“Your orders.”

Sasuke glanced down at the sealed scroll being held towards him in gloved hands. The cover of his mask was especially useful in these situations, where it allowed him to surreptitiously scan things for threats with his Sharingan. Seeing nothing, he took the orders and stored them on a small seal on his palm.

“Hokage-sama requests that I remind you that your orders are for your eyes only, not those of your team unless they specify otherwise.”

Sasuke narrowed his eyes at the masked shinobi, allowing the words to hang in the air and the tension to climb. But it was a pointless endeavour. The other shinobi simply stared back, impassive and unreactive, like every other one of Danzou’s Root lapdogs.

It made Sasuke’s blood boil.

Being careful not to let that fact slip, he nodded, turned on his heel and set off across the village’s rooftops. The pale glow of star and moonlight smothered everything below in a veil of silver, and cool breeze whipped past his skin as chakra supplemented leaps carried him across the village at a pace he would have found exhausting two years ago.

He thought about the past often. No longer just days when the Uchiha clan still stood strong and proud, but now of the time before Danzou. A time where the streets below, even at this time, would have been bustling with activity instead of graveyard silent. A time where people went about their daily lives with smiles on their face, talking to their neighbours and helping each other.

A time where Sasuke could move from one side of the village to another without feeling the eyes of masked men tracking him every step of the way, ready to kill at a moment’s notice.

Of course, two years ago, he’d never noticed exactly what Konohagakure was to those that lived there. He’d never appreciated what they’d had, even before his clan had been brutally murdered by his own brother. As with many of the good things in Sasuke’s life, he’d never appreciated it until it had been stolen from him.

It had not taken many instances of people being dragged off of the streets in the middle of their days for people to spend as much time as possible in their homes or places of work. Nor had it taken many cases of doors being kicked in and folks dragged out of beds for the villagers to work out the consequences of an overheard comment about their venerable Hokage.

Danzou would say that crime rates had plummeted, and productivity had increased tenfold. That their shinobi had increased their mission completion ratio to levels unheard of before his coup. He would also say they were safer than ever, with their dangerous neighbours Sunagakure scoured from the map, and their mission-load added to our own.

Technically, none of those things were untrue. But neither was the fact that people were fleeing at a steady rate, regardless of how many arrests Dazou made, or how many traitors were executed for being caught. Nor was the increased fatality rate on missions as exhausted shinobi were pushed well past their limits, or that with Suna destroyed, the other villages had accelerated their militarization and begun seeking alliances to stand against Konoha.

For every step Danzou took to grow his and Konoha’s power, another crack appeared on its surface, held from breaking by fear of the man who stood at the helm.

Sasuke only hoped it shattered before Danzou plunged them all headlong into a war unlike any seen before.

He arrived at his deserted clan compound even more tense than when he’d last left it, and his pace didn’t relent until he arrived at his family home, slid the front door aside and stepped inside. He only felt the eyes of his observer leave his back when he closed the door behind him, and was finally able to let out a deep sigh, allowing the tension to bleed out of him.

He took the mask from his face, sealing it away, before rubbing tiredly at eyes now returned to black.

“Any word on Sai, Sasuke-kun?”

“No,” Sasuke said, as softly as he could manage, before raising his eyes to meet the concerned gaze of Sakura. “But he’s more than capable of looking after himself. I’m sure he’s fine.”

“Of course you’re right Sasuke-kun,” Sakura said, in an almost too-sweet voice. She stood half covered by shadow, her face bearing none of the joy or naivety held in her voice. She had her arms loosely crossed over the top of a sleeveless black undershirt. Arm length fingerless gloves stopped close to her bicep, leaving her crimson ANBU tattoo that matched his own visible.

By her waist, her left hand ran through a sequence of handsigns, a code that the pair created in order to communicate safely.

“Danzou sent him after Naruto and Jiraiya-sama, how can you say that with any certainty? I certainly wouldn’t be hesitating to kill anybody in a Root mask if I was them. They haven’t been so far, given how many have been sent after them and not made it back.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I have orders from Hokage-sama. I will let you know if you’re needed.”

“Neither is the sort to kill without reason. Besides, Naruto knows Sai, even if not very well. They have likely taken him prisoner, which is probably the best case scenario.”

Sakura nodded in understanding. “I’ll go and prepare my equipment just in case.”

“Sorry, I can’t help but worry. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost either of you, too.”

“You won’t. I promise.”

Sakura shot him a tremulous smile before leaving towards their supply room, and Sasuke allowed himself another sigh. That he was reduced to not even being able to speak freely within his own home used to infuriate him. Now he was just tired. Their mission was too important to compromise, and Sakura’s family situation made scrutiny on the pair of them even more intense than it would have been otherwise.

Your father leading a civilian revolt tended to have that effect.

Proceeding to his father’s office, a neatly organised room with a small, plain desk and chair, Sasuke used a lick of katon chakra to light the candles, and another to melt the wax seal on his latest orders beneath the flickering firelight. It took him a moment to decipher the code, even knowing the cipher as well as he did, but as full understanding of what he was being asked to do filled him, he felt a glimmer of excitement and hope fill him for the very first time in two years.

Uchiha Sasuke, Tonkubetsu Jonin

Mission Rank: S

Orders: You are to hereby bring the traitor Hatake Kakashi to justice, by any means necessary. Alive preferable, but not required.

URGENT PRIORITY: Retrieval of target’s stolen Sharingan eye to take precedence over every other concern, including capture of target.

Your team will leave at dawn.

A chance to be out of the village. To see Kakashi, and exchange intelligence. Perhaps, even, the chance to test his growth in the two years since the coup. His eyes brushed over the team that would be sent with him, and the smirk that had blossomed on his face fell away, and the small taste of hope and joy he’d first felt turned to ashes in his mouth.

----------------------------------------

Shikamaru wiped a week’s worth of sweat and grime from his eyes and squinted, fighting to keep the blazing sun from obscuring his vision too much. It had been nearly a fortnight since they’d accepted this most recent contract—a fairly tedious track and capture on some no-name Suna shinobi that had pissed off Iwa’s Daimyo.

Well, former Suna shinobi, at any rate. But what his own former village had done here two years ago was a can of worms far too troublesome to be opening here and now.

Of course, this whole affair was more troublesome than he really wanted to think about. When Asuma had first suggested bounty hunting, Shikamaru had been the one to persuade the others to throw themselves into it. It seemed the best way to keep moving, to ensure they were getting stronger. Ready.

After all, there was no way of knowing at what point the call would come. That Naruto was finally ready to make his move to take Konoha back, because there was no doubt he would do just that. He wasn’t the kind of guy that could just take what Danzou had done lying down. No, he was out there getting himself ready for a fight. Training with Jiraiya until he was strong enough to lead the way.

When that time came, Shikamaru had every intention of being there to fight with him.

So he and the rest of Team 10 had gone into hiding. First with the Ninja Guardians—Asuma’s old crew had harboured them, even trained them a little, until the Daimyo officially recognised Danzou as Hokage. Once that happened, they were officially traitors and missing nin, and the Guardians would have been obligated to attempt to capture them.

Asuma had proposed bounty hunting as a way of staying on the move and getting stronger at the same time. It seemed logical, and the four of them had still been so angry, it hadn’t taken much persuasion to get Ino and Chouji on board.

Beside him, Ino shifted. “This is taking longer than it should have.”

“No Chunin is catching Asuma-sensei off-guard. Just stick to the plan.”

“And if he isn’t alone?”

“Then great. We’ll be able to take out more of his network in one fell swoop. If Asuma runs into trouble, it’ll be loud enough that we’ll hear.”

Ino sighed, but Shikamaru felt her nod, regardless. “How much longer do you think we’ll be doing this Shika? It’s been two years, and Asuma is just as angry as he was then. We’re stuck not moving and I don’t like it.”

“Me either, but what else can we do? Asuma won’t stop, not anymore. And even if I felt comfortable leaving him in this state—which I don’t—we’ve nowhere and no-one else to go to. We need his training if we’re going to be ready.”

Chouji scoffed from his other side, and Shikamaru had to bite back a response far harsher than his best friend deserved. “Unless you have another suggestion in mind, Chouji?”

He shrugged. “I just can’t believe someone is still holding on to this fantasy of Naruto coming back and taking back the village. He’s gone and so is it, Shika. Even if he does come back, what exactly is he going to do? Naruto’s a great guy, but he would need an entire army to even start taking back the village. I say we stop waiting and start building our new lives as far away from Danzou as possible.”

Shikamaru pinched the bridge of his nose, but said nothing. A year ago, and it had been easy to argue patience and training. But it had been two years since the invasion. Two years with no word from any of their former comrades besides the hunter-nin Danzou sent after them.

Two years since he’d heard anything at all from Naruto.

Chouji hadn’t seen what he’d seen in Naruto, though. His terrifying growth since graduating, his iron-wrought willpower. He hadn’t felt what it was like, standing beside him against the odds. Shikamaru had. He knew, illogical as it was, that Naruto was returning. That he would fight to take back the village. And he knew, as insane as it sounded, that he would win.

All they had to do was wait and prepare.

Ino had built the beginnings of a connection with Naruto, she had seen or felt something in his mind and emotions that even she had trouble describing. That, together with her faith in Shikamaru’s judgement and Asuma’s strength was keeping her going. Chouji, for all his fortitude and kindness, didn’t have the same bedrock of belief to cling to. At first he’d been happy to take it on faith. But after two years of being hunted and hunting others, of blood and dirt and sleepless, frantic nights, he was quickly running out of faith.

Shikamaru didn’t blame him, how could he? They needed something to hold on to, and they needed it soon.