A/N: Sorry this took so long - most of what I've been working on lately is plotting and back-story (plus artwork).
Question (actually, I already asked this on my lj, but I wanted to throw it out here, too): Does anyone have any ideas for a cover picture(s) for War and Strife/Old History/Rokudaime? I was wondering maybe the kanji for six (or go full out and put Sixth Hokage) in the background and an older Sakura in the foreground, but I'm open to suggestions. Another thought is the kanji in the foreground and the Hokage Monument with all six on it in the background…Any thoughts?
Note: "False Faith," "Then There Was One" (forthcoming), and "To Leave a Legacy" are all directly related. "False Faith" is first, "Then There was One" almost immediately after, and "To Leave a Legacy" takes place about a week and a half later, after Sakura and the surviving medics had cast Konoha Higi: Kuunohaka.
-((In regards to that, I've changed Ikione no Jutsu to the aforementioned; it means "Konoha Secret Technique: Empty Grave." "Seals" has been changed to reflect this))-
And finally, the answer to the ultimate question...what's going on with the ANBU? Well, at least the first part...
-rhys
Sakura's Age: 16
Year of Reign: second day
Genre: angst, action
Vocab:
-Kiri-nin - Mist ninja
-Mizu no Kuni - Water Country
-Tsuuga - Inuzuka Kiba's signature attack
False Faith
Smoke still rose from the ruins of the village behind them as Sakura and her ANBU guard moved through the outskirts in search of survivors. So far, there hadn't been many, and they'd already been at if for most of the day.
She'd kept her eyes pealed, but even after seventeen hours of search and rescue, she hadn't seen any sign of the missing Rookie Nine members. No Kiba, no Naruto, no Kakashi-
Well, scratch that.
Sakura came to a jerky half in the blood-soaked clearing, blank eyes tiredly tracing over the distinctive trenches of various Tsuuga incarnations. She didn't bother to wrinkle her nose as the acidic stench of dog urine reached it, instead feeling oddly listless and detached as she surveyed the site of one of her dearest comrades' last stand. Not even desperate, foolish hope could deceive her, even for a moment, that the crumbled corpse on the far side of the clearing still had life left in it, and so there was no crushing disappointment or despair when she finally moved to kneel at his side and place two confirming fingers alongside his neck.
She felt oddly cheated.
His face was scrunched in an expression of anguish it seemed not even death had eased, horrified eyes still locked on the shattered, bleeding wreck of a thing that had once been his lifelong companion. Sakura slid her hand gently over his eyes and coaxed the lids shut, then spent a few precious ounces of chakra to bind them closed. That much dignity at least she could give him.
She tried not to think of how the ANBU at her back would pick his body apart to eliminate any traces of Konoha's secrets before finally incinerating what remained to be swept into a small ceramic urn and carried back to the village proper where it would be buried with all the others.
To distract herself, she turned aside to examine the enormous red dog lying mere feet beyond the reach of his master's outstretched hand. She rested her own hand on his matted fur, and nearly flinched when it squelched. His coat had been dyed red not with chakra as she'd first suspected, but with blood. Lips pursed, she wiped her palm clean on her medic skirt before cupping it gently around the dog's nose.
Her eyes flew wide and her heart fluttered with weak hope when she felt the faintest of damp breezes. He was still breathing! He was alive!
Sakura didn't know what instinct warned her, but she thanked whatever god cared that it had, because it had her leaping upwards just barely in time to (mostly) avoid the four katana that would have skewered her like so much dango had she been a fraction of an instant slower. As it was, they carved deep gouges in her legs that seriously impaired her ability to not only move at speed but also mold chakra, as exhausted and drained as she was.
Who in the hell was attacking her here and now, of all times and places, and how could they possibly have gotten past four elite ANBU without alerting her in the slightest?
A detached portion of her brain was distantly amused to discover that she was still capable of shock when she glanced down to identify her assailants to and found four bone-white masks staring up at her.
By the time she tumbled to the ground on the far side of the massive ninken and rolled gracelessly back to her shaky feet, only one thought was running through her mind.
This would not end well.
With a distinctive and memorably scarred face and a naturally blunt personality, Namiashi Raidou was not your ideal spy. Nevertheless, he'd spent the last two months in Mizu no Kuni passing himself off as exactly that, and his fumbling and bumbling antics (which had clearly amused the locals authorities but were in fact his honest attempts at spying) had successfully drawn any and all attention from the visiting gypsy girl who was the real spy. It helped that the Kiri-nin in charge of sniffing out spies thought so little of Konoha that he truly believed a spy as clearly incapable as Raidou had proven to be was simply the best his village could manage to produce.
Raidou had been sent in two weeks ahead of the actual mission, where he'd set up shop and proceeded to entertain the locals with his attempts at being a stealthy, cunning spy. By the time the kunoichi who would be doing the real legwork had arrived, the entire village was keeping track of ever humorous move of the amateur spy and the half-bemused, half-aggravated shinobi who was half-heartedly trying to A) find out why he was there, and B) get rid of him.
Not all of his antics had been an act – in fact, most of them weren't. He just hadn't been trying as hard as he could have, and the information he'd cheerfully proceeded to unearth was not only useless to anyone outside the village, but also completely unrelated to the kunoichi's mission. She spent four weeks finding out what she needed while Raidou continued to lead the local authorities on a wild goose chase, then slipped out as quietly as she'd slipped in. He spent another week and a half winding down his own operation then finally let the Kiri-nin "drive" him out. A simple mission, all told, particularly compared to the sort of missions he usually ran.
His eyes narrowed at that last thought, and he pushed off a tree branch with a little more force that was strictly necessary. He scolded himself silently and made himself relax, but there was no escaping the thoughts that had plagued him distantly for nearly three years, and far more directly for three months.
Raidou couldn't even begin to guess why, but the Godaime had begun cycling the more reliable (as far as he was concerned, at least) members of ANBU out of the unit as soon as three years after her inauguration. Raidou had been one of the more recent to leave, little though he'd wanted. The Godaime hadn't been inclined to debate her decision, unfortunately. She'd also begun accepting a greater number of S-rank, death-likely missions. ANBU usually got those missions, yes, but a wise Hokage tried not to accept so many that the unit's numbers had been reduced by almost a third, particularly not when the same Hokage had, for reasons known only to herself, chosen not to bring in any replacements. And for all her faults, Namiashi Raidou was not prepared to call Souma Tsunade a fool.
Cue suspicion.
It was with these thoughts in mind that Raidou topped a final rise and confirmed that the smoke he'd been eying uneasily for the last ten miles was, in fact, coming from Konoha. He snarled a curse and was about to spring forward when the stench of blood and death both old and new drifted past his nostrils, and he quickly changed the direction of his lunge. He'd barely survived the last attack on Konoha – he wasn't about to sit back and watch it happen all over again! Especially not when it was likely one of his comrades was spilling blood – his own or his enemy's –little more than thirty feet from him and Raidou was still fresh.
He landed in the outskirts of a clearing that had already seen one battle to the death in the last twenty-four hours, and steel rang in his ears as he halted in bewildered confusion. Most of the bodies in the clearing were from the first battle, but at least one of them was new, and even as he noticed this he watched the small, pink-haired apprentice of the Godaime slam a knee into one of her assailants' throat's with far less than her usual force. Less powerful or not, it was still enough to pulverize his windpipe and snap his neck, and the ANBU-clad – Konoha ANBU-clad – shinobi dropped to join his companion on the forest floor even as his killer whirled away to block a katana strike with her bare forearms.
Raidou caught enough of a glimpse of the katana-wielder's mask to identify him as the Crow, Murakami Akito. He was one of those the Godaime had assigned a suicide mission, just before she'd kicked Raidou out of the unit. Miraculously, Akito had managed to survive. The Godaime hadn't seemed thrilled.
That, along with the fact that Haruno Sakura was the Godaime's apprentice, whom he knew to be a very capable, loyal kunoichi he quite liked as well as quietly approved of, was enough to decide him, and he exploded into the melee with a flurry of fists and kunai. Haruno was clearly exhausted as well as badly injured, and, recalling what Ibiki had once mentioned about she being the only person who could heal herself, Raidou maneuvered the battle so that she was facing off against the other ANBU – Boar, he recognized now – whom he knew to be less dangerous.
Sakura spared the newcomer enough of a glance to identify him, then fixed his face in her mind with a "Friendly" label so she wouldn't inadvertently attack him. That done, she focused her attention on the kunai-wielding ANBU intent on sticking one or both of them in her throat. Three frantic minutes of twisting, jabbing, blocking, and ducking ensued, and Sakura managed to hook her fingers under his mask, catch his chin behind him mandible, and jerk straight up with an explosive SNAP that tore his loser jaw half-off and shattered the vertebrae supporting his neck. His body fell to the ground and spasmed as his nerves misfired, and she spun around to find her unexpected ally plunging a kunai into his opponent's belly and tearing him open from navel to sternum. An impressive feat, considering the fresh corpse was shrouded in thick body armor.
She spread her wavering senses as far as she could and was mildly relieved to feel no hidden malice or killing intent anywhere in the vicinity. Granted, pain dulled her senses so she couldn't be positive, but she was reasonably certain, particularly considering that she had so few warm bodies she'd been forced to detail only one team to each side of the village.
With that confirmed, she let herself crumple to the ground and wrapped green-cloaked hands around her shins. She cajoled what little chakra she had left into stopping the bleeding, at least – she could deal with the rest of her injuries after she'd rested and recovered her strength.
Only then did she spare her rescuer any real attention, and recognition sparked in the back of her mind when his scarred face registered. "Raidou, isn't it?" she asked. If so, then he was one of the ANBU Tsunade had pulled out of the unit a few months ago. Her teacher hadn't explained why, but her comments about him had never been negative, so it couldn't have been for incompetence or inadequacy. Injury, perhaps? But there hadn't been any hospital records for him in the last few months…
"Namiashi Raidou, jounin," he confirmed, wiping his kunai clean and sliding it back into his holster. "You all right?" At her brief nod, he scowled. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded, turning to face her directly. "Why did I just kill one of our ANBU, and why is Konoha up in smoke? Again? Who's attacking us this time? How-"
"You've been out on a mission, haven't you?" she interrupted suddenly, understanding dawning on her expression.
"Just got back from a two-month stint in Mizu no Kuni," he responded warily, eyeing her and wondering at the pain and sadness he saw lurking just behind her eyes. "Why?" Belatedly, he dug into his hip pouch and produced a roll of bandages he proceeded to wrap around her legs, gently but firmly moving her hands out of the way.
Sakura grimaced as she obeyed, instead turning her attention to her less damaged arms as she mulled over how on earth she was supposed to explain the last twenty-four hours. The last few minutes of it in particular, as she herself didn't have a clue.
With the shock of recent events still dulling her emotions, she'd been too tired to be angry when her "bodyguards" turned around and tried to kill her. But now that the battle was over and she'd had a chance to recuperate and absorb the enormity and reality of their betrayal – and there was no denying it was betrayal; they hadn't been controlled in the slightest – their attacks were too smooth and coordinated for that – she knew they were shinobi from her village, not henge'd infiltrators or bunshin, and they'd clearly planned the attack for when she was farthest from any conceivable aid – her infamous temper boiled to the surface.
Sakura snarled a curse when the unpleasant possibility of this being an ANBU-wide betrayal, and a cold chill of fear ran down her spine at the thought of the hundreds of weak, injured and defenseless civilians she'd left under their "protection." Not to mention the injured shinobi she'd thought safe in their care.
With that chilling possibility taunting her, she tugged her legs out of Raidou's hands and quickly fastened the bandages with two simple knots. Standing, she shunted the pain aside and dug a pair of blood pills and a soldier pill from her own hip ouch. She swallowed the latter and one of the former, then dropped to a knee at Akamaru's side to shove the other down his throat. "Forgive me, I'll have to come back for you," she whispered.
Glancing up at Raidou, who was eying her narrowly, she said shortly, "'What the hell is going on' is a long story that will have to wait, and you just killed one of our ANBU because they betrayed us. The rest of your questions will have to wait as well, because I have no idea if they acted alone or as a unit, and all of our injured and civilians are in their care." She smiled grimly when he paled noticeably.
Lurching once more to her feet, the borrowed chakra of the soldier pill coursing through her coils, the newly minted Hokage sprinted out of the clearing, Raidou close on her heels, leaving behind the corpse of a precious comrade and the barely living body of his most loyal companion to save her people from those who should have been their guardians.
-owari-