It was still dark when Redbird Squad moved out across the canal. The squad consisted of two pursuit teams, two attack teams, and a genjutsu specialist with dedicated escort. They were silent as they ran across the water, passing beneath bridges and through tunnels along a pre-planned path to keep from getting lost. The moon overhead shone brightly through partial cloud cover. Enough light to run by, but not so much that they would be easily spotted.
"Approaching first waypoint," called the squad leader on the radio. "Team Seven, Team Gai, status?"
"Go for the operation," said Gai.
"Go for the op," said Kakashi, and Sayaka couldn't help but glance over at Naruto and Hinata and think that she wasn't sure that was actually true.
"Roger. Command, Redbird, go for initial contact."
"Redbird, Command, proceed at your discretion."
"Affirmative command," the squad leader said. "Redbird, get ready. Waypoint on my mark in three, two, one, mark."
The waypoint was a spot where two canals intersected. The attack teams in Redbird Squad slammed to a silent stop under the cover of a bridge just before the intersection, their genjutsu specialist weaving a simple but powerful illusion to hide them. Team Seven and Team Gai continued on, then broke left and right respectively.
"Byakugan," Hinata intoned. "Targets are distributed as expected, sensei. Sentries at three, four, and five o'clock."
"Fan out and engage," Kakashi replied, and Sayaka leaped, easily clearing the canal wall on her right and landing in someone's yard. Then she leaped again, watching Hinata move for the four o'clock sentry and Naruto for the five o'clock, before focusing on her own target. It was a crossbowman, sitting in the shadow of a chimney, on top of a blacksmith's workshop. The guard was attentive, eyes alert, even watching the correct part of the city, but was no ninja.
Kakashi had been correct, back in the barracks. Even as Sayaka's mind hesitated, her fingers moved on their own, and the man's face blurred and she saw the small rings painted on her smallest kunai targets in that space between his chin and collarbone. Her blade didn't make a sound as it flew, and the sound it made hitting flesh and cartilage was barely audible over the wind in her ears.
"One down," Sayaka said into the radio, catching the body before it could hit the ground. She pulled out her kunai and wiped it on the target's clothes before holstering it. The body began to slide, and she was forced to drape it onto the chimney like it had fallen asleep on duty.
"Two down," Hinata said, and her voice didn't waver.
"Three—," Naruto said, before being cut off. They waited tensely for a second before he came back. "Three down. Sensei, the smell—"
"Wipe some insect repellant onto your lip and into your nose," said Kakashi. "The patchouli will mask it and hopefully numb your sense of smell."
"R-right," Naruto stammered, and Sayaka remembered his battle fatigue triggers. Damn, she should have helped him prepare for this. There was another moment of silence before Naruto came back on the line, sounding significantly calmer: "Right, Hinata-chan, next targets."
"Twelve, two, four, and six o'clock," she said. "Sensei, you and me, center targets. Naruto, Sayaka—"
"Flanks," Sayaka said to herself as Hinata called the target. Sayaka took a breath and keyed her radio. "Understood, moving to engage."
The next sentry stood exposed in a small garden. It was only a few sad-looking shrubs, really, attached to a watchtower that should have been part of the Senfuku municipal fire watch but was, at the moment, repurposed by Gato's gangsters as a sentry station. As a last bit of resistance, one of the watchtower's old fire lookouts had ripped up the floorboards in the watch platform. The lookout had been executed but, well, Sayaka was here to avenge that wasn't she?
The garden overlooked a section of the city, lower down than where Sayaka stood without an overlapping field of view with Sayaka's last kill. From the defender's point of view, it was an unfortunate but insurmountable limitation of the terrain, and normally meant that more than one sentry would have been on duty to make sure that the approach Sayaka had taken wasn't used by an attacking enemy. But the pirates and bandits were not disciplined and had gotten complacent, and so Sayaka had no problems racing across the rooftops towards her second target. He was looking away, wielded a long naginata, and did not hear her footsteps on the roof.
The orientation was bad for a kunai throw. If she missed he would alert the garrison, and the only good shot was a kunai straight through the brainstem at the base of his skull. It was a much harder throw than the neck—the brainstem could only be severed with a blade between the vertebrae, and a gap of one millimeter was much less than a gap of fifty.
So Sayaka leaped, flying through the air to land on the man's back. She was small and light and he only staggered as one hand covered his mouth and nose and the other drew her blade across from one side to the other.
It took only a second for the man to fall, crumpling to the ground in the way that Sayaka proscribed as she leaned backwards, then dropped to the ground lightly to set the body down without a sound.
"Neh, Azuma, I can't sleep," said a voice, and Sayaka felt her blood freeze. "How's sentry duty go—"
Sayaka turned and saw a Kiri-nin in the doorway to the garden. He was a boy, exactly her age if not a little younger, with a Kirigakure forehead protector slung across his neck. The symbol on the plate had been scratched out, but the boy was still a ninja. He was in bedclothes, his hair was tousled, but he had his kunai holster strapped to one leg, probably out of habit, and his eyes were very, very wide.
His mouth opened.
Sayaka moved, dashing forward and grabbing him by the face to muffle his shout even as he drew steel from his holster. They careened backwards, slamming into the tatami mats of the fire lookouts' quarters, where one would sleep while the other was on duty. The Kiri-nin's kunai tumbled away in the impact, but he swept his arm up at her anyway, and she was forced to block a jab at her neck that gave him enough time to jerk his head free from her hands.
"Ene—!" he tried to shout, but the sound turned into a gurgle as Sayaka grabbed him by the throat. It was her off-hand, which was unfortunate, and the Kiri-nin tried to push her off him, pushing his hands against her face, but that was hardly effective and Sayaka placed her right hand on top of her left and shifted her grip so that the hard heel of her palm drove into the boy's trachea when she bore down with all her weight.
The crunch seemed very loud.
The boy thrashed, trying desperately to draw in air, and Sayaka stumbled away, watching as he scrabbled at his neck, curling up from the pain, and then finally, finally went still.
Sayaka couldn't stop looking at his neck. It was bright red and inflamed where she had collapsed cartilage under her hand. Unbidden, her hand reached up to touch her own neck. She had killed three people today attacking that part of her body. If the roles had been reversed—
"—ayaka! Respond!"
Sayaka gasped and keyed her mic. "I'm here."
"Are you alright?" Kakashi asked.
"I'm fine," Sayaka replied. She could feel her hands shaking. "Two down. One in the yard, one inside."
"Understood," Kakashi replied. "Are you ready to continue?"
Sayaka took a breath and swallowed. "I am."
"Good. Regroup on our position."
Sayaka nodded to herself. "Understood, on my way."
She looked one last time at the body cooling on the tatami mats. He was so young, definitely no older than she was. It had been one thing killing adults, another thing when she had been fighting Zabuza, but somehow…
Sayaka shook her head and turned away, stepping back outside and jumping up onto a rooftop. She couldn't see Hinata or Kakashi from her vantage point, but they had been engaging targets at Hinata's two and four o'clock at the previous position. She spotted the chimney where she had made her first kill of the night—the body was still there, thankfully, or she'd need to check it hadn't landed somewhere bad—and visually tracked over to Hinata's sentry, then outwards radially.
There, a rooftop with a small banner flying from the top. She watched as it was tilted first one way, then the other, in a way that was against the wind.
Sayaka moved, jumping across rooftops silently, and quickly approached the position. She took a moment to circle it, checking to make sure it was actually her team inside, then landed and ducked into the attic space.
The first thing that Sayaka noticed was that Kakashi and Hinata looked utterly spotless. Kakashi was his usual languid self, while Hinata looked pale but determined. Neither had a single drop of blood on them, and in fact Hinata looked like she hadn't done anything more strenuous than take a short stroll in the garden.
This, then, was what a Hyuuga's prowess in combat looked like. To kill silently and without any force, in a manner so clean and so elegant that it was more like a dance than war.
Sayaka looked over at Naruto and was struck with the contrast. He was covered in blood, with splatters across his front and his arms. A piece of fabric had been tied across his face, leaving only his eyes exposed, and Sayaka was sure it had been liberally doused in bug repellant.
"You lose, Naruto," Kakashi said blandly. "Sayaka's only got a few blood stains."
Naruto scowled underneath his bandanna. "Damn."
"Pay up later," said Kakashi briskly. He turned to Hinata. "Last targets?"
"Group of twenty manning the Bando Commercial Building," said Hinata. She swallowed stiffly, but took a deep breath and kept talking. "Eight on the highest floor, watching the approaches, the rest on the ground floor."
Sayaka pictured the building in her mind. It had been a five-story stone structure on the waterfront with a squared-off floor plan in their briefing earlier that day. It was designed originally to flaunt some noble family's wealth while serving as their base of operations. Sayaka didn't know how exactly Gato had compelled them to switch sides, but what mattered that evening was that it had turned into a command post cum mansion for one of the pirate leaders in Gato's employ, which meant that its garrison needed neutralizing before the rest of the operation could continue. Eight at the top meant two for each side, probably to try and avoid having too many blind spots. It would make attacking it tough.
Kakashi thought for a moment, then made a decision: "I'll sweep first for any ninja. When I give you the all clear, breach in from the top and work your way down. There's too many watchers, so you'll have to get into the top floor first before you can use a clone swarm on the rest."
Naruto shifted unhappily, but nodded. "Understood, sensei."
"I will lead," Hinata said firmly. "The Gentle Fist will be a little quieter."
"Alright," Kakashi said. "Then Naruto, you follow through the top. Sayaka, I want you to watch the ground. If there's an alert and they try to escape, stop them."
Sayaka nodded and pretended she wasn't relieved.
"Alright team, break," said Kakashi.
They turned and ran out of the attic, moving swiftly across the rooftops into position overlooking the plaza that stretched around the front of the Bando Commercial Building. They could see the lights inside, glowing through the bamboo sudare screens. Moonlight shimmered across the waves lapping up against the docks at the building's rear. It would be a pretty scene, were Team Seven not about to ruin it. Kakashi vanished promptly, leaving the genin waiting for several seconds that seemed to stretch forever. Then:
"All clear. Naruto, Hinata."
Sayaka exchanged a final look with her teammates and nodded. They nodded back to her, and set off at a run. Hinata took Naruto on a path that kept them hidden behind obstacles and out of the field of view of the sentries. The most tenuous part came when they leaped over a small gap to the side of the building and ran up it. If an enemy happened to glance over and down…
But none did, and Sayaka watched as Naruto picked a lock on a window and Hinata vaulted herself in alone. There was silence for a solid five minutes.
"Clear," Hinata radioed quietly. She seemed to be breathing a little harder, but Sayaka couldn't hear anything amiss.
"Coming in," Naruto radioed back, and vaulted in. Sayaka turned away and looped out on a long arc around the building towards the water as Naruto and Hinata began to work their way down the floors. It seemed like there wouldn't be—
—a runner, panting as he sprinted toward the Bando building. Sayaka's eyes snapped over to the motion in the corner of her vision. She drew back her arm and threw.
"We're under attack!" the runner shouted as Sayaka's kunai flew. "To arms! We're—!"
The runner fell, but his shout was loud enough to rouse at least one person, and a body in the street was obvious to everyone.
"We're blown," Sayaka called in. If she'd been faster…
"Inevitable," said Kakashi. His voice was staticky, as if he was far away. "Redbird is already inbound. Destroy the enemy."
Sayaka grimaced and drew another kunai as bandits and pirates spilled into the street. Doors flew open across the area. If the rest of Redbird squad was going to fulfill their objectives, Team Seven needed to draw the enemy's attention and make a lot of noise.
"Understood," Sayaka said. "Naruto, we're going to need some clones."
"On it."
An entire platoon of clones burst out of the Bando Commercial Building and fanned out, some taking to the rooftops and others standing their ground in the street. The ragged rush of men they faced was concentrated into five major streets that radiated out from the plaza, easy choke points to hold so long as nobody got clever and tried to go through the alleys and walls.
"Hinata, anybody circling around?" Sayaka asked, moving to circle the plaza as Naruto's clones began to throw kunai. Their telepathic link made sure that each clone chose a separate target.
"Not yet," Hinata answered. The bandits and pirates reeled briefly in the face of the clone barrage, then gathered themselves and charged a second time with shouts and curses.
"Alright," Sayaka said, and she alighted on top of a roof as the rush of pikes and axes and other things began to close on the squads holding the chokepoints. "Naruto, do you—"
Sayaka was cut off by explosions that made her duck into the shadow of a chimney. The air was filled with screams. Sayaka looked over the edge of the roof and felt her stomach heave at the sight of men lying about, torn apart from bomb tags Naruto's clones had evidently wrapped around their kunai handles. They had waited until the enemy was nearly on top of them before setting the tags off, causing those in the back to die a horrible death and distract those in front long enough for easy kills.
Gods.
Then distant explosions, large and powerful.
"Objectives complete," Redbird's squad leader called out. "Good work teams. Pursuit squads status update?"
"Team Gai is doing well," reported Lee. "We are attacking targets of opportunity to prevent a buildup of enemy forces!"
"Yeah, speaking of, we could use some reinforcements at the Bando Building," Naruto called in, voice strained. "We uh, pissed them off pretty good."
Sayaka looked down the street she was standing next to and did her best to ignore the gore. Gato's forces were massing out of kunai range. It was probably a bad idea to sally forth, in case they got caught in some kind of ambush, but if they just let them form up…
"We will come assist!" said Lee. "Unless our leader has an alternate assignment?"
"No, go assist Team Seven," said Redbird leader. "Everyone else, scatter and attack targets of opportunity where you can."
"Please wait just a few minutes," Lee said to Naruto. "We are cleaning up a few more stragglers here."
"Cool, thanks."
Sayaka turned her attention back down the street. The smell of blood and ruptured organs was starting to waft up from the corpses lying below. She felt her insides churn and quickly moved to be upwind of the abattoir.
Naruto probably hadn't picked up that many bomb tags from the armory, since the team's usual tactics didn't call for them. If that was the case then she was going to need to do some crowd control—Sayaka was the only member of the team with good area-of-effect ninjutsu. They had soldier pills in case she ran low on chakra, but hopefully Team Gai would show up in time for that not to be necessary.
She wondered if shadow-cloned soldier pills did anything, or if they just popped into smoke when you tried to digest them.
"Arquebusiers," Hinata warned on the radio. "Naruto-kun, your clones."
"Already moving them," Naruto replied. Sayaka followed the clones into cover and moved to circle around the back. If the enemy wasn't going to approach through the alleyways, then she would. She needed—
"Sayaka, watch—!"
Sayaka pivoted as a massive otsuchi mallet crashed into the ground. The wielder was an almost comically large bandit, wearing only a chest plate and a loincloth, who shouted obscenities at her and tried to raise his hammer a second time. Sayaka didn't let him, and her kunai slashed across one arm to distract him before she ducked underneath his arms and sunk it into his armpit, where it hopefully cut at least one major artery before she was forced to duck and roll away. The enraged mallet-wielder was swaying from blood loss, and Sayaka pulled back as he slumped against the wall, trying to find an opening to—
—duck again, this time from a spear pointed at her back. Damn it, they were going to swarm her. Sayaka grabbed the spear before it could retract and planted her feet with chakra, forcing the wielder sideways into the wall with enough force to jar him and give her the opening she needed to send a kunai into his throat before she had to run, leaping away as axes and naginata tried to cut through her. She bounced off of a wall, then off its mirror, and made hand signs.
The Great Fireball technique was an Uchiha Clan staple. Even the girls needed to know it, and you weren't a real adult until you could manage a respectably-sized one. She had practiced it a lot, and even though she really preferred Dragon Fire and shurikenjutsu, she could still do the technique that proved she was an Uchiha.
It still surprised her when the fireball she produced was large enough to swallow the little strips of alleyway she had been fighting in.
Sayaka landed on a roof then onto her knees and retched as the men below screamed. Some had died immediately, her fireball tightly controlled to be hot enough to warp steel, and the others were horrifically burned. Of all the people she had killed today—
Her stomach heaved again, and Sayaka pressed her hands against her ears, desperate to try and block out the sound of dying men, but now she could smell the smoke and the scorched flesh all the better and what food she had eaten before the mission splattered onto the rooftop. She'd always known what fire did to flesh. It wasn't hard to figure out for anyone who cooked meat. She knew how fire blistered skin, browned muscle, rendered out fat, but she— she'd never thought how—
Sayaka's stomach heaved again, but nothing came out, and she could feel her hands trembling as she wiped at her eyes.
"Sayaka-chan, Naruto-kun needs your help," Hinata said quietly. She no doubt could see her vomiting on the roof.
"Yes," Sayaka rasped, pushing herself up shakily. She pulled out her canteen and splashed water over her face and into her mouth, rinsing out the taste before turning and leaping across and putting the alley behind her.
"There are more making their way through the alleys," Hinata said swiftly. "Naruto-kun has made more clones to try and stop them, but he is running low on chakra and has difficulty coordinating so many clones. Thin out the enemy as best you can."
Sayaka nodded to herself, then realized that Hinata couldn't see her and radioed in: "U-understood."
But then, Hinata's eyes were active, so shouldn't she be able to tell if Sayaka had nodded?
Sayaka shook her head to clear away the useless thought and regretted it as nausea made her slip on the roofing. She fell with a thud that bruised a hip and made her snarl in self-disgust. What the hell was she doing? An Uchiha shouldn't let themselves be bothered by some fire.
She pulled herself up again and set off, swinging across towards a different street and spotting a band of enemies emerging from an alley just to the left of a squad of Naruto clones. One of the clones standing on the roofs raised the alarm, slinging a kunai towards the enemy, but Sayaka was already leaping, already close enough for another fireball.
She almost didn't do it.
She almost didn't. Her hand drifted down to her kunai holster, ready to pull another blade and sling it into the neck of the fat man down and to her right, the one with the large axe that would break her spine if it hit. Then she would land on the man wielding the rusting sword, hopefully not be stabbed, and maybe, because she was very fast, she would be able to take out the men in front of her with a little help from Naruto's clone. It was possible. She could do it. She could use steel and speed to avoid that consuming fire that she spat.
But it was such a risk. She did not know how many other bandits she needed to defend against, did not know when Team Gai would come, did not know how many bomb tags Naruto's clones still had, did not know how much chakra Naruto himself had left, and worst of all she did not really know that she could fight against ten grown men in a crowded alleyway where their numbers did not help them but their sheer bulk was enough, maybe, to overwhelm a thirteen-year-old girl who didn't stand past their chins and had a knife and not a spear to protect herself with.
She hated it. Hated not knowing, hated that she wasn't good enough for a fight in this alley to be so very easy with just a knife, and how it made the fire seem all the more attractive. It would make all those doubts, all those questions, mean nothing. They wouldn't matter. And she knew this technique, knew the hand signs and knew the way her chakra should boil up from inside her, through her lungs and through her throat and out her mouth where it would burn and burn and burn and she could do it.
She could do it.
What was stopping her? In that moment, hanging in the air, the world as cut glass around her, what stopped her fire?
It was fear. It was only fear. Fear of the screams and the sights and the smells and all the other things from the men she had just killed so recently. It was something she did not want to fear, but it was something that pulled at her, made her want to find a corner and cry, want to get away from everything and just be alone.
What was it that Hiroyo had said? Sayaka had done well, back the first time she had come to Senfuku, because she had finished the job and secured the area and gotten everyone home. So Sayaka couldn't stop now, couldn't let that fear take hold, not right now, not when she had such power available to her to make those unknown factors become unimportant nonfactors.
So, with eyes shining red, the pinwheels in her irises turning slowly, Sayaka breathed in and breathed out.
The fire was bright and hot, an intense blast of heat that quenched the alley and part of the plaza beyond with brilliant light. There was chakra there, more perhaps than Sayaka should have used, but her control was what gave her fire strength, binding the flickers and sparks that wanted to expand and fly away and forcing all the power she had expended to stay there.
Then the flames ended and Sayaka landed, hopped once, and skidded to a stop on flagstones turned warm by what her hands had wrought.
Sayaka took a shaky breath. At least this time they had not been able to scream. Her fire was too powerful, burned too quickly. She found that she couldn't look away, couldn't make herself hide from the charred flesh and fabric and curled up limbs, bent in agony and contorted by flame. She couldn't deny that it had worked, nor at what cost.
Part of her, though, part of her asked what the shame was in fighting this way. The Uchiha had fought with fire and flame for generations, had they not? They were not alone as a clan in using such techniques, and stood side-by-side with every Hokage that had ever led Konoha, every great ninja that had defended Konoha and fought in her wars. The fire Sayaka wielded was a fire that had burned across the ages. Would she really let it go out?
"Sayaka-chan," Hinata said into the radio.
Sayaka jerked, snapping out of her daze. "More?"
"West side, about twenty are pushing up behind shields."
"Alright, I'm on my way."
Sayaka took a deep breath. Right, she couldn't get distracted, there was still fighting to do. She took a moment to drink from her canteen and grimaced. Everything tasted of smoke and ash.
She set off again, running across the plaza to take position overlooking the most westerly street that needed defending. The situation was worrying, with a squad of shield-bearers creeping forward slowly towards where Naruto's clones had arrayed themselves. Each shield appeared at first to be made of thin planks, and covered a man from the ground to the chin when propped up on its folding leg. On each shield's reverse, however, was a seal array. A simple barrier seal that any ashigaru knew how to make and, therefore, basically everyone knew how to make. It had no chance of standing up to a focused attack from even the weakest of samurai, but that wasn't what they were designed to do. The shields were for deflecting kunai and arrows, and could even deflect a few shots from an arquebus and survive most ninjutsu. Unless you were a jounin, attacking head on would just be a waste of chakra.
Not that Sayaka or Naruto had much choice at the moment. Chunin assigned to break up shield formations like this usually relied on combination attacks that caused gaps to open up in the defense, while jounin could often blast the shield formation away directly. A squad of Naruto clones with kunai and bomb tags working with one genin Uchiha using low-rank fire jutsu wasn't going to have an easy time accomplishing the same task.
Sayaka carefully peered around the edge of a building to have a look at the formation and ducked back sharply at the sight of a puff of smoke. The arquebus round crashed into the wall a moment later, spraying shrapnel as the street echoed with the boom of gunfire.
That was what made shield formations dangerous. A samurai charging into that wasn't going to survive a dozen arquebusiers blasting him at less than a hundred paces. You could only achieve certain levels of strength with armor, after all. Perhaps something expensive, where each plate had been inscribed with the appropriate seal, or maybe if a samurai carried a shield into battle, but then they would be vulnerable to enemy shinobi, and besides it wasn't like those shields could survive repeated blasts from ranks and ranks of arquebusiers.
Sayaka shook her head with a grimace. She needed to get her head back together and stop letting that fireball get to her.
What did she need to do? She needed to find a way around the arquebusiers. Going on the roofs was not possible—she would be shot before she could get anything done. Through the buildings, maybe? But the shield-bearers had formed a mobile square, and the inner ranks were holding their shields up over the top of the formation while the arquebusiers fired through the gaps. It crept down the road with gaps that opened and closed as members bumped into each other and lagged behind. If Team 7 had actually been a squad of ashigaru with their own arquebuses, they'd have made short work of the formation. As it stood, she wasn't sure she could get a bomb-tagged kunai between the gaps fast enough. If she hadn't fallen behind in her training after getting stabbed—
"Yosh! Team 7, this is Team Gai, we are finally on our way!" Lee called in on the radio. "How may we be of assistance?"
"We require support to the west," said Hinata. "At the edge of the plaza."
There was a brief moment of silence. "Aha, yes, we see you now. We will be there in a moment."
Sayaka peered carefully out from her corner just in time to see Tenten crest the rooftops. The older genin twisted in midair, a dozen massive weapons on thick ropes trailing behind her. She whirled, slinging mallets and clubs around her body before sending them crashing into the top of the shield formation.
Shields that could resist bullets were not going to be damaged by a genin throwing what amounted to large rocks. The arms that held those shields were a different question. The formation broke open like a half-rotted radish. Men tumbled over each other with shouts of alarm and arquebuses went off wildly in the confusion. Shields were dropped and hastily picked back up again, but the damage had been done. The once tortoise-like ball of men had been cracked open and was now vulnerable.
Tenten landed on a roof and tugged, using chakra to pull her weapons back towards her as her team members cut deep into the gaggle of men, breaking up small knots of shields that had tried to regroup before retreating to the perimeter as Tenten began to fire off bomb tags into the bandits.
Sayaka ducked back into cover. There was no point watching anymore.
"Redbird Squad, this is the Aoyagi First Corps," said a voice on the radio. "We're pulling up on the docks now, sorry for our tardiness. I hear the Bando Building is clear?"
"First Corps, Redbird Squad has secured the Bando Commercial Building," said Hinata in a smooth tone that Sayaka had never heard from her before. "We are happy to hear of your arrival. Your assistance in securing the plaza would be appreciated."
There was a pause that Sayaka could only assume was the samurai on the other end processing how young Hinata sounded, then: "Understood, we'll do our best to help. See you in five."
"And so Uzumaki gets his first commendation," said Danzo dryly.
"Stop reading over my shoulder," said Hiruzen as he stamped the short letter and set it aside to dry. "And yes, he does. He earned it."
"Singlehandedly securing a plaza with shadow clones at his age is notable, I suppose," said Danzo. "I hope you aren't letting your favoritism blind you."
"No," said Hiruzen, pushing back his chair to stand with a groan. "No, I have reports from the samurai who reinforced his position and his commanding officer. Of course, the latter was rather brief, but good enough for a positive mark in Naruto-kun's record, I think."
Danzo huffed and turned away to stump towards the windows at the end of the Hokage's office. His leg was hurting him more than usual these days. Oh to be young again.
"The operation was broadly successful, then?" Danzo asked as he came to a stop overlooking the streets of Konoha. It was a clear night with a moon soon to reach its brightest fullness. The light cast all of Konoha in a silvered cloak.
"Broadly, yes," said Hiruzen. "Of course there are a few loose ends to tie up, but nothing that a genin team need worry about."
"Mm. Were there any other notable actions?"
"From the genin? I suppose Sayaka-chan showed her capability, and Hyuuga Neji lived up to his reputation. Otherwise, no."
Danzo nodded to himself. Not unexpected. This kind of policing action more often than not wasn't very distinguishing for genin, but it was certainly a good chance for them to cut their teeth. Not having at least one such mission on file before the Chunin Exams was probably disqualifying without further consideration.
"Team Gai is ready for the exams then, would you say?" asked Danzo.
"Undoubtedly," said Hiruzen. He sighed. "Neji has perhaps more issues to work through, but he can at least cooperate with others, and there is only so much we can expect from our ninja."
Danzo snorted. "Or something like that, yes. And Team Seven?"
"Probably. They will keep taking missions over the winter that should bring them up to speed."
"You have a lot of faith in them."
"Their ability to work together is better than any other genin team's," said Hiruzen. "Even Team Ten, which should be better, does not have the ability to dynamically reshape how they fight to changing circumstances."
"To a large degree, that is because of Team Seven's sensei."
"Well, there is a tendency for the students to gain similar habits to their teachers," said Hiruzen. The ink on Naruto's commendation had dried, and he slid the paper into Naruto's folder before closing it and setting it aside to work on other things. "When the teacher is a prodigy steeped in blood, it is inevitable that the students will pick up some of the stains."
"And you are willing to accept that?" asked Danzo.
Hiruzen scoffed. "The secret, Danzo, to being a soft and overly merciful old man is to never put yourself in a position where you are forced to choose between ruthlessness and mercy. Kakashi has always been a loyal soldier of Konoha, and his students inevitably will be too. I may be soft in your eyes, but Naruto wields tremendous power. When the time comes, we will not need to ask him to volunteer it in defense of our village."
"He will volunteer, as he has already numerous times," said Danzo. He huffed. "Well. It seems the old fox still has a few tricks."
Hiruzen snorted and pulled out his pipe. "One does not successfully lead Konoha through two wars without some tricks. My only hope is that one day they will not be necessary."
Danzo tapped his walking stick against the floor thoughtfully. "Indeed. But for now we must still make use of our guile. The next phase of the operation should begin soon, yes?"
"Yes. Wave must be pacified before Gato will be truly defanged. Have you collected any new information on the matter?"
"I have. The file should be on your desk already, but the summary is…"
