Let's get this trainwreck moving.
It hadn't taken much effort for Jiraiya to find where Konoha's forces were staying during their time in Sunagakure. A few thousand ryo gladly changed from one wallet to another, enough to buoy an unassuming Chunin's finances for quite some time, and the sage had all the information he could possibly want—the building they were at, how to reach it from their current location, how many ninja had come, the fact that the Hokage had personally led the group, and more. It was almost pathetic, in a way; thanks to the damage dealt to them in war after war, Suna was such an impoverished nation that their government had to take their money under the guise of taxation. Only civilian governments did that! And, of course, never mind a handful of hundred- or thousand-ryo notes and coins, he could have comfortably parted with tens or even hundreds of thousands without feeling their loss. Fame had its perks.
"It's all the same few colors," Sasuke said offhandedly as they walked away from Jiraiya's impromptu informant. "No paints, no dyes, just sandstone and bricks."
"Yeah, except for the Kazekage's mansion. Rumor has it that it's made out of the bones of an ancient monster, but I've been in there before and I'm pretty sure it's just clay," the Gama Sennin responded.
"There's no way. The only thing big enough for that is a sandworm that's older than everyone in the Elemental Nations combined." Shizune couldn't stop her lower eye muscles from twitching a bit at that thought. "I've seen and heard some crazy things that turned out to be real, but I'm drawing a line. There's no way."
"Trust the fiction author here: truth is way weirder, and less believable, than the things people make up for their stories...like the seals in the sky over Kirigakure. That many people wouldn't collectively lie about something that they couldn't possibly have corroborated," Jiraiya countered.
The trio turned the final corner to their destination moments later, only to find a scene so alien that they wouldn't have thought of it in their nightmares: at least a dozen of Konoha's Jounin and Anbu were dead on the ground, their flesh ripped and torn. Blood had baked into the cobblestone road outside of the hotel, leaving smears and stains that hadn't yet turned black, and the corpses had begun to swell in the heat. Some of the survivors were standing in the shade of the hotel's overhang, speaking to members of Suna's military police and failing to calm their nerves.
"What the hell?" Sasuke asked, mortified.
Seeing the new arrivals, a black-haired man with a lit cigarette in his mouth waved them over. His muscular figure was hidden by the long sleeves of his loose shirt, with a standard-issue green flak jacket worn over it. Seeing him take a long pull from the dwindling vice between his lips, Shizune wanted to admonish the man for risking his health, but she thought better of the idea as she took in the scene around them. Wordlessly, Jiraiya produced a gorgeously-carved wooden pipe from somewhere within his vest as he nodded to their impromptu greeter.
"Normally I'd ask how you're doing, but..." Jiraiya didn't take his eyes off of the man in front of him as he lit a long match, sticking it into his pipe's wide opening and holding it until its hidden contents began to smoke. "I think I'll stick with, 'it's good to see you, Asuma.'"
"Good to see you too, uncle Jiraiya," Sarutobi Asuma said, nearly in sync with the sage as they exhaled smoke together. "And you, too, Shizune. At least Sasuke's been in good hands."
Shizune nodded at the fellow Jounin, who'd been one of her classmates in the academy. He'd never been unkind to her, but a stiff wall had always existed between Asuma and the others in his graduating class—for better and worse, he was the son of the Sandaime Hokage, and that shadow had loomed over Asuma's head for his entire life. Shizune, as a clanless person whose time in the academy was perfunctory at best, hadn't spent much time around him regardless.
"What's going on?" Jiraiya asked pointedly, waiting politely as Asuma finished his current cigarette and lit a new one.
"What else? We got hit, bad." Asuma closed his eyes and gently shook his head. "Near as I can figure, which isn't very well, whoever did it mostly only went after the people that were awake and outside their rooms. Only one person died in their sleep, everything else is all out here and inside. 'S worse inside, if you've gotta go in."
"And the Hokage?" Jiraiya asked another question, less worried about decorum and more concerned with the world around him.
"Safe, though I don't know how long that'll hold true. His wife is the one who was killed while she slept. He's not in his right mind, but he's refusing to let others get near him," Asuma said.
"Izumi? No, why..." Sasuke trailed off, uncertain, trying to reason his way through the words Asuma was saying. Shizune didn't respond verbally, but her hand came up to rest on the teen's back as he struggled to accept that his sister-in-law was dead.
"Need a cig, kid? I don't have any answers for you, but it'll at least keep you level," the brunet Jounin offered.
"Absolutely not," Shizune interjected before Asuma could fish a cigarette out of its box, protectively lifting her other arm to reach in front of Sasuke. "I don't care what you two do, you're old enough to play around and die of whatever cancer takes you, but don't push that on to him."
Asuma flinched slightly at the medic's words, looking aggrieved as his gaze transitioned from her face back to Jiraiya's. For his part, the Gama Sennin could only sigh out another long column of smoke; he knew why Shizune was on edge, regardless of the death around them. He knew that her concern for Sasuke was, at a minimum, born of her training as a medic. That didn't give her the right to snap back on Asuma, though.
"I think we do need to see him," Jiraiya said at length. "For different reasons, maybe, but we all need to see him. You haven't heard any news about Tsunade, have you?"
"No, sorry. I'd help you if I could, but the last time I saw her was during my stint at the capital a few years ago. She's a hard woman to keep track of, even if you're trying. Pops loved her like a daughter, and even he couldn't keep her in one place for too long." Asuma sighed, taking another long pull from his cigarette after he finished speaking. He looked disdainfully at the item as he held it between his fingers, already at the end of its life, and crushed it into the side of a trench knife.
"It's okay, I didn't think you'd heard anything. Just thought I'd ask," Jiraiya replied. "Wish us luck."
Following Jiraiya's lead, Sasuke and Shizune moved through the hotel's open doorway. More bodies, and more blood, had yet to be cleaned off of the walls or furniture—whoever did this, they hadn't cared about letting it be done quickly or quietly. There was a girl around Sasuke's age standing at the check-in desk, and she seemed like she wanted to say something about their arrival, but she held her tongue when she saw Jiraiya's wild features and tense expression.
"So much death," the sage muttered, his eyes downcast as he began taking the stairs up to the top floor. Where else would the Hokage be? Every step Jiraiya took filled him with greater dread than the one before it, and a premonition began to form as he mentally prepared himself to speak with Itachi. He couldn't shake the feeling that some terrible discovery was going to leap out at him. Without looking at the young man behind him, Jiraiya wondered if it might have something to do with Sasuke; Itachi was his older brother, after all, and the deaths of their parents or grandparents had driven all of the Uchiha closer.
Under ordinary circumstances, the burly Gama Sennin would have knocked on one of the suite doors to find out which one belonged to the Hokage. Looking between the two, though, there was one suite whose door was no longer a door—it was an empty, blasted hole in two sheets of drywall that showed no remnants of any door ever existing. Ducking to enter into the room, Jiraiya saw a large bed against the opposite end with a number of black and red stains across the sheets, ceiling, wall, and floor. Itachi sat at a small table with puffy eyes and more frazzled hair than Sasuke had ever seen on any Uchiha; in the hours since he'd woken, he'd clearly spent much of his time failing to process the world he now found himself in. Pain, outrage and hatred coalesced into a dark expression on the Hokage's face, and even the arrival of his beloved younger brother wasn't enough to brighten his mood.
"Itachi!" Sasuke barely kept himself from shouting as he walked past Jiraiya, staring his brother down with eyes full of grief. He hadn't loved Izumi the way his brother did, but she was his sister-in-law who he'd appreciated as a member of their clan and their family. Why wouldn't he mourn her death?
"Sasuke," Itachi began, and the light of clarity eked into his expression for a few brief moments. "You shouldn't be here. It's not safe."
"Yeah, about that: what's going on?" Jiraiya asked. "I'm no stranger to these kind of attacks, but they don't usually leave survivors. Especially not this many."
"It was the demon. He's here, in Suna," Itachi's expression hardened again. "Naruto."
"What? No, don't do that shit to me, Itachi. I don't give a fuck who you are, don't bring Minato's kid up. Not even as a joke," Jiraiya's tone turned dark, suddenly seeming far more threatening than he had moments ago. "He died in Nami no Kuni after the worst judgement call my sensei ever made. Your brother was there, for crying out loud."
"No...he's alive," Sasuke refuted Jiraiya's statement. "Remember the statue of the demon, in Kiri? The lines across his throat? A Kiri-nin gave Naruto those scars. I'd recognize them anywhere."
The younger of the two Uchiha was more shaken now, contemplating his former teammate killing his sister-in-law, but Jiraiya wasn't far behind him. His godson, his only link to Minato and Kushina, was alive—and a demon, and a renegade. The revelation left a bitter taste in the sage's mouth; he found himself wishing against all common sense that they were wrong, and Naruto was dead, if for no other reason than to prevent tainting his memory as an upstanding ninja of Konoha.
"He's staying with the Kazekage and her brother," Itachi said. "Do what you want with that information, but his final punishment is mine to give. I understand your relationship with him, but I can't ignore Izumi's death."
The room was silent for several tense moments as Sasuke and Shizune came to grips with what the Hokage was asking Jiraiya to do, albeit without phrasing it in the form of a question.
"I understand," Jiraiya spoke solemnly as he began to leave the room. "You two can stay here, or you can follow me, but don't get in my way. I'm not gonna be pulling my punches." With those words, he was gone, and it took Sasuke several seconds to follow after the tall sage. Shizune didn't budge—in short order, she was left alone with Itachi.
"Where is Tsunade?" She left no room in her tone for deflection or diversion.
"Would you believe me if I said that I don't know?" Itachi returned her question with another. "I blacked out very quickly under her treatment, and when I came to, she was gone. I have no memory of anything that happened between then, and I can prove it if you'll let down your mental defenses. The Sharingan records everything it sees, and even though mine weren't active, I can still recreate the scene for you as it happened."
Blue chakra sprang to life as it manifested from Itachi's body, condensing into a vision of Shizune's lost master. "Tsunade's" chakra ran through Itachi's unseen body in the vision, asking him when he'd contracted his chakra-devouring disease. The blonde woman continued probing Itachi's body with her chakra, speaking a few more words as the vision began to fade out. As it did, Shizune felt the pain in her heart show for the first time in weeks. She'd come so far, and Itachi was the only person who could help her—did he really know nothing? Had she been abandoned by her aunt?
"You're not...lying, are you?" The brunette was suddenly afraid of that question's ramifications as she spoke.
"I don't need to lie to you, Shizune. We're all one family. If I knew what happened to Tsunade, I would tell you, because I want to know too. When I have the opportunity, I'll put someone on it," Itachi said. "Please, leave me with my thoughts now. I need to be alone."
Swallowing her grievances down, and doing her best not to read into Itachi's declaration that they were one family, Shizune briefly nodded before she followed after Sasuke and Jiraiya. Frustration began to mount inside of her as she increased her pace, passing by Asuma and a dark-haired woman clinging to him without a farewell. Leaping on top of the building in front of her with a burst of chakra, it only took a moment for her to locate the sprawling white-clay mansion where the Kazekage's family had lived for generations. She couldn't see or sense Jiraiya, but that was to be expected—she'd given him a sizeable head start. From several buildings away, she could see that a familiar mess of black hair was making its way to the same location.
All three members of their impromptu group were hurting, and so was the Hokage. The difference was that Jiraiya didn't need anyone to lean on, and Itachi no longer had anyone to lean on. Crossing a handful of rooftops as she closed the distance to the young Uchiha in the street—why had he opted to travel with civilians?—she waited for a gap to open up before she jumped down behind him. Sasuke froze for a second, but relaxed when he felt Shizune's soft hands lightly press against his shoulders. She wanted to ask him why he'd been moving so slowly, or if he thought his former teammate had really killed the Hokage's wife. She wanted to distract him from the fact that Jiraiya was ahead of them, fully intent on crippling and breaking Naruto so that Itachi could torture, imprison, or kill him at his leisure; she still couldn't entirely fight back the tears in her eyes.
"He didn't know anything?" Sasuke made an educated guess, his tone somber. Even before Shizune answered, the way that her hands moved to grip his shoulders told him everything he needed to know.
"No," the brunette medic confirmed. As she leaned forward, her hair brushed against Sasuke's neck. When had he gotten so tall? In Kirigakure, even if it hadn't been much, she was still taller than him. Now, though, the very top of her head only came up to Sasuke's eyes. That height difference didn't look like much but, in the moment, he seemed like a mountain.
"I..." Sasuke trailed off, unsure of what exactly to say. "I'm sorry." The words felt perfunctory, as if there was more he should be doing for Shizune; after all the time he'd spent around her, when she'd healed him or stayed close to his side, he thought that she deserved more. For the life of him, though, he couldn't figure out how he was going to provide that more. He was present, and he cared enough to say something, but could that really be enough? Turning around, he noticed how the crowded street had dispersed in the last minute before he looked the older woman in the eye.
"Sasuke?" Shizune didn't get more time to ask what he was doing, quickly finding her hands pinned to her chest as Sasuke wrapped her slim body in a hug. She didn't make a sound, but the intimate contact was shocking enough to finally draw her tears out.
"We'll find her," Sasuke whispered. "She's somewhere out there. We'll find her, and we'll make her explain, and I'll make her apologize. You deserve at least that much." The Uchiha tried to put a greater weight to his words by hugging Shizune a little tighter, her forward-facing nails digging into his chest as he did.
The medic didn't respond, knowing better than anyone that Sasuke could feel dampness on his shirt from where her tears landed. Taking in a deep breath that she didn't know she needed, only the solidity of Sasuke's grip kept her from shuddering and falling to her knees. Months of hunting for information had led nowhere, and the last person to see Tsunade alive had no idea where she'd gone, but a boy she'd assaulted was willing to keep searching for her—for Shizune's sake. It was a kind of selflessness that Shizune wasn't sure anyone had ever shown her; even her apprenticeship with Tsunade was done out of a sense of duty on the master's part, not familial love. After losing his parents, his elders, and almost all of his clan, how could he keep that kind of hope alive in his heart?
The answer was simple, albeit improbable. Even if Naruto had firmly juxtaposed himself against Konoha by killing Izumi, the fact remained that he'd saved Sasuke's life twice. For all the people in his life who'd died, and all the family he'd lost...one of them had come back. He was twisted into a different shape, masquerading as Yuurei and bringing catastrophes wherever he went, but the friend and teammate he'd left for dead in Nami no Kuni had come back.
All he wanted, in that moment, was for Shizune's fearful faith to be rewarded just like his was.
