soon, very soon—his revenge would begin on that damn Village and he would see the legacy of the Senju wiped out forever.
Already the traitorous and useless get of his former Clan were wiped out. The first stage of his plan was already complete. Then, Konoha would fall and then Suna, Iwa, Kiri, and Kumo would follow as well with their Demon Beasts. And then the Elemental Countries would be his. And then … everything else would follow.
He would be revered. He would be honored. Remembered.
And he would be Immortal and a God forever.
If the Hokage was the Great Tree that protected the Village, then the ROOT quietly supported it hidden and in secret—akin to their very namesake by being buried deep beneath the Earth itself. At least according to Danzo.
In truth, ROOT served not the Hokage but Danzo himself. Then again, in Danzo's mind—he was the better, fitter, and more appropriate Hokage than Hiruzen Sarutobi or the late Minato Namikaze.
Anyone else would argue if his mindset was treason or sheer delusion.
ROOT of course did not see it that way. They were specifically and fanatically trained not to see it that way at all. In that, everyone all agreed that they were deluded traitors.
And for all of Danzo's claims that his ROOT agents were superior ninjas—the fact was that with rare exceptions, they were little better than cannon fodder.
Their greatest strength was operating as a team and using their superior numbers to overwhelm their opponents. In many ways, ROOT was a return to the old ways of the ninja—favoring stealth, misdirection, and dirty tricks to overcome their opponents. That was because the majority of them simply did not possess any special Bloodlines nor the specific Clan Jutsus and had to rely on the old shinobi ways that had been supplanted by flashy jutsu and techniques.
Because of that, ROOT assault teams were deliberately overmanned by the standards of most Ninja Villages, possessing 8 individual ninjas whereas the standard squad consisted of a mere 3 because ROOT could normally not hope to equal or surpass a squad with similar numbers.
That was also why those few ROOT agents who did possess a unique Bloodline or Clan Jutsu tended to be much more deadly and talented with such additional skills and training. The greatest example of that deadly training was in fact, their target—Itachi Uchiha.
It was due to his prowess that Danzo had assigned no less than four assault teams—32 ROOT ninjas in all—to kill him. And the only reason why he hadn't chosen more was that it was all he could not remove any more critical assets without major disruption at this time—and he knew that Itachi would be returning exhausted—if not injured from an extended S-Class Mission that Danzo had secretly downgraded to appear merely A-Class. Plus, Itachi was walking unknowingly into a kill zone on what he believed to be friendly territory and thus would be surprised by the ambush, increasing the odds against him.
Even then, Danzo had a feeling that at least half of the assault force would be lost. Itachi was just simply that good and that dangerous that he would take down at least that many of his fanatical ROOT agents with him. Given his druthers, Danzo would have greatly preferred to use an S-Class Army Killing Jutsu tasked to remotely detonate in Itachi's face. Simple, clean, no muss, no fuss.
Unfortunately Danzo needed Itachi's corpse—relatively intact—for his story about the Uchiha Massacre to work. And while medical jutsu could cosmetically repair a corpse fairly well, not even Tsunade could return a pile of ash into a recognizable body. And it would be rather hard to claim that said pile of ash to have been responsible for the murder of entire Clan of Ninjas after all.
So it was that 32 ROOT agents were quietly making their way through the gigantic forests of Konoha, leaping from branch to branch nearly silently towards their objective of Itachi Uchiha.
Unseen to the rest of the ROOT assault team, the last trailing ninja who was operating as their rear cover, was surprised when a pair of hands emerged from the shadow of a branch and seized him in a hold that cut off his cry of shock and handily prevented him to raising an alarm. There was a quick jerk and his neck was brutally and swiftly snapped.
Sasuke Uchiha made a quick survey to ensure that his little assassination had gone unnoticed. He then yanked off the blank and featureless ANBU ceramic mask that the now deceased ROOT agent had been wearing and donned it for himself. Almost absently, he kicked off the body off the branch and leaped after it, hurtling towards the ground. He landed and swiveled in place, effortlessly catching the falling body and laid it on the soil. Sasuke flashed through a sequence of handsigns and touched the ground which promptly swallowed up the body, leaving behind a barely disturbed patch of earth. Just like in life, ROOT returned to the earth hidden and secret even in death.
Smirking behind the faceless ceramic mask, he hurried to catch up to his new "team". He hoped that they enjoyed his inclusion to this little ambush as he was going to.
But he rather suspected not.
Too fucking bad, he reflected grimly.
31 ROOT agents and 1 Time Displaced Ex-Konoha Ninja continued to quietly make their way through the gigantic forests of Konoha towards their objective.
Absently, Sasuke thought it was rather ironic that he was operating as a ROOT member. He was in fact following ROOT sacred doctrine; quietly supporting and protecting Konoha hidden in the shadows and in secret. The fact that he was protecting it from the rest of ROOT was something that they would probably not appreciate.
And if he had to do that by saving the life of his beloved older brother and mucking with Danzo's carefully laid schemes—well, he would just have to live with that too.
A/N: When I first plotted this story out, this was waaay before Obito was revealed as masquerading as Madara Uchiha so I'm afraid that my version really is a Madara who has extended his life and has been plotting the destruction of Konoha for decades.
The Battle Meditation is an original jutsu idea that I came up with that enables ninjas as a "power nap" to refresh themselves.