"Got a few more fake friends

And it's gettin' hard to know what's real,

And if death is the last appointment

Then we're all just sittin' in the waiting room,

I am just a human trying to avoid my certain doom."

-Church, Fall Out Boy

I sat against a wall of the hideout, legs tucked against my chest.

Across the room, Naga laid on his side, facing the wall. Namekuji was splayed over his head, a living, breathing barrier to the outside world. He was still hurt over Usagi and angry he was hurting.

I wanted to help him, but I didn't know how. He always had the right words when I needed him, but now that he needed me, the words to make him feel better wouldn't come. What were the right words to say about what he did to Usagi? Yahiko would know. He always did.

My nails were chipped, ragged, and dirty, but Naga healed the pain away. He fixed the cuts but not the bruises, saving his chakra to heal Yahiko's broken wrist.

I looked towards the front, where Yahiko and Konan stood together in the doorway. Yahiko wore a splint—made from planks of wood and torn scraps of Mamoru's old pants. Mamoru donated them to Konan's slime-deterrent pile, as wearing them pointed him out as a shinobi.

Naga said he made the splint because Yahiko's bones were still sensitive and he didn't trust him to stop training until it fully healed. Yahiko only didn't protest because he could see how red Naga's eyes were.

I hated how quiet it was. I glared down at Naga's old shirt, covering the floor beside my foot and darkened in the middle by slime. Mamoru-sensei hadn't come inside since Naga was attacked. That was a day ago.

I stood, ignoring the painful tingle around my ankle where the water rope left a circle of purple-black bruises, and strode over to Yahiko and Konan. I saw the worry in Konan's eyes as she peeked out, sprinkled with fear.

Mamoru sat in the rain with his back to us.

Yahiko's eyes made me think of the morning Jiraya left.

I ground my teeth, shoved past them, and went out. Konan let out a surprised squeak, whisper-yelling at me, but I focused only on Mamoru. Even when I knelt beside him, he didn't turn. Mamoru looked at the sky, but his gaze was somewhere far away.

"Are you leaving?" I asked.

Mamoru dragged his eyes down to look at me. Bags lined his eyes and his shoulders slumped.

I stared back at him. I heard someone come out behind me.

"Oka—" Konan began, half-chastising, half-hesitant. Her eyes flicked to Mamoru-sensei. "She didn't mean it like that," she said haltingly. "She only asked because..." she trailed off and frowned.

Yahiko leaned back against the wall just outside, arms crossed. "It was like this with the shinobi who trained us before," he explained. "They avoided us, and then they were gone."

Konan sent him a look that was half-scolding, half-resigned. She looked like she wanted to speak, but bit her lip instead.

"If you're leaving, go already," I said harshly.

When Mamoru-sensei left, he wasn't the one who would have to watch Konan smile and laugh and pretend like she was okay when she wasn't. He wasn't the one who would have to help put her broken heart back together. I would never, ever forgive him for it.

Yahiko waved me down. "Let's see what he has to say first," he said lightly. "Then we decide how we feel."

Mamoru didn't seem to hear any of it. "Tell me what you know about Hanzo the Salamander," he finally said.

Konan blinked, brows furrowing in confusion.

"He's the leader of this crybaby village," Yahiko answered, hands laced behind his neck. "He wants peace like we do, so we're allies. He just doesn't know it yet."

"That's it?" Mamoru asked quietly.

"He has a salamander named Ibuse," Konan said, smile shaky and tentative. "And he's crazy strong."

"And he was your friend," Yahiko added.

Mamoru stiffened, and all three of us looked at him.

Yahiko grinned. "The day we met, Oka told me about Hanzo," he said, eyes solely on Mamoru. "Which meant you told her about him, and you'd only do that if Hanzo was the one hunting you down and you thought he sent Oka to finish the job. What I couldn't figure out was why you would think that, at least, not until yesterday,"

"You didn't want to kill Inu because he was young, but you thought you had to," Yahiko shrugged. "Kids are your weakness, Mamoru-sensei, and Hanzo knew it. And because I know that Hanzo doesn't know how to mess with the head of every single shinobi in the village—"

"You were unconscious," Mamoru stated, almost to himself, in disbelief.

"Mostly," Yahiko agreed. "I don't like being unconscious with enemies around."

Konan scoffed. "No one likes that."

"Yeah, but I especially don't like it."

Konan stared at him. "You can't force yourself to wake up after being knocked out just because you really want to."

"I can," Yahiko said. "And I did." He faced her. "Just because Inu would've knocked you out doesn't mean he did that to me."

Konan's eyes narrowed. "I would've stayed awake."

"We'll never know because you ran away," Yahiko said airily.

"You told me to get Mamoru-sensei," she hissed.

"Sounds like an excuse to me."

"You're so full of sh—"

"Language, Konan," Yahiko interrupted, sage-like. "You don't want to teach Oka that word, do you?"

"You don't know what I was going to say."

Yahiko stared blankly at her.

"You're not human," Mamoru told Yahiko.

Yahiko rubbed his chin. "I don't know if I should take that as a compliment or an insult."

"An insult," Konan said with a sweet smile.

"A compliment," I decided.

Yahiko shook his head, refocusing on Mamoru. "My point was that for Hanzo to know that, you had to be friends, Mamoru-sensei," he said. "And you called him a bastard. Hurt or not, no one here would do that with other people listening in."

It was like watching a fire go out. Mamoru's eyes darkened and he turned away. Eventually, he sighed. "There were four of us," he started, almost reluctantly. "Osamu, Tadao, Shuji, and me. We were all friends with Hanzo, and during the war, he made us his inner circle. While he fought on the front lines, we kept the village running. Kept food coming in, directed our forces, found a place for refugees..." Mamoru closed his eyes. "Only Shuji and Osamu are left now."

"What happened?" Konan asked quietly when Mamoru didn't continue.

"Shuji happened," Mamoru said, acid dripping from his tone. "He was a traitor from Konoha. Had been for as long as I knew him. I just didn't know it until he stabbed me in the back. He made me a traitor and Hanzo believed him."

Konan grimaced.

I looked out at the rain. Konoha. Why was it always Konoha?"

"Before I found Yahiko, I found Tadao. He was dead," Mamoru said. He looked sad and tired. "He was trying to track down this place. He didn't make it."

Yahiko stared hard at wall.

Was this the fault of War, too? Was it someone else I had to add to the pile of people that died to War's greed?

"Hanzo must've thought he wouldn't get far with his injury," Mamoru said, staring sightlessly at the grass. "Shuji or Danzo had to think otherwise, or they wouldn't have sent Root to finish the job—"

"Danzo?" Konan asked gently, sitting on Mamoru's other side.

Mamoru slowly blinked. He looked at Konan, surprised, as if he'd forgotten who his audience was. "Danzo Shimura," he began haltingly. Mamoru stared down at his feet. "Konohagakure is led by the Third Hokage. Danzo is his advisor, and someone that should only be trusted only as far as you can throw him." He paused. "No, even less than that. He runs an organization he calls Root. They take kids, strip them of their emotions, then turn them into tools to spy on other nations or assassinate diplomats while leaving no evidence to tie them back to Konoha. Shuji is one of them."

Konan's eyes widened. "The people who tried to kidnap Nagato wouldn't be from Root, would they?"

"War orphans are easy targets for them," Mamoru answered. "No one misses them when they disappear, and no one remembers them to notice when they return as spies."

"Danzo Shimura," I murmured, testing the name on my tongue. If Inu and Usagi were his, he was partly responsible for Yahiko getting hurt, for forcing Naga to kill someone.

I promised I would save you and I failed.

If I was stronger, I would've killed Usagi so he didn't have to. But I wasn't. Naga had to save himself and me.

I thought if I wanted it, I could make it happen. But my wanting meant nothing to her power. I clenched my fists.

I was still so... small.

"Could you describe Danzo to us, Mamoru-sensei?" Konan asked.

As Mamoru described an elderly man with bandages covering half his face and one arm in a sling, I stood and went over to Yahiko. He looked distracted, a hand half covering his mouth.

"Yahiko?" I asked, uncertain.

He was muttering under his breath.

Before, I never thought about why Yahiko wanted to be a god. Why it wasn't good enough to be the leader of Amegakure, or taking control of one of the other, bigger nations. It was about power. It was about having so much that no one would, or could, stand in the way of peace.

I stood on my tiptoes to wave a hand in front of his face.

Yahiko blinked down at me. "Sorry, Oka," he said with a sheepish smile. "Mamoru-sensei gave me a lot to think about."

"'Is okay," I said. "Like Danzo?"

Yahiko looked away. "Danzo is a problem for later. I was talking about Root. There are a lot of orphans around here. Some are kinda like us—"

"No," I interrupted him.

Yahiko blinked again. "No?" he repeated.

"No one is like us."

Yahiko laughed a little. "Not like us in that way," he said. "I meant that they had the same idea I did to band together to survive. But a lot of them are still alone. Someone's got to warn them about Root, and that someone is me."

I hummed. "I'm coming with you."

Yahiko shook his head. "Are you asking or telling me?"

"Telling you," I told him with a smile.

He looked me up and down. "You're a little short to be my bodyguard," he teased.

My smile widened into something more Konan-like. "I can show you how sharp my teeth are," I offered.

Yahiko took a purposeful step back, putting space between us. "Biting is rude, you know."

"I'm rude," I told him right back.

Yahiko took another careful step back, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

"Yahiko," Mamoru called before I could decide if leaping at him would be worth hurting my leg more. "You should find someone else to obsess over. You won't find an ally in Hanzo."

Yahiko took a moment to think about that. "Yeah I will," he said back easily.

Mamoru turned away from him. "Whatever dream Hanzo might've had for peace died with Tadao," he said.

Yahiko looked at me, then Konan. "There's no other option for us," he said. "I really thought about it, but we need Hanzo to be on our side. Nothing will stop me from achieving my dream, and it starts right here. He has to be on our side because the only other path for us is to take Amegakure from him."

"But that'll only lead to more fighting and bloodshed, more people dying for nothing," Yahiko said, eyes bright and intense. "We take Amegakure by force and Hanzo retaliates with even more force. The village will keep crying, but we'll be the ones causing it this time. If we kill him, we spend the rest of our lives killing the people that followed him, people that want revenge, mercenaries hired to kill us."

He shook his head. "People will only listen to us out of fear. That isn't peace. It's just a different form of war. I don't want to be that kind of god, and I don't want my friends to be those kinds of people. All I've ever wanted was to make Amegakure better, not worse. Hanzo will listen to us because I'll make him see that we aren't his enemy."

Mamoru stared at Yahiko. He shook his head, and I heard a huff of a laugh. He stood and shuffled past us without a word, a hand on the back of his head. Mamoru stopped in the doorway. "You got me again," he said without turning around. "I'll put my faith in you, Yahiko, and leave it to you to convince the stubborn salamander."

I stared at Mamoru's back as he disappeared inside.

First, Hanzo. Then the rain, the war, and finally, Root.

"How long have you been waiting to break that one out?" Konan teased. She was stretched out on the grass on her stomach, feet in the air.

Yahiko shrugged. "It's just how I feel. Someone without a passion wouldn't get it."

Konan squawked and I thought that maybe, just this once, I could let myself care about Mamoru.

聖域

(Before)

Mamoru gave his students two (and a half, because he was feeling generous) minutes to make a plan and hide. He'd found a common theme among three of them. They excelled in a single area, while everything else was shaky or unrefined.

For Nagato, it was medical ninjutsu. Mamoru owed his life to a kid a third of his age. Nagato was only genin-level, but possibly the best medic-nin Amegakure had. He ranked third on Mamoru's mental anomaly list (because, make no mistake, they were all anomalies, just at different levels), just below Konan (she either had a paper-related bloodline trait or she created a style of ninjutsu, he wasn't sure which), but above Oka.

But, Nagato was soft. He was someone who had clearly learned morals and ethics before he became an orphan. Which, as much as Mamoru wished otherwise, held him back in a village like this. Mamoru still didn't have a good grasp of Nagato's skill in taijutsu because the kid fought differently depending on who his opponent was. He pulled punches with his sister, refused to draw blood against Yahiko, and only tried the hardest against Konan because he couldn't touch her.

He would have to pit himself against Nagato when he had some free time (which, between training four kids at once, was never). Nagato knew how to substitute himself, but anything beyond that was self-taught (though that was a problem with all of them). His sensory ability was nothing to scoff at, but he didn't know how to hide his chakra.

Nagato was practically a beacon to anyone with even the barest sensory ability. He relied way too much on said ability to detect genjutsu, or to anticipate an attack. He was about as stealthy as the rain (again, a universal problem), and his wind style was iffy, at best.

Konan, second on his mental list, had honed her weird paper-ninjutsu like a freshly polished kunai. Mamoru still wasn't sure how she did half the things she did with it. She was better at shurikenjutsu than Nagato, but not Oka. Mamoru knew that she could be a better sensor if she had a teacher that specialized in it, like Tadao. As it was, she and Nagato were both fumbling around in the dark, using trial and error to guide them forward.

Oka was around low-genin level. She was second in taijutsu and only passable in genjutsu because she had him for a teacher. Her ninjutsu was a work-in-progress. Beyond that one time with earth style: mud wall that Mamoru preferred not to think about, she was making slow progress with making an earth clone (still fast, but not four hours fast, thankfully).

Of the four of them, she fought the hardest. She wasn't afraid to draw blood like Nagato. Mamoru suspected that Oka had either, been too young to remember their parents when they were orphaned (because unlike the others, she and Nagato looked at least a little related; they had the same eyes), or she'd been too young for their influence to stick. She was a child raised by war.

As for his fourth student...

Yahiko was, well, Yahiko. He was in a category all his own. He was mid-to-low chunin and the most well-rounded. He was the best at taijutsu, shurikenjutsu, second-best at ninjutsu (Konan and her paper would always be first), and first at dispelling genjutsu.

The kid was a prodigy among prodigies. It gave Mamoru a headache.

Having successfully wasted one minute and fifty seconds musing over his students, Mamoru glanced north, the direction the four of them had disappeared to once he signaled them to begin. He didn't hear or see a trace of them.

Either they were better than he thought they were, or Yahiko told them not to leave footprints.

Forty seconds left. Mamoru would know if they broke the rules and started early because Konan would toss a kunai straight up the second they did, signaling him.

The second planning time was over, Mamoru leapt and stuck to the side of an old building. It made an ominous cracking noise when he landed, but, as the building didn't come down, he ignored it and walked to the top floor (the only floor not completely overtaken by nature).

Mamoru scanned east to west, searching for red, orange or blue-purple hair. Living in a village without forests was good for one thing, it made finding people easier. He limited the "hiding area" to a quarter mile out from his position.

If he couldn't find all four of them by midday, he would take them out to eat and let them order anything they wanted (whether there was a place like that still standing in Amegakure was questionable, but he wasn't going to lose). When he won, he got the next day off (no training, no kids pestering him, and maybe, just maybe, he would remember what it was like to be alone for once).

Mamoru stared off north-west. He found someone, but not one of his students. He or she was half-obscured by boulders, but he knew a human leg when he saw one. He also recognized their pants, because he used to own a pair himself.

Now, why would a shinobi be all the way out here?

Mamoru frowned. He was sure that Hanzo knew he was alive. He used a mixture of genjutsu and ninjutsu to disguise himself when he passed through the shinobi-heavy sector of Amegakure (or what was left of it anyway), but Hanzo never retrieved his body or received word that he was found dead.

Any seasoned shinobi would assume that a missing target was one that was still alive.

Was he really getting so complacent that he let himself be followed? Unless the tracker was from Root and one of Konoha's many clans known for tracking. Like the Inuzuka, Aburame, or worse, the Hyuuga.

His phantom limb ached. Mamoru sighed. Deeply.

The only way to know was to ask them himself.

Time for a quick detour.

.

.

.

Mamoru landed on top of a boulder and went completely still.

Below him, hiding half in shadow, was Tadao. He was laying in the middle of a pond of blood. Mamoru turned, following a red path through the grass where Tadao had clearly dragged himself through the mud.

He should've known it was Tadao who tracked him. Tadao, one of only four people who could've picked him out of a crowd by his tells, transformation jutsu or not.

Of course Shuji wouldn't have stopped at him. Mamoru felt outside of his body for a moment, a spectator watching himself look down at the dead body of one of his best friends.

It was a smart play. If Hanzo couldn't trust his hand-picked inner circle, how could he trust anyone else that served under him?

Mamoru slid down until he stood beside Tadao's head. His friend was face down, an arm reaching, grappling at the dirt and grass, desperate to pull his body forward another inch. His skin was pale and bloated. He'd been dead for a while.

There was a hole in his back, visible even through his gray flak-jacket. Mamoru knew it was from Hanzo's sickle. He dropped to his knees.

Mamoru felt exhausted. He'd lived through two World Wars—a helpless child in the first, a killer in the second—but he never felt as tired as he did right then. Seeing Tadao, dead from the same fate he escaped, shouldn't have been worse than standing in the middle of a battlefield—but it was. He was so tired of watching his friends die.

Though there was still something he had to do. One final thing he could do for Tadao. Mamoru didn't know how, but he stood. His fingers moved on their own. Dog. Snake. Horse. Tiger.

Earth Style: Earth Fissure.

It was the same request he made of Yahiko, back when he was sure he was going to die.

"Destroy my body for me."

The ground shook and the earth cracked as he forced it to tear open, moving apart until—Mamoru closed his eyes and didn't look as Tadao fell in the hole. He kept the jutsu going until he was sure all the red-stained grass fell in too. Only then did he close the fissure.

Mamoru dropped his hand and stared at the ground, clumps of dirt where there should've been grass the only proof that anything happened at all.

"Mamoru-sensei!" Konan yelled breathlessly from somewhere behind him.

His students—and this whole exercise—had been completely forgotten.

"Nagato was captured," Konan said quickly, standing at his side. "I sensed two people; one with water-style chakra. Yahiko stayed back to fight but he can't—he can't do it alone. And Oka's out there somewhere—"

Mamoru walked forward. He picked up a rock the size of his head, struggled a bit adjusting it in his grip, and put it on top of Tadao's 'grave' as a pseudo-headstone. He wanted to stay and mourn and wonder.

If I decided to train them here a day earlier, could I have found him alive?

But Mamoru had something of a responsibility to these kids. Nagato especially.

Konan looked frustrated and scared. She took a step forward, mouth opening—but she must've seen something in his face because her eyes widened and she didn't speak.

"Which way?" Mamoru finally asked, facing away from her.

"East—"

"Stay here," he instructed. Mamoru didn't know why he said it, other than that he didn't want to leave Tadao alone with only the rain for company.

Konan shook her head. "I can take you to them," she insisted. "I can help you fight."

Mamoru looked at the headstone. His legs felt like they were made of lead. "No." Before she could argue further, he disappeared.

.

.

.

It was easy enough to find Yahiko.

Mamoru stopped, observing the signs of battle around him. Small craters in the grass and indented in trees, slashes from a short sword carved into rocks or walls. He followed the signs and soon enough, he heard them.

"Slippery runt," an Inuzuka growled, standing on the middle floor of a building with no back wall.

Metals beams blocked the Inuzuka from accessing the room in front of him. The Inuzuka wore a black raincoat, matching gloves, and held a tanto in his right hand. There was a crack in the middle, like it had been hit with something in that exact spot over and over again.

Perched on a pillar, Mamoru raised his hand. He projected a small visual and auditory genjutsu at the Inuzuka, making the crack appear smaller than it really was.

The Inuzuka took a quick step back and then launched himself forward, twirling his body until he resembled a miniature tornado. He demolished the beams and a good chunk of the floor.

Mamoru watched Yahiko leap away from the explosion of debris, catching himself hand-first on the wall of a dilapidated archway and sticking with chakra. Even Mamoru saw the way his wrist twisted the wrong way. But other than a quick glance at it, Yahiko didn't react.

He continued to hang, eyes on the Inuzuka. Yahiko held a rock in his other hand, and Mamoru understood what made the craters. Anything was a weapon when coated with enough chakra.

He didn't see Nagato. Mamoru dropped down before the Inuzuka stopped spinning, a kunai clutched in his grip. He wanted to end this quickly.

The Inuzuka's head jerked up. He planted a foot in the mud, pivoted, and threw his tanto up in time to block the kunai, all before Mamoru landed.

Mamoru narrowed his eyes. At most, the kid was sixteen. He tightened his grip on the kunai and wedged it into the crack, holding the genjutsu as splinters raced up the surface. It wasn't a coincidence that both Root and Tadao were here.

Because Tadao was heavily injured, Root didn't send their best to hunt him down. No, they sent shinobi skilled enough to kill him, but wouldn't be missed if they failed or died. The expendable ones. In Mamoru's experience, that almost always meant children.

Nagato, separated from his friends and appearing as a lone war orphan, was a bonus for Root. Mamoru made it easy for them. The best strategy for his students to win his exercise was to split up and get as far away from each other as possible in order to outlast him.

The Inuzuka's nose twitched. His eyes went wide. "You were with him," he said. He looked soaked in a way that could only come from being doused in Yahiko's water wave.

"I was wondering when you were going to show up, Mamoru-sensei," Yahiko drawled, landing behind the Inuzuka. Mamoru knew Yahiko could be a sneaky bastard when he wanted to, but he hit the mud with an audible thump.

It worked to distract the Inuzuka for half a second, long enough for Mamoru to drive his foot into the Inuzuka's knee. The boy stumbled and barely threw himself out of the way of a kunai slash that would've cut his throat open.

Yahiko threw the rock. The Inuzuka, still off-balance, instinctively raised his tanto to deflect it—and the short sword snapped in half. A shard carved a deep line in his arm as it sailed behind him, and smaller fragments dug into his raincoat.

The Inuzuka grunted, eyes flicking down to the tanto, stunned by the disconnect between what his eyes saw and the pain he felt.

He still managed to dodge backwards when Mamoru came at him, but not completely. Red bloomed through a horizontal tear in his raincoat.

Even in shock, the Inuzuka smelled him coming. He held the broken tanto up to his nose, eyes hard, sniffing the area around the genjutsu. Yahiko flipped through hand-signs behind him.

Mamoru surged forward, acting as a distraction (the Inuzuka only used the broken half to parry him, despite the genjutsu still being firmly in place) until the Inuzuka was hit from behind by a powerful stream of water.

The Inuzuka was tossed backwards. He hit a pillar and it broke, raining rocks and rubble on top of him as the jutsu sputtered out. He didn't get up.

Before Mamoru could finish the fight, Yahiko spoke, "Nagato and Oka—they were that way." He pointed further east and then his eyes rolled up.

Mamoru caught him as his knees buckled.

What was more important? Taking the extra time to finish off the Inuzuka (if he wasn't faking being unconscious), or rescuing his students (because he'd wasted too much time here already)?

Mamoru fixed the kunai to his waistband and tucked Yahiko under his arm. Maybe it was also because he was tired of killing people. Maybe he wanted to give the Inuzuka a chance to live, even if it would damn them all in doing so.

Maybe it was because he felt numb to it all (the urgency, the danger—it felt so distant).

Mamoru leapt without looking back.

.

.

.

The Inuzuka followed him, and in doing so, chose to die.

As it turned out, neither Oka nor Nagato needed him. Mamoru arrived just in time to see the grisly, half-melted remains of the other Root agent. Nagato was crying, back turned to the body. There was only one scenario in which Mamoru could see Nagato killing someone.

One of the few people he loved was in serious danger.

Oka was in front of him, mud on her chin, blood on her forehead and arms, fingernails half-missing. Despite the pain she must've been in, she looked concerned... and confused.

A child of war, through and through.

Mamoru's tail threw shuriken and he leapt, landing behind Nagato. Namekuji turned to look at him and Mamoru swore in the second before the slug recognized him and promptly lost interest that he felt killing intent.

The Inuzuka landed heavily behind him and Mamoru mentally sighed as he turned around. He stared at the boy, barely able to stand but either overconfident (and a fool) or so brainwashed that he'd continue his mission, knowing he couldn't win.

Mamoru shook his head. I tried.

He put Yahiko down and made a quick sign for Paralysis Jutsu as he pulled out his kunai. All it took after that was eye contact.

A/N: 聖域 - Sanctuary

Half of the inspiration for this chapter came from the song, but the other half came from an animatic of the same name by ToastyGlow.

Updates will be every other week starting today.