Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

"Can't he go any faster?" Anko griped. "He's a ninja. Why's he so damn slow?" She pushed off the next branch, arms spread wide like some black-feathered bird as she hurtled through the air.

Across from her, Gai clicked his tongue. "Be kind, Anko-chan. He's not a jounin, he's a messenger." His gait seemed excessively vigorous, until one noticed that each motion was carefully regulated to maximize the efficiency of his motion. Anko still thought he looked silly most of the time, though right now her eyes were focused on the trees around them for any possibility of a threat.

"I'm not a jounin either," she snapped. Her knees bent as she hit the tree bark and launched off again. "A genin could go faster than this."

"Can't you two shut up?" one of their other teammates demanded from a few paces behind. They encircled the Kusa messenger in a protective, as well as restrictive circle, escorting him as fast as the he could run towards Konoha. Out in front, Aoba rolled his eyes, safely concealed behind dark glasses and feline mask, as well as the fact that none of his squad were Hyuuga and thus couldn't see through his back. They still had a few more hours of travel before they reached Konoha, and he did not want his team falling apart again. So many different personalities sometimes complimented each other. In this squad, they tended to grate. This wasn't perhaps the best side to show to the emissary from a potentially hostile nation.

Luckily, Anko decided not to take offense. She snorted, and pushed off unnecessarily hard on the next step, but she had stopped talking. In the center of their circle, the Kusa nin frowned angrily, but went a little faster.

They plowed through the gate without checking their steps. Straight to the administrative tower, where they left the messenger bowing himself into the presence of the Hokage. Aoba shut the door behind them with a quiet click, and glanced over the four ninja who made up his squad. "Well, we did our part." Four sets of eyes regarded him without blinking through four fake, porcelain faces. "What?"

"Do we get to hear the message?"

"No. That's for the Hokage only."

"Do we get dango?"

"No!"

Knock. Knock. Kakashi turned over with a groan. He stuffed his face into Pakkun's ribs. "Mmmahnn." The dog squirmed uncomfortably and swore. The knocking continued. "Hrrahgn." With an effort, he rolled off the bed. Hitting the floor with a thud, he dragged himself to his feet. Pakkun watched him with a single, unimpressed eye as he swayed across the room and reflexively hooked his mask up over his nose. Squeaky hinges wailed. "Go away."

Scruffy rookie head peered pitifully at him from the opened door. "Kakashi-taichou?"

"Is it a mission?"

"No—" Kakashi shut the door in his face. The knocking started again. Kakashi flicked up a sound barrier and went back to bed. Tenzou's chakra stayed outside the door, and Pakkun nudged him with a wet nose. The jounin sighed and rubbed his face in the pillow. Pakkun bit him.

Throwing the door open again, Kakashi mustered his best half-asleep glare. "Can't I sleep for just a single hour?" he snapped. Tenzou stared blankly at him. Kakashi sighed in frustration and dropped the silencing jutsu. "What do you want?"

"Can I talk to you, captain?"

"You're talking." Tenzou blinked wordlessly for a moment. "About what?" Kakashi moaned. "It's the middle of the night!"

"Actually, it's still evening," Tenzou corrected absently. "And about Genma, and Raidou; I'm worried. I need you to help."

A gravelly voice issued from Kakashi's bed. "Let the brat in, Kakashi. Stop standing in the hall."

Tenzou's eyes widened even further. "Ah. Um. If you're busy—"

"That's Pakkun," Kakashi stated flatly. "Come in, rookie. What's wrong with Genma and Raidou now?"

Tenzou spilled the whole story standing nervously behind Kakashi's single battered chair, his hands fisted on the backrest. Kakashi hadn't been wearing his forehead protector as he tried to sleep, and Tenzou's gaze kept sliding from the grey eye to the paler, scarred side of his face as his captain leaned against the wall. He had been sleeping in rumpled jounin blues that bagged around his ankles and wrists without the wraps that would usually have tied them. He would have looked almost endearing in his floppy clothes and with his hair falling over his face, if not for his single eye, narrowed and intent. It regarded Tenzou like a grey river pebble, hard and unblinking. Pakkun had crawled to the foot of the bed in the other room to listen through the door. Kakashi's first question was, "Where's Hayate?"

"He was still in the hospital, sleeping, this afternoon, when Naruto came."

"So they don't have him. Genma went downstairs?" He didn't mean to the cafeteria.

"Yes."

Kakashi swept his kunai holster and katana, both ready for use. "Uchiha," he hissed. "That goddamn bastard."

Fugaku sat at his desk in his office at his headquarters of his Military Police. That was how life was supposed to work: his life, his decisions, his power. His clan. Hatake...Hatake turned that all upside down. With the stolen sharingan, he smashed the Uchiha's monopoly on the power of the copy wheel, and every time he used it, every time people talked about his exploits on the street, he trampled the Uchiha into the dirt. It was always Hatake the Copy Nin, Master of a Thousand Jutsus Hatake, Hatake the legend, when once it had only been the Uchiha. Fugaku's lips tightened.

And now, if the issue with Grass turned into war, his people would be taken away to fight for somebody else. It had happened a few years ago, in the last war. The Hokage had needed all the ninja the village could provide, and the Military Police had been left with only a skeleton staff. Assuming the skeleton was missing every third bone. Fugaku had been deprived of his own people. This new war, this new affront to the Uchiha, was also Hatake's fault.

Fugaku knew his reasoning was mostly based on petty jealousy and bruised pride. He knew that most people would sympathize with him just about as much as he sympathized with Hatake's plight. But that did not matter. The Uchiha Head did not need the approval of others. He did not need their support, or their agreement. He simply needed power.

When Namiashi broke, as everyone who went before Ibiki did, he'd have Hatake. Whether Namiashi implicated himself or his Captain didn't matter; Kakashi would feel obligated to take the blame either way. It would be child's play after that.

Uchiha Inabi had been working for the police since he'd made chuunin six years ago. When this order had come down through the offices with the clan head's own seal on it, Inabi had pulled rank on his cohorts to get the job. So now he was hurrying a blond child down the streets of town, a firm hand grasping the boy's arm, and beginning to regret his decision.

"So you're Sasuke's uncle or something? I think he's really annoying. He doesn't talk to anyone or play games or anything. And he's always 'I'm an Uchiha, hnnnn'." Naruto slurred the nonsense syllable into a drawn out taunt. Inabi clenched his teeth. Couldn't the brat just shut up? "Where are we going? Why'd Momotami say I had to listen to you? You're not saying anything. Where are we going?"

It was a relief when he reached the designated building and a rather gorgeous woman in a red shirt and flak vest took the brat. Job fulfilled, he offered her dinner, accepted the rejection, and went back to the police station to make sure his name got recorded correctly in case of future promotions.

The woman took Naruto's arm in the same way the Uchiha had been holding it. She walked him down a flight of stairs and through several sets of heavy doors with huge locks that Naruto looked at with longing. Anything that big and shiny had to make whatever behind it important. Maybe he could get one to put one on his ramen stash to keep it safe.

Finally, she pointed to a door. "In here, Uzumaki."

"You know me?" he said in surprise. He was already getting famous! Soon he'd be a super-great-ninja who everybody knew and respected!

The room the lady put him in was big and empty, except for one chair and a hugely gigantic awesome mirror. "Wait here like a good boy," she told him, and shut the door behind herself. Naruto didn't care, because he'd never seen a mirror that big. He stuck out his tongue at the mirror, and pulled the skin below his eyes down and wiggled his tongue. Then he stuck his jaw sideways and pulled his hair the other way with one hand. A giggle welled up and he laughed out loud.

A few years ago, before Raidou had entered ANBU, he led a team of mixed chuunin and tokujou on a guard mission for a group of businessmen hosting an international trade conference. He remembered it because one of the attendees had been a plant, sent to abduct or assassinate the head of the association. They hadn't known who was the spy, but two of Raidou's chuunin had caught a subordinate of the man carelessly transporting poison capsules. As the highest ranking and most experienced of the Konoha shinobi, the interrogation had fallen to him.

The first rule was always to find a weakness. On that man, not trained against shinobi techniques or prepared for capture, it had turned out simply to be pain. Raidou had spent under an hour with his hand on the back of the man's spine, and he'd told them everything just to make it end.

Once he'd entered ANBU, he'd begun coaching other interrogators in genjutsu techniques, and had himself worked through dozens of hours of resistance training. But no one could train for this and still remain human, and Ibiki knew it.

Staring through the glass separating the two rooms, Raidou felt miles away, years away. It didn't quite feel real; everything was dark and slightly grainy behind the mirror. It dulled Naruto's shockingly yellow hair to the shade of dead wheat stalks, even as the boy made faces into the mirror and giggled.

The young ninja looked down at his motionless captive. "You should have been more careful, Raidou. Breaking into classified documents when you're perfectly aware of how that will look with what's happened in the past?" The interrogator's face was hard as the concrete walls and just as cold.

"You can't justify doing this to an uninvolved Konoha civilian." Raidou grabbed onto that weak thread of logic.

"Of course not," Ibiki agreed casually. "Too bad I don't need to justify anything to anyone." He leaned across the counter and pressed down a switch. "You can start now."

In the shadowy world a few feet away, a masked man entered the room. He must have said something, because Naruto turned to look at him, then shook his head playfully. The man strode over and grabbed the boy's arm, swinging him around with a sharp tug to land hard in the chair. Naruto opened his mouth to say or shout something more, and the interrogator backhanded him across the face. Raidou flinched.

"There's a document on that clipboard," Ibiki said as he watched his assistant bind Naruto's limbs to the chair. "And a brush. All you have to do is sign it. Or, if you prefer, I have a tape recorder here to take down a statement. But please, Namiashi, don't waste my time with innocence."

Raidou followed Ibiki's gesture. A clipboard did indeed lie on the counter among the spread of notepaper and old mint wrappers. An empty coffee mug caught his eye, passively incongruous and slightly disturbing for its mundane sweetness. Brown teddy bears marched around the upper rim, while blue sailboats formed a loop around the base. Between the two patterns, in a child's wide and uneven hand, someone had written 'I Love You Dad' in faded purple marker. The ninja snapped his eyes away and began to buck against his bonds, straining his muscles to escape. Blood began to stain the silver wires as they cut into his skin. Ibiki pulsed a touch of chakra into the restraints, immobilizing Raidou before he could cut his own hands off with the struggle. His eyes were wide, his breath coming fast, as if it were himself facing down the brutality.

Naruto was finally secured, and the white mask turned towards the mirror. "Well?" Ibiki asked, offering Raidou one last chance.

"It's genjutsu." Raidou put all the confidence he had ever had or ever faked into those two words. "The Hokage would never let you do this for real." His muscles quivered against the jutsu holding him still.

Ibiki sighed. "Do you really believe that?"

In answer, Raidou sank his teeth into his bottom lip. Driving his jaw up, he fought to puncture skin and flesh, to dispel with pain the lie before his eyes. Blood spilled down his chin and into his mouth. Nothing changed. "Genjutsu," he insisted in a whisper. "Genjutsu."

Ibiki stretched out an arm and keyed the microphone. "Go ahead." They watched the first blow fall in the disconnected silence of the darkened room. Raidou saw Naruto's head snap sideways, the flesh blossom red in the shape of a gloved palm. Desperation made him give a strangled laugh—open palm; the man wasn't even trying. Tears lined Naruto's eyes, but he refused to let them fall. It was strength of the purest kind, and Raidou nearly screamed to see it.

"Betrayal is a funny word, Raidou," Ibiki mused. He faced his own translucent ghost reflected in the glass. "It all depends on perspective."

"If it were Idate on the other side of that glass, would you sign, Ibiki?" The blood spurting from his perforated lip leaked out of his mouth as he spoke. He nearly choked on the taste.

Black eyes met brown in the glass. Behind the stare, Naruto crumpled over a fist planted in his stomach. "Like I said, Raidou, betrayal is a funny thing." His gaze went through Raidou's reflection, focused on the blue eyes squeezed shut against the tears dripping down whiskered cheeks. "You speak, you betray your friends. You stay silent, you betray your brother. And either way, you've betrayed your village. If it were Idate?" He turned for the first time since it had started and looked Raidou directly in the eyes. "That's why I'm standing here and you're sitting there. It's not."

Something inside Raidou was stretching. He could feel it inside his ribcage. Where his lungs should be, a thin sheet was being pulled to its limits. It was going to rip soon, he knew, and even as he stiffened his neck and tried to hold everything still, he almost wished it would.

Naruto's mouth was open. The two men so close by in the room so far away could tell he was whimpering—that pitiful sound that came after the pain, when the scream had faded but silence still wouldn't come. The white mask took a pace away, glanced at the mirror from which his superior watched intently. The next blow caught the tiny child under the chin.

Interrogator's gloves were different from the standard uniform gloves. They lacked the metal plates riveted across the backs of combat gloves. Down here, the leather was softer, smoother, meant to protect the wearer's hand from bruising rather than stop a blade. Naruto's face was turning the grey of wet ash. He wasn't even trying not to cry anymore.

It snapped. Inside Raidou, whatever it was gave way. "Stop! For the love of god, Ibiki, stop!"

"Wait," Ibiki snapped into the microphone. The masked man lowered his fist.

"I'll do it. Just give me the brush." His voice was trembling and bloodstained. Ibiki untwisted one loop of wire and placed the clipboard in his lap. He offered Raidou the already ink-dipped brush. With an unsteady hand, the scarred ninja signed his name.

Ibiki lifted the paper away and checked both the ink signature and chakra print. "Fine." Once more, he switched the microphone on. "You can drop it now, Kurenai."

Raidou's face drained of blood, turning the smooth side pale and the scarred blotchy. He didn't speak as Ibiki released his legs and arms, then led him back to his cell. Over the past few months, he'd tried his best for Naruto. And now his best was all wrong.

He'd never be able to look any of them in the face again.

Sometimes, when everything had gone too far wrong to ever be right, there was still a single way out. In older days, days of righteousness and honor, it was considered atonement.

Now, in these times, in this life, honor was a word and nothing more. But there had to be something to fill that void of purpose, that place in every human soul where the words 'honor' and 'right' used to dwell. No one could live completely empty. And in these times, in this life, what fought for existence in those depths was 'loyalty' and 'duty.'

When you did the unforgivable, and the fragile bridges across the abyss were shattered and burned, it was no longer atonement, but escape. Not rebuilding what was lost, simply plunging into the inevitable darkness before the nothingness could take everything away. Not penitence or an apology or a second chance, just an end.

In the constant light of his cell, he was still breathing. Inside, his heart pumped blood through his body and brain and he was still alive. But in that place that any half-competent medic would gladly inform you did not exist, the tenuous strands that held him together had broken. All he needed, all he wanted now was the steel to make it complete.