Steeling her nerves, Sakura opened the door and strode through. Inside, she found she must have been one of the last ones to arrive. There was a long, rectangular table that went down through the center of the room. Along one side of the table sat six individuals, all clad in ANBU uniform, with varying animal masks one. On the opposite sat, there were five seats that were similarly filled. Sakura spied Ocelot's voluminous white hair and tall figure sitting on the right side of the table at the far end.
At the end of the table furthest from the door, an ANBU member with wavy brown hair demanded in a deep voice, "Take a seat."
Sakura fought the urge to swallow and relaxed her muscles as she sat down, taking the seat next to the end of the table nearest the door. Sitting amongst the host of black ops members was daunting; it was unlikely that any of the others were rookies like herself, much less associates rather than official operatives. A pit formed in her stomach as she tried her best not to fidget in the dead silent room. A few eyes glanced her way from behind porcelain masks, though whether just out of curiosity or disdain, she couldn't tell. Beyond Ocelot, none of the members gathered seemed familiar, though that didn't necessarily mean anything. While most ANBU members didn't take great pains to hide their identities beyond the mask unless specifically on an infiltration mission, it wasn't uncommon for some of the more paranoid members to try and obfuscate their features from time to time – even going so far as to cycle through appearances operation by operation.
In her effort to avoid staring, it took some time for the young kunoichi to notice that one of the pairs of eyes that was upon her was directly across the table. Behind a cat mask warm, brown irises were aimed at her person. Once Sakura locked her own gaze with the stranger's, the other woman gave a slow nod and broke her stare. Had it been any other time, the pinkette would've questioned what it meant, but given the circumstances she elected simply to take it as much needed reassurance. She noted the features of the stranger's mask in detail for future reference and turned her attention to the rest of the room.
There were corkboards on the three walls without the door, all of which had papers tacked onto them. However, from Sakura's vantage point, only the right hand wall and two-thirds of the far wall were visible. Rather than prolong her fretting over the poor design of rooms such as these because of that bothersome visibility issue, the young kunoichi busied herself with the corkboard across from her. On it, she recognized a large map of the Land of Water with various routes depicted on it. She could readily name a few of them, mostly main roads and supply lines, as she had dealt with them in some of the reports she had put together on the nation.
Other than just the map, there were strings tacked to specific locations that led to pictures that surrounded the edges of the board. Like the routes on the map, the pinkette also recognized some of the sketches as prominent figures in the turmoil that surrounded Kiri leadership. Terumī Mei's portrait stood out in particular with her striking red hair – underneath it were no less than six symbols denoting the nature affinities of the woman, as well as an S-Rank notation. Sakura noticed that the pictures that framed the map seemed to be divided, with one faction each to the left, right, and top. Along the bottom were people of importance whose allegiance was uncertain or neutral.
The door swiftly opened and fractured her concentration. She noticed the stiffening of several members in the group, letting her know that the whomever entered was of some importance. The figure that sat at her right at the table's head had short, spiky brown hair and wore what appeared to be yet another cat mask. Honestly, it was as if Konoha had run out of animals to assign.
A kunoichi behind him with blue black hair stalked over to the back of the room next to the far away board, and Sakura did a double take when she saw Kakashi lazily wander into the room in his ANBU gear and close the door behind him, propping himself up against the wall next to it, mirroring the kunoichu on the opposite side of the room, save for his lazy posture and hands shoved into his pockets.
The man to her right gave a curt nod, and the ANBU member at the other end of the table stood up. "You have all been called to form a cadre devoted to stabilizing the political climate in the Land of Water with the intent of installing a regime in Kirigakure that is aligned with the interests of Konoha. From henceforth this mission will shall be known as Operation Calm Waters. The target date for official commencement of Calm Waters will be six weeks from the current date; at that time the members of this cadre will establish contact with Kiri-based allies and set up footholds for centers of activity in the nation. During this briefing, we shall outline the current situation in Mizu as well as identify various persons of interest.
The current breakdown of strife can be divided into three separate factions: the remnant of the old regime, the native resistance, and foreign-controlled outliers. The old regime consists of the elites who were in power under the Yondaime Mizukage; the native resistance's leadership consists of more minor familial lines and those possessing kekkei genkai who were persecuted; the outliers are insiders who rely on Kumogakure support for traction. First, we will cover native resistance, which will be the faction to which will provide support."
The apparent cadre leader rose from his seat at the table and made his way over to the board in front of Sakura. From there, he gestured to the six figures pictured to the right of the map. He started with Terumī, and began to give brief backgrounds on the selected members. Sakura knew most about what he had to say about Terumī herself – she'd been an experienced jōnin at the start of the Yondaime Mizukage's reign who'd survived the kekkei genkai purges because of both her considerable abilities and her lack of affiliation with any particular clan name. Before the Mizukage had her supplanted, she was also the equivalent of Konoha's Jōnin Commander, which was of note given that she was not in the traditional circle of the village's elite. After the death of the Yondaime Mizukage, she styled herself as the Godaime Hokage with the backing of several other disaffected elites.
Following Terumī was one of the Mist's Seven Swordsmen – Hōzuki Mangetsu. He had been of particular interest to Sakura when he came up in the reports on Mizu, given her previous run in with Zabuza. Hōzuki's motivations for joining the resistance were unclear, as his family line was descended from the Nidaime Mizukage and was therefore very tightly bound to the top of the Mist's caste system. The ANBU leader didn't offer any insight on that point, though he did mention that the shinobi was highly dangerous, even for a Swordsman, given his usage of many of the swords that fell out of ownership following the death of the late Mizukage. His holding of the swords had gone a long way toward the legitimacy of the movement, though his own skills and status played no small part either.
The next figure down was a hunter-nin with blue hair and an eye patch whose face she didn't recognize, though she did recall the name 'Ao.' He was not a man of much political clout, but he had quickly been identified as one of Terumī's top lieutenants and was responsible for the cause of much grief for the other factions. Sakura was reminded of Haku and Kakashi's words about Kiri's hunter-nins. If Haku wasn't even an official shinobi and held that much skill, an actual hunter-nin was bound to be impressive – from what reports she had read on the corps remaining with the regime, they were certainly highly lethal.
Chūkichi, Terumī's third lieutenant, was a renowned jōnin of the Mist who had gained a reputation in the Third Shinobi War as a keen guerilla warfare tactician who made use of keen sensor abilities and a variant of Kiri's Hiding in the Mist jutsu to harry enemy forces where they were weakest.
Sakura didn't recognize the next two at all. One kuniochi by the name of Umeko and a shinobi called Katsurō – were the last two of Terumī's lieutenants. Umeko was a scion of a family from the top of the caste system while Katsurō came from Kiri's lowest caste. There was little information on Umeko's prowess on the battlefield, but it was known that she commanded a large contingent of Terumī's forces that she largely drew from her own estate and connections. Katsurō, however, was somewhat unconventional, not unlike Terumī herself. The shinobi was fairly young, though older than Sakura, and had made a name for himself after storming the kage building in a fit rage. The attempt on the Mizukage's life failed, but the lives of many high ranking bodyguards and Kiri ANBU were lost in the assault – that, heaped onto the fact that Katsurō survived at all, earned him a rather large reputation amongst the lower class nina as a sort of folk hero.
Those the powerhouses of the native resistance – the top leaders that Calm Waters cadre was poised to assist. They were just the martial forces in play, however, and the ANBU leader speaking was sure to note that behind them was a board with the actors from the political and economic sectors of Mizu. Sakura hung onto every word the man said and committed the details to memory. It was hardly an accident that she was integrated within the unit, given current ongoing assignment. That made her at once more at ease and anxious. It was nice not to be reeling to catch up in terms of knowledge of the subject matter, but she also guessed that more would be expected of her because of that same fact.
The leader of the briefing went on to outline the other military actors. From how he spoke, it seemed that the native resistance had the advantage when compared side by side with the other two regimes. However, recent engagements suggested that the other two factions had recently worked in tandem against Terumī's group. A hard alliance between the two wasn't likely but at the least, they were sharing intelligence with one another and coordinating the timing of their attacks. That, together with the fact Konoha's own intelligence from Kumo suggested that reinforcements were being sent to aid the outliers, put the native resistance at a disadvantage, and it would likely be put on its back foot without aid of its own. Sakura realized it was likely more serious than the man stated – Terumī relied on support from the smaller islands that delivered supplies necessary for combating the more well-equipped regime remnant and the Kumo-backed faction. If Kumo's reinforcements included any sort of naval aspect or diplomatic envoy that could either disrupt supply lines or wrangle the favor of Terumī's allies outside of mainland Kumo, then the native resistance would implode on itself.
Sakura hesitated, unsure whether or it would be wise to bring up the issue – after all, the man still had to review the political and economic players before the brief was over. He had already moved on to the strategic locations all of the factions occupied so the pinkette elected to withhold her comments for the time. She'd wait until the end of the brief to evaluate whether or not her input was needed – it wasn't like whomever put this together hadn't reviewed the write ups she'd compiled. The operation still had six weeks until it was officially underway so she'd have plenty of time to consult with either Ocelot or Kakashi about how to go about presenting the angle to the proper person. By using that route she'd also be much less likely to embarrass herself in front of the cadre by awkwardly stuttering conjecture.
As it turned out, the analyses and estimates that she'd submitted were brought up in some capacity when their leader moved over to the other side of the room and onto the next topic. The flow of supplies and mobility facilitated by political ties that allowed for access to certain areas and the geography that allowed for the ease of movement, had both been Terumī's steadfast allies the further from the center of the country she was. Her spheres of influence were allowing for strategic chokepoints to be set up in such a way that the old regime was essentially under siege. Though the resistance didn't have the same political clout the regime forces did, that kind of power only went so far when the source of it was being stemmed off. It was interesting to see Kiri's own guerilla tactics being used so effectively against the very ones who'd once been at the center of it. On the other hand, the remnant still had control of some of the mines, and a handful of ports of its own that were still operational, as well as the years and years of contracts to take advantage of them. Meanwhile the outliers had Kumo support from the north as its main source of supplies and political capital.
What concerned Sakura was that Kumo could apply leverage on the minor nations surrounding Kiri and clamp down in an even greater way than Terumī and her people had been. Should the Raikage decide to follow down that line, it would be a major power play on the part of Kumogakure. That particular hypothetical was what concerned Sakura, and she wished she knew more about Lightning and its nation. Making a move like that could potentially provoke the other Hidden Villages and trigger another Shinobi World War if it were to be done with heavy handedness – which was something Kumo had a reputation for. The young kunoichi made a mental note to look more into the minor nations surrounding the Mist; she'd already done some reading on them as necessary, but she'd need a more nuanced understanding of their inner workings to see exactly how nations other than Kiri could apply pressure to them.
Finally, the speaker arrived to the last business of order at the board at the far end of the room. He started by taking out scrolls from a satchel that was hung from the board. When they were passed to everyone in the room, the shinobi spoke once more.
"In these scrolls, you will find dossiers on those we have discussed today and other persons of interest. In addition, they will have write ups on the situation that further expound upon what I have already told you. You are to treat these scrolls as sensitive documents and only access their contents in secure locations. You will have all of these read within the week, after which we will reconvene in this room to go over specifics.
In the meantime, anyone engaged in double time will refrain from duties unaffiliated with the ANBU. Inter-ANBU safety protocols are in place until stated otherwise in regards to both the wearing of masks and discussion of the mission with anyone in the cadre. Operatives Hound and Tenzo will be reporting directly to the Hokage while Operative Hinoto and I will report to the ANBU Director. Triads One, Two, and Three, you will report to evaluation and mission training for the week. Analysts, you will remain here for a short while to receive your orders for the week. The rest of you are dismissed."
Sakura waited patiently for the room to clear out; neither Kakashi nor Ocelot acknowledged her on the way out, which she supposed was fair, considering the safety protocols that were in place. When a dozen ANBU members had filed out, the apparent leader of the cadre withdrew three manila folders from the satchel and beckoned for her and the two remaining in the room to come forward.
After handing out the folders, the man instructed, "Review these orders – they should each coincide with your respective projects. Then, following the guidelines, start a write up a brief to deliver to the rest of a cadre at a later date. Dismissed."
Sakura followed suit when the other two nodded and exited the room. From the conference room, she made her way to her office where she did her analysis work. It was late when the meeting was called in the first place, so she was unsurprised to find that it was dawn when she checked the time. It would only be a few hours before she was required to report in for assignments so the pinkette decided that she would power through without rest and go ahead and read her orders.
'Coffee first,' she decided. The kunoichi had small kettle set up in her office for just this kind of occasion, and she set about making her liquid wakefulness.
After she finished, she sat at her desk with a mug in her hand and opened the envelop. She found that the shinobi was right about the order coinciding with her ongoing assignment – she was to write a brief estimating stability of Terumī's position and advise on the best possible avenue of recourse that could be taken by an ANBU triad in conjunction with a select contingent of Terumī's faction, led by one of her lieutenants.
She sighed and wondered to herself if it mattered what contingent and what lieutenant. After briefly mulling it over, she took it as open ended, to be decided by her upon evaluation. It wasn't in the orders, but it was perhaps wise to best to assemble an alternate plan in addition to what she thought was the best course of action, which meant that the young analyst had half again as much work as was dictated to her. It was a fortunate thing that she had a neat, organized system of the files she'd been working on – that meant she could pull them out right away and get to work reading. It wasn't that she didn't know the content well, but before she was looking at the information with a larger scale in mind – this time, she was scaling down her scope to only one facet of Mizu's fragmented political landscape. After she skimmed through the relevant reports she'd compiled, Sakura would sit down and divide everything into sectors and subsectors – such as military into demographics and equipment and numbers and health or position into terrain and climate and proximity to power sources of any kind. Doing the same with the other forces acting on the resistance such as the other two factions and civilian population unrest would allow her to juxtapose positive and negative aspects in relation to the stability of Terumī's people. After that, she'd chart out the most relevant aspects of the situation, drawing out the links between the people and the areas of stability and instability to narrow down the fractures and strong points in order to better ascertain where the assigned forces should be sent.
Satisfied now that she had a plan of attack, she threw herself into the plethora of papers she'd amassed over the past few months. Sakura went through everything systematically to maximize her efficiency, divvying up everything into piles as she went along and making annotations to help expedite her thinking for later on when she would map and chart everything out. By the time she needed to report in, Sakura had no less than fifteen mountainous stack of papers and had drained four cups of coffee. When she left to see the secretary, she did so with bloodshot eyes and her fifth mug of coffee in hand.
"Analyst," greeted the secretary in the typical monotone. "Please, close the door behind you."
The door clicked as she shut it. It was unusual – normally order reports were simply handed out and the reporting member left. The pinkette approached the desk, fiddling with the mug in her hands. "What's on for today?"
"I've called you in to inform you that five weeks from now you are to undergo evaluation for full ANBU status as a dual class Management and Coordination analyst as well as field certification. While at this juncture, you will not be inducted as an operative, but you will still be required to meet strenuous tests evaluating your abilities. Here are the files you need to have filled out on the day of your evaluation, as well as the requirements you will need to meet to pass," informed the secretary as he handed her a packet of documents. "If you have no questions, you may also take your orders for today – you will notice that you will now alternate your training sessions from day to day in order to maximize your analyst duties."
If Sakura had been more awake, she would have had the energy to be nervous about all of what the secretary had just relayed to her. As it stood, she simply accepted her latest mass of new papers and stalked out of the door. She'd had quite enough surprises, thank you. The next few weeks were going to need to slow down if she were expected to survive them. She groaned internally – these first six weeks were only going to be the beginning.
'Quit your whining, Sakura. This is what you wanted, right?' she thought to herself. 'Well. It's not exactly helping me on the way to catching up with the rest of the team, is it?...Even if I'm still ultimately training to become a full operative,' mused the kunoichi. Shimura-sama's words spoken to her months ago came to her in her thoughts: "there are those of us who must do our part in the dark, unseen by all."
She reflected on the idea. When the girl had first heard the words, she'd thought the man had simply been talking about the ANBU and their shadowy reputation. Now, though, she wasn't so sure – maybe he meant something more, something different? If he'd meant life as an analyst, then she could not possibly comply. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy the work – it was stimulating and interesting as all hell, but she'd come too far as a ninja, working to fight on the front lines only to end up working primarily behind a desk. Besides, Team 7 was an assault team, and she had every intention of them coming together again and fighting as a team.
Shimura-sama's meaning probably wasn't anything so direct as Ocelot's subversive fighting either, though perhaps the thoughts were similar in spirit. Given the work she'd been doing, though, Sakura had learned that despite being a cut above in terms of intelligence, the way she had been thinking was too linear – too often she had seen things and accepted them without any critical thought. With the mounds of work she'd been doing as of late, however, it was clear that nothing was ever so black and white – rarely ever was a glaring problem the most prominent one; often, it was the overlooked facets where the best solution lied.
She broke out her reflection and put is aside when she returned to her office. After taking a brief glance at her order to see what mentor she'd be meeting with, the kunoichi went back to sifting through the remainder of her files. The extra time allotted due to cutting her mentor meetings to one a day was a change that Sakura thoroughly enjoyed. She'd often found that she didn't have enough time to properly write anything up, with the meetings interrupting her whenever she had truly gotten into a flow. This time, she hadn't been writing anything up, but the kunoichi had been able to properly reorganize her files as needed, complete with a file system detailing what reports were where based on what subject, along with a rough outline that detailed how she was going to go about using the new system when she returned from her training session.
"Five weeks?" asked the masked operative.
Sakura nodded in affirmation. Staying in line with protocol, neither of them had mentioned what would happen the week after her evaluations – the reason they were being taken in the first place. The fact was there, nonetheless, and their stiffer than normal interaction spoke where their voices did not. Ocelot's behavior was a strange thing now. It was as if seeing Sakura in the meeting had legitimized the younger kunoichi in some way, whether it was simply because she was acting only as an analyst or because she was actually being used for a serious mission. Either way, the ANBU operative hadn't greeted her with the same amount of vitriol that she normally did. Sakura was hopeful that her changed behavior was a sign of newfound respect rather than simple dismissal – she'd taken Ocelot's continued devotion to training as a sign that it was the former.
"Genjutsu or thread control?" came the crisp question.
Out of the two, genjutsu was the one she had less practice in as of late, and the pinkette especially wanted to add a few techniques concerning the art before evaluation and her subsequent field work. She justified the urge by rationalizing that since she already knew how to manifest and use threads, she'd be able to practice their usage in downtime. "Genjutsu for two weeks and then threads for two? Then the last week can focus on more wholesome usage, maybe?"
"Reasonable. But your abilities still aren't up to par for the genjutsu constrictions I intend to teach you," said Ocelot. The hint of condescension was still there, but it was a muted thing. Sakura imagined that was just part of her default personality – she wondered what the operative's voice would sound like without that particular tone. The kunoichi would probably sound like another person entirely. "So for the first week, we'll continue to work on –"
"Kai!"
"Slow," came Ocelot's drawl. And there it was – that condescension – of course the muting of it had been part of an illusion; she should've known immediately.
"How?" asked Sakura. She clarified, "Most genjutsu don't fabricate a beginning like that – they just place you in a situation like in the beginning of a dream. The one you use synthesizes memory to go along with the situation."
"Most genjutsu that latch on with this much power don't bother with subtlety. For example, the Yūhi family often incorporate elements of some kind of vegetation in their genjutsu techniques, usually in a fantastical way. Other genjutusu that maintain more mundane illusions don't immerse one in a construct so much as deceive perception," informed Ocelot. "This particular genjutsu incorporates both – using the latter to set up the former. You already know that it lets the target fill in most of the details, with the user dictating the overall tone of the construction. So it's less that the memory is a construct, or rather, it's a construct of your own mind."
"Yes, but genjutsu itself takes advantage of a target's senses – manipulation of sensory input in such a way that the user's chakra can shift the victim's chakra system so that it roots itself to the false sensations, creating a loop that feeds back on itself, locking the victim in the construct," she answered in full. "But memory isn't sense, per se."
"If you already understand that genjutsu targets both chakra and input systems, then it shouldn't be any great leap for you to understand that if someone presses just right and pushes enough power into a design, a victim's mind can be affected as well," purred the ANBU kunoichi. "That if you seize the senses with enough vigor and snare your target's chakra in all the right places, you can make a person's mind dance as easily as Suna nin might a puppet wired with chakra threads."
The concept was already fascinating as it was, but the way Ocelot was speaking was enthralling. She spoke with infectious emotion, a mesmerizing cadence that Sakura's desire to learn more grew into a hunger that demanded the secrets behind the technique. 'A genjutsu that can influence thought through other means than senses? That's incredible. Sure, it's not mind control or anything, but…'
"That reminds me," she began, "Can genjutsu affect the sensing of one's own chakra?"
"You should know, shouldn't you? You've been under my genjutsu while using your chakra."
"Well, I'd say it'd felt normal, but when I was using chakra threa—" she stopped short, a thought occurring to her. If genjutsu tied senses and chakra into a loop, it meant that anything filtered through traditional input would be muddled in terms of her sensing her chakra.
'And if that's true…it wasn't my senses with the thread that were muddled. It just tipped me off that the rest were out of line,' mused the kunoichi to herself. Any threads she had were outside of her system, and genjutsu didn't affect chakra itself – it just aligned the system with faculties in a faulty way, and since genjutsu only affect the user, the threads were out of play, unable to be targeted because of that.
"Okay," she said. "Could you put me under again? I want to try something."
The figure opposite of her remained stock still and silent, as if she didn't hear Sakura's request. An uneasy feeling crept up on her, and Sakura pushed chakra through her fingertips and manifested threads. The stark contrast between the sensation with the thread versus that of her normal senses was immediately apparent. Focusing on the thread and trying to attune her senses to that feeling, she flushed her system with chakra.
"Kai!"
When she opened her eyes again, Ocelot was still staring back at her. It was a bit off-putting because she was still unsure about whether or not the genjutsu had been broken. Carefully, she tested the threads and found that the feeling of them aligned with the rest of her system and breathed a sigh of relief.
Across from her, Ocelot snorted, though whether it was derisive or in amusement, Sakura couldn't tell.
AN:
Hey look, I'm actuallycapable of updating in a reasonable amount of time!
Anyway, should this continue for another week, I think I'll formally declare a weekly update schedule. I think As always, please feel free to comment, whether to critique, offer opinions, or correct any typos I missed. Also, thanks to everyone who has left a review (constructive or not) so far and for everyone whose kept up with the fic despite the irregular schedule! Hope you enjoyed this chapter!