"Five weeks?" asked the trench coat clad kunoichi incredulously. "How am I supposed to make you glorified fucking ANBU material? You're still a genin! What are those idiots thinking? I'm good, but I ain't that good! I'm not cut out for this training crap."

Sakura sighed. For about the first ten minutes of her tirade, Sakura had felt embarrassed; now she was frustrated. Yes, she was genin. Yes, she probably wasn't ANBU material right now. But she was not a lost cause – even Ocelot hadn't made this big of a deal about this. "Mitarashi-san, could you at least stop shouting about me being involved with ANBU?"

"We're far enough away that no one can hear us, kid," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. After melodramatic sigh, she raised up her head again. "Alright, we're bumping up your schedule."

The pinkette waited patiently as Anko pulled out a scroll and unfurled it in between the two of them. It was a bit different than other scrolls she'd seen – it seemed to be made of the same kind of material that some of the scrolls in the library that weren't permitted to be taken out due to age. But this one didn't' seem to be deteriorating; it was adorned with designs down each side, and the rollers used were quite ornate as well. On it, there were a list of signatures next to fingertips, all of which were color of dried blood.

"Okay, brat, listen up. This is a summoning contract, and it's what you're going to sign," said Anko, who made some hand signs and placed her hand on the ground, "after we have a chat with someone."

A cloud of smoke appeared, and Sakura found herself staring at enormous, blue scales. Craning her head upward, the pinkette found herself staring at a monolithic snake, the size of several buildings. Its yellow eyes stared down at her, and its slit-like pupils pinned her down menacingly. The only thing that restrained the young kunoichi's urge to flee was Anko Mitarashi, who stood upon the snake's snout. Sakura backed up a few feet anyway.

When Anko jumped down, the big snake opened its mouth and spoke so softly it almost sounded like it was sighing the words. "What is it you wish, Broken One?"

"Cut the crap, Mabu," hissed Anko, whose face was distorted in annoyance. "We already went over this. Check the kid out."

Sakura's body reverberated when the big summon let out a snort. "How can you be sure you've sharpened the little one's fangs properly in your state?"

'What?' wondered the pinkette. 'What about her is broken?'

"Because it wasn't just – this one's been a group effort," said the older kunoichi through bared teeth. "And I do just fine."

Mabu stared at them for a little while longer before he raised his large head up and craned his neck so that he still had Sakura and Anko in his vision. It was always a strange experience to be with a summon. Sakura didn't know if it was just her, but something about their presence just felt different. Granted, she'd only been around a few. The pinkette absently wondered about why Kakashi's ninken didn't grow as large as other summons seemed to while she waited to see why Anko had summoned Mabu.

Her body tensed when the snake flicked its forked tongue toward her. It was only close to her for a moment, but her hand reflectively went to one of the kunai she had strapped on her person. An ominous hissed filled Sakura's ears as it emitted from the gargantuan summon. Her fingers twitched the few remaining centimeters to the handle of her weapon, and she drew in front of her defensively. She wasn't exactly sure how she combat a snake this huge, but she wasn't going to be defenseless if she had to.

Anko's hand flew out in front of her. "Put it away, Sakura. Mabu's bigger than the other summons I've brought out before, but he's my personal summon. He won't hurt you."

Sakura locked her gaze with the towering snake for a second longer and then relented at Anko's request. She calmed her breathing and tried to remind herself that this was a summon, not a wild animal. And while Sakura knew that personal summons varied in temperament, most were fiercely loyal to their summoner – if Mabu was this big, that surely meant that he had been Anko's summon for a long while so the older kunoichi's judgment should be solid.

The snake spoke again, its soft voice still a surprise to the pinkette. "This one has some promise. But her fear is that of a prey animal, not the focus of a predator."

"Whatever, Mabu, is she fit to withstand it or not?" inquired Anko impatiently.

"Her chakra levels are," said the snake, pausing to find the word, "meager, but it seems you've acquainted her chakra itself with venom well enough. Are you sure that she has the temperament? She seems – skittish."

Anko, who had already turned her attention to the contract at the point, hummed a short, "Hm?"

"Her mindset matters, Anko," sighed the snake. "Should she pair with—"

"What the hell are you mumbling about?" snapped the tokubetsu jōnin. "Why are you still here?"

The snake coiled up and propped its head upon itself, obviously not bothered by Anko's abrasiveness. "I shall remain, I think, for the duration of this lesson."

Anko scowled, further piquing Sakura's curiosity, but she decided that it was best not to pry – at least in front of Mabu. Either way, it seemed as if there would be no time for questions, as Anko was pointing to the scroll and looking at her expectantly.

"Alright, brat!" exclaimed the grinning the older kunoichi. "You ready to summon one of those bastards that've been sinking their fangs in you for that past few months?"

Sakura gave the other woman a wry look. Still, it was nice to be moving onto phase two of this little program; the tedium of being envenomated multiple times a week had rapidly set in and eaten away at her patience. And that was on top of the mithridatism she was conducting herself with the syringe set and venom vials that Anko had given her. "Yes, Anko-san."

The older kunoichi looked put off at the pinkette's lack of enthusiasm, but she didn't comment. Instead, she jerked a thumb in the direction of the summoning contract. "Alright, kid, you've seen me summon plenty of times so you should have the hand seals down by now. Yeah?"

When Sakura nodded in affirmation, the tokubetsu jōnin continued, "Alright, open yourself up with a kunai and use your blood to sign and put your fingerprints down. After that, you just need to run through the seals. Questions?"

Sakura opened her mouth to respond, but Anko didn't give her the opportunity.

"No questions? Good. Get started," demanded the older kunoichi as she walked over to her own summon and propped herself up on his bottom-most coil.

The pinkette shot the older woman a dirty a dirty look and pulled out the kunai she'd taken out earlier. She dragged the weapon's edge against her palm, making a shallow cut. After she put the blade away, she carefully signed her name, taking care to make it as legible as possible – she didn't know if legibility mattered for the act, but at the very least if her name were going to be recorded on it for years to come, at least it would look nice. When she was satisfied with her signature, she wet the fingertips of her hand with the blood and pressed them into the scroll's parchment. The young kunoichi shiftily shot a glance over to Anko to get some kind of affirmation that she did everything properly only to find her mentor seemingly in conversation with Mabu.

Rolling her eyes at Anko's inattentive behavior, Sakura paused before beginning on the last step, conflicted over how much chakra she should use. No doubt, using a large amount would summon a powerful snake, but she didn't want to summon anything she couldn't control. On the other hand, she knew that many shinobi who could summon often had a personal or a go-to summon, and she didn't want to get stuck with a weaker one if the first summon you brought out was the one who became your personal summon. Of course, the pinkette knew that a given ninja could summon any number of members of the line they contracted with, but the specifics of those arrangements eluded her – arrangements that a certain someone had done nothing to illuminate.

'Damn that psychotic, careless woman. It's a wonder she hasn't gotten me killed yet,' thought Sakura, shooting a dirty look at the other kunoichi. She paused to reconsider. 'Don't count the possibility out yet, Haruno.'

In the end, she elected to go with a large amount of chakra. She doubted she'd be able to summon a snake as big as someone with a jōnin's chakra pool, and Anko and Mabu were both there if she summoned anything too large or surly to handle. Should that fall through and she get eaten by her own summon, at least she'd be able to get one over on Anko before she went out. That is, unless the tokubetsu jōnin actually did take some sort of perverse pleasure in the death of her charges.

Decision made, Sakura went through the series of hand seals she'd seen Anko perform dozens of times throughout the past few months. Pushing chakra through and out of her system in accordance with the hand signs, the pinkette placed her hand on the ground. Around her chosen spot on the ground, there was an appearance of an ornate seal followed by the sudden draining of Sakura's chakra. The rapid rate at which it dropped sent her into a mild panic, and she immediately stemmed the flow.

A cloud of smoke rose from the ground and engulfed her person. When it cleared, she spied a snake in a loose coil, with its head resting. She was a bit upset with the size – while it wasn't as small the normal ones Anko summon to have bite her, it was no where near the monstrous Mabu. Instead, it was roughly as large around as two of her thighs, though its length was harder to make out because of the coil. It was of an odd coloration and pattern, much different than any she had seen Anko summon. The summon was mostly black, though it had white patches, making it reminiscent of the pattern that was unique to Kiri if it were inverted.

Anko seemed to take note of her success and hopped down off of Mabu to come and further inspect. As for Sakura, the pinkette wasn't quite sure how she wanted to proceed – she hadn't really known what to expect, but she had expected some kind of response form her summon. The snake, however, apparently had other plans; its beady, black eyes didn't even so much as twitch in her direction. It wouldn't be a hard thing to tap it with her foot, but she didn't' want to provoke it unnecessarily. Besides, she'd hate to be rude or do anything that was untoward in terms of snake etiquette. Damn Anko a thousand times for not preparing her better for any of this.

"Hey, not bad, brat!" congratulated the tokubetsu jōnin in question as she roughly clapped the younger kunoichi's shoulder. "Any particular reason you didn't call up a bigger one? With your control, you should be able to bring out something even larger than this."

"The way it drained my chakra at the end - was it supposed to do that? I didn't want it to wipe out my reserves."

"Hm? Didn't you read the scroll I gave you on summoning?"

Sakura gave Anko a blank stare. A number of weeks ago, the tokubetsu jōnin had given her some more of Orochimaru's writings, and she'd gone through all of them. Nothing in them had mentioned anything about summoning, though. "All the ones you gave me were either on chakra venom or his theories on innate chakra nature affinity."

"Huh," uttered the other kunoichi, face screwing up in thought before she shrugged. "Oh, well. Space-time ninjutsu works a little different than average ninjutsu. Summoning techniques in general have their own mechanism – the hand signs just open the gate and call up the seal on the ground while your hand placement fuels the summoning. Don't do the seals as well, your gate can't support anything too impressive, or at the very least you'd need an absolutely massive chakra pool to."

'That would've been helpful a few minutes ago,' Sakura thought grumpily. It was helpful information though, and it explained a lot about how the whole process worked. "Can I have a look at that scroll, anyway?"

"Sure, whatever," said Anko as she waved her off. She took a few steps over and nudged Sakura's summon none too gently with her foot. Huffing in irritation, she opened her mouth and yelled, "Wake up, you lazy bastard!"

The two-toned snake stirred, and lazily lifted its head a few centimeters to stare at the abrasive kunoichi before it turned its head to Sakura.

"Can you speak?" asked the pinkette. She hadn't really thought about this part; she'd expected some wrangle for control, not a chat with a passive summon.

When the snake didn't respond, Anko did. "Most snakes don't speak the human language; a lot them think it's beneath them. Though with a lazy bastard like that, I don't know if he could ever be bothered to learn."

"But they can learn how to speak our language, then?"

"Sure. Mabu couldn't when I first summoned him."

Sakura turned her attention back to the snake when it started to crane its head toward her and raise itself toward her. It slithered behind her, and she realized that the summon was winding itself around her. It eventually came to a stop once it was in front of her, its face only a few inches from hers. The pinkette couldn't' help but feel that it was staring at her expectantly.

"Hold out your free hand, Sakura," said Anko. "Your first summon bites you, marks you to solidify the contract. That's why we've been working on that over the past few weeks."

She briefly wondered about how this would've worked if a bigger snake had been summoned, but Sakura did as her mentor asked and held up her right hand so that it was level with the snake's head. For a few seconds, they both were there side by side, but in the next instant, the snake lunged so quickly that the young kunoichi hadn't realized it had even moved until the flashes of white that were its fangs were already poised for strike.

The sharp pain that registered in the next second was so familiar to Sakura after weeks of dealing with snake bites that she didn't flinch. The rush of venom that coursed through her, lighting her insides on fire was equally as familiar. In the background, she heard Anko give the order not to actively fight the venom, to let it pass through by itself.

A month into the exercises, it was already apparent to Sakura that her chakra system was adapting to the venom at a much faster rate than her physiology had to the normal venom – it struggled to find a foothold and the side effects were dulled when weaker venom was applied. The rapidness with which her chakra system had learned to fight the venom had surprised her, though the pinkette did wonder if perhaps it was simply her own prowess concerning ridding herself of it that had increased more than any conditioned resistance that had developed.

The snake that she had summoned loosened itself from her, remaining wound in a loose coil around her feet. Beside her, Sakura heard Anko instruct her to sit and wait it out. She complied with the order and sat down right in the middle of the snake's coil. The venom was muddling her thoughts somewhat, and it was hard not to combat it on reflex – the kuniochi hated how she felt when under her mind was under the effects of venom. There was little choice but to wait it out, however, unless she wanted to go through the process all over again.

The only good thing about having an altered state of mind and perception was that time was a far off thing that only drifted in and out of notice. It was true that sometimes a second stretched into hours, but after that hours-long second, time was suddenly forgotten, a thing of no consequence. Besides, it was just as often that hours seemed like seconds. So, fortunately, it didn't seem like it was overlong until she was fully cognizant again.

When she came to, it was dark, and she was surprised to see that the splotchy snake was curled around her with its head in her lap. There was a small fire and across from her sat Mitarashi Anko, who was leaned up against Mabu and had her eyes sharply set on Sakura.

"Back with us, kid?" asked the tokubetsu jōnin, with her eyes still sharper than Sakura had ever seen them.

"Yeah," replied the pinkette, as she stretched out her jaw. "I'm all back now."

"Good. That was boring as all hell," complained the other kunoichi, whose former seriousness had melted away.

"So since he can't talk, how will communication work?" asked the pinkette. "I know that even shinobi can't talk in combat all the time, but at least they'd know the situation. Summons won't have that kind of advantage."

Anko shrugged her shoulders. "Summon lines have their own training so they can take care of themselves. Just don't call them into the middle of an attack – unless they can take it, anyway."

"So there's really no way to drop them in with any preparation?"

The older kunoichi relented. "Well, there are some techniques that can, but they're usually not long terms summons—those are more like regular space-time ninjutsu because there's no physical seal that appears when you do the signs."

"How would incorporating a command immediately upon summoning work?" Sakura asked.

Instead of answering, the tokubetsu jōnin stood up and performed a series of hand seals before thrusting out her arm to the side. A nest of six snakes, each the size of the one Sakura summoned, sprang out of Anko's jacket sleeve and shot to a tree at the edge of the clearing, biting, constricting around, and hissing at it.

Anko dispelled the technique and walked closer to Sakura and took a seat beside her. When she sat, she explained, "That was one of the ones I'll teach you over the next few weeks. It works on the principle of priming your summon with intent using certain hand signs before the summoning."

Sakura nodded. "So when you summoned multiple snakes just now did you just open up multiple gates or did you just split the chakra flow that spread out to one gate?"

Sakura waited patiently as the older kunoichi laughed long and loud at what she had thought was a reasonable question. "Already moving on to a multiple summon, huh, kid?"

Sakura reddened at the tokubetsu jōnin's amusement. "I—If it's really that complicated, I can wait."

"Nah, it's okay," assured Anko with a big grin. "But it's a little late to start on a new technique now, ain't it?"

Sakura blinked, realizing again how late it was again and swore. This little excursion had cost her precious time, considering she was on a timeline for that report she had to write up for the cadre. She sighed, loathing the idea of another sleepless night. If she didn't get a handle on her schedule she'd be useless in general and in terms of her report. "Right. I'd better get back to my office."

Anko grimaced at what Sakura assumed to the thought of working in an office, though she didn't comment on it. "Sure, sure. Just dispel him first. A simple release command should do it. Next we'll get started on some of the specifics of working with the snakes – what they can and can't do and how to coordinate with them on missions. I'll bring that scroll since I know you like reading them so much."

Sakura didn't have time to address Anko's ribbing about her interest in theory or the smug smirk the woman wore on her face. Instead, she turned the snake and released her chakra. The summon disappeared into a cloud the same time Mabu was lost in a giant wall of smoke. The young kunoichi turned to leave, her mind already on critical areas off the coast of the Land of Water. 'For the most part, the southeastern-most islands off mainland Mizu are all newer territory that have been won in conflicts, so Terumī has an advantage with those relations because of her lineage… But if they decide to take up on those counter offers the remnant faction has been making or if any of the advocates for neutrality come out ahead—'

Sakura was broken out of her reflection on the matter when she was yanked back by the shoulder. The pinkette glanced back to Anko, whose hand was firmly clasped onto her. "Anko-san?"

"C'mon kid," said the tokubetsu jōnin, throwing her arm around Sakura's other shoulder. "Let's go to town and get some dango."

The request struck Sakura as a bit odd. To be honest, Anko didn't necessarily seem like someone she'd want to spend her down time with, considering the older kunoichi's proclivity for ignoring social etiquette. "Er—thanks for the offer, but I really have to –"

"Look, kid, I know you're with ANBU and everything, but I'm still a jōnin, so I can still kick your ass," growled the other kunoichi. "Now. We're going to go get some dango and have a nice chat."

An "um" followed by a mumbled "okay" was all that Sakura could manage, so a small while later she found herself back in Konoha and seated on the Hokage Monument, staring down at the moonlit ninja village while she munched on dango. The pinkette had hopes that the little shop would have been closed by the time they got back, but not only did they happily greet Mitarashi, they had apparently stayed open just because she hadn't stopped by yet.

"Ah!" exclaimed the tokubetsu jōnin who was seated next to her. "They make some damn good dango, right?"

Sakura ignored the question. "Um, Anko-san. Why are we here?"

Her companion heaved a put-upon sigh. "You know, it ain't healthy to go so long without a break now and then, brat. When's the last time you just went out to the town and gotten something to eat? Actually gotten something to eat, not just picked up groceries to eat at whatever office you're working in."

"Not for a few months," admitted the younger kunoichi. "I appreciate you looking out for me, but I have really important work to do, now more than ever. I can't just take a break right now if I expect to move up."

"Look, I know people who think like that, and I've seen them break down when too much shit piles up – and it always does," said Anko. She sighed and looked away form Sakura, staring out at the town. "You know what this is about, right?"

"The stress?"

"No!" she snapped. "The training. With me, I mean. The reason why they're training you to do all this - why they're having me teach you about all of his techniques?"

Sakura had thought about it. Her arrangement with Ocelot made sense – the icy operative's style seem suited to Sakura, over the months she'd found that the areas in which Ocelot seemed to excel synced up with Sakura's own natural strengths. For a time, she'd thought that perhaps the higher ups had assigned Anko to her in order to take advantage of her degree of chakra control and teach her how to resist chakra venom. 'But if they're teaching me how to resist it…'

"Are they," she asked uncertainly. "Are they going to send me after Orochimaru?"

Anko scoffed. "C'mon, kid, think. That bastard is one of the Sannin; they're not training a genin to assassinate him."

It took the pinkette longer than it should have to reach the conclusion of Anko's implication. When she finally did, a painful lump formed in her throat and her heart raced as it pumped chilled blood through her veins. She swallowed before she respond. "Sasuke. They're training me to kill Sasuke-kun?"

"Look, I ain't really involved in any decision-making. I just do the jobs the village assigns me. I'm not saying they're gearing you up to kill your teammate," said the older kunoichi as she shrugged. She looked back at Sakura with a unreadable expression on her face. "If you had to, could you? Could you kill him?"

Sakura swallowed again under the scrutiny of the other woman. "I—Sasuke-kun hasn't doesn't anything to harm the Konoha, right? He's with Orochimaru, but he hasn't actually attacked anyone. Well, I mean, he fought with Naruto, but they fight all the time – that's just how they are!"

"And if he does attack the village? Orochimaru's already attacked Konoha once, and now your teammate is with him."

When Sakura remained silent, Anko spoke again. "I'm not saying that you'll have to fight him, but you need to starting thinking about it. And you need to take some time to think about something other than this job"

Sakura wasn't sure that she wanted to take time away from her job, considering what Anko had just dropped on her. She'd been considerably less stressed before she considered the possibility that she might have to kill Sasuke. "How is taking a break supposed to help me process this? You just told me I might be ordered to kill my teammate!"

"Your former teammate is a traitor" snarled the tokubetsu jōnin, her words as venomous as what the snakes had been injecting in Sakura's veins. "just like my former sensei! He chose to leave, and you chose to stay. That means you're on different sides of the line now – you have to put the good of Konoha first – it's your duty as a shinobi to put the village first!"

"Team Seven doesn't abandon their comrades," she said in quiet defiance.

"Even when they abandon you?" the older kunoichi fired back. She pinched the bridge of her nose out of frustration and exhaled in slow deliberation. "I didn't come here to argue about the Uchiha boy – for all I know, the village won't even order his assassination since he's the only one of his family his brother left alive.

I just want you to be ready, Sakura. To have your eyes open about what's expected of you and to know what's going on in your own head and with your own health. I—I had to deal with this too, kinda, when he left. I just thought—look, just don't be a fucking head case! Alright, kid?"

The two stared at each other for a long while after the outburst. It slowly dawned on Sakura that Anko was doing and saying all of this because the older kunoichi cared about her. Not just her work or capacity to do her job, but the other woman cared about her well-being. It had been a while since anyone had checked up on her like that. Naruto did in his own way, but letters only went so far; Ino had tried a few months ago and her time spent with the girl had been nice, but they hadn't had a heart-to-heart – they couldn't have with Sakura working with the ANBU. But Anko – she knew at least some of Sakura's situation, and she was here, trying to make sure that she'd hold together.

The pinkette had an urge to hug the other kunoichi, but Sakura held back. The young kunoichi wasn't sure if it'd be appropriate, and she didn't want to seem even more childish than she was sure she already appeared to the tokubetsu jōnin. Instead, she awkwardly reached out a hand and placed it on her mentor's shoulder and gripped it tightly, steeling her voice so that it wouldn't quiver.

"Thank you for looking out for me, Anko," she said softly. She loosened her grip and let the hand fall. "How did you handle it? After he left, I mean."

Anko closed her eyes. "I didn't really remember much when he left. Until a few months ago, I actually thought that he just abandoned me. I guess I was one who left him when he decided to leave Konoha. It was tough, especially when I thought that he had just abandoned me. Sometimes I felt like garbage that he had just left behind. Then I felt like garbage because there was a part of me that wished he had taken me with him. I, uh, I guess kind of just focused on how angry I was at him instead."

Sakura nodded along, personally she couldn't identify with wishing to be taken along with Sasuke away from Konoha – she had wished Sasuke-kun had talked to her about it or maybe asked her to go, but she had no desire to defect to Orochimaru's Sound. But she did understand about the conflict – the feeling that it was wrong to still care about someone the rest of the village saw as traitor. "How did the rest of your team deal with it? Did you all stay together?"

"I—" began the other kunoichi, "I didn't really plan to talk about them. I, maybe—"

"Later. Maybe we can talk about it later," said Sakura. The young kunoichi certainly understood the lack of desire to talk about that sort of thing; it was best not to push Anko if she didn't want to talk about it. "You don't have to talk about it right now."

And she didn't. Neither of them did. Instead, the pair of kunoichi just sat in the dark atop the Hokage Monument, neither one saying anything for a long time.

AN:

Well, I've done well the past three weeks in terms of updating so I'm going to go ahead and tell everyone to expect an update every weekend until further notice. Hopefully I'll be able to continue to stick with that schedule. Should that change, whether on a temporary or permanent basis, I'll do my best to let you know. For anyone tiring of the episodic formula this seems to be falling into, fear not, for this arc is about to come to a close within the next few chapters, and then we'll follow Sakura in Mizu.

This chapter's been a difficult one for a few reasons - I wasn't sure how I wanted to engineer Sakura's interactions with the snakes or how the interaction between Anko and Sakura should go.. It gave me so much trouble that I actually pushed it back a few chapters from when it was initially supposed to appear. Something else that was cut was a dimension of summoning - I originally had the snakes and the summoner having a very rudimentary sort of telepathy or a mild sensorial or empathic link, but I decided that that was taking a little more liberty than I'd like for something already showcased in canon (of course that's not to say I won't be bending canon at some other juncture). Anyway, still not completely happy with this chapter, but I accomplished what I needed to in terms of setting up certain devices.

Also, at this time, I'd like to extend credit to xShadowRebirthx on DeviantArt, who has given blanket permission for anyone to use their map of Naruto's Elemental Nations, so long as proper credit is due. I will be making use of this generous offer for my fic as a point of reference when writing.

As always, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to leave a review with any comment, question, or critique (even if it's just a typo I missed).

Suzulu4moe: Sorry for the late response. I picked Ino because it's stated in the anime that she started training alongside Sakura, though she wasn't exactly Tsunade's apprentice in the same capacity. I'll be cribbing from the anime/games by preference because while I like some elements, some parts of them are a bit ridiculous. Thanks for your commentary thus far!

imaginesakura: I'm glad you're enjoying those aspects of the story; I worry about being a little too dry with those facets of the fic. I actually have interludes planned in between each sub-arc. Kakashi's will be the second interlude after the first sub-arc of the Kiri arc, but unfortunately, if I stick to the current outline, Anko's won't be for while. It's a format I picked up from Wildbow's web fiction – I find it's a nice break from the central character and adds some more depth to the story in addition to dissolving monotony in general.

r1ncewind1: Glad you like it so far. Danzō created Root pre-Uchiha massacre as a subsidiary of Konoha's ANBU. The Third eventually disbanded it and formally removed Danzō from the Council (per what I remember from the manga/anime and from the wiki). However, because it's seen in canon that he's still affiliated in some way with the Council and is operating Root illegally, I always interpreted it as Danzō still having influence over ANBU proper as well, official or not. Another reason I interpret it this way is because it is evident that Root operatives are deeply embedded within ANBU and since not all of them (such as Sai) were there before the official disbanding, that suggests a continued presence of Danzō in the current ANBU hierarchy, even though he is not, as you pointed out, the ANBU Commander. Keep in mind this is just my interpretation and how I will integrate it in this fic; I can see how others may have their own ideas about how canon operates. Either way, in Chapter 5, the ANBU Commander mentioned wouldn't be Danzō but rather a separate individual that was portrayed but never officially named – this character can be found on the wiki (though Hinoe and Hinoto will still definitely be reporting to Shimura as their primary superior).