She saved Shisui on accident, though if it'd been presented to her as an option she would have made a better plan. Any plan really that didn't include an untrained six year old practicing chakra control in the forest above a corrupt council members' clandestine organ extraction.

She hadn't known at the time he was a councilman. Nor did Sakura know he was attempting to tear out the teenager's right eye, his hand getting so far as to pop the eye partly out of the socket when she startled them both. Shisui, who was already reeling back from the attack, was having his eye pulled out.

Sakura saw this just as she landed between them and it made her so angry. This was the Uchiha hero who'd saved so many of his comrades with his flicker technique. The anger and frustration which had been building up in her since lunch flooded back. Bringing chakra with it the colors burst forth with a vengeance. Their flows coalesced into the chakra network of her muscles. With an inarticulate scream she threw herself at the man trying to nab the hero's eye. In this moment he didn't seem like a person. He was something worse. She lunged at him. Sakura's tiny chakra laden fist smashed into his stomach, the highest part on him that she could reach.

Only when she hit him it wasn't like punching a hole through wood. She felt her fist connect and puncture tissue, her knuckles separated muscles, they sunk in and disappeared beneath and ruptured a hole straight into the stomach. It was wet. Blood, bile, and the contents of his colon erupted on her. It coated her arm and splattered on her screaming face. The man let go of Shisui's eyeball and reached to grab her. Sakura's vision blurred and stung with the gross liquid squirting in her eyes, but through all this she could still see. Even with her hand in his stomach he was angry and reaching for her.

Her quick brain finally caught up with her stupid body. It concluded she was going to die. If she didn't move she was going to die. Quicker than she'd ever done anything, fueled and sped up by the chakra still flowing through her muscles, she yanked her hand out and stumbled back. Back till she was pressed against Shisui. The old man in front of her stumbled with her but remained standing. He shouted a command, his words harsh and full of venom.

The white masks descended on them. Eight of them, their blank and white masked faces eerie in the red valley's setting sun. The figures ran close and reached towards them. Sakura screamed again. The one who got to her first bent down as if to snatch her. Only she was tiny and by doing so he put himself within her reach. She punched him too. His armored mask cracked under the pressure, revealing the face and broken nose beneath, and he went flying into and through a tree. This, however, seemed to be her limit of control. Inside her limbs the chakra sputtered. That flow she'd so meticulously maintained then faltered. Sakura felt her muscles quake as the flood released and sent the man flying. Like a puppet unable to hold herself up without the support her legs collapsed under her. Tired from her run through the trees and her first two attempts at punching real people. Chakra or no her muscles weren't strong enough to support this and she dropped. Her long pink hair fell on the ground before her face hit the dirt. It dug into her left temple and she stared up at the figures looming above.

The fight around her flurried in a movement of hand signs, jutsu, and taijutsu. Shisui the Uchiha hero moved so fast, flickering out of one place only for his body to appear nearby with his sword unsheathed. He killed one, then two. Or she guessed he did. He moved faster than she could track, only leaving a flash of color and a dead body before he flickered away again. From the undignified sprawl in the red dirt she watched it happen in approximately two seconds. So fast, she had only a single moment to be amazed before registering someone's hand had just gripped the back of her dress.

Her body was slung up and then whoever held her was moving through the trees. She blinked down the shoulder she'd been slung across. Across the back was Shisui's sword. Like the hero he was he'd put it away before grabbing her up. However much she admired him, she realized he had been injured. He ran with a limp and he sometimes ran into the tree branches instead of perfectly landing. The masks behind them, though some had died, now numbered nine people. They were chasing them and they were fast, just as fast as the injured Uchiha hero. Sakura reached for the academy standard hip pouch and fumbled for a kunai. She threw it at the ninja leading the chase. He dodged it as if she'd thrown a leaf. Not slowing in the slightest. She grabbed another one and some of the ninja wire Iruka Sensei had handed out the other day. Wrapped it first around one hilt and then the next. Her fingers shook as she twisted and wrapped the academy standard wire around the hilts. Sakura twisted them as tight as she could, slicing herself twice on the sharp wire when she mishandled it.

This time she didn't throw immediately. Sakura watched the foliage coming up and waited for the cover of the next big tree. As Shisui landed next to it she slammed one kunai into the bark then leaned sideways to throw its pair against a neighboring tree. The wire stretched between them, not as tight as she'd like, but the sharp edge nicely hid amongst the shadows.

Then they were off to another perch. Sakura didn't see it, but a garbled voice rose out from behind them. When the pursuers next appeared from a cluster of trees the leader's pants had been slashed, the red soaking through. The man met her eyes across the five meters separating them and snarled. Sakura felt cold, the blood drained from her face. This was bad. This was really bad.

Her untrained eyes had a hard time keeping up. Though focusing chakra to them helped, if giving her a headache immediately after. When Shisui's body tensed and made a much bigger jump, she realized the increasingly sparse trees meant they'd gotten away from the forest and had closed in on the Village's apartments near the edge of Konoha's protective wall. Shisui scrambled up the huge wall, running flat out up its massive surface. Sakura looked at the ground and apartments disappear below them and her throat went dry.

Her awareness of the colors circulating within another person's body had never been so great as it was in this moment. Shisui's chakra control was the only thing keeping her body from plunging a hundred meters to her death. When his chakra flared and flickered her breath shuttered, sure they were going to fall. Yet the flaring chakra burst out of him in a pattern. This pattern kept repeating. It wasn't even a high level code, but the simplest of distress signals Iruka Sensei had only this week introduced to their academy class.

It blared the single word, "Help. Help. Help." To anyone and everyone who could sense such strong flares. The chakra inside of him burst like an erupting bon fire each time it shot out. His mix of colors so unique and interesting she wasn't sure she'd ever forget them. At least she wouldn't if she survived and got off this wall, a possibility Sakura really doubted just then.

At Shisui's broadcast of trouble the pursuing ninja lost all sense of discretion. One lifted their mask above lips, and with fingers held before those lips Sakura saw him power up a surge of colors and out of his mouth he formed fire. It glowed, built hotter and larger, and then shot forwards. It formed a massive fireball and roared through the air, shot up the wall and straight at her face.

Sakura had just enough time to realize, "Ah this is why you went up the wall. Can't have the apartments burning."

She hadn't thought she'd spoken aloud until the teenager sprinting with her chuckled. The sound was scratchy and derogatory. Sakura felt his weight shift as he dove away from the fireball and launched them atop the wall. His laugh shouldn't sound so bitter. The sound made her sad. If he survived she thought she should try and make him happy. A child who helped win a war shouldn't have to be so sad when they grow up.

His bitter chuckle continued, as if he couldn't stop now he'd begun. Then his scratchy voice informed, "They weren't going to draw attention to themselves if they could help it. It would have been better for them if they'd gotten us quietly in the forest. You notice they didn't attack with anything flashy back there, ya?"

"Ya," She understood immediately. Sakura thought he'd make a good sensei. "It's better for us if we get everyone's attention. So they were sneaky."

"Hmm." He went on, "Girl, can you run?"

Run? Could she run? Sakura's dry throat tried to swallow, tried to speak, but the thought of trying to run left her terrified. Another huge fireball shot towards them and it singed the tips of her hair before Shisui could get them out of the way. The heated air blazed by, feeling extremely hot wafting against the skin of her head and neck. Her hair left smoke as Shisui jumped and sprinted. Run? Could she run?

Her voice was dry and quiet when it squeaked out, "I don't know. I can try."

In the distance Sakura saw colors of shinobi jumping across the rooftops. She'd seen them a moment ago, but they were quickly drawing closer. Near enough she could see their bright bursts as their chakra sped them faster and faster. She just hoped they weren't the bad sort running to assist the blank masked attackers.

Worried this is exactly what it was Sakura licked her lips with a dry tongue, stammering out a warning, "There's more ninja coming from the southwest. They're coming fast. Four of them. No, three. One broke off and is running towards the administration tower."

"When they get here, if they're friendly, I'm going to set you down and you're going to run. Run atop the wall and run as fast and as far as you can. If you have to you're going to concentrate chakra in your fists again and you're going to break anyone's leg who tries to grab you. Got that?"

Sakura's legs and arms were still trembling from their last exertion, but she thought she could do that. Probably. If she didn't pass out first. The rush of adrenaline had begun to make her feel sick. It hurt her tummy and she'd been bouncing around long enough she really thought she might soon be sick. But Shisui thought she could do it. She would do it.

"Okay."

They ran over the wall. Those blank, featureless, white masked shinobi followed. Shisui's distress signal continued to flare. Ninja flocked them. What happened next was so fast and full of people she saw it happen in snippets of time and moments of killing blows. Severed heads flying and bouncing off the wall, parries of kunai, flashes of lightning jutsu, someone slapping exploding tags around the rescuers.

The blank masks, who kept getting more and more numerous and the three non-blank masks destroyed this section of the wall. When Danzo-sama showed up wanting the eye he'd only partially been able to extract, it turned into a bloodbath.

A streak of white chakra flared brighter than anything she'd ever seen from a single ninja. The white chakra rescuer moved so fast Sakura only saw the streak of color they left behind, then their hand plunged in the councilman's chest with a crackling fist of lightning. The rescuer's hand went through the chest cavity before dropping the councilman and then assassinating another six people in the same way. One clear shot and their organs were fried, their hearts removed.

By then Shisui had put her on the wall and Sakura ran. Her trembling, stumbling legs nearly toppled her over the edge, but she calmed her breathing and focus enough to hang on with her toes. They barely caught her and she teetered, but then she got her legs under her and found she could run just like Shisui said. His words went through her head. She repeated them again and again to keep calm. Run. Concentrate your chakra. Break their legs. A man did reach her. He had the same bleeding leg she'd injured with her wire and this time when he snarled at her it was much louder and more scary. When he grabbed her by her long pink hair she whirled around, chakra in her fist and smacked his knee just like Shisui said. She didn't stop to watch as he toppled over the wall, she turned and kept running. Behind her she heard an explosion and the wall beneath her feet trembled. Sakura ran.

The current team Ro had been assigned to patrol that night. Their armored uniforms hid the identities of Kakashi, Tenzo, Yūgao, and Genma. Kakashi had been leading them on a route circling the residence of Minato's son when he felt that familiar signature. It'd been several years since he'd trained the pair of Uchiha prodigies, but he'd know either of their chakra signatures anywhere. Shisui's always felt unique, unforgettable. Kakashi was used to it feeling happy or joking, but now it felt panicked. It mixed with the Hatake's famous white chakra, conveying a deeper emotional connection than any other clan would be able to sense. It tracked location as well as emotions of the person expulsing chakra.

Hatake Kakashi launched himself on the roof, a barked order left for the patrol team swiftly following, as he sprinted toward the panicked signal. Shisui didn't panic. The teenager had been in the war from the same age Kakashi had himself. Shisui handled himself under all but the worst situations. If he was panicking it meant he'd very nearly died. Kakashi saw the fireball, his left eye opening to expose the sharingan red and clarifying details even at this distance.

Shisui ran, a girl on his shoulder, an injury bleeding on his leg, and an eye half hanging out of its socket. The younger boy kept reaching up to hold it to his face. The pair of his arms occupied and leaving him clumsy as he dodged the second fireball jutsu. No. Kakashi sweated, running faster. He saw Shisui with his eye bleeding and hanging halfway out of his head. No. Clutching a little pink haired girl with shaking hands. A horde of root ANBU on their heels. No.

"Tenzo, alert the Hokage."

Tenzo had the root seal under his tongue, and while Kakashi got the boy out of Root itself and recruited into ANBU, he didn't want to test the loyalty compulsion in the tongue seal. If Root was active in masse and in the open like this it meant Danzo-sama himself was nearby. The old War Hawk liked to get his hands in everything.

"Aim to kill."

Behind him Genma and Yūgao drew their weapons, "Hai Taichou."

"Ready for body replacement."

"Hai."

The body replacement jutsu worked best with a similar mass to the users. Kakashi chose the root member running at the back of the pursuing group. With hand signs and minimal smoke he switched locations with the root member. His team was waiting for the root uniform to appear. Genma got him with a kunai to the eye. Kakashi, from his new position at the rear of the root ninja, picked off one member and then another before his team used the replacement jutsu on their bodies. Precisely executed just as team Ro practiced. It was a move Kakashi thought up years ago when he and Itachi had been chasing the large group of Kumo nin who rigged a civilian street with explosives. Even now with the new teammate Yūgao, replacing Itachi, its execution felt practiced and clean. If Shisui wasn't so fast he would have placed himself at the front of the group to block their advancement, but Shisui's speed (even while injured) should be relied on. From the rear he and his team took out half the pursuers before the other root squads realized they were flanked. The beauty of perspective, few know you're there if they're facing the other way. If root weren't full of brainwashed members single mindedly following orders it would have been much harder to take out so many. That's the problem with removing free will. Your operators are only as good as your orders for them.

A chakra presence flared nearby. A large familiar presence often found kneeling to speak in the Hokage's office. If Kakashi hadn't been working so closely with Sarutobi he wouldn't have suspected so much was wrong about this situation. Clearly, the War Hawk hadn't been following the Hokage's plan to subdue the Uchiha Coup. It rather seemed he wanted to take advantage of the bad situation. Kakashi felt that little bit of empathy in himself dwindle.

"Danzo-sama."

"Go back to patrolling boy. This is above your clearance."

The old man just saw three ANBU uniforms and bodies in the ops standard henge to change their appearance. Today they all had dark hair and feline masks. He didn't know this was the elite unit Ro. Otherwise he probably wouldn't have attempted to order the Hokage's personal team.

"Your actions are not sanctioned by the Hokage. Order your men to stand down."

Behind the War Hawk another twelve signatures appeared, their chakra cloaked, but Kakashi was sensitive enough to catch the flux of their entry just below the War Hawk on the other side of the wall. Only one of the new root members stepped forwards. As if speaking only to the one Danzo-sama ignored Kakashi's warning and ordered loud and clear, "Kill the pink haired girl. Extract the eyes. Lock down the base until I or my replacement orders you otherwise."

Kakashi's fist moved, the lightning chakra of the chidori powered him forward and in the next flash his hand was through the old commander's chest, heart ripped from its place and the rest of the torso fried. Kakashi didn't pause. He moved again and again, trying to take out the nearest squad before they could follow through on their orders. He only got six of them. Three used the shunshin to travel away. Three went after the girl. Kakashi flickered in front of them, killing two with his tantō and the other got halfway to the running girl before being impaled by Kakashi's earth spike. The girl herself wasn't helpless. A bleeding root almost caught her, but she must have sensed him. The tiny, ridiculously pink head of hair spun around, her fist raised and coated with chakra and she smashed the root's knee. The kneecap shattered, the femur pierced skin and by the spurt of blood Kakashi estimated that one would be dead within five minutes. Just in case, Kakashi made the hand signs for a Kage Bunshin clone and sent it to finish the root now clinging to the side of the wall. Another sent to guard the girl from the shadows. It wouldn't approach her.

Yūgao stood in front of Shisui's pale form as he leaned against a blown up chunk of the wall. The woman sliced an arm off the last remaining root still attacking the injured kid. Then her katana swung and stabbed up through the bottom of the rib cage. When the root member went limp against her she pushed the body off the end of her blade and immediately pulled a rag out to clean the expensive metal. Yūgao was a perfectionist. Her blade work surpassed his own.

With his team standing watch he went to Shisui. This kid wasn't a kid anymore, but Kakashi had never been able to separate his feelings from his mission, not like the ninja rules said he should. Just like his father he'd forever give everything for his comrades and this kid he'd practically raised. Shisui was his otōto in everything but Hatake blood. Shisui, the kid who's head was only just reaching above his shoulder and who still had gangly limbs. Limbs that were shaking. He had a hand pressed over one of his sharingan eyes, the blood still leaking between his fingers. He was breathing and alive and Danzo would never hurt him again. Kakashi had never been so happy to rip someone's heart out. That craggy shit had done this to his otōto.

He was so relieved he hugged the younger boy. Although only a few years separated them Kakashi's frame dwarfed him. Shisui no doubt would continue to grow if he were allowed to survive into his early 20s. So many ninja didn't make it there. The ones who did were always more built. Kakashi's own time in ANBU, the daily brutal training with Gai, the S rank missions, it kept him twice the weight he might have otherwise maintained. No doubt if he ever quit he'd slim down, but Kakashi had no desire to lounge around with nothing but memories and regrets to hound him. No, he needed ANBU. It was his redemption and purpose. Training kids like Shisui, Itachi, Genma, Raidō, and now Tenzo... Seeing them grow up and come close to surpassing himself. Knowing they're strong enough to take on almost anyone short of a Sannin. They were his life. Not someone from his team. No. Kakashi would never let that happen again. Not his otōto.

"Taichou."

They all still called him Taichou, despite almost all of them now leading their own squads.

"Taichou I don't know what to do. My clan. Danzo, he tried to steal my eye. He's after our eyes. I...what if he does something to my family? My otousan-"

"Shh, not here." He let the younger boy go. "Flicker over to that girl. I saw her break somebody's leg and she's still running."

Shisui chuckled. That sad, dark chuckle he'd been doing for months. Hearing it made him frown. Kakashi didn't like the similarities he was seeing in Shisui and his own father before the man had taken his life. If there was anything him or the forsaken kami could do for this boy, Kakashi would find a way to make it happen. He didn't deserve this. The chuckle pervaded the pre-rain mist around them, floating over the wall and its litter of root uniforms.

"Ya, she follows orders. I'll go get her."