A/N: My apologies for being so late, I've had troubles writing the flashback chapter, in fact I still haven't finished it. Instead, I've posted a short interlude I thought of to let everyone know this story is still alive. I'll keep on working on the flashback chapter, please be patient because it should be great.
Chapter 09 – Interlude
The sky above Konoha was a perfect blue and the warm sun shined down the village on the new morning. The Hokage Tower was peaceful, no meetings or disruptions, so it was a perfect time for Tsunade to take one of her naps instead of doing paperwork.
However, she couldn't sleep. She hadn't been able to sleep for days, a lingering dream haunted her thoughts, leaving a bad feeling that wouldn't go away. It had been days since that dream and yet the effects hadn't gone away.
Instead, she occupied herself on a mystery.
Mitarashi Anko's file was in front of her, she flipped through the pages as she carefully read every word. She was now more than aware that some of the entries were false. After closer examination she could easily see where Anko had been modifying her year of birth, keeping her age at a constant twenty-four, but there were other changes as well and they were more disturbing for the fact that they weren't done by Anko.
"Sarutobi-sensei's fingerprints are all over this," she sighed in frustration. Secrets were a natural part of a ninja village, but she couldn't understand what had happened to require the Third Hokage to rewrite the woman's history or that he would leave nothing to tell is successors as to why he did it.
Tsunade's thoughts went back to the last time she talked to Anko.
"What is this?" she asked softly. Her fingers were wrapped around the other woman's wrist, her chakra already extended her medical-nin senses, telling her something was very wrong. The skin felt smooth and soft as a young woman's skin should feel, but in her mind, she saw snake scales stretched painfully tight across Anko entire body.
"Y-you d-don't know?" Anko managed to speak through the pain in her head. "The Third and the Fourth knew."
The memory of her last conversation with Anko echoed through her head. Tsunade told the other woman that she would get to the bottom of this when she returned, but it didn't stop her from searching for the truth while Anko was gone.
Tsunade picked up a picture from the file. It was Anko's team photo taken at the time Anko graduated from the Academy. The ten year old girl looked so happy standing next to her new teacher, Orochimaru.
"Orochimaru, what did you do to that girl?"
Tsunade examined the picture closely. Anko was the only student assigned to Orochimaru at first. Sometimes it turned out that way, sometimes the number of graduating students didn't total the right number to be divided into complete groups of three. With only a few of those teams not being sent back to the Academy, it was sometimes rare for these one or two Genin teams to exist, when they did after a year or so new graduates were added to the team to fill out a complete three Genin team.
It was even curious as to why Anko had even been assigned to Orochimaru. She wasn't a genius, in fact her intelligence scores were so low Tsunade was reminded of Naruto. The only things that stood out from Anko's early scores were she had a strong stamina, unusually high for a kunoichi, and a knack for breaking genjutsu.
Yet, neither was interesting enough to keep Orochimaru's attention. Evident by his unhappy look in the picture, Tsunade guessed the little girl was not the student Orochimaru would have picked out for himself.
"Sarutobi-sensei, what in the world were you thinking, placing that poor girl with him?" she muttered. Tsunade knew that the Third often placed the Genin with the right teacher, but sometimes it was the right Genin for the teacher. "Orochimaru always was your favorite, did you think you could save him with this girl's innocence?"
Tsunade wasn't nearly as angry about the Third's preference to teach Orochimaru as Jiraiya was, but she also recognized Orochimaru as his favorite and perhaps his hope for a new generation, much as he had been for his teachers, the First and the Second.
Yet, if Anko really were twenty-four, then at the time she would have graduated then Orochimaru's cruelty and obsession should have already been known to the Third, even if the human experiments weren't at the time. The Third would have to have been blind to place Anko's future in the hands of someone so dangerous.
"But she's not twenty-four, is she Sarutobi-sensei? You must have paired them together back when you thought he could still be saved, but you were wrong weren't you? I guess even Hokage's can make mistakes."
Tsunade looked at the picture closer, looking at Orochimaru. "I may be old, but my memory isn't gone. I remember when you looked that young. With your obsession with youth, it maybe hard for others to see, but see it. Damn it…there must at least be ten years difference, what the hell did you do to her?"
She slammed her fist down on her desk in anger. It wasn't amplified with her chakra this time, but it still made her new desk rattle.
The truth was Tsunade, barely knew Anko, but perhaps it was because Anko was the student of one of Tsunade's teammates or perhaps it was her medical-nin instincts that led her to care about anyone with an injury. It might even have been her role as Hokage, the Third used to say everyone in Konoha became one of a Hokage's important people.
"Whatever the case, I need to get a closer look at her skin," she told herself. "There was something wrong, like an organ about to fail. Anko doesn't know it, but she's in trouble. I hope it holds together long enough for the mission."
"Tsunade-shishou?" Sakura poked her head through the door and looked around, expecting to find someone. "I thought you were talking to someone."
Tsunade chucked with embarrassment at being caught talking to herself, "No one's here, come in Sakura."
Her apprentice walked in her office, holding a tray with both hands. On the tray was a fresh cup of green tea, the heat evident as steam rose off it.
"I thought you might like some tea."
"Thank you, Sakura."
Sakura watched her master carefully as she drank the tea, noticing that Tsunade was wide away reading over a file rather than taking a nap on paperwork.
"Are you still not sleeping?"
"I'm fine."
"How can I tell if you use that technique to also cover how exhausted you must really look?" said Sakura. Her voice had a stern quality she rarely used on her own master, the girl had long learned to be careful of her master's temper, but her concern was evident on her face. "If this goes on much longer you won't be able to keep it up."
Tsunade frowned at that. No one in Konoha had seen what she really looked like except for Jiraiya and Naruto that one time and Shizune and Sakura for being her students and the ones she most trusted when she let the technique off at certain times.
"The feeling will go away and then I'll be fine. Besides, it's about time for him to return with that brat. He'll be as healthy and perverted as always, despite the white hair he's not an old man yet."
Sakura nodded in agreement. She really didn't know what she could say to take away the fear that Tsunade had after her dream days ago. Tsunade refused to talk about it or why it disturbed her so much.
She looked around, curious to what Tsunade could have been doing. It was rare for Tsunade to go through the files without Shizune prodding her along.
The picture that Tsunade had been holding, caught her eye, mostly for the young man in it. "Orochimaru!"
Tsunade sighed, knowing Sakura was rather sensitive to anything that had to do with Sasuke, including Orochimaru and any of his activities.
Sakura picked up the picture and studied it. "Who's the girl with him, on of his students?"
"That's Mitarashi Anko."
"What? The second examiner from my first Chuunin Exam!" Sakura studied the picture harder, comparing her memories of a loudmouth, sadistic woman with the happy little girl in the picture.
"The same," she told her student as she took another sip of tea.
"Wow, I remember when I first saw her she seemed Naruto-ish."
Tsunade about spit out the tea as she laughed at Sakura's description. "Naruto-ish! I suppose she is in a way, loud and exuberant. She was like that as a child too, even though I didn't match my memories of that little girl as being the same person as Anko when I met her again. Orochimaru was never happy with her, I guess her abilities were beneath him and a waste of his time. So she declared she was going to 'kick the ass' of Konoha's number one rookie."
"Now that sounds like Naruto," laughed Sakura. She replaced her laughter with a sad smile as she remembered all the times Naruto challenged Sasuke to prove himself. "Who was the number one rookie back then?"
Tsunade looked at her apprentice with a clear look as she spoke with words that were filled with pride, "He was the boy that grew up to become the Fourth!"
"Uzumaki Kayaku?"
"What? You know his name?" Tsunade blinked with surprise.
"Kakashi-sensei told me almost two weeks ago, that Naruto was named after him."
"Oh, of course." Tsunade hid her expression as she took another drink of tea.
Sakura didn't have time to question her master further as the doors to the office swung forward.
"Hokage-sama!"
Tsunade turned and saw three Anbu kneeling just outside of the door of her office. She recognized them, not by their names, which she forgot, but by their masks: a Wolf, a Bear, and a Cat.
These were the Anbu sent with Anko on her mission.
Tsunade stood up, the cup of tea forgotten in her hand. "Sakura, you can leave now."
Sakura gave her an uncertain look, but followed her order. Tsunade watched the girl leave, managing to move around the three Anbu who blocked the door, before speaking to them.
"What is it? Where's Anko?"
"A-Anko-san remained in the village. She ordered us to returned to Konoha as soon as possible. We've been running as fast as we could for a day. We…found something."
"What?" she asked, but slightly put off by the hesitant way the Wolf spoke. From what she remembered, it wasn't like this individual at all.
Their heads bent down, because of their masks, she couldn't see their expressions, but something in their body language worried her.
"Hokage-sama," spoke the Bear. "When we entered the village we found Jiraiya-sama."
"Jiraiya?" Tsunade's body started to go numb, everything within her was screaming for the dream not to be true.
"Apparently he had been ambushed by the Akatsuki. They…killed him."
The cup of green tea slipped from her fingers and crashed into the hard floor, cracking it into several pieces. Hot tea hit her bare feet, but she couldn't feel it. She couldn't feel anything at all, as she slipped into darkness and feel buckled beneath her. She could only hear the worried yells of the Anbu as she fell to the floor.
Next Chapter: Anko's Flashback (really this time)
Author's Note: The one man or two man Genin teams were based on the fact that Kakashi graduated at 5 years old, yet his teammates who are the same age didn't graduate until nine. Since it is probably impossible to find a group of three five year olds, I guessed Kakashi was trained alone by the Fourth for a few years, until Obito and Rin graduated. I figured Anko might have had a similar situation. She said she was one of his subordinates, which Kakashi also has called Team 7 his subordinates once, so my guess two nobodies (probably your regular nondescript mean looking Genin) were added to Team Orochimaru years later.
The Anbu left in the other village in the morning and arrived in Konoha by morning, they've been running non-stop. I'm assuming from the rescue Sasuke arc that Konoha is about a day away from the border of the Rice Field Country, so the Anbu's arrival should work.
Version 1.1
1.0: Original
1.1: Corrected a mistake, Sound village is in Rice Field Country, not the Tea Country.