Please bear with me, the starting part of this chapter will be a bit expository. It's not very long.

CHAPTER 24

Three years ago, Danzo noticed something alarming.

His hideouts and ratlines in Lightning and Snow were going silent. The operatives stationed there vanished without a trace, the ratlines were caved in and plugged up, and all of the resources stockpiled in the hideouts were looted; money, documents, and everything in between.

There were four bases in Lightning and seven bases in Snow, and they were all snuffed out one after the other without so much as a shout. It was a big emergency because with the ROOT bases in those two countries gone, Lightning and Snow were blacked out from ROOTs awareness. ROOT operatives who wore disguises as public servants of the country were tracked down and violently mutilated, murdered in cold blood. Their bodies were left in the open in the position they had been killed in, made to look like a gang crime; some had their jaws bitten down on the sidewalk and their heads were stomped on, some wore cement shoes and were thrown off a cliff, some were victims of letter bombs and acid attacks.

There were no survivors. The crimes were equated to gang-related crimes.

The sensational news was pasted on newspapers and national curfews were called but no person was caught. A bounty of 100,000 ryo was posted for useful information but no one came forward. Anyone questioned didn't know or see anything; neighbours, coworkers, and pedestrians saw and said nothing.

Only news carried by word of mouth by travellers reached them, but always two or three days too late.

Chronologically, it all began with Kumo's sale of Hidden Chill to a mysterious, faceless buyer. There was no way to get information on the buyer and there was no way ROOT could effectively infiltrate Chill to find out the purpose of the purchase. As soon as the purchase was finalised, the roads leading to Chill were blocked. Only a few hundred people or so were allowed through, architects, builders, landscapers, and other professionals. They were taken into the thick blizzard and merciless snow storms on sledges pulled by Snow Wolves.

After the Chill Acquisition, as it was called in the Kumo Daily, homeless people in Lightning Country, destitute, street waifs, orphans, junkies, and petty criminals started disappearing from the street. It started small, with less than eight disappearances a week, and then later ramped up to twenty disappearances a day. Roughly three months after the disappearances, the vanished people would reappear, healthy and content, working jobs they would never have gotten in their previous state. For this one, a little digging informed ROOT that they had undergone rehabilitation by a benefactor.

The benefactor, some of them said, was The One from Chill.

He had lowered himself and picked them up from the pits they found themselves in, saving them from oblivion. He clothed them, fed them, found jobs for them, and helped provide for their families; they were utterly loyal to him.

As the homeless of Lightning Country were being taken away and reformed, the Copper Pot gang in Kumo was being killed and chased out. Copper Pot was an addictive substance that came in many forms. It could be smoked, inhaled, or eaten. It had a euphoric and pain-relieving effect that slowly killed brain cells, irreversibly eroding bits of neural pathways, and blackening the user's lungs, for those that smoked it.

It was a product ROOT introduced into Kumo's criminal underworld that kept the village docile.

Now, the gang was rounded up and systematically executed, and those that had the wherewithal to flee, ran like hell away from Kumo and eventually escaped Lightning. Anyone ROOT managed to capture and interrogate swore that their shadows wanted to kill them.

Sneakily, though, while the Copper Pot gang was being terminated, ROOTs moles in Lightning's government were being assassinated. One by one. That was also when the ROOT bases started going dark.

No one saw anything. No one heard anything. No leads were established. No suspects were arrested.

That was when everything went dark for ROOT, as it concerned Lightning. Then like a plague, the same happened to Snow; the homeless were rehoused, the destitute given a new life, gangs were either murdered in the most gruesome fashion or they were booted out of the country, and ROOT bases were collapsed with no survivors. Only someone with prior knowledge of where to look and who to look for could ever be able to trace every ROOT ratline and hideout, and even then, it needed a coordinated effort from hundreds of hands at a time.

It was all too coincidental that all of that was happening the years after Naruto fled ROOT.

So, the moment Snow became a blind spot for ROOT, Danzo knew what to do; the progression of conquest was painfully obvious, with the northern region being slowly overcome by the mysterious group, meaning that the next place was Iron Country.

CORE set a trap in the Kaska valley and the caravan passing through sprang it.

The bandits in the valley, including the bandit One killed, were Sandy's sleeper agents.

The Uchiha boy had the Mangekyo ability to plant a dormant seed inside the minds of people, letting them live their lives as normal while unconsciously gathering information to be reported back to him later. The ocular jutsu didn't change any memory, but rather it implanted a new instinct in the target; subconsciously gathering information. Once the seed in their mind bloomed, and this was irreversible, they would spill everything they had seen to Sandy and die after their report was complete.

While healing from his Atonement, Sandy was immediately alerted when one of his sleeper agents was snuffed out. To complete his Atonement to his master for failing the mission to capture Naruto, Sandy was sent out to investigate, along with two other siblings…

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It was a miracle that Sandy could still walk. His Atonement had shattered his elbows and kneecaps, and it had torn muscle. Surgery, one week of physical therapy and pain medication were barely enough to keep him upright, but he fought through the pain. His CORE training had been worse. Sandy could have gone to Five-Hundred's Green House and be healed of all his pains but his master had forbidden it; pain and remorse were important parts of the Atonement ritual. There would be no point in undergoing such extreme pain if he was going to be healed afterwards.

He consoled himself that either he would get used to the pain throbbing in his joints or the pain would subside in a few months. Sandy's master had promised to allow him into Five-Hundred's Green House if he did well on the mission, so maybe Sandy didn't have to put up with the bothersome aching for much longer.

Fortunately, he didn't have any combat function on this mission, or else he would risk making his wounds worse.

The Uchiha yawned into his hand, smacking his lips sleepily. The cloak he wore to cover his body rustled in the breeze, though it didn't push his hood off his head.

His Mangekyo stared out from the darkness of his hood, half-lidded and bored. He clapped his palms together and twisted his fingers into the Ram seal. A cloud of white miasma ebbed from his cloak and hung over the village like an oppressive weight, driving the people further and further into their dreams; passively, his ability to make people sleep in his presence couldn't be resisted by anyone other than his siblings, but when he actively wanted anyone to sleep, there was little resistance they could make to prevent this.

"Silent Night," he murmured and the cloud draped over the village, threading through the environment list a dense fog.

The wind didn't blow. It couldn't blow. It was as if the Uchiha's genjutsu had sapped the strength out of nature itself, lulling it to sleep by drowning it in a heavy fog. Eventually, the fog became thick enough to prevent the rays of the moon from pushing through.

It was a real struggle for Sandy to not fall asleep, even though he was entirely immune to the illusion.

Sam and Ninety-Eight were at the village's entrance sign, a safe distance from Sandy's influence. They were on the road, tireless and wide-eyed for any changes, and waited. Sam wore an emotionless mask, his piercing eyes staring seriously ahead into the quiet night as he kept one hand on the sword on his hip, and Ninety-Eight was similarly stoic.

CORE Operative Ninety-Eight, nicknamed Razor by her siblings.

She was a pale girl with closely cropped strawberry blonde hair that looked to have been cut with blunt hair clippers, and dull yellow, compound eyes. Despite her jagged hair looking unkempt, at closer inspection, her hair was healthy and clean, and a dab of dark makeup shadowed under her pupilless eyes, adding some definition to her pallid face. Easily mistaken for a boy and treated accordingly by her male siblings, even with the faint makeup on her face, she strictly objected to wearing lip gloss like her sister. She didn't bother with disguising herself in a typical samurai attire though. Instead, she wore a white, long-sleeved half-shirt and a black fishnet shirt underneath, proudly showing her well-defined abdomen. She also wore a pair of tight black shinobi pants.

She wasn't wearing any shoes. They only got in the way.

Strangely, there was no snow where she stood. Even around her, heat faintly ebbed from her form, melting snow and evaporating water before it could glance off her pale skin.

Sam cast a wary look at his sister but quickly twitched his head away when she darted an irritated look at him. The serious façade on his face was replaced by an uncomfortable smile, stepping away from his sister; she had been vocal about not wanting to participate in this particular mission. She hated Nine-Nine with every fibre of her being.

She didn't want to see him. She didn't want to be near him. He was dead to her.

She had been the most vocal in blacklisting her brother from their family.

If they had been allowed to bring her twin—Four-Hundred-and-Fifteen—along for the mission, Razor would have been a bit more bearable, but Four-Fifteen was occupied in Kiri. Either way, Ninety-Eight's skillset made her perfect for this mission.

She, however, couldn't promise their master that she could bring Nine-Nine back alive.

Sam fidgeted on the spot, tapping his thumb on the butt of his katana; he didn't know if he could leap in in time to keep Razor from peeling Nine-Nine's ribs apart and ripping his heart from his chest. He had seen her do something like that to a ROOT operative who had compared her intelligence with Nine-Nine's, crushing his heart in her hand and turning it into dust.

It had been a gruesome nanosecond.

Back in the village, when Sandy was satisfied that his illusion was in full effect, he pulled out a two-way radio from the folds of his cloak—retrieved from One, who lay asleep at Sandy's feet—and coughed into his other fist.

He fiddled with the radio for a moment, turning it over and looking at it with his red eyes, before he clicked his thumb on a button and held it to his mouth. He opened his mouth and said, "Brother." He inhaled silently through his nose and continued in a firm tone, "I know you're there."

He didn't expect a verbal reply, since Nine-Nine couldn't speak, but he was briefly surprised when he heard a faint click on the other end. A toneless voice answered him, "Yes."

Sandy licked his bottom lip. He didn't doubt that his brother would give One a radio that connected directly to him, but speaking to this unknown third part wasn't something he anticipated. He was fully alert now. "It seems this village is important to you."

There was a short hum of static on the other line, punctuated by silence and stillness, until the person responded, "Very." The person sounded young. Female. Impatient. "I take it One is—"

"No." he glanced down at his sister, curled up in a ball on the hard ground. "She's alive."

The short silence after that single word was loaded. The person then responded, her smile filtered into her airy voice, "That's too bad."

"The other people here though, not for long."

The person's smile vanished. "That's also too bad…"

"I want my brother here. In this village. Unarmed and alone." Sandy looked around, casually. "The longer the people sleep, the deeper they sleep. They won't wake up. He better start coming." Sandy's words were laced with malice, glaring at the radio in his hand; a side effect of his actively using his ability was akin to the target falling into a bottomless pit. The longer they fell, the deeper they reached that endless hole and the harder it would be to climb out. Far stronger people were trapped in comas because Sandy doused the area with sleeping gas for too long. More times than he wanted to admit, he had to be shaken awake and yelled at by his sister, One, for keeping his ability active for more than seven hours.

He looked at his sister, shivering on the floor, also falling further into an abyssal sleep. His eyes steeled over and he hardened his resolve.

She's compromised, he reminded himself. She'll forgive me.

The siblings could never stay mad at each other, but even that made him pause. Even if, somehow, Nine-Nine returned home to his family, Sandy wasn't sure he could forgive him. He wasn't sure their family would forgive him.

"Master told me about you…Sandy. He has many stories about all of you." The girl's empty words brought Sandy back from his descending thoughts.

"Seems to me that you don't understand what's happening." Sandy was losing his patience.

"Oh, we understand. I just want you to understand that even though my master loves all of you very much…he will do what needs to be done." The person then smiled audibly. "He wants me to tell you that you won't be so lucky this time."

"Bite me." And the Uchiha dropped the radio, stomping down on it and shattering it into pieces of plastic and metal.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

At that moment

Little Whirlpool (Izu-Ken village)

Lio switched off her radio and tossed it onto her bed. A family in the village had been kind enough to allow them to sleep in their attic for the night before their journey to Kumo the next day. A lightbulb hung from the ceiling, illuminating the attic in golden orange light.

Naruto was sitting on his camp bed, located under the window. He sat with his face in his hands, managing to keep his breathing in check.

His friend looked at him, turning a little to hide her pleased smirk. Still, she couldn't help herself. She said, "I told you so." Naruto didn't answer, only that his body tensed for a short moment. His hands slid down from his face and his byakugan stared vacantly at the neon pink eyes glowering at him from the other end of the room. Lio jabbed her thumb into her chest. "I told you so."

If One had not been with the caravan and they had sent their usual guards, ROOT would be none the wiser of their organisation's movements.

Lio didn't bother with sugarcoating her words. She had a chip on her shoulder. There had been an unseen wall that separated them ever since Naruto had exhaled all of his frustrations on her at the Auction hideout. She hadn't expected him to let her carelessness slide but she didn't think he would reprimand her so severely.

"You've not been the same since One arrived. You've been brash and short-sighted." Her eyes glazed over with her fiery emotions. She started shouting, throwing privacy to the wind as she lost her usual composure. "I've asked you over and over and over again to let me in, but no." She held her hands to her chest and stepped to him. Her frankness was like icicles stabbing into Naruto's chest and he flinched. "I opened myself to you, completely. I've hidden nothing from you, but you won't do the same for me." Naruto freely told her about his siblings but he didn't tell her much when it came to him. Meanwhile, she told him about where she came from and the hell she had been through in Hidden Star; she had been alone and suffering, soaking in the depths of insanity derived from pain. Then he came for her, like a distorted fallen angel. He gave her freedom to rain down retribution on her village. He then let her follow him when she had nowhere to go. On the other hand, she didn't so much as know why he left Konoha. She knew nothing about him but she blindly followed. The girl gnashed her teeth and spat, "Am I not good enough?"

The boy covered his face again and shook his head. Her outrage broke the quietness of the house, though no one dared interrupt them. Lio's lips opened and closed, visibly searching for how to tell her what got under her skin. The heavy silence in the attic made them notice the faint hum of electricity in the lightbulb and the low howl of wind outside the window.

Her words were angry but sincere. "I've been on your side since day one because I've liked you from the first day I saw you." The boy tensed again, bringing his hands down from his face and looking at his close friend. She was panting, her teeth grit and clenching her chest with her right fist as if the admission was physically hurting her. "I'm not asking you to like me back, Naruto. I can never ask that." Everything started pouring out from her and Naruto helplessly watched. It had started with his rash decision to keep his sister so close to the heart of their operations but it evolved into something more. "I just want you to see that I'm always on your side." A few tears trickled from her eyes, splashing on the floor. Her face reddened with how emotional she was getting. "Always."

It was the promise Naruto made to Kakashi years ago, first when they were living with their father and then when they were recruited into ROOT. But this promise was different.

This promise wasn't between brothers. It was deeper. Impossibly so.

In that moment, Naruto experienced the endless depths of Lio's feelings for him.

The boy sobbed, signing, "I don't know what to do, Lio." Even a blind man could see that Lio loved Naruto. The boy certainly knew of her affections, only that he couldn't bring himself to escape his training and open his heart; Danzo had tattooed distrust into Naruto's heart and any attempt to go against his programming strangled air out of his lungs. It was like the souls of those he had hurt were pulling him back, keeping him stuck in the past. He wanted so much to love her like she loved him, but he couldn't. He cried freely, looking at the image of a lost and desperate child. "What do you want me to do?"

His friend came to him and knelt in front of him, holding his face in her hands. "Trust me."

Naruto's face was a mess of tears and snot, reaching down and holding his friend's face. He tried to speak but nothing came from his mouth. Hesitation shrouded his mind and he blinked away the haze that blurred his vision. Lio's heart broke at his hesitation but she waited, holding onto hope with both of her hands. Finally, after a long pause filled with panicked trepidation, he mouthed, "I trust you."

It was like a load had lifted from his back and Naruto could finally breathe, even with his nose blocked with mucus. The chains on his soul were still squeezing the life out of him but he felt like there was a way out of his self-loathing, looking at Lio as she also cried. He gasped tearfully and shared his friend's watery smile, leaning in and placing his forehead against hers.

"Do you want to go with you?"

Naruto nodded, closing his eyes.

"Then I'm going with you." It didn't matter that Sandy had specifically said that Naruto should come alone. Lio was going to be there. She said, "But this time, we need to do this right." She shook her head. "No prisoners."

Naruto swallowed and the hands cupping Lio's face tightened a little.

She had been opposed to One being dragged around with them from the first day. Her threat to keep his sister in line had been genuine, but aside from possibly compromising their organisation and thousands of people as a result, Lio was also against Naruto keeping One prisoner. Whether physically, like locking her in her room, or psychologically, by branding her with the caged bird seal. It was drastic and wicked, even for someone he loved.

Lio had been a prisoner once. It was something she could never wish on her worst enemy. She would rather kill them quickly than keep them prisoner.

Naruto sighed. Lio closed her eyes and hummed at the scent of their dinner; cooked rabbit and pottage. He wilted and Lio, sensing his reluctance, opened her eyes and pursed her lips, an understanding look on her face. She waited for him to make up his mind.

"I…can't kill them," Naruto murmured soundlessly, sniffing. She read his lips and her lips curled up encouragingly.

"Who said anything about killing them?" she asked. "That's our last resort. Before that, we can do what you did with your other brother. Tenzo."

Naruto's eyes widened, lighting up at the memory.

Suddenly, he felt eager to go to Higashiyama. He knew what to do and Lio's demeanour brightened at the renewed vigour in her friend's posture.

There would be no more prisoners.

"He won't be alone," Naruto mouthed.

"The more the merrier." Lio smiled, and her expression made Naruto smile. He leaned back and stood up, cleaning his face with his shirt. The girl moved aside and rubbed her red face, sniffing. She willed her heart to stop hammering in her chest, fearing that the boy would hear it. Naruto got up and went to his travelling bag, changing into his combat clothes, while Lio turned around to give her friend his privacy. They were close but she didn't think she had the force of will to watch him undress, and vice versa.

He hurriedly wore a white short-sleeved shirt with white, grey shinobi pants, and light blue sandals, he fitted on a vest over his torso and a white ski mask on his head, not rolling it down to cover his face. He attached a kunai holster to his right calf and a shuriken pouch on his lower back, taking out a tanto from his bag and fixing that to his left hip. He checked the pockets of his vest and murmured under his voice, taking inventory of the tools sealed inside the pockets and nodding to himself. He didn't care for Sandy's threat to come unarmed either.

Next, he took out a finger-sized scroll from inside the lining of his bag and rolled it open.

He looked with grim eyes at the seal on the scroll; it was the Master Seal of One's Caged Bird seal. He tore the scroll and the seal deactivated, along with the chakra limiters and suppressors etched into the seal.

Somewhere inside One's subconscious, she stopped falling down the bottomless pit Sandy pushed her into. She started climbing out, and she wasn't happy.

Lastly, Naruto found two sealed letters. One from Minato Namikaze and the other from Tenzo. He had received the letters one night before. As it had been mailed to Kumo, the letter took a short while to reach him. He hadn't been eager to read either of them, afraid that Minato would reconsider their alliance or that Tenzo would turn his back on him. With a clearer mind, he carefully read both.

They reported great news.

Simply put, Minato was now Hokage and was inviting Naruo to his inauguration. Tenzo had stolen some documents on Naruto from the ROOT Archives, using the confusion of Orochimaru and Kakashi's escape to his advantage. Several copies of the documents, some badly damaged and most heavily redacted, were attached to Tenzo's report, and it made Naruto very happy to hear that Tenzo's faith in his master, Danzo, was shaken. Tenzo was looking deeper into Naruto's connection with Danzo.

Tenzo had also convinced their brother, Five-Hundred, to help him.

Five-Hundred was always a free thinker, so he didn't need much convincing to do something that went against their master, Danzo. That was why Tenzo went to him first. With Five-Hundred, Tenzo's rebellious thoughts and actions were safe.

This was probably the best news Naruto had received in the last three years, almost eclipsing the time he and his people systemically tracked and executed ROOT operatives in Lightning and Snow.

Meanwhile, Lio brought out the scroll that contained her wings, already feeling the nightmarish memories of her time as a lab rat bombard her mind, but she shook them away and took the plunge.

Authors note

Jutsu List

Sleeper Agent: this is a Mangekyo sharingan technique that only CORE Operative One-Hundred, or Sandy, can perform. This technique implants a chakra seed in the mind of the target that lays dormant until Sandy activates it, whereupon the seed germinates and blooms, taking over the mind of the target. While dormant, though, the target passively absorbs all information they encounter and stores it inside the seed, living their lives as they normally would have even if they didn't have the seed in their brain, and once bloomed, the information would willingly spill from their mouths to Sandy alone. This technique can only be used once per target, since after the seed blooms, the person dies from a severe blood clot in the brain. The technique requires chakra equivalent to making two shadow clones, and thus Sandy doesn't use it much.

Silent Night: This is another technique used by Sandy, albeit it isn't a special sharingan technique. This is a genjutsu. The jutsu utilises Sandy's mutation of producing an overabundance of Yin chakra and expels it from his system, forming a miasmic cloud that transforms into a thick mist that covers a one-mile radius. The effect of the jutsu is that everyone who inhales or touches the cloud is put into a deep, dreamless sleep, which gets deeper every second the person remains inside the cloud. Sandy is immune to the jutsu, and some of his siblings are also able to resist/negate the genjutsu, notably Naruto, Tenzo, One, and Five-Hundred, but only because they have too much chakra in their reserves to be overcome by Sandy's Yin release (Tenzo and One), their minds are too strong to succumb (Naruto), or their mutated Yang release negates Sandy's Yin release (Five-Hundred). Some people are trapped in comas because Sandy fell asleep in the immediate vicinity after casting the genjutsu.

Something that should be noted is that Sandy unconsciously expels Yin chakra from his body all the time, which his siblings have become immune to after years of exposure but it still puts anyone near him to sleep. However, this is a passive technique that Sandy is too lazy to suppress, and which would not result in permanent sleep from victims. Silent Night is when Sandy actively uses his Yin chakra to put people to sleep.

Done

What do you think of the story so far?

I hope my explanations weren't too confusing. Let me know your thoughts on the reviews, please.

I didn't know how to fit it in but, including Sleeper Agent, Sandy has two more Mangekyo techniques; Susanno and one other ability. You might see it in the next chapter ;)

The next chapter is going to be a hectic fight, so get ready.

See you when I see you.

Foy.