A nimble figure in a porcelain mask resembling a wolf stood over a scene that would make most recoil. Indeed, it was hard for her not to look away. The smell of fresh blood permeated the grassy knoll where bodies lay strewn about. All were dead, although none by her own hand. She was much more selective with the lives that she took, and this scene utterly repulsed her.

Another figure appeared on the hill next to her in a cloud of smoke.

"They were no match for us," he said in a husky voice.

"Our mission was to take out only the leader." Her strained voice rang out across the quiet night. The rest of these bodies on the hillside…they were excessive. Lives that did not need to be taken.

"And we did. There are always casualties."

"There didn't have to be."

"We complete the mission, no matter the method. Are you growing soft, Wolf? I noticed you were slow today."

"Not so slow," she said, and a second version of herself held a kunai to his throat.

The feeling of cold steel against his neck made him grunt with surprise. "So you do kill your comrades," he muttered.

"Only on Lady Tsunade's orders," she said, hesitating.

In her moment's lapse, he moved against her, but she was already prepared. Another kunai flew at him from the trees, striking him in the heart.

He fell to his knees as a third version of Wolf stepped up the hillside towards him. This third version was her own flesh and blood, the other two merely clones.

"I'm sorry, Owl," she told him. "But aligning yourself so thoroughly with Danzō's ideals is something the Hokage cannot forgive."

She pulled the kunai from his chest, and his life's blood began to drain out into the cold ground. He let out a final, ragged breath, fell over, and was gone.

Leaning down, the female figure removed the man's mask. It was porcelain like hers, but shaped like an owl. Underneath, his face looked tired. There were bags under his eyes. He had not shaved that day.

Wolf closed his eyelids and stood up again, wondering what the other Anbu would think. Her reputation within the organization was only growing worse. Lady Tsunade would be pleased, at least. This particular operative had given his life to resurrecting Root, despite not being one of Danzō's original operatives. The remnants of the organization were nearly destroyed, and soon enough, she would be able to leave her own life as an Anbu behind.

There were rumors that funding for the organization would be slim in the coming years, and Anbu operatives would no longer be necessary to protect Konoha. She wondered briefly what would become of her once that happened, but regardless, it couldn't come soon enough. She hated the organization she worked for. Or maybe, she just hated herself.

She looked over the bodies across the hill. So many families destroyed, torn apart, and for what? Peace? The price of peace was high, and it wouldn't come for her generation. She would never get to experience the good fruit of her actions, only the rotten decay. In her mission to kill Owl, she had allowed countless others to die. This ate at her.

Her hands gripped the mask so hard that it cracked, cutting her palm in the process. She would have one name to add to her book tonight, but she briefly considered adding seven others, for the bodies that dotted the hill.

No…only one was taken by my hand tonight.

She hoped Lady Tsunade wouldn't call her by that ridiculous nickname when she returned to Konoha.

The Silent Assassin.

She hadn't been very silent tonight, but she hated being known for death. In her hands, the mask, now covered in blood, snapped in half. She preferred her own name, but as an Anbu, that would not do. Instead, she was called the Lone Wolf.

In Konoha, Wolf made her way towards the Hokage's office, taking the back route as to not be seen, per the procedure she and Lady Tsunade had agreed upon. She perched at the window of the Hokage's office and rapped with her knuckles successively, three times.

A moment later, the window flew open, nearly knocking her off of her precarious perch. She jumped to the roof and peered upside down, wondering why Lady Tsunade had opened the window so forcefully. Normally she just called Wolf inside.

Below her, the red hat of the Hokage brushed against her ponytail. She looked down as the Hokage looked up, curiosity getting the best of the village leader.

"Kakashi," she said, an edge of annoyance in her voice.

"Hi there," he replied jovially.

She swung herself into his office, nearly bowling him over as she entered, but she didn't care.

"Where's Lady Tsunade," she demanded.

"We completed the transfer paperwork. She's no longer acting Hokage."

"So you finally decided to step up," she noted. "Took you long enough. Does that mean I'm dismissed?"

Hokage appointed and dismissed Anbu members at their discretion, and Wolf secretly hoped that she would be released from her duties. Given her background, any sane Hokage would distrust her. Lady Tsunade was not sane, and had appointed Wolf as her own personal spy, particularly to look into the spread of Root's activities.

Kakashi laughed. "On the contrary, Tsunade suggested I keep you on. I agreed, so you'll be working with me now."

Wolf crossed her arms. Apparently, Kakashi lacked sanity, too. "Did Lady Tsunade mention our agreement?"

"What agreement?"

"Three more remnants. Three more deaths. Then I'm out."

"I heard from Tsunade that it was four."

So he was aware of the agreement. Tsunade promised to release her after she finished cleaning up the diseased organization that Danzō created, a small faction of people working in secret around the region. Much of Wolf's work since the war had been to track members down, confirm the extent of their involvement, and assassinate them. She and Lady Tsunade conferred to separate who of these members Root had taken advantage of, versus who had taken advantage of Root. The former started new lives, while the latter were wiped out.

Wolf reached behind her and tossed the broken halves of the owl mask on the Hokage's desk. She hadn't bothered to clean her own blood stains from the porcelain.

"Three. It was a massacre."

Kakashi's eyes probed her. She wasn't used to seeing both of his eyes, let alone one without a sharingan. They dug into her as if they could read her mind. She was glad he couldn't see her face, because she averted eye contact, and for that she was ashamed.

As much as she wished to respect him for what he had done for the village and his role in ending the war, she couldn't. She resented him for his happy, laid-back demeanor, and she disliked him even more for shirking his duties during the first year he should have been Hokage. She had other reasons for her disdain, but they were buried deep underneath a wall that she did not touch, lest her rage and hatred be released.

"Anbu members aren't supposed to be phased by death," he mused.

"Hokage aren't supposed to be afraid of paperwork," she retorted.

Kakashi sighed and took off his hat, placing it carefully on the desk. "You and I have something in common, it seems. We both dislike our roles, but we do them because they are required of us."

"We?" she asked, incredulous. "I do my job, Hokage, but time will tell if you do yours."

Kakashi peered up at her from his seat. "How old are you?" he asked.

"Don't you have my file?" she spat, and without skipping a beat added, "Oh wait, it's on paper."

She's not going to give this up, is she? Kakashi thought. "You don't have a file. Your work is too sensitive."

Wolf considered this. A clean slate. She suddenly realized that he, unlike Tsunade, knew nothing about her. As much as the Hokage should know the identity of all their Anbu members, she was thankful for this. Her past, her kills, her mistakes, her secrets…they would be hers, and hers alone.

"All you need to know is that I'm old enough," she said gruffly. Without another word, she dismissed herself.

"You didn't tell me she was so depressed," Kakashi said later that evening, swirling a finger of whiskey in his glass. He and Tsunade were sitting in the common area of the Hokage's residence, a temporary space set up for the Hokage until the new, permanent residence was constructed. "She doesn't have the chops to be an Anbu."

"That would be the Third's opinion," Tsunade replied, downing her own glass and leaning back in her chair. The two were conferring about the recent assassination of Owl. The broken mask was sitting on the coffee table between them.

"Do you trust her?" he asked. "Enough to neglect keeping a file?"

"Everything I need to know is up here," Tsunade replied, tapping the side of her head. "She's not going to cause harm, if that's what you mean by 'trust'. She owes me her life, and she'll pay it back, even if you're in charge."

"Can I trust her?"

Tsunade laughed and reached for the bottle to pour herself another glass. "Maybe not. But, she understands the mission, she's ruthless and silent, and she won't kill unless she's absolutely sure it's the right thing to do. She hates the organization. She'll do whatever it takes to weed out the rotten fruit and be released herself."

"Good fruit can turn rotten. Is she respected by the other members?"

"Feared," Tsunade responded. "She's been working alone recently."

"Not a team player?"

"Not her own fault. Every time I put her on a new team, someone dies. At least, that's how the other Anbu see it. She's only following my orders, but it's given her a bit of a reputation with the others."

Kakashi stared into his glass. He knew what that was like, and he wasn't fond of the fact that the Anbu organization had not changed since his own tenure within it.

"And this agreement…three more on the hit list?"

"Up to you," Tsunade answered. "My agreement with her was to help me assess the remnants of Root, and then I would release her from service. She'll at least stay with you until that mission is complete. Afterwards, you can do whatever you want with her."

Kakashi stretched his arms high in the air and yawned. "Why did you appoint her, again?"

"She lost everything in the war, including her sense of purpose and her perspective. Her past is certainly not pretty. I thought appointing her and giving her this particular task would help her cope with her loss."

"I don't know if pursuing a career as an Anbu ever helps a person cope, really."

"Said from experience?" Tsunade asked.

"If the organization were different, maybe it would have been good for her, but taking damaged people and turning them into killing machines didn't work before, and it won't work now."

She took another big gulp from her glass. "You have plans to reinvent Anbu?"

"It needs to be dismantled. I have plans to build something new."

Tsunade smiled. "We all have baggage, Kakashi. In any case, Wolf's not a machine. Talk to her. You'll see why she's the only person that could do this job, maybe apart from you."

"You think we're similar?" Kakashi asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

Tsunade gave him a knowing smile. "Talk to her. You'll see what I mean. You want to know who she is?"

Kakashi gave this a moment's thought, and then said, "No." He would assess the Anbu on his own. It was enough for now that Tsunade trusted her, and he wanted to form his own judgment of the girl's character.

Across the city, Wolf sat in her meager apartment, sketching a face into a notebook. Owl's face. She thought of the way his stubble felt when she picked up his mask, her fingers brushing across his cheeks. She wondered why he hadn't shaved that morning. Was he running late to work? Maybe a few extra minutes in bed with his wife? She was pregnant, and now no one would provide for her.

Wolf would end up being the one to deliver the news. How messed up was that? Receive orders to kill a man, and then be forced to tell his grieving family how he died?

She knew why she had to kill him…his activities weren't necessarily positive by way of the world, but a small part of him did care about his family, and his wife loved him, despite his angry streak. The families always made her question her line of work.

The child would grow up without a father. Wolf wanted to know what Owl would have done once the child was born, although she had an idea. Characters like his didn't change so easily. Besides, the assassination orders came in before she could watch the situation play out. She had spent a lot of time watching Owl and reporting his activities to Tsunade. Enough to know his likes, dislikes, and feel a kinship with his wife. She, just like Wolf, hated the way that cruelty made him smile. But, was it nature? Or nurture? Owl's own father had been a criminal, a fact he liked to deny. Could he have changed, if given time and the environment in which to change?

All of these details, the good and the bad, were written into the pages of her notebook. She had a page for every person she had killed, because she knew that her own actions of taking a life reverberated through the lives of others. She checked up on those reverberations every now and again, needing to know whether her actions were leading to a net positive or a net negative in the world. As far as she could tell, taken together, her actions were tending towards neutral. Her recent assassinations had generally led to more good, which she thought balanced out the ones in her past that had only bloomed more death and decay.

She would tell Owl's wife that he had died honorably, in the line of duty. It was a lie, but one that even the Hokage would proliferate, especially for an Anbu member. Maybe that honorable death would start Owl's child down a positive path in life. Yes, this killing could be for the best.

She was unsure of the next three. The one after that, the final killing, would be of her own choosing, and she was absolutely sure the final one would result in a positive change.