Where Windows Play an Important Part and the Storm Breaks

066. Rain

A long time ago Sai had a brother who called himself Shin. He didn't know if Shin was his brother's real name, a code name given to him or simply something he had made up, but Shin was Shin and in a show of life's great ironies he dubbed his cute little brother Sai.

(It was written with different kanji than Sai's code name, but the kanji used meant " to offer prayers" so the irony ended up counting anyway.)

Shin wasn't related to Sai by blood as far as they knew – though admittedly they didn't know anything about their blood families so it was a possibility, however miniscule – but Shin insisted that genetics weren't a minimum requirement at all. Young Sai had no idea what genetics meant, but he was inclined to take Shin's word for it back when Shin lived. They only ever had one mission together. It had been the mission that got Sai "blooded" as part of the Root's desensitization program and the target was simply a merchant who had somehow caused some harm to Konoha.

"Don't ask me what he did. Maybe he sells to Iwa too. Maybe he committed a tax fraud. It doesn't really matter anyway," Shin had told Sai. He was there as a senior operative to ensure things went smoothly and to witness the killing. Sai could remember it was a beautiful, sunny day and the merchant had reserved a room from an inn that coincidentally looked over a steep cliff to a river that divided the town in two. The river was only deep enough there that the water reached a grown man to a waist, but the flow of it was fast, the water was very cold and most importantly the bottom of the river was full of big, sharp rocks.

"Sai," Shin had sighed. "It was supposed to look like a natural death." This reproach had made Sai very confused.

"Isn't it natural to die if one falls out of the window into a river and is knocked unconscious underwater?" he had asked.

"Maybe if the window had been open," Shin had groaned, taken his hand and shunshined them both away.

Now it was raining, Sai's name meant rhinoceros and he had betrayed Danzo; it had been the last minute to do so, figuratively speaking, as he had already been scheduled for a curse seal application like all Root ninja. Only this mission had delayed it and Sai wondered if the sensation of lightness located within his chest was a psychosomatic symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. He was almost sure he wasn't traumatized, but no-one had ever explained to him what being traumatized felt like so he couldn't be sure. He was standing in the waiting chamber outside the Hokage's office and witnessing as Naruto spoke of his travels with Jiraiya and great ramen bars, Sakura spoke of her medical studies and their jounin sensei Kakashi who was out of village for a mission and they both ganged up on Sasuke, asking questions and receiving mostly one-syllable answers.

"So Ero-sensei offended this miko and let me tell you, some of them can do seriously weird shit when they get angry…" Naruto looked like he was going to explain, but this was when Sasuke decided to volunteer a sentence.

"Can't all women?" he asked. This made Naruto grimace and look at Sakura, but she only threw her head back and laughed.

"Keep that in mind. I know where your tendons are, you know," she threatened, yet her words made Naruto grin and Sasuke appeared unconcerned.

"Can threats of violence be used as a form of bonding?" he asked. Sakura and Sasuke turned to give him a look that was… disbelieving was close and so was exasperated, but Sai was certain he was missing some important nuance.

Personhood: The Art of Being Fully Human had read: Love is also heavy rain that falls freely and washes away the hurts and chains of the corrupt heart of man; and, like thirsting saplings, the heart reaches up to the heavens, and the cry of it calls aloud for relief from thence.

In the beginning it was a sunny day, Sai's name meant offering prayers and he threw a man out of a window. Now it was raining, Sai's name had changed and he was leaning back against a window. It wasn't locked.

"Only if they know you don't really mean it, or if they know you mean it with love and stuff. But don't get it mixed with masochism, though Sakura-chan probably suffers from that too, what with having a thing for the bastard…"

After this things happened quickly. Sakura punched Naruto, who should have been able to dodge it, but for some reason declined to do so. He was thrown back towards Sai and Sai could have dodged, but he wanted to catch Naruto. He managed, but the force behind the punch threw him back as well and the window was thrown open. It was the end of one chapter of his life, it was raining and Sai had just been thrown out of a window. He noted it was nice symmetry. He even laughed a little as he flipped over in the air.

Of course he and Naruto were all right. They weren't ninja for nothing.

067. Snow

The plan Tsunade put together was simple, out of necessity; they were on a time limit and the moment Danzo found out either Kabuto or Sai were back in Konoha they would lose the element of surprise. And they needed that surprise, badly. According to Sai there were currently twenty children under the age of sixteen in the Root, not counting himself, fifteen of them under the age of twelve and five were precisely five years old new recruits – something Tsunade found completely revolting.

If these kids, half-trained in the best cases, got between her Anbu and Danzo's jounin in a fight it was going to be ugly.

The attack was to be three pronged. Tsunade had sent a message to Danzo about Uchiha Sasuke's return – a message she was certain he didn't need anymore – and an order to arrive to meet her in her office. What was waiting for him there was an ambush and Shizune disguised as Tsunade to lure the man inside. Her student couldn't fool Danzo for long, but hopefully long enough for him to close the door behind him. Another part of this operation was going to be the house arrest of Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura. Tsunade wanted to believe they had simply been subtly controlled by Danzo's stolen Sharingan, but she couldn't allow them to roam freely before the situation had settled and they had been officially cleared of all accusations.

The second prong was the Operation Think about the Children, the one Tsunade was personally leading. According to Sai (and Kabuto, damn the creepy man Naruto had decided to adopt like a stray puppy) the Root trainees had different schedules depending on their skill level and classes, but they all ate at the same time in the same place. The plan was to sneak in at dinner time and hopefully avoid fighting, catch them in the trainee mess hall and start to order them around.

This was why Tsunade was needed personally. These children were trained to be fanatically loyal to Konoha and Tsunade was the current military dictator of the village, however little Danzo liked this fact. There was no telling if these child operatives would acknowledge the normal village hierarchy and take orders from her jounin, but Tsunade doubted that even Danzo had gone as far as to denounce the position of the Hokage, especially since it was a position he had his eyes on. As long as there were no conflicting orders from the war hawk, the children should follow Tsunade's orders like good little drones. Should.

The third prong would be the main assault of the Root Headquarters after Tsunade go the children out, or if and when the distress signal came. Rooting out the agents who weren't in the headquarters would be a nightmare and the clean-up of the agents embedded in other villages would probably take years, but if everything went to a plan the main force should be crushed in an afternoon. Again, should.

Tsunade was holding up an umbrella and giving the map Sai had drawn for them a last glance. They stood in front of an entrance to an old civilian shelter that had been abandoned after the Kyuubi Attack because of structural damage that had been inflicted on it. It should have been demolished years ago, but somehow the issue had gotten lost in the bureaucratic swamp of the village administration.

"Why am I not surprised," she drawled and pushed the map down her cleavage. "Sai, take point. Cat, behind me, you are responsible of the genjutsu, Asp, you advance on the ceiling. Neutralize any guards we encounter. Silently." A second later only Sai could be seen entering the shelter.

The above-ground part of the shelter was a sturdy, gray cube with a door. The below-ground level was a bigger gray cubicle space with everything stripped off – except, of course, an entry into a sewer separate from the main Konoha sewer network. After a long climb down, a hundred crouched, narrow meters and two turns the sewer got… rather absurdly spacious for a sewer. This was when they met the first guard. It was a woman with mouse brown short hair, a mask that depicted some sort of bird on her face and her hand on the handle of her tanto.

"Id and identification code," the woman demanded with a toneless voice.

"Id ROOT522. A red hand hanging from a tree, a silent sentinel under the tree's roots. Standing silent, loyal to the end," Sai answered with an equally flat voice. It was a nonsense sentence like all Konoha identification codes, but not one Tsunade knew and as a Hokage she was supposed to know them all. The guard stepped aside, only to fall back, her throat slit open.

She was angry as she stepped over the body that Cat's genjutsu swiftly hid from view. There had been no need for that woman to die but Danzo's delusions. Konoha was a village of special snowflakes and while it wasn't quite as nice a place as the propaganda tended to paint it as, the truth was that they encouraged individuality as they best could in the framework of loyalty to the village. Konoha could and would demand its tithe in life and limb, in blood and tears and a series of funerals to attend to, but identity, the right to pursue personal happiness despite the risks? No. Danzo. Had. No. Right. She was fuming as they passed one more guard before entering the trainee barrack division, luckily a low-level security area.

"There," Sai said and pointed towards a closed door. "There is likely at lest one adult operative supervising."

"Good," Tsunade growled and cracked her knuckles. "It's time to save my little snowflakes." And she kicked the door open.

068. Lightning

Kabuto waited in the small ante chamber behind the hidden door in the Hokage's office, waiting with five Anbu. He knew better than to think that he was trusted by anyone except Naruto-sama, but the Hokage was banking on his hatred of Danzo to not turn on her shinobi mid-battle – and if he happened to die taking Danzo down, one less headache for her. He understood that the woman was fond of Naruto-sama, which was a good thing considering her surprisingly ruthless streak, but he would have to keep an eye on her regardless. Politics could turn even a mouse into a monster.

He knew the moment Danzo stepped into the office. There wasn't a single audible step, the door didn't creak or click shut, but the tinge of Uchiha in the chakra of the man was impossible to mistake. They all acted as one.

Sable shunshined between Danzo and the door, barring the way out, while Serow took her place between the man and the window. Marten, Squirrel and Crane flickered into a half circle that left Danzo now completely surrounded. Kabuto simply stepped into the office and Danzo's head immediately turned towards him; he didn't feel even the slightest hint of the fury he had half-expected to consume him when he finally stood in front of the man, ready to take him down. Instead it was like all his blood had turned to ice water so cold it burned from within. He was going to kill Danzo and there was no joy in the thought.

But there was satisfaction. There was a sense of completion.

"What is the meaning of this, Shizune?" Danzo asked. Well, they hadn't really expected to fool them man any real amount of time. Shizune allowed her henge to fade and stood up, sending the legs of the chair scraping backwards on the floor.

"You are under suspicion of several counts of unsolicited assassination, several counts of kidnapping of a Konoha citizen…" Shizune went through the short list while Danzo stood in the ring of bared steel, seemingly unaffected. He was an old, wrinkled man, frail-looking, leaning on a cane; no-one relaxed an inch because of this. "Please surrender into our custody pending further investigation into your affairs," Shizune finished her piece. It needed to be said, Kabuto suspected, if for formality's sake only.

"So be it, then. Daitoppa!" The sad way Danzo inclined his head didn't fool Kabuto in the least. He flickered his way through a series of seals that allowed the wind to simply whirl around him, but the Anbu and Shizune weren't as well prepared or as nimble of hand and they were blown away against the walls, the desk falling over Shizune with a crash and a book case almost hitting one of the Anbu.

Kabuto struck at Danzo too quick for the man to evade him and the strike connected cleanly and with full force. He felt the body of his enemy break beneath his hand, but even as the man landed in a heap, his back twisted at a seemingly unnatural angle, Kabuto knew that it had been much too easy. Marten was foolish enough to prove this by leaping to the old councilor's side and taking a lightning-quick wind jutsu to the chest, falling bleeding on the floor.

Fighting in an enclosed space was a skill of its own. Kabuto stepped to the side and watched as Shizune made a daring spurt into the middle of the melee and dragged the badly bleeding man to the minuscule safety the ante chamber offered and begun to heal him, her hands glowing gently blue. It was impossible to shunshin away from the entirety that the office and the ante chamber formed and the heavily enforced walls withstood the tail end of the jutsu strikes that shredded flesh and furniture and covered the floor in water. But while Danzo was the one who inflicted the most damage in the fight, he couldn't seem to finish his opposition. The man was getting on in years.

"What an uncomfortable age that must be. Now if you'd asked my advice, I'd have told to stay twenty-five – but it's much too late now;" he remarked amicably. The water was up to his ankles now and coloured delicate, translucent pink.

"One can hardly stay twenty-five their whole life, unless they sink to Orochimaru's levels." Danzo answered nonchalantly and dodged a strike from Crane's tanto. Or yours, was the implication. Kabuto found his mouth stretching into a genuine smile of amusement.

"Stealing a whole body is wrong, but stealing eyes is all right? Do your morals operate on a weight-based system?" Kabuto inquired; and his suspicion that Danzo was more tired than he appeared was confirmed when the man only froze for the briefest of moments before dodging a fire jutsu that left the walls smoldering and pulled at the bandages covering the right side of his face.

The short list hadn't included bloodline theft and Kabuto wondered if the man had still thought he could get away with it all and remain in Konoha.

"Besides, one perhaps can't help growing older, but two can. With proper assistance you could have ceased at twenty-five. Well, better late than never, I suppose." And without further ado he leaped into the battle again. It was a trick, a feint, this partially reverse-engineered jutsu. He grabbed Danzo's left hand and made a one-handed seal with both their hands.

Old or not, Danzo was good. As a snake slithered out from underneath Kabuto's sleeve Serow, her face now bared by her cracked mask, exhaled wind-infused chakra onto her tanto to make it longer, deadlier. Danzo twirled both their bodies around, forcing Kabuto to drop on his knees on the wet floor. Serow and Squirrel both struck as Kabuto's snake sunk its teeth into both of their arms and at the same moment Danzo exhaled blasts of wind blades none of them could dodge at such short range. Then several things happened at once. The poison Kabuto was immune to, that Danzo in all likelihood could neutral as well, was released into their bloodstream. The wind blades stuck through Kabuto's flesh, forcing a pained groan from his lips as red and black spots danced across his vision. But this was the part where he had modified Anko's jutsu, when he released a blast of lightning chakra through the snake's body.

Kabuto had been stranger to elation for as long as he could remember, but the sight of Danzo being bodily flung by the lightning bolt struck through him with the rush of the best endorphin release technique. The walls would have withstood the impact easily, but Danzo hit the closed window.

069. Thunder

The door wasn't locked and Tsunade kicked it open with no effort at all. The head of every person in the mess hall turned towards her, standing seemingly alone in the doorway, Sai hidden behind her form. It was a mirthless place, with bare gray walls, plain long tables without table cloths and plain long benches, no carpets on bare gray floor and the children dressed in similar plain clothes, in dark blue and black under the harsh, yellow light of the light bulb without a lampshade.

Tsunade was distantly aware that her killing intent thrummed through the room in almost audible thunder. She was so out of control it was unacceptable… but maybe it was appropriate all the same. After all, wasn't this whole mess the proverbial lighting from the clear sky, and didn't thunder always follow lightning?

There was a man in the room. He wore no mask, but as he flickered to Tsunade in the space between two heartbeats his face was so blank there wasn't much difference. He was quick and silent and powerful, he was merciless, he was at Anbu level… he was so outmatched it wasn't even fun. Tsunade struck fast and she struck bloodlessly to spare the children a little shock, and the man toppled over, groaning a little.

"These rash youngsters," she sighed and shook her head sadly. "They don't make insurgents like they used to. Back when we fought in Rain…" The children jumped up, drawing kunai, wakizashi and other short swords, the youngest grabbing shuriken and all of them ready to jump her. Tsunade had to hide a smirk. Completely brash, a little fire and no survival instincts at all; maybe they weren't that different from normal students after all.

"I am Godaime Hokage Senju Tsunade and that man was a traitor to Konoha!" she thundered. "Stand down and lower your weapons, soldiers." Twenty children froze momentarily, their faces reflecting hesitance, some more, some almost managing to hide it.

"She is the Hokage. I have seen a picture of her," one of the older children said, a boy with brown, cropped hair. Immediately all children hid their kunai and swords and bowed deeply to her.

"Hokage-sama," they chanted as an eerie underground choir. Not one of them asked a question.

"We are fighting traitors to Konoha now," Tsunade spoke to them; no need to tell the Root forces were the traitors here, not yet. "You are to follow me and my men above ground. Don't engage in battle unless directly ordered to. I declare you ameliorated!" Her words were met with pensive silence.

"But Hokage-sama, there aren't any windows we could be thrown out of… is this why we are going to the upper levels?" the same boy who had recognized her spoke with the slightest strain in his voice. Tsunade blinked.

"No, that's defenestrate. She means something else," a thin, doe-eyed girl corrected the boy. Tenseness barely there eased at her words and Tsunade realized much to her horror that the kids really had thought she wanted to throw them out of a window…

"I thought defenestrating meant gelding," the bell-clear voice of a tiny, androgynous child rung out from the middle of the crowd.

"No, that's castrating and it doesn't count as a natural cause of death even if they are drunk," yet another kid answered. "Except if the dead person is Jiraiya-sama. Hare-sempai said so, but she didn't explain why."

"Wasn't that sabotage?" the girl asked.

"That too, I guess, if they have a really important Kekkei Genkai, but vitiating means sabotaging," the silver-voiced child mused and bit his lower lip, appearing absurdly adorably precocious. Also, wholly disturbing.

"To ameliorate means making something or someone better. Now, make a crocodile, follow me and don't make any noise," Tsunade interrupted the Word of the Day Calendar recital before it got completely out of hand. She made a mental note that she needed to make several therapist's appointments because if children barely of age to enter the Academy were contemplating castration as a viable sabotage strategy…

None of the children were moving.

"Do you mean an area effect genjutsu, Hokage-sama? Or should we henge ourselves as crocodiles?" the boy who had first spoken up asked her. "The youngest haven't been taught either yet."

"Just form pairs, grab each others hands and follow me!" Tsunade barked, painfully aware that the clock was ticking seconds away and they could be discovered any minute now. And like the world was mocking her, that was when a huge boom rattles the floor under their feet like an underground thunderstorm, the echoes bouncing off the walls. What had happened? They hadn't sent the distress signal and the attack wasn't supposed to start before her group got out.

She herded the children out of the mess hall with the help of Cat and Sai, Asp keeping watch in an intersection of tunnels, and swore to herself that unless there were some really mitigating circumstances she was going to do some defenestrating, castrating being a very real possibility as well.

070. Storm

It had been a nice, mild winter so far, but now the fierce wind and the clouds massing south-east of Iwa suggested that a storm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one. It was half past midnight and Deidara was walking home from the mission office, dusty from the road, tired and annoyed and hoping Tomomi hadn't been sent on a mission alone while he had been running after a turned informant halfway across the country. It wasn't that she didn't know how to take care of herself, but he always worried anyway. What if a client lied about the mission parameters? What if the situation simply shifted in an unfavorably way? Deidara knew that few plans survived contact with the enemy and any random missing nin wandering through the area might cause trouble.

It wasn't that he didn't trust Tomomi to take care of herself, but if the unlikely happened and something happened to her…

He walked through the almost empty streets up to Tomomi's house. Iwagakure no Sato was built in a bowl-shaped valley surrounded by steep rock formations and cliff faces and Tomomi's house was one of the upper ones. It was a real house that even had a handkerchief-sized garden, not an apartment, but it was awkwardly shaped; long and narrow with a bathroom where sitting on the toilet required pushing the knees into the shower and a kitchen that was – according to Tomomi – a head injury hazard if even one cabinet door was left open. This was why she was able to afford it with the chuunin wages.

He had thought about asking her to move in with her, but the time was never right, somehow. If they weren't interrupted by someone at a fateful moment, she'd had a bad day or one of her friends had just been widowed and he always lost his nerve at the last moment. But the life of a ninja was short and perilous and he was determined. Today he would ask her.

It was too late. Deidara returned to tracks of blood on the floor and the clay statue he had made for Tomomi in pieces on the living room floor.

"Tomomi," he whispered, a cold, cold hand squeezing his heart, desperation bringing a tang of numb disbelief and despair to his tongue. He walked the apartment like in a bad dream, thinking how she had been supposed to be safe in the village! Through the living room and into the bedroom through the kitchen…

The bedroom window was open. No ninja worth their first shuriken would leave a window open, but then, Tomomi hadn't left of her own free will, now had she? There was a bloody handprint on the window sill and Deidara leaned over it, thinking about how easy it would be to die here, watching over the long drop to the lower levels of the village.

But Tomomi had said that suicide wasn't an answer. She had said that wimpy defeatist attitude wasn't allowed in her house. He couldn't jump out of her window.

But when he took a step back his foot hit something, sending it clattering over the floor. The house was dark and Deidara had to kneel to find the little thing: a piece of ceramic armor. It was a thin sliver that curved ever-so-slightly, bone white with a reddish-brown stain – and a bright red line. He had to fumble for a light to make certain, but yes, in the corner of that curvy piece of ceramic was the end of a red line. It was a piece of a mask. It was a piece of a mask and Tomomi was nowhere to be seen and there was blood on the floor…

Deidara couldn't remember how he stumbled back into the living room, but there his foot hit a piece of clay, sending it clattering all over the floor. The noise echoed in his ears the drum beat and he stared, he stared, he remembered. A part of him was thinking of practicalities, of the Inner Sanctuary and the Tsuchikage's private library and the classified section of the mission archives as the shattered statue of a dove filled his whole field of vision. Another part finally, finally understood why Tomomi had said that suicide wasn't an answer. She had been right, like always. He had just lost the only person who had ever understood him when even his parents had flinched away from his precocious, disquieting questions. It wasn't fair, but he wasn't looking for fair and he wasn't looking for death either – not for his own death, anyway.

"I will be a good shinobi for you, Tomomi-chan. I will find out who is responsible. And then…" He looked at the broken piece of art on the floor and smiled. He wasn't looking for fairness, he was just looking for who he could point the blame at and blast away.

"Art is a blast!"

AN: In Japanese folklore an akateko is a youkai that appears as an infant's hand hanging from a tree; the red hand in the Root code referred to that.

I hate writing fighting scenes and I write plot-driven Naruto fiction. I fail common sense forever.