Please leave a comment or PM if you have any questions, suggestions, concerns, or just compliments. For the sake of this work, the elemental balance will go earth}lightning}water}fire}wind. Thanks to SmallFountainPen for betaing chapters 57-73. Thanks to SoaringJe for betaing chapters 116-164.
Kurenai wanted to die.
Sensei had said that she and Asahi needed to get their first kills in, given that they'd only had close calls so far and the chuunin exams were coming up.
That had made sense. They needed that experience before they had an international audience.
They'd been sent to clear out some cattle thieves in the southwest, thieves who had killed a child who had been in the way.
That had made sense. Child-killers always deserved to die.
Asuma and Asahi were partnered, with Asuma there to keep Asahi on track.
That had made sense. Asuma had handled his first kill well, and had managed to keep his head in the immediate fall-out—he'd be able to keep an eye on Asahi and keep fighting at the same time, but that might not be true if he was made to watch Kurenai, given past experience.
Kurenai was with Sensei.
That had made sense. Sensei was a master of killing people before they were aware, had actually spent the first chunk of her shinobi career doing just that, and she'd been a big help in helping Kurenai develop genjutsu skills to the point that she'd finally been able to start taking private lessons with actual genjutsu experts.
Everything, everything, had made sense.
And then the day had come, and Kurenai had wrapped the head of the cattle-thieves into a layered genjutsu (probably too much effort, but she hadn't wanted him to feel pain), and slit his neck.
And—
Kurenai agreed, totally, that she needed kill experience. Kurenai agreed, totally, that the cattle-thieves (more accurately, the child-murderers) should die.
And she still couldn't stop crying.
"Kurenai?"
"Go away!"
"…Do you actually want me to go away, or do you just want no one to see you?"
"…Can't both be true?"
Asahi sighed, and she felt him coming to a stop beside her. "You're making Asuma mope, you know, with how much you've screamed at him to go away." She felt him sitting beside her. She kept her eyes closed, but she could imagine his relaxed posture, his inviting countenance.
(There was a reason they were partially a diplomacy team. There was a reason they were going to the Spring Session. At least then Asuma would stop whining that Ibiki had been slotted to attend the Winter Session, at least until the continued worsening of the war meant no shinobi could be spared and his team skipped out on the session entirely.)
"I just… I'm not a very good shinobi, am I? To be so affected by the death of someone who deserved it?"
"Sensei said that plenty of shinobi reacted the way you did."
"Oh, sure." Kurenai sat up, finally, wiping away enough tears to look Asahi in the eye. "Do you know, I'm pretty sure I've been avoiding my first kill? I keep going back to our old missions—like that merchant caravan guarding mission, the one where Sensei had to jump in to save you? I saw the missing-nin, and I tried to use genjutsu, and then when he broke out of it, I just tried to use it again. If I had just thrown one stupid kunai—"
"Kurenai, you sounded the alarm, you gave me time to dodge out of the way so the missing-nin couldn't reach me when he snapped out of it, you noticed the stupid missing-nin even though it was my sector…"
"You don't blame me for nearly killing you?"
"I blame me for nearly killing me. I knew I was getting distracted and didn't refocus. You just picked up after me; and regardless of how many kunai you threw, that will always be true."
Kurenai tried to smile. "You really don't think less of me?"
"Did you think less of me when I missed the missing-nin?"
"No, we were only just learning how to caravan-guard."
"Then I don't blame you for learning how to kill."
Kurenai took a breath, feeling the soreness in her eyes and the congestion in her nose. They both must have been so red; she was not looking forward to the next time she saw a mirror. "Thanks. I think I needed to hear that. From you, I mean, not Sensei."
"Okay, great. Now can you go tell Asuma you're feeling better so that he stops dragging his feet and hanging his head?"
Kurenai huffed a laugh. "Yeah, I can do that."
She and Asahi both stood, turned to head back toward the main part of camp. "Oh, and Kurenai?"
"Yeah?"
"You may be less obvious about your crush than Asuma is, but that isn't saying much. Everyone but him already knows, so you may as well get a move on."
And now Kurenai had to deal with bright red cheeks too.
.
Minato did not look up when Taika Aoi entered, instead choosing to finish approving a stack of reports.
Aoi was smart enough to stand at attention, and in silence.
Minato let him wait.
Eventually, though, he completed the night's reports, and it was time to deal with some of the even less desirable aspects of his job.
"Taika Aoi. Jounin."
After a pause, Aoi nodded. "Hai."
"You were put in charge of a team of chuunin in the last months of the war, recently promoted chuunin. They, and you, were intended to skirt around the enemy during attacks, set fire to as many ships as possible."
"…Hai."
"Yours was one of ten such teams. Each were filled with recently promoted chuunin, as the task was deemed less deadly than outright combat, which would give the chuunin time to learn."
Aoi swallowed. "Hai."
"Did you know that your team had twice the average death rate of a ship-burning team during the time period you were leading them?"
Minato saw Aoi trying not to squirm, saw him trying to breathe normally. He was stressed, scared, and overwhelmed. Good. "I… did not know those exact numbers sir, no."
"But you did know that your team had a higher-than-normal death toll?"
"…hai." His voice was smaller now, not quite a whisper but clearly desperately wishing it could be.
"Well, the Survivability and Lethality Analysis Research Division noticed too. And they brought that information to me. So I went ahead and had a Yamanaka talk to your former team members, to people who worked in your vicinity, to people who had tents near you at camp." This was mostly true, actually, except that it had been multiple Yamanaka and some non-Yamanaka. But Minato wanted Aoi to believe that his Hokage thought his behavior merited those around him to be mind-scanned, and based on the tension in Aoi's shoulders he'd succeeded.
"Do you want to tell me what they found out? It would help if you were honest." And it would—it wouldn't stop the demotion, of course, wouldn't stop the limits put on what he could and could not do… but it would make those limits go away faster, give him routes to be promoted again.
Aoi remained silent.
The minutes ticked on. Minato did not mind; his wife had recently told him that she wanted kids sooner rather than later, and now that the war was over, he'd better get on it, so he simply sat and considered what seals would best work to allow the pregnancy and birth to happen as safely as possible, what he would have to modify, what Tsunade had already figured out.
Finally, Minato had to acknowledge that Aoi had been given his chance. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his desk. "Alright, I'll tell you instead. They found that you were reckless with the lives of your subordinates. You dismissed their reports of injuries, of depleted chakra. You ordered them into dangerous situations that you yourself never entered. You actually stayed back the majority of time, allowing your subordinates to do all the work despite knowing that you were expected to do just as much as they did, and lead them on top of that.
"You behaved callously towards them. You used slurs when privately talking to anyone who you believed visibly weren't Fire. You spoke to your female subordinates in such a manner, and requested such inappropriate things from them, that your team developed a system of finding a reason for other jounin to interrupt you whenever you were alone with one of your team's kunoichi.
"You are a disgusting man. You are an unfit leader. You are a poor excuse of a shinobi."
Minato waited, let the man realize exactly how badly he'd screwed up. And it was so, so badly. As it turned out, a number of the man's equals in rank had already been discussing what to do about his behavior, but decided to wait after the war because they didn't know if resources could be diverted to dealing with the issue.
It had been made very clear to them that such a thing needed to be reported immediately, and each Department Head had already promised to go over the same with all who reported to them.
The chuunin had been aware that other jounin knew, weren't stopping Aoi, and assumed any reports they made would go nowhere. Again, it had been made clear to them that that wasn't true, but Minato understood more easily why they hadn't bothered to try, risking retribution if they didn't succeed. They were all meeting with Sarutobi Biwako once a week, now. She'd ensure they understood what a good leader should do, what they should do when they led. She'd also agreed to teach a newly mandatory class in the Academy about that, about the reporting system and competent versus incompetent behavior in peers, subordinates, juniors, seniors, and superiors.
This should not have happened.
Minato was used to some amount of incompetency, of course; it was hard to control everything. But the deaths that could be put at Aoi's feet, the actions, things he'd felt comfortable to do, say…
"One month's solitary confinement," Minato said. "That will start your punishment. You are also being immediately demoted to genin, and will no longer be allowed to leave Konoha." Too high a risk of becoming a missing-nin, but Minato couldn't keep him locked up for more than a month without having to go the judicial route, and T&I made it clear that none of the man's subordinates wanted to go over what had happened to them in public. "You will never lead anybody again. You will not be allowed to retire when you wish, and must instead get the agreement of your superior that you are not a flight risk. You will no longer live on clan lands—"
"You can't decide that!" Aoi snapped. Somewhere along the line he'd gone from upset to angry, and Minato smiled at him.
"You're right, I can't. It's a good thing that your Clan Head agrees with me. To continue, your Clan Head has arranged for you to receive weekly tutoring to try to fix whatever isn't working in your brain, to stop whatever impulse you have to treat people the way you treated your subordinates. You will never be trusted again."
Minato sat, waited. Watched the tension in Aoi, the balled-up fists, the posture ready to leap forward and fight. If he did, he'd be killed on the spot. He wouldn't be the first to choose suicide. Slowly, though, he straightened. The anger left his body, the upset too. Only defeat was left. He bowed.
"Hai, Hokage. I accept my punishment."
Minato wondered if this really was Aoi's first step to personal growth, or if he was simply faking it. Time would tell. He made a gesture, and an Akimichi came through the door to lead Aoi to the T&I cells.
He really hated dealing with people like that, people who recklessly endangered others' lives. But it was something that needed to be done, and so he was going to ensure he did it right.
.
Sakura cleared her throat. "You do realize that my son will be competing in the next chuunin exams, right?"
Commander Nara rolled his eyes. "Yeah, but he can't even become a chuunin, so it's fine. Look, we're developing this reputation, right, for inventions and science and shit, and we need to make sure the chuunin exams reflect that; we need to make sure that our technical expertise is obvious. You were the one that suggested using the radios, and we just want to know what other ideas you have."
"I kind of have a lot of work—"
"Yeah, I know. But, like, delegate or whatever. The first international chuunin exams in years is important. This shit has to work, or else we're just going to fall back into constant war and then what's the point of the hidden villages?"
And the Commander, unlike Sakura, remembered all too well the years before the hidden villages, the Warring years.
(That was the difference between samurai and shinobi, really. When samurai got involved, wars tended to be far deadlier, and a hell of a lot shorter, especially because most samurai were involved in some way with agriculture. With shinobi, on the other hand, the death toll tended to be comparatively smaller, but there was no break, no off-season, just endless death that went on for generations.
(There was a reason the hidden villages had become so popular the second Konoha proved it could remain at peace for at least a year.)
Sakura rolled her eyes, then pulled forward the proposals. "I've already cleared my schedule, sent my duties to Hotaru. Kind of figured this was less a request and more a demand."
"Look at you, showing off your brilliance," the Nara snarked. After a moment, he gestured to one of the papers Sakura had splayed onto the table. "This is the most popular proposal for part one so far, but it has issues…"
.
It hadn't been a good day.
He'd known it wasn't going to be, known that he was only fooling himself, when he'd woken up, decided to try again—
Actually, it was probably longer than a day, now. Maybe three? Possibly four, but he tended to notice when he was up for five or more days straight.
Still, he certainly wasn't thinking right.
He just couldn't get the stupid eyes to work.
He knew—
He knew—
He could do it.
But it would have been so much more easy if he'd managed to stay hidden for a bit longer, gotten a few more Uchiha samples. Not given so many to Danzo, when he'd first started out.
(That was really the problem; Danzo had found it so easy, so straightforward to use the damned eyes—Orochimaru was certain, now, that the man had had some Uchiha blood in him; nothing else made sense.)
He could tell Obito's eyes were powerful, powerful beyond even the already-rare sharingan, but he hadn't managed to get them to work for him, yet.
It was only a matter of time.
(That was the problem, wasn't it, that he kept thinking it was only a matter of time? How much time, was the question. How much time.)
He tried—
He tried to take a step back, remind himself to get some sleep, but almost despite himself he was throwing a book across the room, then another, then another, then another.
By the time he was refocused, breathing deeply but otherwise unharmed.
He hated his rages.
He hadn't gotten them from the snakes, he knew that much, but he must've performed the brain surgery wrong, touched something he shouldn't have.
(When it had happened to his subjects, he'd assumed that that was just because they were bandits, homeless folk, other useless people. He should have guessed that the frequency of the emotional control issues meant something.)
He took a moment, let his breathing get back under control.
Then he left his base; he wouldn't sleep until he'd made at least some progress, and it was about time he sent another spy anyway.