A Ninja's Guide to Surviving a Shinobi War
By: JAJapster

Copyright Stuff: I don't own anything in the contents of this story. Please don't republish this story without asking permission. That is all.

Summary:
Slightly AU –It has been three years since the flames of war engulfed Konoha and the rest of the world, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands. When Naruto unexpectedly returns, though, he brings with him the key to Konoha's victory: a suicide mission deep behind enemy lines. A squad of Shinobi will leave on a quest to end the war, but none of them will return home the same, if at all.

Chapter Four: Strangers in the Night

The nightmare that had plagued the sleep of Haruno Sakura for the last three years was always the same. It began with her and Sasuke standing in the middle of that deserted, snowy field in the Forest of Death where she had last seen him. Her trembling, slender form was wrapped passionately in his strong arms, reveling in the security and comfort that only a mighty warrior from the famed Uchiha clan could provide.

In retrospect, Sakura knew the gesture to be a mocking one, a cruel parody that embodied the farcical nature of their relationship and romance, but at that moment, she believed there was no place safer where she could be than in Sasuke's warm embrace.

"I'm sorry," Sasuke whispered.

His words echoed, repeating itself over and over, each time with increasing volume until the sound of Sasuke's voice resonated deafeningly in her ears.

"I'm sorry…"

Then there was the gunshot and the dull sensation of pain in her abdomen as the trigger was pulled and a bullet tore through her stomach. She dropped to her knees, staring disbelieving at Sasuke's cold, remorseless features as the pistol slipped from his fingers and landed beside her body.

"Why?" she whispered weakly. Her eyes closed for a moment, but when they opened, a different face was staring down at her. Gone was Sasuke's emotionless face, replaced by the compassionate, glowing cerulean eyes that Sakura knew belonged to only one man.

"I'm sorry…" whispered Uzumaki Naruto.

At first, Sakura thought it had been the nightmare that caused her to awake with a start, drenched in sweat and her heart thundering through her chest. But as she took several deep breaths to calm herself down, she became aware of the high pitched ringing noise that filled her apartment. Her phone glowed on the nightstand beside her bed, vibrating furiously until Sakura picked it with an irritated snarl.

"What?" Sakura demanded.

"Sorry for the early call Sergeant Haruno," a voice on the other end of the line said. "But General Hatake has ordered all active personnel to meet at the city gates at 0300 hours to await further instructions."

"What for?" Sakura glanced at her clock, which read 2:50 a.m. "This had better not be a goddamn drill."

"No, ma'm. There's been a security breach."

That was all Sakura had to hear. She hung up her phone, threw back her blanket and began frantically grabbing her clothes. Her normal uniform couldn't be easily located in the dark, so she hastily threw on the first thing she could find before slipping on her flack vest over her mismatched attire and bolting out the door.

A security breach was no small matter. Ever since the war broke out, no one had managed to infiltrate Konoha's security. The enemy had tried on numerous occasions, using all manners of espionage and subterfuge, but all attempts had been thwarted long before they posed a threat to the village. Konoha's security network was ironclad, meaning that only someone with intimate knowledge of the village and its defenses would have a prayer of bypassing it undetected.

Unfortunately, the list of Konoha's renegade Shinobi was not a short one and every entry on it merited extreme caution. If someone had managed to sneak into Konoha successfully, it was undoubtedly a ninja of great power and skill.

It only took Sakura a few minutes to traverse the network of rooftops leading from her apartment to the city gate, and waiting for her arrival was a small group of soldiers. Three of them wore the uniform and masks of ANBU commandos. They were lead by Sakura's former instructor, the silver-haired General Hatake Kakashi. The rest of the soldiers, though, Sakura were equipped in the conventional armor and assault rifles of village military. One of them, a large, heavily scarred man wearing a bandana, stood out from the others and glowered at Sakura menacingly as she walked over to join them.

"It's about damn time," he growled.

"Thank you for joining us, Sakura," Kakashi said. He gestured to the scarred man. "This is Colonel Inoue of the Shinobi Suppression Squadron."

"Oh," was all Sakura said.

Shinobi traditionally comprised the entirety of a nation's armed forces. A force of non-Shinobi equipped with weapons, whether it be swords or guns, were normally kept on hand to settle domestic issues and support in case of emergency, but the supernatural powers of the ninja made their combat effectiveness limited. Now that the world was plunged into war, though, normal villagers were quickly becoming a vital component the battlefield. Their weapons, such as rifles, jets and tanks, were still no match for a skilled Shinobi, but in numbers they were still a force to be reckoned with.

The majority of skirmishes on the front lines were between villagers who had dug trenches into the ground. Machine gun, artillery and mortar fire were exchanged regularly, with jets periodically soaring by overhead to drop bombs on enemy positions.

Shinobi, however, could make or break a battle. They could slay a dozen soldiers in the blink of an eye, they could slip behind enemy lines and assassinate a general, or they could summon a giant monster to support them on the field and raise morale. In fact, whenever a Shinobi was spotted, it was common practice for soldiers to focus their fire exclusively on them in the hopes of somehow taking them out before they caused too much damage.

That was why the Shinobi Suppression Squadron, or the Triple-S as they liked to be called, was formed. They were combat hardened men and women who were trained specifically to hunt down Shinobi. Their weapons were state-of-the-art, and it was rumored that they even had tools that could actual suppress a ninja's Chakra –their power source –making them easier to kill.

Though technically they were on the same side, there was definite tension between the Shinobi and the Triple-S. After all, it was a ninja's job to create techniques to overpower enemy Triple-S agents and kill them, and it was the Triple-S operative's goal to exploit the weakness of enemy Shinobi's and terminate them.

"Why are they here?" Sakura asked. "We can handle this."

Colonel Inoue scowled at her. "Orders from the Minister of Security himself. Seems like he wants to make sure this job is done right."

"We're working together on this," Kakashi said diplomatically before Sakura could interject angrily. "As you might have been told, we detected a security breach a few minutes ago. A single infiltrator managed to bypass our defense network and is currently in the village."

"How'd they get through?"

"A secret passageway through the hot springs," replied Kakashi. "Only a handful of people know about it, and it's only by chance that one of our security cameras caught the suspect sneaking in. We don't know if he's a Shinobi or just a spy, so we haven't raised the general alarm yet. However, we're under strict orders to detain the suspect immediately."

"Our orders are to terminate the threat," corrected Colonel Inoue.

"As I mentioned before, Colonel," Kakashi said, a slight hint of anger evident in his voice. "I want him alive so we can interrogate him."

The colonel shrugged. "We have jurisdiction over this matter, and if he resists, we're putting him down." As if to emphasize the point, he patted the assault rifle that was slung across his chest. It glistened ominously in the moonlight.

Sakura knew all too well that conventional firearms could kill Shinobi. It was often impossible to shoot a Shinobi, as most could dodge incoming gunfire with ease, but a single bullet in the right spot could be as deadly to a ninja as any other human. It was only by a miracle that Sakura had survived when Sasuke shot her –Shinobi, after all, were not invincible.

"Wait," Sakura asked. "If Triple-S has jurisdiction over this, why was I brought here?"

"Because," Kakashi said. "We think the infiltrator is an old friend of ours: Uzumaki Naruto."

The mere mention of his name was normally enough to make Sakura pause, but this time she froze, her mouth still halfway open, an exclamation of surprise and disbelief on the tip of her tongue. For three, long, painful years she had yearned to hear that Naruto had finally returned home to Konoha, but now that the moment had come; she wasn't sure how to react to the news.

Fortunately, Kakashi did. He placed his hand on her shoulder, jarring her back to reality. "Sakura," he said, softly but sternly. "You have to remember that Naruto is no longer your ally. He is no longer your friend. He is a renegade Shinobi, an enemy of the village, and you need to be prepared to kill him if you need to. Do you think you can do that?"

"Y-yeah, sure," she replied, hoping her voice conveyed greater conviction than she felt. She had subconsciously always been aware that Naruto was considered an enemy of the state –his face and Sasuke's were still prominently featured in every Bingo book – but never had it occurred to her that she might actually have to fight him. "But why do you think it's Naruto? Couldn't any renegade ninja from Konoha know about the secret passageway?"

"Because we tracked the intruder to a local noodle shop," barked Colonel Inoue. "It's called…"

Sakura didn't have to wait for the colonel to finish his sentence. She knew exactly what ramen bar he was talking about. Though she hadn't eaten there in years, she remembered it all too well because it had been Naruto's favorite restaurant in all of Konoha.

"Ichiraku Ramen," she whispered.