Authors note: flashback will be used to indicate the beginning and end of flashbacks for the purpose of this story.
The Rangers were being flown back to base on the Chinook. The Chinooks were to be refueled and then to fly the Rangers off to another sector to handle assignments there, hopefully not in interference with the operators. Naruto and his team were being driven back on a humvee, Shikamaru was sitting in the back seat snoozing. Kiba was on the 50 cal turret in the event that they should run into anything. Naruto was sitting next to the driver.
"Hey, driver. I can't say I know who you are. What force are you in?" asked Naruto.
"Ranger." responded the driver, in a seemingly cold and emotionless voice.
"Are you usually behind the wheel of a humvee or are you driving just for this specific op?"
"My role is usually rifleman."
"Any family?" asked Naruto.
"Brother. Mother and father are dead."
"Do you talk much?"
"No."
"And why not?"
"No need to address others beyond the basic requirement."
Guy's kind of a jerk, thought Naruto.
The conversation got dropped, as Naruto clearly wasn't getting this guy to open up. Naruto looked at his eyes. The dude looked totally out of it, his eyes were seemingly empty, as if they were spaced out. He clearly wasn't, as he was driving in a straight line.
"Man. This guy's got as much personality as a wet dish rag..." muttered Naruto.
The humvee grew quiet. Naruto had a need to begin asking the driver questions again, despite his previous failure in effectively starting up a conversation with the man.
"Do you have a name?" inquired Naruto.
"I do." responded the driver.
"What is it?" Naruto asked, irritated.
"No need for you to know."
"Damn. Cold as ice." Naruto could hear Kiba say from his turret position. Kiba was chuckling.
"And what, Kiba, is so amusing?" asked Naruto.
"Your failure to start conversation, obviously."
"Bah." was all Naruto could think to say back.
Night was once again stretching its large, dark fingers over the great sky. Naruto felt nervous. It was easy enough to ambush a lone humvee at night. The palms of his hands felt sweaty, and Naruto wondered why he was panicking so much now when he had been faced with many ambushes and worse situations before.
"How much longer 'till we get there?" asked Naruto.
"Half an hour." responded the driver.
Naruto groaned. That was 30 minutes for them to get ambushed. He didn't feel like having his humvee blown up and having to walk back to the base, if he was gonna be walking back there at all. This driver didn't exactly pack any humor to keep the ride warm either.
Naruto stared out into the endless expanse of desert before them. The road laid out in front of them seemed to never end, extending far into the dark night. There wasn't much to look at out the window, just the same shades of tans and browns over and over again. There wasn't much vegetation. There was a few beat up and aged adobe buildings that they were passing by, but other then that there was not much to be remarked upon in the endless field of sand. Naruto began to hazily doze off and remember things that happened in his distant past, when he was in training for the famed operators. He got to bypass going into the Rangers and was just sent straight to operator training, because he was viewed as "special" for reasons unknown to him.
flashback
On the first day of recruitment, the instructor, Iruka, took a particular interest in Naruto. He had the recruits gather around him and asked "Who wants to wrestle this man?". The man looked far bigger and more muscular than any of the recruits there. One of the recruits dared to raise his hand. He and the wrestler man, whom Iruka just referred to as "The Wrestler", circled around each other for a while. The recruit charged. The Wrestler simply sidestepped, grabbed the recruit around the torso, and threw him to the ground. The recruit got back up, and charged again. This time the Wrestler let the recruit grab him. The recruit appeared to almost tackle the man to the ground, but the man reversed the momentum and it was instead the recruit grovelling on the floor. The first challenger sat back down in the circle. Another raised his hand. He charged the Wrestler in a manner similar to the first, and just as quickly as he had began charging he was flying through the air and made a tough landing on another recruit, brought down even more quickly than the one who had tried before him. After several tried their hand at bringing the big man down, with all of them failing, Naruto raised his hand to attempt it.
Naruto and the Wrestler stared eachother down for a little while, Naruto pondering what strategy he could bring down the much larger man with. Naruto then charged, just like those before him. However, when the man attempted to grab Naruto in order to reverse his momentum and throw him to the ground, Naruto stepped back just out of reach of the mans arms. Now without defense, Naruto threw himself at the big guy, and almost brought him down, however, using his superior physique and size, the big man managed to overpower Naruto and threw him to the ground.
Iruka was fascinated. Few recruits before had ever attempted strategy over strength against this man. He could see that the Wrestler was going to try a little against Naruto, his interest apparently piqued as well.
Naruto could see that trying to bring the man down by charging at center mass wasn't going to work. He'd have to bring the man down by tackling his knees, if the man would allow himself to get that open.
This time, the man charged at Naruto. Naruto clearly didn't have the strength to do as the Wrestler had done to the other recruits, so he merely dodged rather than trying to overpower his foe. Naruto could see that his opponent had switched back to a defensive stance. He charged again, making it appear as though he were going for center mass. The man waited until Naruto was close to see if Naruto was going to try something, and when Naruto didn't, he began to counter Naruto's charge. When he reached to grab Naruto, however, Naruto this time rolled out of the way. He had expected this, and turned to counter Naruto's second attack, however, he blocked his torso, and not his legs, which Naruto then dove for. The man was taken by surprise, but he himself managed to roll out of the way.
Naruto could see that he was defeated, for he, despite having employing intelligence, was not fast nor strong enough to overtake The Wrestler. He took back his seat.
"Naruto. I wish to speak with you after we are done today." Iruka said.
"Sir." responded Naruto.
When all the activities of the day were finished, Naruto went to have his talk with Iruka.
"I must say I was fascinated by your ability to reason through fights, which will no doubt help you as an operator. Since you clearly, however, lack a strong physique, that is what we will concentrate on. While we don't expect you to take on men that are bigger than you by as much as The Wrestler in your operator career, you will take on men that are larger and stronger. It is clear that you can easily handle these situations – assuming you have the strength and agility to win even when aided by your intellect."
"Yes, sir." responded Naruto.
"You don't have to be so cold. Humor is the only thing that's gonna be keeping you warm out in the battlefield." Iruka said.
"Sir?" inquired Naruto.
"I'm saying that you should relax a bit. A humorous soldier is often a well-liked one, and a humorous soldier is often the one that can produce laughs even in the grim conditions of battle. If you're so serious all the time, well, the battlefields gonna be a harder place for you then it can be."
"We were tol-" said Naruto, but Iruka interrupted.
"Yes, yes, you were told to show respect your drill instructors. But that doesn't mean you have to go around saying nothing but "Yes, sir." in that dull and boring voice."
"Yes, si-" started Naruto, but was interrupted again.
"What did I just say?" Iruka chuckled. "Alright, time for you to go."
"Right..." said Naruto.
And off Naruto went to his bunk.
flashback
Naruto was being shaken awake. Being ground back into reality and no longer the past, Naruto woke up.
"That was a good nap...what'd ya wake me up for?" said Shikamaru, who the driver had woken up as well.
"There were lights in the building up ahead. Probable ambush." the driver said in his dull tone.
Naruto, suddenly alert, told Kiba to get ready and primed his own weapon, an M4 CQB. Clearly seeing that it got too dark to see much beyond the light provided by the car, Naruto and the rest of his squad, including the driver, switched on their NODs.
"Drive forward slowly...at least we'll have the armor of the humvee then." Naruto told the driver.
The driver started moving the humvee towards the building, going slowly.
Sweat beaded down Naruto's forehead. This was probably not going to turn out well. They got relatively close to the building. Naruto saw a brief shine out of one of the windows of the building.
"Shit! Open those doors and jump out! RPG! RPG!" Naruto shouted.
They did. The humvee exploded and burst into flames. Pieces of it flew everywhere.
Bullets bit into the ground around them as men started popping out of the windows of the building and opening fire on Naruto and his group.
"Take cover behind the wrecked humvee. Move!" Naruto ordered.
They moved behind the humvee and started returning fire at their ambushers. More men began coming out of nowhere. There was a much larger force than just the men in that building. They were clearly surrounded.
"Put down your weapons and do not resist!" the leader of the group said in a strange accent.
The driver of the jeep didn't listen. He whipped out a pistol and popped the speaker right in the head. A wave of AK fire soon silenced the driver.
"Shit..." said Kiba.
"As my now dead comrade said, do not resist." said another of the terrorists.
"Fuck...of course we get the damn ambush on our way home..." muttered Shikamaru.
The operators threw their weapons down. The men came and threw them to the ground, and blindfolded and tied their hands together with coarse rope. They were then taken off and put into a vehicle of some sort, each was in a different vehicle. The vehicles got started and they started getting taken off somewhere. The man who tied Naruto's blindfold clearly was not an expert. He tied it too tight, so Naruto could still see by tilting his head back, and looking through the small slit under the blindfold, making it appear as if he were sleeping.
They were being taken off the dirt road was all that Naruto could tell, other than that, it seemed the same old expanse of tans and browns, nothing but the dirt and rocks.
It seemed that they were driving for what must have at least been a few hours when Naruto was finally thrown out the car and then taken off inside some building. The building looked much finer than the dilapidated adobe buildings Naruto had seen before, having carpet, polished wooden floors, nice looking doors, decently decorated rooms. Naruto was taken up a set of polished wooden stairs, into another room, and then put in a chair. The blindfold was removed, but his hands were still died.
Before Naruto sat a man with long dark hair, yellow snake-like eyes, and pale skin.
"Do I need introduction?" said the man.
"Perhaps you might." replied Naruto.
"I see...I am the leader of the forces you have been fighting this whole time, the one you fighters for the land of leaves call Orochimaru." he said.
It suddenly dawned on Naruto that he might have been in deeper shit than he thought. That meant that this place was well-reinforced. It would be impossible to escape.
"I have a few questions for you..." Orochimaru said in his strange voice.
"Ask away." Naruto said.
"...Why do you fight for the land of leaves, for Konoha?" asked Orochimaru.
It was not the kind of question Naruto had been expecting.
"...It's my home, the place where I was born, raised, schooled, lived my life, felt everything that I have, and it has been a good place. I feel a natural patriotism towards it."
"Yes, I cannot argue with you that it is indeed a decent place..." said Orochimaru.
Naruto was puzzled. What was this man trying to gain?
"Next...what do you think of its leaders, the government for which you fight for?"
"I didn't pay attention in class, so I probably wouldn't know much about the government of Konoha."
Orochimaru chuckled.
"They are a very corrupt peoples...old men sitting in expensive lodgings throwing lives of soldiers around to fight their wars!" he said.
"I'm not seeing the point of this interrogation." Naruto said.
"An interrogation, is what you think this is?" Orochimaru asked quietly.
"It's not?"
"I am merely asking for your opinions on matters. I am not grilling it out of you." Orochimaru said.
This puzzled Naruto further.
"What do you think of the wars that Konoha has fought...including the one that it fought just before this one?" Orochimaru asked.
"The only war I am familiar with is this one and the one prior, so I can't say much on the subject." Naruto said.
"Then you know of the valley battle, the one that took place just on the valley you and your team of, ah, what do they call them?" Orochimaru asked.
"Operators." Naruto responded.
"...Your team of operators just took. Do you know what occurred on this battle?"
"Yes. I do." Naruto responded.
"Then you know of how many lives were lost over that pitiful valley, simply because the old men saw it as necessary that the valley be taken, ignoring all advice given to them, saying it was absolute that it be done their way. Many lives were wasted fighting their war, and they lived in contentment, looking down on the soldiers with contempt. Hatred. Seeing our lives as ones to be thrown around to gain what they desired." Orochimaru said.
"...Excuse me, but "our lives"? What would you know of this?" asked Naruto.
Orochimaru sat quiet for a second.
"...Because I was once a Konoha soldier, who fought in that very valley."
Naruto had to take a second to process all of this. It was shocking.
"Then why do you fight against your homeland now?"
"I wish to retake it from the foolish men that lead it, to establish a new government, one that cares about its peoples and listens to the masses, one that makes wise military decisions, one that knows how successfully develop relations with other countries, one that doesn't doesn't prepare for war like a shrewd fox and for peace like retarded pygmies! One that knows how to effectively rule a country!" Orochimaru responded.
"I can see with you eye to eye on that one. But your attempts to do this still take lives, still consume Konoha with fire, still fill many of its residents with sorrow. Isn't it enough that it finished the previous war with peace talks and treaties and not destruction? It can rebuild itself."
"Yes...they do." said Orochimaru. "But, in the end, a new Konoha shall be born, as with its corrupt government, I doubt there will be much rebuilding..."
Naruto looked at him for a second. This Orochimaru man might have not been as brutish as he was made out to be, but still. Konoha was his country.
"...You want me to join you in your quest to take Konoha?" Naruto asked.
"Yes...I was getting to that."
"Sorry, but the current Konoha, the one I have always lived in, shall remain my home, and shall remain the place that I am a soldier to."
"...You have a brilliant mind, I can see that. A mind rife with potential. Why does such a mind fight for such a government?"
Naruto was silent.
"...You and your squad mates will be released. No harm to you people will be done. You can take one of the civilian trucks from this village and go." Orochimaru said.
"Just like that?" asked Naruto.
"Yes." Orochimaru responded.
A man came and removed the handcuffs. He walked Naruto out the building, where he was regrouped with his squad, and was then handed a truck.
Naruto and his squad set off into what was now a sunset, to go back to home, back to fight for Konoha.
"So...how was it?" asked Kiba.
"Interesting." said Naruto. "I'm going to sleep."
"Hey!" said Shikamaru. "How come you get to sleep and I hafta drive?"
Kiba laughed.
And so they rode off back to the base.