Chapter 7
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~In victory one does not understand the horror of war. It is only in the cold chill of defeat that it is brought home to you~
Everything had been packed away, sealed up into scrolls, the ruins combed over with a professional eye and any written evidence found promptly destroyed. Information retrieved from hidden deposits, and vicious traps set into the ground for any enemy that would wish to take advantage of the shelter to be offered by the broken buildings.
The morning air cut against their skin, breaths frosting out in front of grim faces, their eyes darting for unseen enemies. The shells of the ravaged buildings stood as silent sentinels in the dawn light, forbidding any talk between the Konoha troops, hushing their footsteps and restricting any careless movement.
By unspoken consensus they paused, bearing silent witness to the scene, before picking up the survivors – only two of a total of ninety-eight – in stretchers the medical nin had brought as a matter of course.
They departed.
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The trip required the sedation of the jounin Kazuki and the child Hiroshi to avoid any undue stress on their injuries, although in the case of the jounin it was more because he had not rested the night before, too focused on the child's wellbeing to have seen to his own needs.
Minato led them carefully back into Konoha, sending one of the chuunin off to inform the Hokage of their return, another to secure the documents and the rest to check in the scrolls containing the casualties of the attack and send the bodies of the invaders for ANBU division's analysis. His genin went to the required debriefing building; a temporary set up deemed a necessity for the mental health of the fresh recruits – Minato himself was uncomfortable with the idea of psychologists, but he was grateful that his students were being taken care of in this manner.
Fortunately, this was a case of 'do as I say not as I do' – he himself was not required to attend more than the half-yearly sanity and loyalty assessments because of the amount of classified missions and information he had access to. He kind of dreaded the (slowly approaching) day that Kakashi completed enough classified missions to qualify for this courtesy as well, because he knew better than anyone of how emotionally crippled the young boy had been by the suicide of his father, and he could appreciate how they had the capacity to help him work through some issues.
He was only thinking about this because he did not particularly want to think about the situation that he had found himself in at this very moment.
He was in the hospital, under the gaze of two of the most experienced shinobi that Konoha had to offer – Sarutobi Hiruzen (the freaking Hokage!) and Kazuki Masatane (Minato had a sneaking suspicion that the man was the recently retired commander of the ANBU corps, but couldn't prove it) – and they were staring him down. Not a place where any recently promoted jounin wanted to be.
"Now, Minato-kun, do not look so afraid. We are merely asking for your observations." The Hokage chided.
Kazuki snorted, the senbon in his mouth bobbing with the movement, "You're always so diplomatic, Saru. You're allowed to say he looks like a deer facing a fire jutsu! He's got those big frozen eyes, it's hilarious."
The man was stretched out on a crisp white hospital bed, his infirmity hidden mercifully beneath the sheets, put away for the moment although Minato did not want to guess how the jounin was handling this development – the man himself looked relaxed, now that he was firmly set up across from the young boy that had survived the destruction of his post of command. He wasn't even attempting to hide the fact that his eyes kept darting over to the prostrate form, surveying the rise and fall of the small chest, tracing the bruises visible on his face and arms, lingering on the cast covering one leg.
Minato thought he looked like a man on a life raft – settled precariously atop of his ocean of worries, grasping to the one thing that was keeping him stable, the one thing that survived the 'ship wreak' of the destruction.
He kept this observation to himself.
"Fine!" He spoke with exasperation. "Although I don't know what else I can tell you. When I got him out, he was conscious for at least two minutes, his eyes were unfocused but I'm fairly sure that he was actually there, that it wasn't an unconscious reaction. He didn't respond to verbal stimulus further than the opening of his eyes. Apart from minimal body movement, that was all I got out of him before the medic nin swooped in and sedated him to fix up the compound fracture in his leg. Transportation went as well as we could hope, he didn't get jostled around too much and we hydrated him periodically throughout the trip."
The Hokage nodded, leaning back and reaching for something – Minato thought a pipe – but thinking better of it, moving his hands to trail around the brim of the hat of his station, which rested in his lap.
Kazuki's eyes once again darted over to the boy, and Minato kept his silence, wondering when they would kick him out so he could go and write up the official report for the mission.
"I must say Kazu, I am curious as to why you are so concerned with young Hiroshi."
The jounin removed his gaze from the boy and settled it on the Hokage, his gaze thoughtful. "Yare yare, you don't allow a man his secrets for long, Saru." He sighed through his nose, moving his eyes back to the boy, gaze turning pensive. "Hiroshi. How can I say this? It is… difficult to explain."
The Hokage raised one of his white eyebrows in a silent request for the man to continue and Minato suddenly hoped that they had forgotten his presence because shinobi were a naturally nosey lot, and this subject seemed to hold potential for valuable information. He himself was curious – he knew the jounin wasn't particularly fond of kids at all, most veteran ninja weren't simply because of overwrought nerves.
Kazuki rolled his eyes but continued. "You received my report of his appearance during an attack of the Iwa nin. I was just going to send him away somewhere, it didn't really matter where as long as he was well away from my outpost, but Maya convinced me to at least hold him until the little bugger woke up. You heard how he was – silent, following after me or that woman at all hours like a damn little puppy and I admit it… I was suckered into keeping him by Maya, though I know he shoulda been moved to a civilian village or even here with the next ninja that came to collect reports. I figured that the brat was silent enough and did what we told him to so he'd be fine around us, and there was always that possibility he'd be attacked on any run back to the village or make the team vulnerable because they'd have to protect him in an attack."
Here Kazuki paused, eyes glinting in recollection of something deeper, and Minato figured that there was something more to the arrangement, that something else had happened to keep the kid in the village that he didn't want to go in to.
The man shook his head after a moment, "Of course, that happened before we all saw the real Hiro." He snorted, shaking his head in disbelief, "We'd had him for about a month and a half before he seemed to get comfortable, and boy were we in for a surprise. That nice, contained, silent and compliant puppy of a kid that we'd even named Hiroshi(1) suddenly seemed to wake up for the first time, and smile. We didn't even know that we'd taken in a demon." He shook his head.
"A… demon?" Minato couldn't stop himself, although he hoped that the slight squeak of his voice was a figment of his imagination.
The Hokage beside him was shaking slightly, although Minato could tell why, and Kazuki settled amused eyes on him, and Minato wondered if he'd missed the punch line.
"Ah yes… this would be about the time that I received the first report on the List, yes?" The Hokage asked, his eyes dancing in laughter and amusement.
Kazuki scowled, dragging a hand across the short stubble on his chin that he hadn't gotten a chance to shave off. "… That would be correct."
Minato was now completely lost, because the venerable Hokage was chuckling, leaning back in his chair and the jounin on the bed seemed to know why, but hell if he did. "…What?" He prompted, rather put out that he was missing something.
The Hokage's chuckles petered off and he glanced at Kazuki before turning to Minato. "The List. I fist encountered it while receiving an urgent transmission from Kazuki's outpost, that-"
"Aww, shut yer trap Saru and stop dancing around it, I'll tell 'im. Mina-kun, I had to… adjust some things in response to little Hiro-kun's 'awakening'. Namely, some laws and such that were unhelpful in the face of this. And unfortunately, some bugger got the idea that the Hokage needed to see every change and/or addition to the village laws – either that, or the bastard thought old Saru could do wif' a laugh. Anyway, he sent the Hokage a few new ones we'd made to help curb that brat's more… demonic nature."
The Hokage snorted. "Demonic? Hardly. What was that first one, Kazu? Children of younger than twelve years are not allowed to associate with-"
"-goats, pigs and/or enfeebled donkeys. Yes, yes I know, Hokage-sama. Shut up."
The room was silent. Flies lazily buzzed about, a pin obligingly dropped from a noticeboard in the hall, and Minato's jaw didn't look like it would ever rise from the floor. He got the distinct impression that the two men had let him stay just to mastermind this conversation to see the look on his face. This granted him the strength to pick his jaw up off the floor, "…What?"
The Hokage snorted. "That's a fair approximation of my own reaction, although the ANBU in the rafters saw fit to swoop down to try and find out what jutsu someone had attached to the message that would cause me to choke on my own tongue. Kazuki, wasn't Hiroshi the only person under your command that was in that age bracket?" He added innocently, turning back to the man.
Kazuki was not amused by the jab, but his face showed reluctant respect, "…He was."
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1. The name 'Hiroshi' means generous.