Chapter 8: ANBU or Murderer?

Note: I have decided that in my story, the "bad" countries will be sound and lightning, and the "good" countries will be rock and fire. The rest will all be neutral.

::The Next Day::

"Good, now that Hiraku is here, I can begin to tell you all what our mission for today is." Yawning inside of his ANBU mask, Hiraku silently hoped none of the other ANBUs heard him.

"The mission we are going to be taking on, will be taking us to the edge of our country where we'll be disposing of several sound-nins that have been confirmed to be in the area. We are to leave none of the sound nins alive, and we are to leave their bodies on the spot for our hunter nins to inspect. We believe at the moment that the group is only two squads of chuunin, but we all now how that could end up being false. Anyway, I believe that the eight members in our squad should be enough to handle this mission, so I want the squad to divide into two groups of four. I'll lead one group, and Noritu will lead the others. I expect us to have this mission done within two hours, now go!" The room was suddenly empty as the ANBUs moved at an incredible speed to their destination. In less than half an hour, the group of ANBUs were at the location where the sound nins were reported to be.

"Any idea where the sound nins could be at Ysung?" Hiraku suddenly felt Ysung smack him on the top of the head, and then felt Ysung pull his face so close that the masks were only an inch away from touching.

"You'll never again mutter a single ANBU members name during a mission. You'll also never again speak during a mission unless told to. Is that understood Falcon?" Hiraku nodded his head, and after a few moments Ysung released his mask. It seemed that while on missions the ANBU would refer to each other by their masks. Silently making a note of that, Hiraku knelt silently down next to Ysung.

"Falcon and Turtle, I want you two to go to the center of the clearing up ahead and be prepared to dodge attacks that will come at you from all directions." Watching as the Turtle member of their group stepped forward, Hiraku silently moved into the clearing where Ysung had directed him to go. Hiraku had barely arrived on the spot before barrages of kunais were hurled for him and the ANBU wearing the turtle mask.

Activating his Sharingan, Hiraku jumped high into air and spotted four sound nins hiding in the trees. Keeping his urge to shout out to the others about his discovery in check, Hiraku dove for the nearest sound nin while moving his hands rapidly to form hand seals for a jutsu.

"Kaze no Yaiba (wind blade)!" An invisible blade of wind suddenly appeared from Hiraku's fingers and he used it to cut the sound nin in half. Doing a back flip off of the tree to avoid a kunai that was thrown at him, Hiraku threw three kunais at his attacked before landing on the ground below. Hiraku felt his heart sink as he watched all three of his kunais hit with deadly accuracy.

By the time Hiraku was prepared to attack again, the rest of his squad had already taken out the sound nins he had seen, and four more. Walking grimly over to where his leader stood, Hiraku waited for further instructions.

"Nice quick work team, we will now report back to head quarters immediately. I have already alerted the hunter nin, and we are to be gone before they arrive." The group of ANBUs once again vanished without a trace and were at their headquarters within a half hour.

Hiraku then had to wait for another hour while their team was in the debriefing room with higher ranking ANBUs before he was allowed to go to his locker and leave for five hours before reporting back for afternoon training.

Sighing out loud once he arrived at his locker, Hiraku began to wonder if the life of an ANBU was for him. Today was the first day that he had been required to kill someone who wouldn't have directly harmed him if he hadn't seemed like a threat. It made him feel like he was the bad guy of the situation.

"Hiraku, can I talk to you for a moment?" Hiraku turned around to see Ysung sitting at the desk in the front of the room. Closing his locker, Hiraku quietly walked over to where his leader was sitting.

"Hiraku, you did what you had to do today when you killed those men." Hiraku felt slightly shocked at how well his leader had guessed what he had been thinking. He was about to ask how he knew, but then he was once again interrupted by his leader.

"All men who join the ANBU and aren't cold blooded killers always have the same problem when they first go out on missions. All other ninjas in our village, for the most part, only have to kill in life or death situations. We ANBU are required to kill almost by job description. Anyway, when you killed those men today, I just want you to realize something. In killing them, you prevented them from getting any closer to our village, where they would have been able to kill many of our people before we would have even been able to put up a defense. In killing them, you saved many more of our peoples lives. Remember that Hiraku." Nodding silently, Hiraku quickly left the ANBU headquarters and walked over to the apartment where he lived.

Hiraku walked over to his bed once he was inside of his one room apartment, and the fell right on top of it. In his head he was once again thinking about what he had done that day and what Ysung had told him. In the end, Hiraku decided that killing the way he had today was justified, if it meant saving more innocent lives. Feeling relieved after coming to the conclusion, Hiraku decided to sleep for the few hours he had left before he had to go back to the ANBU headquarters for training.