Shunshining into the Hokage Tower was easy when every ANBU stationed there was a lower rank. Even if they noticed Sakura's signature, which was extremely unlikely, it wouldn't raise a brow. Before opening the door, she flared her chakra, letting her shishou know she was there, as well as scanning for any familiar signatures. Neji, Raidou, and Genma on patrol today, she mused. Naruto must either be on a low rank or holed up in that hazmat hazard he calls an apartment. Chuckling to herself, she opened the door, only to find her shishou half asleep on her desk. Approaching the Godaime and coughing slightly, Sakura hid a smile behind her mask.

Grumbling, the Godaime Hokage came to, raising her head only to have to brush off papers that had stuck there. Something about zoning, Sakura noticed. No wonder she fell asleep, can't say I blame her. Tsunade blinked, taking in her apprentice standing there, ANBU attire unwrinkled and for all the world, looking as if she never left. Breathing deeply, Tsunade smirked, coming as close to a smile as she would allow after being woken up with a slight hangover.

"Ah, Sakura. It's been a long time."

Removing her mask, Sakura smiled brightly, breathing, "Shishou."

After a moment of looking her over, checking to make sure she was as unbothered as she looked. Enhancing the chakra in her eyes just to put her mind at ease, Tsunade let out a huff. "You really didn't run into any real trouble, now, did you?" Rolling her eyes she added, "Leave it to you to look like you just came from home and not three countries over. Have you rested or did you come straight to report?"

Smile turning wry, Sakura looked into Tsunade's eyes and said, "I just came from seeing Kakashi."

It was as if all happiness was sucked out of the room by an invisible force. Eyes tightened, their faces drew blank as if to shield their owners of the pain of the conversation to come. "I see. So you know as much as I could tell you, medically anyway." Sakura inclined her head. Tsunade sighed, she honestly did not want to go through this again. Kakashi was a thorn in her side half the time, but he was an elite shinobi, and a dear friend.

"Sakura…it was touch and go for a while when they came back. Naruto came screaming through the gates with him, no one knew what was going on. Shizune and I got to him as soon as we were notified, but even then, he had lost so much blood and that chakra…it had almost engulfed his entire brain. I managed to pour enough of myself into him to force almost half of it back, but every day one of us has to go in to see him and push it back. I have yet to be able to shrink it further than that. I honestly don't understand any of it. I don't understand why its eating away at his chakra, I don't understand how it manipulates itself into a genjutsu that apparently can't be broken even by a master genjutsu specialist with a god damn sharingan, and I don't understand how the fuck the mission went sideways enough for that level of pure torture to be inflicted on him like that. And from what we've been able to get from Naruto, he went through the same. The only people out there who we knew of that were that vindictive and messy are the now defunct Akatsuki, and we all know if they had Naruto, he'd be minus the Kyuubi when he came back; not mostly healed and able to transport himself and Kakashi."

Sakura nodded along, understanding exactly what her master was feeling. It was a very rare thing to have developed something the Sannin couldn't fix, or at the very least understand. Even if she couldn't save someone, she wouldn't stop unless she knew everything there was to know from a condition or poison. It just wasn't in a medic nin's nature to give up prematurely.

"The mission was only A-rank Sakura. A. It was a simple retrieval mission. A spy infiltrated the mind of one of our lower ranking guard staff, in Records. Morning shift chunin." Shrugging, she continued, "With the elite shinobi around the tower and inside guarding this seat, we've never felt that position was a threat. Not just in my regime; ever. There's plenty of chunin staff inside this tower, all nowhere near trained to go up against a mind infiltration like Sunji faced." Sakura grimaced, partly at the ghost pain of training against mind jutsu and partly because she knew Sunji from her time as a mere apprentice. Before she surpassed him in rank, they would often cross in the downstairs meeting hall, sharing a hello.

She almost didn't want to ask, "Shishou, is Shunji…alive?"

Closing her eyes briefly, Tsunade answered quietly, "No. He had to be put down. The madness the nukenin implanted in him…it would never have left him. Sunji would never have wanted to be a burden unto his village. I consider him a consequence of battle, and shortly after his death, he was honored as one. He's on the Stone."

Sakura's face mirrored her sensei's, eyes closed in harsh acceptance. Opening them, she nodded. "He was very dedicated to his service. Did he have surviving family?"

"No. He was alone, which somehow makes it both better and worse." She ran her fingers over her pigtails, something Sakura knew she only did when she was about to lose a lot of money or something wasn't right and she couldn't pin it. Knowing it was the latter, she brought her shishou back down to earth. "What happened, Shishou? How did it go so wrong?"

"Once Sunji was compromised, the nuke-nin, name of Nimke Tatsao, lesser known A-Class running a gang out of Earth Country, used Sunji's position and information to compromise the records room and steal a few scrolls of powerful jutsu. Two S-class ninjutsu and an unclassified body preservation jutsu. We still have nothing but questions as to why they were stolen. The Nara's have a few theories, the favorite right now being they were after the unclassified or possibly a different scroll altogether, and took the S-class ninjutsu for proof or spoil. They were Earth and Lightning based, so that makes it the most likely."

Clearing her throat and taking a swig of the sake bottle that must have been from last night, she continued on, "This happened about six months before you went to Snow, when you were in Suna for that Kage escort. Kakashi and Naruto were available and being as Kakashi is back up to his ANBU standard, I didn't think twice of sending them both, it'd been quiet. I wanted to go over it with you when you came back from jumpstarting their clinic, but the request from Snow came before we even had anything from them, so I didn't think twice. They're elite."

The anger Sakura had for herself almost doubled. Straying from the village in the name of getting stronger finally caught up with her. Since making ANBU two years ago, she'd spent maybe three months total inside of the gates. And half of those were really on patrol. God, the guilt just kept rising. If she had been inside the village, maybe it would have been her with Kakashi. She didn't have the Kyuubi, but ever since her promotion, Sakura and her ex-sensei had become a formidable team. They worked almost seamlessly once Kakashi realized she wasn't the little girl she once had been. His face when she blew his mask right off of it was a priceless memory she hoped to never lose.

Snapping back to her shishou, she nodded at her to continue.

"So I sent them, they were in the valley between Earth and Wind, Kakashi was to treat the mission as ANBU and stay in the shadows to infiltrate, while Naruto was to be the main force behind the apprehension and execution. They were all rogues so we were hoping to have recompense by their bounties, but according to what we got out of Naruto when they returned, there are no bodies left. Between his own destruction and Kakashi's katon use, its all gone. He brought back one headband he said belonged to Tatsao, but despite that, and Kakashi's condition, they completed the mission. The scrolls have been authenticated and replaced, and we're currently reviewing duty rosters for the Tower, we started with records. Established jonin only. No newbies, no special rank.

"From what Ino could get from Naruto, it went bad, and it went that way fast. These nukenin weren't A-Rank like we believed. S-rank at best and their leader, I later found out from the Tsuchikage, was one of their elite that went rogue. Kakashi's level, unclassed. Somehow, Tatsao used the body preservation jutsu on a live body. Kakashi's live body. It isn't supposed to be possible, which means it went wrong. That's the only way they were able to get them both. When Kakashi disappeared into the forbidden scroll, Naruto lost it. Kakashi is the last battle mentor he has left. He lost his battle focus for a split second, and the numbers were just too much while being so low on chakra. Suppressants and a seal incapacitated him, and it took him a little while to reach the Kyuubi and overcome them."

"Sakura…you were in Snow for ten months, the theft happened six before that. They left on the intel we had a month later. Naruto said that he and Kakashi were captured and separated two weeks after they left. Naruto was able to escape a couple of weeks later. Finally healed and left shelter two after that, was home after another four days."

Fuck.

"It took until three months ago for Naruto and his second team to find him, infiltrate the base he was held at, and bring him back."

Fuck.

Sakura closed her eyes and took a deep breath, willing the emotions back down her throat. She held it in as her thoughts frenzied. Realization settled in the pit of her stomach as the time hit her. Naruto escaped after two weeks. Kakashi was kept for fourteen and a half months. One year and two months of torture, deprivation, and god knows what else happened to him. How many times were they healed, or left to heal painfully and naturally, only for the process to start over again? Sakura had her fair share of both torture endurance training and the real thing itself. She knew first hand exactly how awful and disgusting it can be for a shinobi physically, and mentally. Kakashi had been through this many times before, she'd read his file over once or twice, knowing full well that it was only his official jonin file, not Black Ops.

But Naruto….Oh Naruto, how have you been coping? To know that such atrocities were committed against someone as sunny and good as Naruto made the tears threaten to come back again.

Sakura clenched her teeth, fists tightening at her sides, before she let the breath go and forced her taut muscles to relax. They're home now. They're home, they're safe with us, safe with me, and we will not stop working until we fix Kakashi. We won't. I won't. I can't fail.

"Shishou, the chakra. A fuinjutsu seal? The Fire Temple?"

Tsunade nodded her head slightly, understanding what she meant. "I'll let you and Naruto hash out the finer details of their capture. We've been talking about seals, but none are compatible so far, at least not any that won't make him completely disabled. The fact is, we've made absolutely no headway with Kakashi's condition. None. Everyday it takes a massive amount of chakra just to keep the parasitic chakra at bay. When Shizune and I managed to force it back towards the optical nerves, the epicenter, but it stopped at the reticular activating system and we haven't made any further progress with it. We also haven't been able to get him to respond to anything but the most basic physical stimuli. With the blockage to the RAS, he will stay in the coma, until it can be removed. The chakra is emanating from his eyes, and although his sharingan is always activated since his original transplant, we have no idea if this concentration is deteriorating, blocking, or just sitting in his eyes. His natural eye is doing fine, I'm sure you saw. For the life of me, I honestly can't figure it out. I'm going to lose one of my oldest and best shinobi because the men who did this and the base they were on is completely wiped out and I've never seen anything like this before!"

By the time she finished, Tsunade was breathing heavily, almost at a shout. Sakura understood. She was angry, lethally so, at the mission, at the men, at herself, at Kakashi's condition. At the stupid fucks who thought keeping such a jutsu was worth lives. The preservation of bodies has long been mastered. What made that jutsu so different?

"You said we have the scrolls back in possession?" Sakura began.

"Hai, they're sealed again in the unclassified room on the records floor. Only myself, and Ibiki currently have access. I know what you're thinking, and I agree. You and I can pour over it together in a few days after you catch up with Naruto and thoroughly examine Kakashi. I want you rested. This is your new mission. Fix my elite shinobi, Sakura. I have faith in my apprentice. Almost as much as I do myself." Tsunade smirked up at Sakura and drained the rest of her sake.

Sakura gave a small, strained smile, and tensed. She knew what was coming next.

"NOW GET OUT!"

Sakura left behind a lone cherry blossom, floating to the ground just in time to miss the shattering of a sake bottle on the wall three feet behind her.