Behind the Curtain

We moved through the trees with the ease born out of the experience we had, and the tension worthy of our first actual mission.

We were as fast as we could, considering that we were simply flooding our limbs with chakra and that Kakashi hadn't deemed necessary to show us the shunshin yet. Still, we were quiet, fast, and Neji kept us safe.

Soon enough, he signaled the presence of three hostiles that were walking back towards their camp, by virtue of lip-reading, Neji could make out that they were returning from a small and fruitless hunting trip.

I hesitated for a single instant, then gave my orders: -AMBUSH AHEAD OF THEM- we would complete our circle around the targets' camp, do what we were meant to, and then go away. I didn't want to think too much about the blatantly random killing that I was about to take a part in.

The three hunters didn't even notice that something was wrong.

Neji dropped from the branches and took 2 of them out with a surgical strike to the nape of their necks, while I simply dropped a poisoned senbon into the neck of the third, courtesy of Kabuto.

For a few seconds, team 7 remained still. Kabuto walked out from behind a tree trunk, his expression grim but controlled, and he observed the unconscious bodies of the bandits. Kakashi appeared out of nowhere, his lone eye staring us down, completely quiet.

In the familiar surroundings, while our ears naturally filtered out the white noise we were grown accustomed to, Neji and I exchanged a look, briefly hesitating before turning towards the unconscious targets. I could kill them all and spare Neji... then my eyes found once more Kakashi's form, and I knew that even that was beyond me. This was a task specifically tailored for us, to get our team used to the act of spilling blood.

I didn't even realize that the stress made me activate my bloodline, the world turned in purple tints while I turned towards the bandits for one last time, my fingers instinctively fishing out a kunai from my pouch. I could feel the leathery wrappings around the hilt dig minutely in my skin, granting me a solid grip despite the cold sweat that I noticed was covering my palms, I took a step forward and...

I tilted my head backward just in time to avoid a kunai that would have landed in my temple, and in the corner of my eye, I saw Neji deflect two projectiles with a stance of the infamous Gentle Fist. Ultimately, I didn't think when I completed my turning motion and flung my own kunai at the incoming shape of an enemy shinobi.

I didn't think when my free hand snatched one out of the air that was aimed at Kabuto, I didn't consciously whip my wrist to throw it, I didn't willingly target where my enemy was going to be, I didn't even notice when my newly obtained weapon buried itself into the eye of one of the shapes that had assaulted us out of nowhere.

My eyes registered perfectly how the weapon parted the flesh, and the bulging motion of the eye as its liquids were forcefully pushed aside by the length of metal.

The first kunai I had thrown had been deflected by a third shinobi, one that had already unsheathed his tanto that gleamed wetly in the dark of the forest. My left foot landed heel the first half a step from where I had started moving, and there was no more time for considerations of any kind.

I ducked under a swing of the enemy's short blade, my legs performing a perfect split over the grass while I planted my left hand in the grass, chakra making sure that my grip of the ground was strong enough for what I was about to do.

I torqued, my core muscles twitching like an uncoiled spring while my feet came together in a mule kick that landed squarely on the armband of my closest opponent. My free hand however fished out three shuriken from another pouch and flung them, perfectly timed, at the back of someone that was pressuring Kabuto.

I retracted my legs, pushing slightly on the ground in order to gain a little space, and I looked in my opponent's eyes from beneath his right arm. He had common features, no scars to speak of, black hair, a shade of beard, and brown irises: my chakra slipped in without a hitch, and his free hand stabbed two inches too wide to land a blow.

The hand I used to throw the shuriken pulled back on the ninja wire tied to one of the weapons while my fingers assumed a knife-like shape: while the ninja star deflected its route, the side of my palm collapsed my opponent's trachea.

My free hand pulled lightly at the wire that almost went loose and redirected the ninja star, which cut through a hail of senbon.

Another kunai found itself in my hand while I darted my eyes around for the first time: Neji was brutalizing a couple of shinobi through sheer taijutsu, the third dead on the ground by virtue of two of my shuriken, one of which had landed perfectly through his vertebrae. Kabuto was stumbling back against a kunoichi that wielded a weighted chain.

Kakashi's body was on the ground, a pool of blood being greedily drunk by the dirt. I blinked in surprise, my mind starting to catch up with the instinctive reactions of my body.

I moved towards Kabuto, neatly avoiding the chain when the kunoichi directed it towards me, my eyes easily picking up the pattern it was going to follow, and I jumped back, jerkily avoiding a tanto that would have otherwise hopped off my right arm.

Engaging me there was another kunoichi: brown hair and eyes, bland features, 1,70 meters tall, maybe 60 kg of packed muscle, maybe in her late teens. She threw the tanto forward while her hands quickly formed a sequence of seals: "Doton: Iwayari (Stone Spear)."

I was about to grab the tanto that almost pinned my foot to the ground when the earth answered to my opponent's command: sharp spikes rising from the dirt in an attempt to gore me.

She spoke quietly, and I flooded chakra to my limbs in order to move. An instant later I was on the side of a tree trunk, bringing up my kunai to avoid the tanto slashing again at my arms. Duck, weave, spin, jump on the underside of a branch and propel yourself downward. My eyes found hers several times while we fought, but she simply slipped through my attempts to ensnare her in an illusion.

I was slowly but surely being forced back: her longer reach, both because of her age and choice of weapon against my kunai, her extensive training in overcoming genjutsu made her a bad match for me. Still, Kabuto would be killed by her unless he made use of all of his abilities, and that would be wonderful for me.

I jumped to another tree and I led the woman hunting me through a merry chase between the branches, my shurikenjutsu, enhanced by the abilities of my boodline, forced her to keep some distance. I planned ahead. 3 steps ahead. 5 steps ahead.

Ninja wire diverted shuriken into the path of kunai that then cut another wire, which stopped the change in trajectory of twin shuriken, one always moving in the shadow of another.

The kunoichi, that had the advantage in close quarters, was forced to measure each step.

Eventually, I dropped to the ground in the bandits' main camp, my eyes flashing red over the non-shinobi as I impressed over their chakra systems the concept of ally followed by pursuing enemy. The large illusion sapped roughly a third of my chakra. But when the kunoichi landed at my back, she had to waste time by killing the bandits.

I ducked behind a tree as the three ninja that Neji had spotted during our first recon entered the fray. A perfect henge took over my features and I turned into a bearded, burly man with a slight limp with his left leg and a large wound on my belly.

Ram-Horse-Tiger: "Katon: Bunshin." and I was down to a fifth of my chakra reserves as 2 clones appeared with the features of the real Uchiha Sasuke. One of the two kept moving from behind the tree, directed by my rough intentions, while the other quickly and quietly climbed up the trunk.

I rolled out from behind the tree, stopping with my back to the ground and a leg half bent beneath me, showing my mortal wound to the world.

My clone engaged the two closest ninja while the tanto-wielding kunoichi finished dealing with the bandits that were still puppets of my illusion. Uchiha Sasuke's look-alike ducked under a thrown kunai and executed a perfect split so that his heels could land respectively on one man's chin and in the other's gut.

Then the kunoichi was there, her tanto slicing through an overextended arm.

My clone exploded in a rush of flame that reached easily the corpses of the bandits, consuming their features and making sure that there wouldn't be 2 bodies with the appearances of my henge around. The two shinobi that had been just kicked by my clone were too out of it to perform the instinctive Kawarimi that saved the life of the kunoichi.

Taking full advantage of the short-term precognition that my eyes granted me, my second clone flung a kunai exactly where the kunoichi emerged from the kawarimi, immediately engaging after she used that damned tanto of hers to deflect the projectile.

Like the first clone, this one didn't last long, and exploded in a rush of flame.

I observed as the kunoichi formed a ram seal and shaped her chakra in a manner I had been trying to learn for months as she disappeared in a shunshin, reappearing on the other side of the clearing, her blade casually cutting down the remaining shinobi, who went down with a wet gurgle. I almost blinked in surprise. The ones that ambushed us aren't with the bandits.

Now that I had some time to think, hidden in plain view as I was, the pieces started to click together. Kabuto already sold us away. I thought, withholding a frown when I realized that it couldn't be true. The only ones interested in me at this point in time should be Danzo and Orochimaru, the latter would have jumped in personally at the chance of snatching me up, while the first... Fucking hell, they're Root, aren't they?

I pushed aside the revelation once the kunoichi that had given me so much trouble finished cutting down the bandits that had survived this far. She stilled on a branch, her blank eyes analyzing the camp, and after 12 seconds, she turned towards the direction we first came from and disappeared in a shunshin. Is Kakashi feigning to be dead because of orders? I almost snorted at the obviousness of the thing. This mission was a test, one that had been allowed through the ANBU chain of command. Which pointed either to the Hokage himself or Danzo.

I waited for a second, to see if the kunoichi's disappearance was a feint, and rolled back on my feet, the henge unraveling as I stopped feeding chakra into the technique.

As quietly as I could, and keeping an eye on my almost dry chakra reserves, I moved across the trees: I knew that Neji could hold out, that Kakashi would hopefully jump in if necessary, and that I honestly didn't care about Kabuto.

I arrived on a branch over the first battlefield just in time to see the kunoichi stab her tanto through Neji's arm when he stumbled over one of the bodies that surrounded him.

Quick as a viper, the enemy retracted her weapon and made to slash at the Hyuga. He was still unbalanced, his healthy arm too far to be used adequately, his legs sporting several deep gnashes likely thanks to the other shinobi weapons, and too tired to burn explosively through his chakra reserves.

My hands closed in a ram seal before I could think about it, chakra surged through my body as I focused on the exit point of the technique. The Shunshin carried me in a straight line next to the kunoichi, and I turned even as I felt something tear in my leg in order to bury the kunai I had extracted into my opponent's body.

I adjusted my aim and direction instinctively when my left leg lacked the power to complete the movement, and my kunai buried itself into the woman's leg instead of between her ribs. Her heart was healthy, but I knew I had reached an important vein.

Now the tanto was closing in on my head faster than I could avoid it, as it had happened once before, I felt my eyes burn while I pushed more chakra through them, slamming into the kunoichi's head a debilitating illusion followed by two subtle ones.

The first illusion didn't even land on her pathways, it simply slid off, the second forced her to correct her aim basing her strategy on something that didn't rely on her sight, while the third she broke through in a way I hadn't see before.

In the exact moment, the gleaming wet blade almost started to cut into my skin, there was a sharp *crack*, and Kakashi was suddenly there, letting go of the kunoichi he had just snapped the neck of.

Half an hour later, I had metabolized the outrage in seeing that my doubts were well-reasoned deductions.

Kakashi was alive. Because of course he was. He pulled the same shit in canon, in hindsight, it was obvious that he would do something similar.

We were sitting a few meters from where our sensei had finally decided to jump in, the bespectacled spy of our team had already tended to my torn ligaments, which throbbed dully every time I started to rely on my left leg, Kakashi was just done checking the surroundings for survivors, and I was royally pissed off.

"How did they ambush us?" my eyes landed once more on the unconscious form of Neji while he was being attended to by Kabuto. And doesn't it freak me out to let him land his hands on either of us?

"Seals." Kabuto replied under a layer of sweat, his relief at seeing Kakashi alive and well still clear in his voice, even if it was tight because of the focus necessary to keep the Hyuga from bleeding out.

"Indeed." Kakashi flatly commented, his lone eye analyzing the messy battlefield, "A seal on a coat to hide what's under it, another to let certain frequencies of chakra to pass through." he tilted his head, momentarily looking at Neji, "If the Byakugan couldn't be tricked, the Hyuga incident would have been a joke."

"So the Byakugan is... useless." I repeated dully, all the metaknowledge and personal experience I had about it rattling hollowly in my head.

"It is very expensive." Kabuto muttered as he healed Neji, his frown deepening as he feigned to be concerned, "Not just anyone can prepare a coat like these, and I imagine that they must be tailored to the wearer."

Our sensei seemed supremely unconcerned with the situation. And in hindsight, I could admit that he was likely used to worse, but that didn't mean that it made sense to let three genin survive an ambush that clearly was tailored to push us on the backfoot.

"I was too slow, and Neji almost got beheaded!" I snarled at Kakashi, absolutely fed up with his attitude towards my fucking team. I knew how he had acted in canon, and I knew his personal philosophy of 'teammates before the mission', it was clear that he didn't care one lick about either Neji, Kabuto or me, mostly because he was fucked up in the head.

"You don't want us as your team, well fucking done, we don't want you!" I took a step towards the singularly unimpressed jonin, I knew that he would have likely acted earlier in order to save Neji if not for my intervention, but I had learned Shunshin by sheer dumb luck, and using it without preparation shred the ligaments in my left leg, which meant two weeks with regular check-ups and inability to train to the fullest, "Teach us something to keep us alive that we can't learn on our own, throw us at the next chunin exams, and then fuck off!"

What the fuck was the point of stress-training ourselves if the only thing we were learning was the natural progression of skills we developed on our own in the first place? I had to figure out Visual Genjutsu on my own, and thank fuck my eyes were a hack that allowed me to accomplish bullshit-tier stuff without even trying. But besides a series of Fire Ninjutsu that were too chakra intensive for me to use, self-taught Ninjutsu and Genjutsu, general awareness and stamina, Kakashi had done nothing.

Fuck Kabuto, he probably was a jonin in any case, but I surely would have been well served by a competent and committed teacher that I knew wasn't in the pocket of some politician, and the same went for Neji. Sure, his eyes meant that he routinely saw and learned the Gentle Fist from the main branch even if they didn't want him to, and the continuous application of it forced him to improvise and adapt.

Having said that, the Hyuga prodigy had 0 elemental Ninjutsu, and I refrained from forcing him to learn something fire-natured, lest he set himself on fire at the wrong moment. What if his elemental nature was Earth? In any case, without a jonin taking a hand in it, it was better to leave elemental training alone. I was mentally an adult and I had a vague idea of what I needed, if only based on my metaknowledge and dead clan's notes.

I had no idea about how much effort Kakashi put in our almost daily fighting, and I didn't know anything about the shinobi we just killed. I only knew that it took everything I had and then some in order to win. I knew that it took me a while only to start thinking straight. I knew that I had acted like an automation while fighting for my life, motions and exercises coming alive in a whirlwind of jutstu, from close quarters to disengaging and shurikenjutsu. I knew that I had reacted with lethal force without even thinking about it.

And I knew that, seeing the bodies of those that had attacked team 7, I didn't care at all about their lives. Behind the curtain of civility that I liked to think myself wrapped in, it was clear that I was as monstrous as any other shinobi that walked the Elemental Nations.

The worst part was that Kakashi looked at me like he knew exactly what I was thinking.

A few days later, when Team 7 left the Hokage's office after a very accurate debrief, a shadow melted out of one wall, his cane tapping the wooden floors with a rhythmic echo.

Sarutobi turned marginally towards the one-eyed spy, at the same time, he made a quick gesture of his right hand, making the ANBU in the room disappear and immediately seal the office from prying ears and eyes.

Once he was sure that they were alone, the Sandime Hokage studied his old comrade from under his hat, which cast his features in a deep shadow: "Tell me one reason why I shouldn't strike you down where you are."

"Hatake's reluctance in teaching this team cannot be allowed to stunt their growth, I had to make sure that they would be up to standard."

"By almost killing them?" Sarutobi's chakra, always perfectly controlled, stirred minutely, and it felt like the distant rumble of thunder, like the tides rising to encircle the moon.

"For all of Konoha's experience about raising soldiers, we still have to find a safe way to prepare them for their first battle." Danzo replied, his face not changing expression and maintaining his unconcerned attitude, "How many genin die at the first spilled blood because they freeze? Having Hatake with them was enough as a safety net. And given the time we have him benched from higher ranked missions, we had to be sure that his 'efforts' were bringing results."

Sarutobi took a deep inhale from his lit pipe, letting the smoke fill his lungs, and for a single instant, the instinct to flood the cinders with chakra and torch alive his old friend rose to the forefront of his mind. It wasn't an aggressive thought, merely a possibility that was being considered. Ultimately, the kind of damage that Danzo's death would bring to Konoha outweighed both the gains and the reduction in headaches that his old friend kept causing him.

"You've seen Hatake's non-verbal report." the Sandaime replied, "He'll teach them for the next three months, then they'll be ready to become chunin."

"The Uchiha will look to become hunter-nin." Danzo nodded lightly, "The Hyuga too," the one-eyed relic of the previous two Hidden Great Wars stopped momentarily, almost visibly considering his words: "letting them together has been a good thing."

"Bonds are the only thing that actually ensures loyalty." Sarutobi smiled widely at his old friend's admission: "You have seen this."

"I don't have to remind you of Sakumo Hatake." Danzo's immutable expression was matched only by the dryness of his voice: "Ultimately, his choice of putting comrades above the mission forced us into a war we were ill-prepared for."

"Spare me." Sarutobi waved his hand dismissively, unwilling to wade through the marsh that was Sakumo Hatake's scandal. In Sandaime's opinion, the Hatake had simply chosen the wrong comrades to value above the success of the mission, but that was in the past, and utterly meaningless at the moment.

"The duo have an implicit trust one for another that they aren't willing to share with the relatively unknown third member of their team." Danzo said, his lone eye studying Sarutobi's reaction, "Maybe things will change now that they have actually risked their lives together, but it's too soon to tell."

"The Hyuga remains the flight risk of the two then?"

"He does, but the Caged Bird Seal neatly solves that particular worry." Danzo replied, "The Uchiha's pet projects seem to actually have some genuine influence on him."

"Prodigies are always difficult to handle." Sarutobi breathed in the unique mixture of tobacco that he had perfected in the wake of the Kyubi Disaster, letting it calm him down, "Orochimaru was obsessive in his affections, that was enough when he was a child... Kakashi could only think of redeeming his family's name, Itachi was unique... Both the young Uchiha and the young Hyuga have triggers that point them against the Village, even if only the latter is already pointed at us. That seal surely doesn' help."

"And yet, it keeps him from going too far." Danzo casually replying, his lone eye never leaving Sarutobi's frame.

"From what I know, he's quite brutal in the sparring with the children of the main branch." the Sandaime sighed heavily, his mind running from contingency to contingency, from the riskier to the less controlling, and everything in between.

"The Uchiha will be a problem," Danzo flatly stated, "even if not on par with his brother, he can hardly be mistaken as average, he will not appreciate his little brother walking in the dark."

"Itachi is the one that pushed him on this path," Sarutobi shook his head, "we didn't influence him, he made his choices, and I couldn't hold him back, not when the only human connection he made was with young Rock Lee. For now, Kakashi will take care of it, once he's chunin... we'll see. Surely, he'd be a boon to our black ops, his eyes are enough to make him perfect for infiltration, and his sheer creativity and tactical acumen allows for a broad application of his skills."

"Hatake's training has refined their mundane capabilities, more than that, only experience will teach him." Danzo commented idly, his frame perfectly still, as if he was carved out of dead stone, "He'd better put his 'One Thousand Jutsu' to use. Elemental training, Elemental Clones for Ninjutsu combinations..."

"For now he's a genjutsu specialist." Sarutobi replied with an uncaring gesture of his shoulders, "He doesn't have the necessary inclination to be a medic, and his reserves promise to bloom once he hits puberty, I'm more inclined to let him explore his limits on his own, after all, you've seen his Katon. The control he refines now will be a great help for all of his career. But the basics... yes, having him practice those now that he has clearly completed his Fire Nature training will make him much more dangerous later, and surely more effective were he to steal a technique at the chunin exams."

"There is also another option."

"I won't allow it."

"He is named after a Sarutobi."

"Danzo..."

"It would optimize his growth, as well as to keep him satisfied." the Darkness of Konohagakure no Sato replied smoothly, "He'd be both untouchable and unable to run if that was the situation. The Hyuga could be groomed for an ANBU team to throw them on the field, keeping them in contact while forging some bonds for the..."

"I said no." with his last word, the Hokage rose deliberately to his feet, and the chakra that had started moving at the beginning of their debrief rose to the edge of his skin, almost but not quite rolling out of his tenketsu, ready to crush whoever stood against him.

"You understand then why I had to make sure?" Danzo seemed to relent by returning to the topic that marked the beginning of the impromptu meeting.

"You will never do something like this again." Sarutobi narrowed his eyes at his old comrade, "Kakashi followed my amended instructions for the team. Yakushi Kabuto kept up with the necessary studies to become a better medic-nin, Hyuga Neji has a structured training program because of his Clan." the Hokage's gaze turned towards the window, his eyes landing on the infamous monument of the previous leaders watching over the Village, "As for the Uchiha... ingenuity let him perform feats that I wouldn't believe possible in a child."

"We will be better served by having him showcase a wide array of abilities at the chunin exams." Danzo remarked, returning once more on the topic that caused the need for that encounter with the Hokage.

Sarutobi puffed tightly on his pipe, walking around his desk and stopping a step shy of going nose to nose with the one-eyed spy: "I already planned for it..." the chakra of the ninjutsu monster rose once more to the edge of his skin, heavy and oppressive, calm as a glacier, and nevertheless capable of cleanly cutting through the mountains if it started to move in that direction, "This is your only warning, stay away from Uchiha Sasuke, we own Itachi that much."

AN

C-rank:

How did the fight go? I wanted to make it fast-paced without losing the tactical application of techniques that shaped the bell-test. And I didn't want it to be boring.

Opinions?

Hokage-Danzo:

So, snoopy Danzo makes a move. We see some of the reasons behind the kind of training that Team 7 was enduring, we see the results of training, another bit of character interaction, and a realization that in hindsight should have been obvious.