Sunlight For Leaves

by Aegis

Chapter XI: The Godaime Hokage Isn't Tsunade (Yet)


Two hours later, the invasion ended with the exodus of most of the surviving Suna ninja and the death of most of the Oto ninja. Six hours after that, the final reports on the Konoha casualties came in from the logistics office. Sixty-five clan members, one hundred and ninety-nine unaffiliated ninja. One hundred and twenty-seven genin, one hundred and thirty chuunin, six jounin and tokubetsu jounin. One Hokage.

Nara Shikaku stared despondently at the papers, wishing that the lamp over the Hokage's desk were brighter, The combined number of cigarettes smoked in that room had left a black pall hanging near the ceiling, and it was drowning the light into greyness. Shikaku had run out of cancer sticks an hour ago, and he found himself wishing devoutly for another pack.

"The funeral is in an hour."

He looked up. Shikamaru and Hinata were in the doorway, though it might be more accurate to say that Hinata was hiding behind Shikamaru. He didn't ask which funeral it was; there were only two funerals he was attending, and Sarutobi Hiruzen's wasn't until tomorrow.

"Ah, Shikamaru-kun," he said fondly. "Come in, please. You too, Hinata-chan. I need to make a decision, and I want as much input as I can get."

Shikamaru visibly deflated, but went in anyways. Hinata did as well, reluctantly. She coughed delicately and tried in vain to wave away the smoke before the smell latched on to her clothes.

"Let's see," Shikaku muttered. "There's Jiraiya-sama, Chouza-san, Shibi-san, and Asuma-san. Am I missing anyone?"

Shikamaru peered over his shoulder. "You forgot Hyuuga Hiashi-san."

"Uhm," Hinata began. "What are you doing? And why is my father involved?"

"This village is in a predicament," Shikaku said. "The daimyo will learn about the invasion by November at the latest. When he does, he has the obligation to instate me as the Godaime Hokage. I cannot afford the position at this time, as without me the position of Jounin Commander will sit empty and I do not hold enough popularity to marshall this village effectively. We cannot afford to use me in that way as of yet, and so a proper Godaime must be chosen soon. It falls to me to make the official recommendation, but the final decision is between Chouza, Shibi, and Hiashi. As I said, suggestions for the post are welcome."

Hinata coughed, more deeply this time. She had intended to visit Kiba, Ino and Sasuke in the hospital with Shikamaru, but this was an important decision. Surely her input took precedence over a visit. She thought for a moment.

"I– I do have one idea..." she said slowly.

A—Ж—N

Naruto knocked on the door of Anko's apartment, but when there was no answer he let himself in. Unlike the mess from the last time, the apartment was borderline empty. A quick search reveal that the closet, wardrobe, filing cabinet and fridge had been emptied of everything but traps. There was a nasty explosive note stashed in the fridge, and lacking the time to disarm it Naruto hurriedly threw the door shut and dived behind the kitchen table. The force of the blast knocked the refrigerator over, but damaged nothing else.

Naturally, Anko chose that moment to crash through her own window.

"Ta-daaaa– Hey, what gives?" she sang, brushing shards of glass off her overcoat.

"You know, ordinarily I would ask why you have an explosion trap in your fridge," Naruto said slowly.

"You won't, though?"

"No, I'm just curious how you eat without destroying your food beforehand. I already know why you trapped your fridge, and its not just to piss me off: you just came in through the window, so you're worried about intruders from Otogakure. Plus, people come in here all the time, and it looks like you were just raided during the invasion. I bet you've got some ryo stashed in there."

"Oh?" Anko chuckled. "Am I so predictable that even a cute little genin can read my moves in advance? Aww, that's unfortunate. I guess I'll have to step up my game, hmm?"

"... No. Please, feel free to remain at your current level of insanity. Don't go trying too hard on my account."

"Too late. I feel as if I've been offered a personal challenge! I wonder if Kurenai-chan's handcuffs are still here..."

Naruto's face scrunched up, and Anko had to admit that it looked kind of adorable.

"Anko-sensei, why would Kurenai-sensei have handcuffs?" Ninja usually used wire or seals to restrain shinobi targets, and rope sufficed for the average civilian.

"They're for Asuma-kun, silly!"

Naruto spent a moment processing that statement, and abruptly realized that Anko was by no means the weirdest of the jounin he'd encountered. In fact, most of the other ones qualified as more bizarre in one way or another: Kakashi, Gai, Zabuza, Jiraiya, and now Kurenai and Asuma.

He started to ask why Kurenai's handcuffs would be in Anko's apartment, and furthermore what Anko could possibly do with them, and then he stopped. Some questions did not need answers. Instead, he moved to something that had been bothering him since yesterday.

"What happens now?"

Anko rolled her eyes. "Not to sound too dramatic, but this means war. Sunagakure can't possibly expect us not to retaliate, not with the Yondaime Kazekage dead. Their jinchuuriki are less powerful than the Kyuubi, but the Nine-Tails is a special case. Only certain people can hope to effectively contain and use the kitsune's chakra, and you're not one of them. Most other villages use their jinchuuriki as a deterrent, but Konoha doesn't."

"I've seen why," Naruto remarked, referring both to his own past and the jounin of the village.

"Yeah, the average demon isn't a match for Jiraiya or Kakashi. With Sarutobi-sama in charge, we could afford the luxury of refusing jinchuuriki. They lead harsh lives, kid. The idea isn't popular enough that anybody will risk their skin suggesting it, but after the war all bets are off. The only time we ever had a couple jinchuuriki roaming around was under Senju Hashirama, and they were automatically inducted into ANBU."

Naruto considered the idea. It made sense; if jinchuuriki had the natural advantages that he and Gaara had, in terms of strength and chakra production, it only made sense that the Kage of the village would employ them on missions where failure was not an option. ANBU had the advantage of anonymity, and without an identity a jinchuuriki could ostensibly make friends and have a semi-normal life. It was weird, but Anko was the example he looked to of a functioning adult shinobi with a minimum of psychoses, though he didn't personally know very many of them.

"Who's the next Hokage gonna be?"

"Most of us are confused about that," Anko admitted. "I think Sarutobi-sama's been in charge for, uhm, fifty years? Your lesbian friend would know for sure. Aside from Yondaime-sama being in charge for two years, that's three or four generations of shinobi under his belt. Add that we just lost so many of our number, and we might be seeing some policy changes around here."

"I always thought I could be the Godaime," Naruto confessed. "Sarutobi-jiji was so old, I guess I tricked myself into thinking he'd live forever. If I have to settle for being the Rokudaime, that's fine..."

He grimaced, and for a moment Anko could see the shadows around his whisker marks deepen.

"But I'm going to take it out of Orochimaru. If that bastard is alive somewhere, I'm going to become the greatest ninja this village has ever seen, and then I'm gonna find him and make him pay!"

"Nothing like bloody vows of vengeance!" Anko chirped. "Part of a balanced mind, that's what Ibiki-senpai always says when I say that. Now, there's a funeral wrapping up in a minute, and then Shikaku-sama wants to speak to the jounin. Wanna prank them?"

A—Ж—N

"Hello, Sasuke-san? I need you to open your eyes now."

Sasuke opened his eyes. There was an IV taped to his left arm, and he was wearing a paper-thin hospital gown over his pants and nothing else. His eyes felt like they were melting in their sockets, but that feeling quickly faded. He sat up.

There was a doctor standing at the foot of his bed. Civilian, by the looks of him, but with a few distinguishing scars. He was thumbing through Sasuke's chart, but looked up briefly when Sasuke came around.

"How are you feeling?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Fine."

"If you're going to be difficult, Sasuke-san... does anywhere hurt?"

"No."

The doctor produced a stethoscope and quickly took note of Sasuke's pulse and breathing, which were both normal. At his request, Sasuke removed the hosiptal gown and allowed the doctor to observe his bare chest. Nothing would have shown up from a gentle fist attack, but it paid to be certain.

"At this rate, you'll be good to leave in just a minute," the doctor said, a modicum of cheer colouring his tone. "We know ninja have a bit of an aversion to hospitals. There're two more tests. I want you to use a katon jutsu, just to test the flow of chakra. Ideally we'd have a Hyuuga come in and look at you, but everyone with a byakugan is busy right now."

Wordlessly, Sasuke made the seals and produced the smallest flame he could. It billowed out a few inches and mushroomed, then dissipated. The doctor nodded.

"Last test, I promise. Your sharingan, please."

Sasuke willed his eyes to respond, but when they did it was like nothing he'd ever experienced before. Chakra signatures from all over Konoha leapt into his field of view, dancing in precise motions as their owners went about their business. Sasuke could see a group of ninja training on the south side of the village, a class of Academy students in a room with Umino Iruka, and Naruto and Anko walking somewhere kilometres away. Some signatures were almost frighteningly powerful, such as Kakashi's in a restaurant downtown and Gai's, which was surprisingly close. Sasuke assumed he was in Lee's hospital room. It was so amazing he cried.

'Wait, what?'

They weren't tears, precisely; blood was leaking from beneath Sasuke's eyelids, trickling down his face and pooling at the corners of his mouth. The doctor's mouth moved silently, but to Sasuke's enhanced vision he could see the words being formed so clearly he almost heard them: 'What the hell?'

The doctor quickly schooled his astonished look into professional curiosity. The front page on his clipboard was flipped over, and he began sketching on the back.

"Does the bleeding hurt?" he asked idly, pen scratching furiously on the page. Sasuke didn't respond; not verbally, anyways. He simply waited patiently for the doctor to look back at his eyes. Then it was over.

"Put the clipboard down," Sasuke said softly, and was rewarded by the clipboard falling abruptly from the orderly's hands.

"Forget you saw this. Write me up as perfectly healthy." Sasuke put his metaphysical might into the genjutsu, cracking the man's mind wide open and forcing him to obey. As the doctor began to fill out a new form, Sasuke shifted out of bed and picked up the fallen clipboard. It was a rough sketch, but the eyeball detailed there was obviously not a regular sharingan. In red pen, the doctor had outline a series of interwoven ovals surrounding a solid inky dot. Sasuke grinned in satisfaction, then quickly tore the paper into several shreds before deactivating his mangekyou sharingan.

Those seconds of its activation had been permanently scored into his memory. Sasuke remembered every moment as if it were happening again in his mind. The power of the kekkei genkai was formidable indeed, and it felt more like the chakra of ninjutsu than a doujutsu or genjutsu like the sharingan normally did. Sasuke thought of Itachi's power, what he had bought with Uchiha Shisui's death, and allowed a small smile to creep across his face. This was the way to restore his clan, and maybe even kill his brother.

A—Ж—N

Elsewhere in the hospital, Tenten and Neji were sitting on stools at the end of Rock Lee's bed. A medic was quickly flipping through the test results for Lee's blood chemistry, and the look on her face made both of them want to kill someone.

"This is absolutely incredible," Oyone muttered. "Your teammate has sustained and survived more compiled physical injuries than any other ninja I've seen. Fractured femur and tibia, numerous shards of bone lacerating the spine, massive blood loss in the initial stages, and there are some proteins in his blood that shouldn't be there. By rights he should have died within the hour!"

"Can he recover?" Neji asked flatly.

"At the rate he's spending chakra on cellular regeneration, Lee-san will be up by the end of the week!" Oyone said cheerfully. "As for making a full recovery, that'll be damn near impossible. The main problem is that his spine is severely damaged, and any operation to try and fix it would require almost ten hours under the knife. That's more than any human being can take without risking infection or complications."

"Could Tsunade-sama do it?" asked Tenten.

Oyone looked at her flatly. "Yes. If I may be so bold, what you are proposing is slightly less likely than Orochimaru becoming the Hokage. Tsunade has done no significant medical work in about a decade; nothing beyond what a country herbalist could accomplish. She is almost certainly out of practice, and besides which she has sworn never to return to Konoha."

Neji's brow furrowed. "Who is the current head of the medical system in Konoha?"

Oyone snorted. "The hospital director manages civilian affairs, but the medic-nin corps doesn't have a leader right now. There's just nobody qualified for the job."

Tenten turned to Neji; Neji turned to Tenten. They looked at each other solemnly.

"So, we need to bring Tsunade back. Gotcha," said Tenten.

"Lee-san's condition isn't deteriorating, so we do have some time," Neji said.

"I'll go get Jiraiya, you'll find Guy-sensei?" her teammate suggested. Neji nodded, and in twin puffs of smoke they disappeared from the hospital.

Oyone looked down at the unconscious Rock Lee with something between pity and appreciation. "Your teammates are certainly determined, Lee-san. Perhaps you've rubbed off on them."

A—Ж—N

"We need a new leader now!" Hyuuga Hiashi roared. "I am sorry, Jiraiya-sama, but Sunagakure will not wait on your mad quest to bring back Tsunade!"

"There is no one else!" Jiraiya shouted back, his white mane bristling unconsciously with chakra. "Nobody but Tsunade can unite this village, nobody but Tsunade can present the front of strength that we need, nobody but Tsunade can handle the stress of the job! Sarutobi-sensei should have brought in a Godaime Hokage years ago, true, but now we have no choice! I am going to bring her back if it's the last thing I do!"

"Surely there's no need to be so dramatic about it, Jiraiya-sama?" Akimichi Chouza said firmly. "You're so insistent on retrieving Tsunade, but whenever we offer you the job you seem strangely reluctant."

Jiraiya grimaced. "I can't. It's my duty to appoint the leaders, not to be one. I'm afraid, shinobi of the Leaf, that at this point Tsunade is our only hope."

"What about another jounin?" asked Aburame Shibi. "There are plenty of ANBU agents and other respected shinobi who could potentially defeat another Kage. I am unsure if that is a suitable metric for determining whether a ninja can be Hokage, but you have yet to suggest another."

"The most important two are fame, and impartiality," Jiraiya muttered. "We need someone who's clan, but not extremely so, and we need someone famous. The Godaime Hokage needs to already be known to the other Elemental Nations, and that leaves Tsunade."

"That leaves Senju Tsunade, Might Guy and Hatake Kakashi," Shibi corrected placidly. There was a moment of dead silence as the gathered jounin contemplated the ramifications of that. It was the usual assembly of clan leaders, jounin and political figures, and where there were mixed reactions to Jiraiya's suggestion, the word 'Guy' was downright horrifying. That was when Guy stood up and got on his chair.

"JIRAIYA-SAMA!" he shouted. "WHILE I AM HONOURED BY SHIBI-SAN, I BELIEVE IN YOUR BELIEF IN TSUNADE-HIME!"

He paused, apparently evaluating what he meant by that, and then, "I will accompany you on your youthful mission and persuade Tsunade-hime to return!"

Every single ninja breathed a sigh of relief. That narrowed the choices down to what even a civilian would judge acceptable, but unfortunately didn't decide much.

"I will suggest Hatake Kakashi," Shikaku injected into the quiet. "He is not the leader his sensei was, but he holds international respect and may well be the most powerful ninja currently in the village. Kakashi-san also has the necessary command experience and skill in dealing with civilians required for the job. Furthermore, supposing that more suitable candidates come forward in the future, we will appoint him temporary Hokage and amend our choice when Jiraiya-sama and Guy-san return."

"That's a wonderful idea," Chouza said quickly. "We should definitely do that."

"I concur," said Shibi. "Why? Of the three choices, he is the most logical."

Everyone looked at Kakashi, who was surreptitiously reading Icha Icha in the back corner. He glanced up, then went back to reading.

"Maa, I suppose..." he said, flipping the page.

"Given the lack of... alternatives, I agree with Shikaku-san," said Hiashi.

"When will the surprises stop? I too will side with Nara-san," said Asuma. Kurenai nodded as well, though she looked slightly nauseated at the prospect.

"All in favour?" Jiraiya asked wearily.

A—Ж—N

Anko didn't always do the window-crashing routine to announce her own entrance. Most of the time she was seeing the Hokage or some other jounin about a mission, which required the use of doors. However, Konoha was currently lacking in a Hokage, and there was a list of surprises she hadn't pulled yet on the unsuspecting shinobi of Konoha. There was something undeniably satisfying about shocking a group of hardened killers with loud noises and flashy prestidigitation, but for this meeting Anko had set Naruto to painting the Hokage monument again while she distracted the rest of the village with some explosions as they left.

It was a good thing too, she reflected, because she had no idea how Naruto would have reacted had he heard that Kakashi was now the Hokage. Surprisingly, she almost thought the man was blushing, but it was hard to tell with the mask. As soon as the forest of hands went down he said something vague about putting the ideals of the village and how he needed to buy more dog food before disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

'I can't tell if this is a stroke of genius or utter lunacy,' she thought, excusing herself with a few well-placed elbows and rushing off to find Naruto. On the one hand, the temporary thing was a bit of a dangerous precedent, but with Kakashi it was for the best. Team Seven was now officially without a sensei, which meant that Anko could pester Naruto to renew the contract without feeling guilty about.

The third thing she had to tell Naruto was less established, but the blonde didn't exactly keep his nose to the ground regarding village policy. By no means did Anko relish having to tell him that they were marching to war, but the alternative would be hearing it from Kakashi when he deployed them to Wind or Sound Country.


This one is what you might call filler, if only because the plot needs to slow down a bit. The next cannon arc was, I think, something to do with Sasuke defecting from Konoha, but here it will be the resolution of the Sand-Leaf conflict. Also, as far as the mangekyou sharingan goes: creative licence.


~Please review.~