Chapter 15 – How Sannin Laugh

When Sasuke woke up the next morning, Itachi wasn't beside him. He turned blearily in the sheets, looking around the dusty inn room that Shizune had loaned to them. Morning light filtered through dirty windowpanes and hit him harshly in the face.

His eyes sharpened as he realized that he was alone in the quiet room. Itachi had been sharing his futon only hours earlier, and now he wasn't there and Sasuke had a strong suspicion on where his brother had gone. With that, he slipped out of the thin blankets and pattered into the corridor outside, looking to one side, towards the room where Shizune had dumped her shishou the previous night. When he listened quietly, he could vaguely hear Itachi's low tones saying something within.

The next moment, there was a sudden thud. Sasuke watched wide-eyed as his brother came flying out of the room and crashed into the plaster wall.

"Nii-san?" He asked sharply. "What happened?" He ran over to help his brother stand, noting the way Itachi winced when he had to turn.

There was a loud yawn, and they both looked up to see Tsunade stepping out of the room, with dark bags under her eyes and her blond hair a haphazard mess on her head. She looked around, almost as if she didn't see them, and then turned sharply on bare feet to walk down the corridor to the inn's washrooms. Sasuke watched her leave with an incredulous look.

Did she just … punch aniki through a door? It was clear that his brother had probably taken the hit on purpose in some stupidly valiant display of dedication, but …

"I'm … ok," Itachi managed, slowly regaining his balance. "But I only asked her … was that too forward of me?"

From inside the same room, Shizune peered out with an apologetic look, "I'm so sorry! She's like that when she's hung-over, it's nothing to do with you. She probably didn't even hear what you said. Here, let me fix that." She stepped up beside Itachi and laid her hands on his stomach, slowly allowing green chakra to coat him.

"You're a medic?" He asked, swiveling his body when she was done. He nodded appreciatively at the lack of pain.

"I learnt from the best," she smiled. "Tsunade-sama is still the greatest medic in the Five Countries, even with her … problems. Sometimes shinobi from far away come to seek her for medical aid that no one else can cure."

"We've come to seek her for something she can cure," Sasuke gave her a dry look. "And she just punched my brother and walked away," he paused. "I hope she doesn't do that to everyone who approaches her."

Itachi frowned, "no, she is powerful. I can see that much. She was very precisely decreasing the power of that hit, even though she is clearly not thinking straight. And yesterday, she was able to see through Sasuke's genjutsu immediately."

They pondered that in the silent hallway after Shizune had apologized profusely once more and left to take care of her shishou. Sasuke was still completely unimpressed. This was the legendary Sannin? First, the dobe's perverted old man, and now a sake-addict? Whatever happened to the shinobi principle of discipline? Clearly, he had gotten the best deal out of the three of them.

"I think we should head back quickly," he said. "She had probably gone through a few lifestyle changes before becoming Hokage, because not even Konoha would stoop that much. You could be helping people survive the skirmishes, nii-san."

"No." His brother remained silent for a long time, simply staring down the long corridor. On either side, the other occupants of the hotel were just starting to wake, and doors were creaking open. When they had arrived the previous night, Tsunade had gone straight to collapse in her bed and her assistant had hastily dispatched them to her room before heading off.

Sasuke put together that Itachi had probably gone in the early morning to speak with her, at the unholy hours that his brother – socially inept as he was – somehow considered acceptable, "what do you mean, 'no'? There are people we could be saving instead of wasting time here."

"I'll talk to her. She's better than I hoped for. And more than that, she is determined," Itachi laid a hand on his shoulder and gave him a slightly lonesome smile that seemed to drain the youth from his face. "Let me deal with her, Sasuke. Go to the main room, I think they are serving a light breakfast to room-holders. Oka-san made sure you never went a day without at least two glasses of milk, because you need to be strong, right?" He faltered slightly in his words. "I meant to say, to make yourself strong physically. You may have sixteen years of experience, but …"

Itachi stopped there, mid-sentence. He trailed off for a few seconds, casting thoughtful glances at the peeling inn walls as if they guarded his answers behind their desolate plaster. Then he patted Sasuke's shoulder and walked off, towards where Tsunade and Shizune had gone.

Otouto, Sasuke reminded himself, feeling a certain lingering strand of awareness break down into tears once again in his mind. It had been doing that a lot, and he suspected that it was close to breaking. But that was fine, because that seven-year-old boy was going to be the sacrifice that would make everything right again. All he had to do was keep reminding himself that …

I have to be his otouto again.

"Oi! Naruto!"

When he woke for the second time, he saw stone in front of his eyes. His face was pressed to a cold floor, and there were small hands pulling at the back of his shirt. His own hands were still tied behind his back, but Naruto made a valiant effort to sit up, feeling a strange sleepiness drain out of his mind. He looked around blearily.

Behind him was Ino, and her pretty face was pale in the faint light that filtered in through the single, barred window. He managed to rub his eyes on his shoulder and wake himself up. "I-Ino-chan?"

"Yeah," she hissed quietly. "Do you remember what happened?" Her blond hair hung limply around her face, and the effects of hours of genjutsu made her blue eyes look huge and sunken in their sockets. The bright green dress she wore was scuffed beyond measure.

His expression suddenly morphed into childish anger, "hey, I remember! This lady kidnapped me and used her weird Sasuke-eyes on me!"

Ino nodded hastily, and used her elbow to nudge them into an easier position where they were both sitting with their backs against the wall. "We're in one of the Uchiha holding cells," she whispered. "This is where they put the civilian criminals. According to otou-san's maps, this building is at the very back of the compound, near the forests." She strained her neck upwards to glance out the barred window. "And it looks like midday. We've been under her genjutsu-thing for hours."

Naruto flailed around vigorously, growling when his hands wouldn't disconnect from the metal clasps. They were stretched painfully behind his back and they dug into the wall.

"Stop that, there's a better way," she hissed. "Watch me." With a slow deliberation, she took a deep breath and relaxed her muscles. Then she slowly slid her clasped hands down over her thighs. Without hesitance, she flipped onto her back and stuck her legs in the air, managing to get her bound hands all the way down to the back of her knees while revealing a pair of candy-pink underwear.

Naruto reddened slightly. "Ino-chan, what are you doing!?" He paused in his motion to watch as her hands continued the slow decent down her calves.

"This is something the older students learn in their kunoichi classes, as part of infiltration-stuff," she explained. She was almost touching her ankles. Her intent was clear; to get her hands in front of her where they would be more useful.

He stared at her confusedly, "I thought they just learned how to arrange flowers and do the boring stuff that the civilian girls are trained in."

"I already know how to arrange flowers, and it's far more useful than people will ever think," she huffed. "But this comes in handy. You won't be able to do it because you're not flexible enough." Finally, she was able to slip her handcuffed arms all the way across the pads of her feet, and held them successfully out in front. "See? Better."

Naruto stared mournfully and felt the slight, throbbing pain of his arm muscles still being stretched back with the thick cuffs, "you think you can do that to me, Ino-chan?"

"No, probably not," she said matter-of-factly. "You eat too much ramen, and the cuffs are too wide for you to try. Not even Forehead could manage this," she tilted her head to one side. "Though maybe Sasuke-kun could do it. He's got really nice bone structure…"

Suddenly, her eyes snapped back into focus, and she gave him a considering look. "We have to find a way to inform my father."

"Huh? Why him?"

"Because," she stressed, "he's Konoha's head of intelligence. He can get us out of here."

Naruto's face scrunched up with his frown, "I thought you said we got kidnapped to get to him?"

Ino leaned back with a sigh, glaring out at the pale clouds beyond the lone window. She reached up with her still-bound hands to finger-comb her hair out of her face. After a while, she turned back with a pensive look. "Actually … their goal was to kidnap you, Naruto."

"Huh? That doesn't make sense, the adults don't usually like me," he tilted his head to one side, his eyebrows furrowed in all the childish confusion he could muster. Now that he thought of it … why was Ino-chan not being mean to him anymore? The look wasn't usually in the other kid's eyes to the same extent that it was in the grown-ups, but even the kids had hints of it that they'd learned to copy from their parents. But she was merely giving him an annoyed glare, just in the same way Sasuke looked at him. It was a different type of dislike, one that he could handle. One that he kind of hoped for, even.

Ino drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, cuffed hands hanging of her knee. "So you didn't know about it either. I bet no one except the Hokage knows the whole truth. That's probably why he's so nice to you when he comes by the academy. Hokage-sama was probably keeping it a secret from the Uchiha-people."

"Secret, what secret?" He shuffled closer, sitting on his hands in a position that least strained them. "I don't know something?"

She gave him a baleful look, "you don't know lots of things."

"Oi, I'm trying! Just tell me, ok? What did you figure out, Ino-chan?"

Ino's eyebrows were furrowed. "Something about you. Something that's probably pretty important to Konoha," she shook her head. "I can't believe the village was able to keep this hidden for so long." She turned to look directly at him. "Naruto, do you remember that thing that happened back when we were all born, the attack on Konoha?"

His face scrunched up as he tried to piece together things from history textbooks he'd barely been able to read. "… I think a lot of people died because of something around seven years ago … Yeah, that's what Iruka-sensei was blabbering on about for our last shinobi history test."

"Well, a lot of people did die," she huffed, slightly scandalized at his academic ineptitude. "It was because of this huge chakra monster called the Kyuubi. It's one of the nine bijuu."

"Huh? Bijuu?" He tilted his head to one side.

Ino rubbed at her forehead. "It's a chakra monster, ok? All I know is that it was really big and powerful, and it destroyed oka-san's flower shop. She told me that she had to rebuild it all over again after the attack, and that she had to reorder flowers from other villages outside of Konoha because there were no gardens left standing in the village."

"A chakra-monster that could destroy flower-shops," Naruto nodded in utter seriousness. "What about it, Ino-chan?"

"Well, Yondaime-sama was known to have sealed it away with some really awesome fuuinjutsu, but that Uchiha lady told me something different," she went on. "She told me that Yondaime-sama actually sealed it inside a person, making a Jinchuuriki. My otou-san told me about the Jinchuuriki once. Kumo has two of them."

Naruto was beginning to look more confused, so he backpedaled to prevent the information from crowding his seven-year-old brain. "So the super-awesome Yondaime Hokage put the chakra-monster into a person," he tried.

She nodded sharply. "And the Uchiha lady says that person is you. That's why she kidnapped us, Naruto. You have a fox-bijuu sealed inside you."

There was silence in the cell as Naruto considered this, a layered kind of quietness that merged in with the cold floor and the pale color of Ino's face. A type of cold dread rose up within him. He wasn't old enough to recognize the implications of the feeling, but he felt that it was there, lingering at the back of his mind, putting things – looks – together with slow deliberation.

"Hey, are you ok?" She looked slightly worried. "Don't worry, we'll get out of here and you can go back to flunking your tests like usual. Forehead's still out there after all, and she's pretty smart. She'll know who to contact to help us."

Naruto wasn't listening to her words, his mind was too busy whirring with thoughts. "That's … that's why," he mumbled under his breath. "That's why they say it."

She frowned, "say what?"

He glanced at her with wide blue eyes, "that's why the adults call me the 'demon-brat'."

For the first time in several decades, there was only one person in the Hokage's office.

Usually, there would be anbu in the room, guarding from every niche and looking down with masked eyes. Danzo had long sent them away to patrol the streets in search of Uchiha bases; now that the Sandaime had been declared missing, they obeyed him and the council.

He sat alone in the quiet office, in the chair before the Hokage's desk. Not in the Hokage's own chair – he hadn't yet earned that right for himself. For now, the chair before it would do. It was one of the only places he could expect to not be disturbed by the paper-pushers that were always milling about in the tower.

Danzo rolled out the scroll he had found in Hiruzen's private stores. The crinkling of paper echoed through the room as he laid it flat on the table, looking over its contents with curious eyes. It was unlikely that this one in particular would be of much help, but there were others. Hiruzen's personal library was extensive, and the answer had to be somewhere within. He had to find a way to fix it before it was too late.

After glancing through the entire scroll and determining it to be of no help, he thrust it away. He looked angrily at his right arm, which was unwrapped, lying prone over the Hokage's desk.

Three tenketsu points in which chakra flowed in mere, erratic bursts. Ten implanted Sharingan. Five closed eyes. A sixth that barely persisted, frozen in an insubstantial place between existence and blindness. With slow deliberation, he ran his left hand over the arm, feeling the pulses of the strange deadness running though its veins.

He was too preoccupied to hear the creak of the door opening. When he did turn, it was to see the startled face of Mitokada Homura in the doorway of the Hokage's office. He had one hand braced against the doorframe.

For a while, there was silence. There were no anbu inside the office, it was true. There were, however, five root agents out in the hallway, with marked tongues and rigid backs pressed against the ceiling.

Homura's eyes ran over Danzo's exposed arm, noting the swirl of red irises. He took a step back. "Danzo … what is this? Why do you have … on your arm? ..."

Danzo stood from the table, slowly. Deliberatively. He took his time in rolling up the sealing scroll and mulling over possibilities. But ultimately, there was no other choice, and there were only three root operatives outside. Homura had been a long and dedicated friend, but his time had come.

"Danzo," Homura's eyes became firm, recovering from the surprise of the sight. "What is the meaning of this? Explain." He was a council member in his own right, and he had once boasted enough power to make A-rank jonin.

Unfortunately, the mixture of age and obsolescence had long taken its toll on jonin Mitokada Homura. Danzo walked steadily towards him, his unwrapped arm still by his side.

A single gesture of his other hand. A swift shunshin from the ceiling. A silent cry that reverberated through the empty corridor.

Another swift motion with his hand, and Homura's body would be taken care of.

Hours later, Sasuke sat calmly by the foot of Shizune's futon, sipping at the cup of milk that he had collected from the reception-room of the inn. He watched as the Slug Sannin rubbed her blond hair to a messy nest on her head and glared tiredly at Itachi, who was making a valiant effort to explain the situation in Konoha. The words seem to drift over her head. The only reason she stayed in place was that she needed to wait for Shizune and Tonton to come back from the market with their supplies.

There was something to be said about the way Senju Tsunade glared. Sasuke watched her eyes carefully, noting the faint glasslike look they had. She didn't glare cruelly, but it was obvious that she didn't underestimate his brother in the least. The moment he had spoken the word 'anbu', there had been a certain edge to her look, like she was employing the age-old, long-forgotten practice of deeming if he was a threat. It seemed to be a practice she used so easily that it had long become difficult for her to do it conscientiously.

Then again, not even an average shinobi could be expected to make the mistake of underestimating Itachi. His brother had a certain air around him that was suffocated in an unmistakable deadliness.

"-and by my suspicions, the first skirmishes would already have occurred," Itachi went on. "Do you understand Konoha's current position, Tsunade-sama? It is dire."

Silence persisted in the small room as she gave him a long, calculating look. "Kid, I'm a little preoccupied with taking care of my hangover."

Sasuke almost choked on his milk. He'd only just noticed the slight green glow of her hands as she rubbed her head. She'd been healing herself all along? He watched as the thirteen-year-old-ness came flooding back into his brother's face.

"You … you did not hear me, Tsunade-sama?" Itachi asked, slightly mournful. His hair was placed back in its tie, but the long travel had taken its toll on his energy. The lines of his face were prominent in the daylight.

"Well, I recognized some words here and there. It's kind of hard to listen when there's a hammer banging on your skull," she drawled. But she lowered her hand from her head and there was a new clarity to her eyes. There was a hint of emotion there, on her face. Sasuke had to search for it, but it seemed to be present, though it was masked beneath layers of apathy.

Instead of seeming aggravated, he had a newly hopeful look. "So does this mean you can listen to me, now that you've succeeded in using your Shousen on yourself to heal your pain?"

She shrugged, looking like she wanted nothing better than to throw him out the window. But Shizune hadn't come back yet with their supplies, and until then she couldn't leave. Violence towards minors would probably get her kicked out.

Sasuke groaned inwardly as his brother started over from the beginning.

When Itachi's calm voice filled the room once again, he sighed and took another gulp of his milk, watching them curiously. After hours of sleep, she looked slightly more human and her face had settled naturally into its faked youth, along with her renewed chakra. It even had a slight glow to it, and the strange jewel resting around her neck managed to perfectly compliment the brightness of her hair. So this was Senju Tsunade, the Slug Sannin, the greatest medic-nin since the era of the Shodai. This was the person who had once stood against Hanzo the Salamander, who had been granted a title that many shinobi could only dream of grasping.

This was a person who was known to have reached the exalted heights of a kage.

She was pitiful, Sasuke found no other way to say it. It was clear that she had power, there was no way to debate that. But given the stink of sake and threat of debt that followed her around like an ever-present cloud, she was in no condition to use that power wisely.

In her youth, she had been Konoha's prodigy, just like Sasuke had once been in his own future. Orochimaru had told him stories of how people had seen the cheerful young girl as an embodiment of the Shodai, horrible luck at gambling included. But she had risen high into Konoha's ranks, labeled as a prodigy from the moment she had graduated the academy at the age of six. But she had been sheltered, and sometimes prodigies were only impressive in their youth. Someone like her, who had no discipline, no determination, no goal, couldn't possible fill the role of Hokage.

But even at this time, Orochimaru had been after her. If anything, Sasuke knew that Orochimaru always had reasons for what he did. If he had been so desperate for her power, then there was something…

And there was the way nii-san looked at her, like fate had presented her to him on a golden platter as the solution to all his problems. Sasuke frowned as he watched his brother speak earnestly about the state of their village, explaining everything in a detailed, anbu-style report just like he had once reported to Sandaime-sama. He went over all he knew of the coup's origins, every suspicion he'd gleaned months before it had started. Then he explained the most recent events. Itachi didn't hesitate to tell her the complete truth behind oka-san's death, and the only expression Tsunade showed was a slight, disbelieving frown when Madara's name was mentioned.

In a way, she reminded him of Naruto. A mature version of Naruto who had lost all sense of conviction, like the Naruto he had once left behind unconscious at the Valley of the End: an unfair natural potential that had been long crushed under the feet of circumstance. This person had done it to herself and didn't even have anyone else to blame for it.

His brother's explanation was incredibly thorough. He was speaking to her as if she was already his Hokage. Sasuke narrowed his eyes as he watched. What did Orochimaru and Itachi see in her that he didn't?

"Stop," Tsunade interrupted him flatly as Itachi reached the part where he had taken Sasuke and left. "I get it. Konoha's in trouble," she glared tiredly. "Nice to know, thanks for informing me, you can go now."

Itachi shook his head, "I am here to bring you back, Tsunade-sama."

Sasuke sighed and gulped down the rest of his milk.

She raised an eyebrow, "why the hell do you need me? Just leave it to Hiruzen-sensei. I've no affiliation with that village anymore."

"Sandaime-sama's missing status forces us to assume him to be dead," Itachi replied. He looked at her in earnest, hands resting firmly on his knees. "We wish you to succeed him and become our Hokage."

For a while, the only sound in the room was Senju Tsunade's rough laughter.