Naruto : Struggle Of Childhood

Waiting

So, really, they didn't know what had happened.

"As a rule, no matter how safe you believe that you are, it is a poor idea to discuss matters like these in a public place," a calm voice said behind them.

All of them had stood up and braced themselves, Kimimaro already had a bone in his hands, then the man who had been sitting behind them slowly stood up and faced them.

He wasn't very tall, and his long black hair was tied into a long hanging pony tail. He had an almost pretty face, but two lines in the skin kept it from looking feminine. Actually, he did kind of look like someone...

The man calmly reached out, and poked Sasuke in the forehead with two fingers.

"Hello, Sasuke," he said.

"Aniki," Sasuke said.

The immediate aftermath of the three way battle was mostly concerned with figuring out who was dead, and who had defected. The problem was that a large portion of the Jounin, along with a healthy chunk of the old ANBU was gone and so things were slow going with the sudden drop in numbers. ROOT was more interested in dealing with its own wounded than anything else. They had never been all that interested in the city itself.

The civilians were, for the most part, left to try to find one another and bring their wounded to the hospital. There was some grumbling, but, at the moment, everyone was too shell-shocked for it to be anything that was close to an actual outcry.

Ibiki was, in addition to dealing with a ROOT shadow, working see who was still there, which was mostly going to the various districts to see about the clans, find who was still there, who had left, and which districts were now mostly abandoned.

The Uchiha were being very quiet. The news that one of their attackers was Uchiha Sasuke, son of the late Uchiha Fugaku had spread like wild fire, and the clan, which had a reputation for extreme loyalty to Konoha, wasn't used to people looking at them with suspicion. What was worse was that apparently Uchiha Itachi had been sighted and Uchiha Yumi had vanished and, from a testimony from Inuzuka Kiba, she was responsible for the death of Inuzuka Hana. The clan was close to the slight suspicion that

It had been viewed by all those years ago.

What had she thought she was going to accomplish?

Well, that wasn't his business. He had interrogations to do on those prisoners who were unlucky enough to be captured. There weren't many of those, and three of them were just civilians who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was impossible to contact Kinen, or even any Jiraiya's spies that were still in the city. His movements were being carefully watched by his new assistant, Neko. She was a good assistant, if all you counted was sheer efficiency, but it was clear from the way that she watched his every move that he was under some suspicion though not enough for the fact that he was useful to be forgotten.

He missed Anko already for some reason. It was too bad that she couldn't control herself and ran off with that teacher.

Well, with Suna starting to make peace negotiations with Konoha and Iwa showing signs of getting some of its strength back, things were looking a more like a stalemate than anything else. Possibly more because of the news that Konoha's attack had been completely unwarranted than anything else. Kumo was backing off, possibly to aid its ally, and right now, everyone was on edge.