Naruto sighed as he flopped backwards onto his sleeping roll which he'd laid out after he'd changed his clothes and washed up a bit in order to catch a few hours of sack time before they left sometime after dawn and headed back to Saida where they weren't going to be getting a warm welcome upon their return thanks to a certain merchant whose kids had been the reason his team had been drugged and kidnapped and several of the Saida children had died in the first place. It had been a rather insane evening, and not one that he was likely to get over anytime soon.

He hadn't run a mission like that in...ever. He'd killed before as part of his job but, not like this. It wasn't just the killing that had made the mission so intense, though he had killed more people during this mission than he had in the entire two years he'd been a ninja, but the fact that he'd been going up against a horde of other ninja, knowing that he was going to be out-numbered and quite possibly outclassed.

When they had gotten to the compound, it had rapidly become apparent that the leader of that little kidnapping for ransom ring that they were going up against had been setting up his own ninja village and manning it with the dregs of ninja society. While a large percentage of the ninja there were washouts, not all of them had been, and the group had been hard pressed to survive because numbers had been very firmly on the enemy's side. In fact, numbers had been so heavily in the enemy's favor that it was ridiculous.

The compound was larger than he had expected it to be based on the number of ninja who had been hired to storm it. It was roughly the size of a small town, and looked to have a population of at least a hundred.

As he was beginning to doubt that they could do this, a chilling mist rose from a small nearby pond, and kept rising until the area was blanketed with a near impenetrable fog.

That was their cue to start. They would run silent for as long as they could.

They ran from house to house, killing every adult they found. He felt sick over the possibility that many of the adults here could have been innocent civilians who'd been drawn here by false promises but, he couldn't take the chance that, in sparing one of the people in these houses, he would be leaving behind a ninja who could then turn around and stab him or one of his teammates in the back...

It had all been his least favorite kind of fighting as well. He hated straight-up fighting in areas where he hadn't gotten a chance to set up traps beforehand, and the enemy had an intimate familiarity with the terrain and every opportunity to do so.

The first clue that anyone had that they were there had been when either Gozu or Meizu - he had a hard time remembering which of the two was which - had set off a basic trap. An instant after the explosion, the compound burst into frantic activity like a kicked-over anthill.

Everything got blurred and jumbled after that. One second he was sinking his kunai into the gut of a man who had probably never risen above the rank of Genin before he'd washed out of his village's ninja forces. The next, he was slashing the throat of a man who was trying to release something into the air, probably more of that drug that had been used on Saida. After that, he was leaping off of a rooftop and struggling with a ninja who had a headband with the stricken through symbol of the village of Frost on it on the way down to the ground...

Mai had been the one who had reached the boss' luxurious, if a little small, home first, and had been the one to follow him into his escape tunnel before the door had shut and locked. By the time he had blown the lock, the bastard who had been surprised as hell to see them had been toying with Mai for a long while, taking out his frustration over the destruction of his criminal empire cum ninja village out on her. It had been that frustration that had been the only reason Mai had still been alive when they had reached her, and Kakashi had joined the fight, killing the bastard who had been killing Mai by inches.

The lock had been some sort of picture puzzle lock like the ones on the Instructors' lunchboxes at the Academy, but more complex. If he could figure out how to take the picture apart, he would be able to get into the tunnel Mai and the boss of this place had gone down like he had gotten into the Instructors' lunch boxes. There had to be a key to it that he was missing...

There!

Now if he could just figure out how to...

POP!

He and the others ran down the tunnel the instant the door opened. Mai was still trying to fight back despite the hopelessness of the situation she was in. They all ran to help. Kakashi got there first. As Kakashi fought, Renji raced over to his wife's side, and held her as she lost consciousness.

As he drifted off to sleep, he could hear the cries of the dying men, and the screams of the few children living in the compound who had woken up to find one or both of their parents dead.

He never wanted to take a mission like this again. Each time he killed, it felt as if a piece of him died with his opponent. Tonight, it felt like a large chunk of him had been removed. He could understand killing an enemy before they killed you, and he could understand killing to protect the village or something that was precious to you but, what he had done last night hadn't been the same. Not by a long shot.

As Naruto struggled to sleep and eventually fell into a nightmare, Sasuke stood in the ocean trying to scrub the blood from his skin and clothing, not caring if a long period in the salt water he was washing in damaged his skin which was already starting to burn, and almost wishing that one of the waves that crashed against him would roll over his head and drag him out to sea.

The mist had completely lifted by the time they had exited the boss' house with the boy that the missing-nin had been hired to retrieve. He had found the boy in an upstairs room when he had been helping clear the house while Naruto had been occupied with the lock to the boss' hidden escape tunnel, which could come out anywhere since they hadn't found the other end during their run through the compound. Without the mist to obscure them, the bodies practically stood out in the light of the three-quarter moon.

The sight of the bodies brought back memories that he had spent the last four years either trying to forget or to remember in greater detail as incentive to drive him further depending on what he was doing at the time. The thing was, this time, he had helped do it.

He had helped do it, and though he was mostly sickened and horrified by what he'd done, a small part of him had liked it...

Throughout the trip back, he couldn't get over the stench that came from the blood that had clung to his skin and clothing the way it had four years ago when he had run from body to body hoping and praying that one of his aunts, uncles, or cousins who had been strewn about the compound like garbage was alive. The instant they had reached their destination, he had run into the water, not caring about the risk of undertow dragging him from shore, and started scrubbing the blood off.

As he scrubbed, he wondered if he had gotten lost somewhere. He had to have to have even considered enjoying the killing he had done the way that He had enjoyed killing the clan. The person he had been before IT had happened would have been absolutely horrified by the thought of killing someone and throwing their body aside like trash, not felt the rising sense of satisfaction at a job well done that began to eat away at the horror he had felt.

As Kakashi replaced his hitai-ate he felt a sense of relief wash over him. He'd always hated going on the sort of unofficial missions which Konoha may need to disavow, mainly because they were the sort of mission that left you the most messed up afterward. He was worried about Sasuke's mental state. The boy had been exceedingly vicious in battle, and afterward...

Well, the boy had currently been in the water over an hour, and was still scrubbing his skin raw.

Sighing, he got up and waded out to where the boy was scrubbing the skin off his arm with a handful of sand. He grabbed the boy's arm, and forced him to drop the sand before he picked him up and carried him to shore. Shimura, who looked about twice as tired as he felt, was there waiting with a blanket. As soon as the boy was ashore, he and Shimura wrapped the boy in the blanket and carried him back into the cave.

The boy made several choking noises, and he got out of the way in case the kid vomited, as that was a common reaction after such a battle. It was apparent that shock had delayed his reactions so far, and the boy was finally beginning to process what he had done. When the boy failed to vomit, he got close enough to get a good look at the kid's face.

He was crying.

Sighing, he wrapped his arms around the boy and pulled him close, like he had done for a number of his ANBU teammates after similar missions. The boy needed someone to be there for him right now the way Minato-sensei had been there for him the day he'd lost his first two teammates, and the day he'd lost his father, and the day he'd lost Obito. He'd be that person right now. He had to be, since the child's sensei was too mentally and physically exhausted to deal with the situation right now, and was practically dead on his feet at the moment.

Sasuke wasn't nearly as tough as he tried to convince himself as well as everyone else he was. It was a pity that the boy had had to learn that the hard way this evening.

Itachi frowned slightly when he awoke to find the crow he'd left in Konoha in case the Council needed him for something coming in for a landing. The bird landed by his side as he sat up, and he took the note it had been carrying in its beak. The handwriting was Homura's, which was highly unusual because, every other time he'd been contacted, it had been either by the Hokage or Danzo. Not that he'd been contacted all that often over the last four years.

Curious, he broke the seal.

He almost acted in an uncharacteristic manner when he had read the contents of the note that the crow had brought him. His precious brother who was supposed to be safe in Konoha raking leaves, walking dogs, and training to kill him had been captured by missing-nin on a C-Rank gone wrong. Rather than sending someone out to rescue his brother, the Hokage had decided to sit back and wait for things to play out.

According to the letter, his brother's last known location had been somewhere outside the small border town of Saida, which he'd not heard of before since it was too small and remote to bother marking on a map.

Sighing because he hated violence, and because violence would undoubtedly be necessary in this situation, he got up and headed off towards his brother's last known location. Fortunately, he was in Southern Lightning Country near the border of Frost, so the journey wouldn't be as far as it would have been were he in say, the River Country base for instance.

"What's going on?" Kisame, who had been woken by his departure, asked when he finally caught up to him.

"Nothing." he replied. "Just some personal business I need to take care of."

"Will there be fighting?" Kisame asked almost eagerly.

"Yes." he replied, almost looking forward to the upcoming violence just this once.

"Count me in." Kisame said giving him a razor toothed grin.

"I'd rather not." he replied. He hadn't told Kisame about Sasuke yet, and considering how the other man felt about lies, there was no way of knowing how his partner would react to his lie of omission.

"You don't have a choice." Kisame replied, continuing to follow him.

Edited 10-6-12