Fuuko thinks the world is terrible when she wakes. Her body is full recharged but there is this heavy feeling in her chest. The shadows of the window looms across the floor as she sits up and places her bare feet on the cold wooden floor. There is a set of clothes and a cup of water on the bedside table below the Uchiha fan on the wall. She looks out of the window. The tall Hashirama trees shading the house giving the room a distinct chill.

So she made it to the Uchiha compound and judging from the trees outside the window, the clan head's house.

The fight on the training ground had been a blur. There is blood crusted beneath her nails, then Fuuko remembers. She had pursued Danzo to retrieve Shisui's eye, only to find him with a whole arm full of Sharingans. Sharingarm, her mind muses and she laughs hysterically. Fuuko laughs and laughs until she's out of breath. Then she laughs some more.

"Fuuko-chan?" the lilting tenor asks through the wooden door, before opening it.

"He stole Shisui's eye. He stole an armful of Sharingan," she tells Mikoto as the Uchiha sits on the bed.

"An armful?" Mikoto repeats, fingers clasping over her lips. "An armful? Who?" The Uchiha takes a tremulous breath and closes her eyes, hands gripping tightly on her kimono. "Danzo?" she spits the name out like acid through her teeth.

Fuuko looks away, acutely aware of the painful sound rasp of Mikoto's breathing. She could have stopped this, she thinks. Made a move earlier, done something besides… besides… She fists the blanket, the joy of being able to move so easily still has not dissipated even after all the months that she's been here. If she had moved earlier, she might have been able to save Sasuke. Was Shisui dead now? Had she not changed anything?

"I'm sorry." The reborn woman drops her head, feeling like she should have been able to do more to stop all this from occurring. "I…" Words that she wanted to say, wouldn't come. Words that wouldn't be enough.

"He stole eyes from my clansmen, and now he has also taken Sasuke," Mikoto finally says, her voice is cold. The fear and horror that was on her face are now wiped clean, except the trembling hand belies her emotionless state. "If it's anyone's fault, it's Danzo."

Mikoto stands, squaring her shoulders, her hands no longer shaking. "Get dressed, there is lunch in the kitchen. We will leave in twenty minutes."

Fuuko doesn't look up even after Mikoto leaves, staring at her hands like they would offer some form of explanation or comfort. She needs to get up and save Sasuke and hopefully destroy Shisui's eye.

Why is it always her? The thought floated to the top before she can push it away.

She strips, gingerly wearing the dark anbu uniform that someone must have retrieved from her apartment because it fits. The white armor sits snugly around her chest and she smooths the velcro, fingers checking the armor for chips or cracked parts. Fuuko takes a deep breath, hand resting on the door. Here she is, standing in the safety while her little brother had been taken by the big bad wolf, Shisui might be dead, her brother might be dead and all she can think of is 'why her?' She swallows the rush of guilt and slides the door open, bare feet padding silently through the hallway.

"...because that's how we're going to find him."

"I'm just saying that Mekugi-san told me that Danzo hasn't been seen since two days ago."

"Sarute-san said that there were traces of him near training ground three."

Fuuko slides the door open and they fall silent. There is a group of Uchihas in the kitchen, she recognizes a few. Izumi steps forward with a grim smile and a plate of onigiri. "Fuuko-san."

"Izumi-san." She takes the plate of onigiri. Though not feeling hungry, Fuuko forces the onigiri down. She will need it for strength to rescue Sasuke.

"It's not like we can ask the Inuzukas to track a council member for us," Kashira snorts.

"Habaki-kun is our best sensor… we could…"

"We could do a lot of things, but it'll take time which we don't have. How long do you think it'll take Danzo to harvest his eyes? And rogue anbus? Genma-san said they were really short, like child short. How many prodigy children do you know that can become anbu before hitting the growth spurt? I'll bet every single ryo I have that they were stolen kids."

The Uchiha that speaks is surprisingly very on the dot, not that Fuuko is supposed to know about the stolen children. Fuuko swallows her onigiri, clearing her throat to catch their attention. "I know where Danzo's headquarters is…" she tells them quietly.

"Good," Mikoto says from behind her.

There is a saying in Konoha, you can force an anbu into retirement but you can never force a retirement into an anbu. Seeing the way the Uchiha matriarch step into the kitchen, dressed in black anbu uniform and seal-reinforced porcelain armor like her, strikes Fuuko hard. The lithe muscles that are usually hidden by her kimono are now prominent. Mikoto, who was retired for fourteen years clearly had not stopped training. Mikoto tosses Fuuko her kodachi and her mask.

"Izumi-chan, Kashira-kun, Tsubachi-san, you're with us. Hamoni-chan, Hadashi-san, Sageo-kun, you're better in genjutsu than the rest of us, so you're staying here to assist Fugaku."

Fugaku only nods at her words. The other six straighten up at her words.

"Yes, ma'am!"

"We don't know how long Fugaku will be able to hold the genjutsu down. When it goes down, you know what to do. Those with me…" Mikoto slides her old anbu mask over her face. The red streaks curved down the white mask seemed to denote mongoose features. "We're going to go in, get Sasuke and get out. Questions?"

They shake their head and don the anbu gear that Mikoto has retrieved for them.

Fuuko slides her mask on, strapping her kodachi on the small of her back. Fugaku grips Mikoto's forearm (an old warrior's greeting/goodbye), Mikoto presses against his forehead then pulls away. Her voice stripped of any emotion, impersonal like her Anbu mask, "take care."

"Go strong," Fugaku replies. He reaches out and grips Fuuko's forearm. "Go strong," he repeats the traditional anbu farewell.

"Take care," she says.

Please, if there's anyone out there. Let her bring them back alive, Fuuko begs.

-/-/-/-

Just three levels down the creepy headquarters, they trip on an invisible security seal.

A bit of belated reaction, better late than never, Fuuko supposes.

She takes a deep breath then surrenders her control, letting the phantom reflexes do their work. Her kodachi goes cleanly through the first and before she can advance to the next, he drops dead from a senbon through the eye. Fuuko has never worked with Izumi or any of the four Uchihas, but their movements are well-practiced and she knows how Uchiha katas work.

They make it another level down, with Fuuko sending out her chakra sense to find Sasuke. The chakra signature of Sasuke worries her.

"It's… muddy," Fuuko tells Mikoto as she vaults over the Root-nin, breaking his neck with a twist.

"What do you mean by muddy?" Mikoto hisses. She pulls her chakra threads taut, snapping them tightly around another Root-nin. Izumi takes the two behind Mikoto with her senbon. Fuuko flickers backwards slicing another down as the four make their way further down the hallway, tripping pretty much every security seal that there is.

It's pretty pointless to go in covertly if everyone already knows they're there.

"Most people have crystal clear chakra signatures…" Fuuko starts to explain and then promptly runs out of air when she's forced to drop into a roll, barely dodging Kashira's fireball that goes over her head and incinerates the shinobi behind her. "Basically, either they did something to Sasuke or… well… he's not alright. Anyway, they're moving from us so we need a faster way to go down."

They tried using earth jutsus to dive through the floors but there's something on the floors and walls that prevents it from being scratched by jutsus. It's pretty smart. No one would build an underground headquarters only to have some earth element enemy-nin simply bury everyone alive.

Mikoto looks thoughtfully, her sharingan coming to life. One tomoe, two tomoe, three tomoe then the mangekyou glowing. She grabs them as red chakra builds up around them. Fuuko hears the sharp inhale of the other two Uchihas and the awed gasp from Izumi then remembers Mikoto.

"You're Susanoo no Konoha."

"I heard my mother telling me that story before," Izumi says.

Mikoto scoffs, slamming her susanoo's fists into the ground below them. The first smash breaks the walls into small bits, the second smash cracks the floor and the third, Fuuko can't hear beyond the thumping of blood in her ears and the mantra spinning in her head, I'm going to die and it's going to be Mikoto-san's fault.

They drop four floors and crash a party of definitely A-rank Root, judging from the strength of the chakra signatures. They are getting closer. This time Mikoto takes point, plowing through them with her susanoo.

How many Root anbu have been festering under Konoha?

Fuuko dodges the fire web that Tsubachi sends over her head, sweeping the feet out of a Root Anbu and drives her kunai into his throat. She slices anbu after anbu. The blood sprays over her face and apart from wiping her eyes, Fuuko doesn't make a move to clean the rest. There is a coppery tang in her mouth.

The civilian part of Fuuko squirms uncomfortable. All she wants to do is stop and retch, except she can't. The force that drives her practically holds and moves her like a mindless marionette. Her body launches herself at another, kodachi skewering through one and turning it around to use the body as a shield against a fireball.

Please stop. (We have to save Sasuke-kun.)

The sound of anger roars through her head, deafening her, but it doesn't diminish her battle readiness. It wouldn't matter anyway. She isn't in control of her body now. Fuuko can feel the ghostly hands reach into her muscles and bones, throwing jutsus left and right that she doesn't even know, twisting away, advancing and dropping back in some kind of macabre dance.

That's when it goes wrong. Tsubachi takes a wind blade through his chest and collapses on the ground, dead. Izumi brings up the back but even Fuuko can see that she's exhausted. She pops another soldier pill, spewing another fireball that sets the wooden doors on fire. It buys them a breather, letting them flicker into a large room where Sasuke lies on the ground.

-/-/-/-

Naruto is scared. Naruto thinks it's his fault that Sasuke was taken. Sasuke hadn't wanted to prank Mizuki, there was a chakra lesson that he was interested in and he wanted to stay for it, but Naruto had enticed him with the promise of a fish-smelling, fluorescent pink glitter that wouldn't be washed off for days for Shisui-niisan.

Jiji tells him that it's not his fault but deep inside, Naruto knows it is. It was him who shook his anbu guards off, it was him who planned the prank. Sasuke would have been safe in school.

Naruto watches the sun crawl across the hardwood floor, trying to muster some appetite to dig into the lunch the anbu brought him. Nee-chan is out there finding Sasuke, she'll find him. If there's anyone out there that can, it'd be nee-chan, he tells himself. He takes a bite of the ramen, now soggy from his deliberations.

"They'll be fine. Jiji said he would find them," he says, hoping the words would at least ease the sinking feeling.

But it doesn't.

-/-/-/-

The explosion that occurs when they remove Sasuke takes out Izumi's leg. Lying prone on the ground, the Uchiha gathers her chakra, breathing a whole curtain of flames, cutting off their pursuers.

Fuuko snatches Sasuke out of Mikoto's arms when Mikoto turns to smash her susanoo's fists down. The Hatake bounces off the wall, spearing another white masked anbu. She lets Kashira take care of the rest and speeds ahead with Sasuke slung across her shoulders.

Then the trio halts to a stop as smoke fills the hallway.

Fuuko doesn't need a visual to recognize the chakra signature. It is bitter. She will never forget the fermented bitter gourd chakra taste. Feeling the multiple chakra presences at their back, the Hatake had guessed that things would have led to this.

"Danzo."

"Hatake Fuuko. Uchiha Mikoto." His steps, echoed by the tapping of his cane, are meant to be intimidating, but she isn't scared. Beneath the surface of her mask, the thin ripple of apathy rises to the surface, enveloping her. Here, she isn't Hatake Fuuko or the lightning blade of Konoha. She is Wolf.

She flashes forward, her kodachi unsheathing in a movement too fast. A white blur in the shadows of the Root hallway. Danzo's katana blocks and breaks under the weight of her chakra infused blade.

"Are you going to kill me?" he brazenly asks despite the cold metal biting into the side of the neck. His eye is calculative with a unveiled smugness. "You'll never get your precious Uchiha back if you kill me."

"We already have him," Mikoto says.

Danzo tuts. "I never said about finding. I never doubt that you wouldn't. But we wouldn't want the precious Uchiha's spare to die, now would we?"

"What would Hokage-sama say if he knew what you have done?"

His lips stretches across his cold, scaly skin. "Are you planning to tell him that you killed all those loyal Konoha shinobi too?"

"Under the light of your betrayal, I'm sure we would be pardoned. Regardless, I care not for my own self."

"Yes, just the little Uchiha, but if you kill me, that would be you killing Sasuke-chan too." He unwinds the bandage around his wrist to show them a seal. Fuuko knows enough of Fuuinjutsu to know that it's a blood-linked explosive seal.

"So you see, you can't kill me if you want him alive." Danzo picks up his cane. A smirk, coy and triumphant tugs his face. He has won and he knows it. "There, there. See I don't like to waste good things," he soothes. "You want little Sasuke-chan. And I, I want-"

Mikoto pounces with a snarl, flattening him to the ground with her susanoo. She pulls his arm out and smiles a toothy smile at Fuuko. "It's a good thing we don't need him alive, now do we?"

Immediately, Fuuko understands, her body doesn't hesitate. She lifts her kodachi, the white lightning sparking off the blade, severing his arm straight through and tosses it to Kashira who channels chakra around the seal, keeping it alive.

Mikoto gleefully rips the eyes out of Danzo, burning each eye into ashes. "As the spouse to the Clan head, former heir to the Uchiha branch head, descendant of Uchiha Madara, third of the ruling bloodline and therefore with the full authority of the Uchiha clan, I hereby proclaim you, guiltyof dojutsu theft and hence sentence you to death!"

She stabs him through the heart and sets his body on fire. Her susanoo blocks off all attempts of Danzo's ninja trying to save him and though blood steadily trickles from her right eye, Mikoto watches the body burn until there is nothing but ashes before turning to the Root soldiers.

"Do you still fight for him even though he is dead?"

They don't.

-/-/-/-

Naruto hears the alarm bells go off at midnight. Every Konoha shinobi and civilian is taught the different types of alarms in school and even without being told, he knows that any alarm going off means serious business is going down.

Owl appears beside him, dragging him from the windows while Crow seals the windows and reinforces the walls. Under normal circumstances, his anbu should have fallen in with all the currently available shinobis as the alarm dictates. Or perhaps they don't, Naruto has never heard an alarm go off outside class.

"Do you know what's going on?" Naruto asks. Owl only ruffles his hair and lets him sink into his side.

And the siren just goes on and on.

-/-/-/-

"Yesterday a coup occurred at midnight..."

Kakashi stares up on the stage, his face is blank, his mind not really translating the sounds into the words.

"...On the counts of treason, Uchiha Fukagu, Uchiha Shingo, Uchiha Haguchi, Uchiha Tenma, Uchiha Munegu..."

Gai stands beside Kakashi, his hand gripping Kakashi's arm tightly as Sandaime reads the list of dead Uchihas. Kakashi doesn't say anything, there isn't enough air in his lungs for the words that will never be enough. He watches his sister up on stage, his sharingan recording every curve of her.

"...Uchiha Yokote, are found guilty and hereby have been executed as according to the law of Konoha page 30, section 3.80. On the count of the murder countless of active duty shinobi and the murder of Council Member Shimura Danzo, with the evidence provided, Hatake Fuuko have been found guilty and hereby sentenced to death."

His shoulder shakes, Kakashi is half propped up by Gai's strength. He grips Gai's wrist so tightly when Sandaime states the date of her execution. Where is the mercy of Konoha, the village of the good people, the ones that face the sun?

"Shimura Danzo was stealing dojutsus," his jaw is clenched so tight that Kakashi has difficulty speaking the words. "How, why would they sentence my sister to death?" he asks again and again when they are finally alone in the apartment.

"Even if it was the right thing to do, it wasn't her place to kill Danzo."

It wasn't even her, the words die on his tongue. His hand twitches and Kakashi realises that he has to make a stand, a choice. Gai is still talking, his hand still resting on Kakashi's shoulder. Of all the Konoha shinobi's, Gai is one of the most steadfast and loyal. He wonders if Gai's loyalties have ever been tested. Kakashi blinks the sting in his eyes and slides his hitai-te over his red one.

"Kakashi, where are you going?"

Kakashi picks up a pack of soldier pills, another set of first aid kit, puts it on the blank seal scroll and moves back and forth until the seal scroll is full.

"Kakashi-" Gai places himself between the scroll and Kakashi. Kakashi brushes him away, seals the scroll and pats down the pack, slinging it on.

"If you go down this road, it won't be easy to turn back," Genma tells him. The senbon specialist watching him from the counters.

"They chose to sentence my sister to death for an action she did not commit."

"If you give them a chance-" Gai says.

Kakashi spins around and looks straight into Gai's black eyes. He knows it's a choice that neither of them would be coming back to make again. "When I was six, my father made a choice to save his teammate in a mission that was doomed to fail. It was a choice between failing the mission and dying or failing the mission and living. He was ostracized by the village for choosing to live. My father, he killed himself from the guilt that the shinobi of Konoha and the civilians piled on him. They spat on him, they threw rocks at him, they threw garbage at our house. When I was thirteen, they called me a teammate killer, a friend killer."

Kakashi clenches his fist and forces him to take a breath. He shakes his head. "Gai, if it wasn't for imouto, you would have never been friends with me. Same for Genma, same for Itachi-kun. There is no one else besides imouto that is singularly more important. There is nothing else more important than her."

Genma pushes himself off the counter, his senbon tilting upwards from his grin. "In that case, let us help you."


Notes: Well, lots of bamf Uchihas here and me going on a rampage killing them off as fast as they pop up like a whack-a-mole. Oops? :) I like writing action scenes, but wooo one too many. I'm so thankful to have none for awhile after this.

I rewrote this chapter at least 6 times. I'm not completely satisfied with it, but oh well. Those who read the 'Words not spoken' will see a chapter bump on the various versions that was discarded. Those not aware, 'Words not spoken' is a companion piece to this story with various pieces/au that never made to the final cut of the story.

Yup, this is the last chapter for this arc.

Let me know what you think is going to happen in the next arc on your way out ;)