She found Kakashi down the hall in another room. This one was a study, and had shelves full of books lining every wall. He was shuffling through papers on the desk that stood in the middle of the room. He glanced up as she entered.
"Start looking for intel on the operation. Gather as much as you can."
"Yes sir." Akira snapped. Kakashi paused what he was doing and looked up at her again. He still was not wearing his mask, so she could see the snarl on his face that hardened his jawline and furrowed his eyebrows.
"If you don't drop the attitude, I'll send you back to the leaf village right now. If you have a problem with your superiors, you can voice it to Lord Third. I will not have you jeopardizing the mission because you can't control your emotions."
Akira stood as still as a board, staring at Kakashi. He glared back at her, unwavering. After a moment of standstill, Akira dropped her eyes.
"My apologies, captain." She said in a low voice.
"Go search the other rooms."
"Yes captain." She turned and made her way out the door, careful to keep her posture in check. She didn't doubt his words. Part of her knew he was right, that she needed to get her emotions under control. Part of her didn't care.
Akira walked down the hall, opening every door she came across and giving the room a look over. There was nothing in them that had any significance, so she made her way back upstairs. She had seen another study on the third floor that had been connected to a bedroom she assumed belonged to the dead noble.
She stepped over the bodies in the hallway on the second floor, her sandals squelching on the blood soaked carpet. She jumped up the staircase that lead to the third floor in one leap and crossed the hall to the study. When she entered, she was greeted with a site that was similar to the one she had seen downstairs. The brick walls were lined with bookshelves full of books, and a table was in the middle of the room with four chairs around it. Papers and scrolls were spread out across it. There was another door at the other end of the study that lead into the bedroom.
Akira started rifling through the papers on the table, looking for any information related to the drug operation that they were running. She found some, but the majority of the information was regarding various businesses around town, their taxes and such. Nothing that was incredibly meaningful to her. She threw those away across the table, sending papers flying everywhere. She pulled an closed scroll toward herself and opened it.
She balled up her fists, glaring down at the scroll she had just unrolled. It detailed operations for the organization's secondary operation. The operation that their intel had briefly mentioned but had not focused on.
A human trafficking ring.
Akira's breath came out in shallow pants. She clenched her jaw so tight the muscles in her cheeks began to ache almost immediately.
She spun and threw her right fist into the brick wall behind her. A snap echoed around the room and pain flared in Akira's right hand, racing along the back of it and up her wrist. She was about to throw her fist into the wall again when she was stopped cold.
Kakashi had grabbed her wrist. Akira glared at the wall, a snarl twisting her lips back over her teeth. She panted, pain still rushing through her hand.
"Enough," he said quietly. He glanced at the scroll on the table. "That's enough, Akira."
"Yes captain." She said through her gritted teeth. She straightened upright, but Kakashi didn't let go of her wrist. He reached up and removed her mask. Akira immediately turned her head away from him, hiding her face. Hiding the tears that had started to crawl down her cheeks.
"Drop the 'captain' for now." Kakashi set her mask down on the table and gently grabbed Akira's chin with his free hand, forcing her to look up at him. He studied her face, staring deep into her eyes. "What is going on? I've never seen you snap like this. Talk to me."
Akira couldn't help the tears that continued to flow down her face. She pulled her chin from his grasp and looked back down at the ground. She pulled her wrist away too and turned away from him.
"I'm fine."
"Akira," Kakashi said in a warning tone, sending shivers down her back.
"Seek did this on purpose, didn't he?" She asked. It was a rhetorical question. They both knew the answer. "So you would have a chance to corner me."
Kakashi didn't respond.
"He gave us the task with the lowest stakes, and no time limit. The others will easily take care of the businesses, and he requested Goat to come along so they could find the girls being held captive. So they wouldn't need my help."
"Yes, he did."
"We didn't need two captains on this mission. He set me up."
"He's worried about you. And so am I."
"Are we even expected to return with the team?"
"They will come get us if we don't rendezvous with them in the morning."
Akira wiped the tears away, smearing blood from her sleeve across her face in the process. "I thought the mission was supposed to come first, and emotions didn't have a place on the battlefield."
Kakashi put his hand on her shoulder, and gently pulled on it. Akira turned her body so she was partially facing him. "I told you earlier. Protecting your friends comes before the mission."
"I don't need protection, Kakashi. I'm fine."
"I beg to differ."
Akira scoffed and raised her eyes to meet his. Her glare faded. She only saw concern in his eyes. He took her hand and raised it to show her. One of her knuckles was clearly broken.
"This is not fine. You can't tell me you're fine when I just watched you break your hand on a wall."
Akira raised her left hand over her right and began a medical jutsu. Green chakra glowed for a minute, allowing her to identify where the break was. She stopped to push her knuckle back into place, wincing at the pain. Then she started the jutsu again.
After a couple minutes of healing herself, she was able to flex her hand again without pain. She pulled it from Kakashi's.
"Why are you so determined to get me to talk?" She asked him, eyes on the ground.
"Because that's what friends do. They don't leave each other to drown in their own darkness. Like I said earlier. I'm returning the favor."
Akira sank to the ground, sitting down and leaning against the brick wall. She rested her forearms on bent knees and closed her eyes. She heard Kakashi kneel down next to her.
"It was my fault."
"What was your fault?" He asked.
"It was my fault they died. Sparrow and Bat. I got them killed."
Akira ran through the forest leaping from branch to branch, hot on the heels of the group of cloud ninja that had attacked the outpost. Sparrow and Bat were right behind her, the three of them having been tracking the cloud ninja for miles. They were finally gaining on them now.
"Fox, Bat and I will take the flanks. Continue on forward!" Sparrow said to her.
Akira nodded and put on a burst of speed. She could just see the enemy's backs up ahead now.
Sparrow and Bat split off, each of them going in different directions. They would cut them off before they reached the border.
Akira had been so focused on the enemy ninja, she didn't realize that they were running straight into a trap.
She hit a thin wire in the air, and lightning arched through it and her body, electrocuting her. Akira screamed and fell to the ground in a heap. The group of cloud ninja then suddenly changed course, and Akira was surrounded.
The lightning blast had temporarily blocked her chakra points in her arms and legs, rendering her completely defenseless. Leftover bolts of electricity periodically raced through her body, causing her to tense up and yell in pain. The trap had been extremely effective. And she had completely missed it.
A moment later, two more squirming bodies landed next to her. Bat and Sparrow had been tied up with rope and their hands were bound behind their backs. A thick rope had been wrapped around their bodies, pinning their arms to the side. They were shouting through the gags placed in their mouths, their masks gone.
The leader of the cloud ninja group walked up to Akira and yanked her mask off her face. He threw it across the clearing, and it skidded underneath a bush.
"Well, well, if it isn't the little Uzumaki," he growled. "Can't even sense a trap? Your skills must be the worst of your entire clan."
The cloud ninja laughed. Akira glared up at him. "Go to hell!" She spat.
The cloud ninja raised his foot and slammed it down against her head three times, hitting the side of her face, her ear, and her jaw. The cloud ninja laughed some more.
Then he crouched down next to her. "I bet I could earn a pretty penny for you." The man groped her chest, fondling her. "Though you are a little young. That's okay, some people like the young ones."
Akira fought every urge in her body to break his hand. The feeling was coming back into her arms and legs, as well as her chakra control. But not fully. She couldn't lash out yet.
A muffled scream of pain came from behind her, followed by laughter from the cloud ninjas. Bat had been kicked between the legs.
Akira started desperately funneling chakra into the ground below her as the leader stood from where he had been crouching next to her. He kicked her in the stomach, flipping her onto her other side so she was facing her teammates.
"I think we will have some fun with these two. But let's get you tied up first. No need to throw caution to the wind."
They tied her hands behind her back and her ankles together. Then they tied her up with the thick rope as well, so tightly that any time she made the slightest movement the rope would burn the bare skin of her upper arms.
But Akira's chakra control was quickly returning. She infused more and more chakra with the ground beneath her, and under all of the cloud shinobi. Then she unleashed her chakra, and the entire clearing became a pit of quicksand.
"Gah!"
A couple of the cloud ninja were able to leap away from the clearing, but the rest were stuck in the quicksand. But the ones that had gotten away had grabbed Bat and Sparrow in their escape.
"Kekkei genkai!" The leader spat. He was holding Sparrow by her hair. Dangling her off the branch. Tears were streaming out of her eyes from the pain of her scalp slowly being ripped from her skull, and she was yelling through the gag they had placed in her mouth and tied around the back of her head. Bat was being held similarly, but the shinobi holding him had his arm wrapped underneath Bat's jaw.
The quicksand lashed around the trapped cloud shinobi, and Akira used it to crush them, causing blood to rain down over the clearing.
The leader snarled and raised Sparrow higher.
"You'll pay for that, you insolent girl!"
He unsheathed a katana and swung it at Sparrow's neck.
"NO!" Akira screamed.
A spray of blood hit the ground at the same time Sparrow's body did. Akira stared in horror at her teammates head. Sparrow's eyes were still staring at Akira, fear widening them. The cloud leader grinned at the horrified look on her face.
"Kill the other one."
Bat started thrashing violently, trying to free himself from his restraints. But he couldn't do anything either. The ninja holding him decapitated him as well. His body hit the ground and started to sink into the quicksand.
The two cloud ninja threw her comrades' heads at her feet where she still sat against the tree. Akira couldn't take her eyes off of them. They rolled to a stop, facing her with the ghosts of fear and pain still etched onto their faces. Laughter echoed around her.
Akira hadn't told anybody the full story of what happened that day. Seek, Bear, and Juke had arrived a little bit later to a scene of carnage. They found their friends decapitated, their bodies mutilated beyond recognition, and a pond of blood that was inches deep at the center where Akira stood. It pooled up over her ankles, pieces of organs and skin floating around in it.
The cloud ninja had used Sparrow and Bat's bodies as target practice, and Akira couldn't do anything to stop them. She could only stare ahead at her friends' faces. Their petrified looks were burned into her minds eye now. She saw them in all of her dreams.
At some point, one of the cloud ninja had thought it would be funny to throw a kunai at the back of Bat's head. It sank in with a thunk and the momentum from the throw forced his head to roll onto his face and into the bottom of Akira's sandal. That was when she had lost it.
Akira had unleashed a chakra surge into the ground that was so powerful it ripped nearby trees out by the roots and sent them flying. The cloud ninja had been able to brace themselves, but just barely. A tendril of quicksand had cut Akira's restraints, and she stood, facing them with bloodlust pouring out of her chakra. Blue tendrils of chakra swirled at her feet, creating a tornado of dust.
The cloud ninja didn't even have time to run. Their screams echoed through the forest as Akira's quicksand ripped them limb from limb. The quicksand pulled their insides out through the holes created in their bodies by their missing limbs. Then she pulled their heads off.
There was so much blood on the ground, it looked like a pond of blood had been created. That was when Akira had realized the potential of her quicksand. And it was the day that two of her comrades died, practically by her hand. That had happened six months ago. It had been the start of her downward spiral through darkness that she had kept at bay for years.
It had only come out after the fact that the so-called cloud ninja were actually a group of rogue ninja from the hidden mist village trying to sow seeds of dissent between the cloud and the leaf.
Kakashi had listened quietly through the whole story. Akira couldn't bear to look him in the eyes. She didn't want to know if he blamed her. Not that it mattered anyway, she would never rid herself of her own blame. It was her fault they had died.
When she finished telling the story of what happened that day, Akira was crying. Tears were steadily making their way down her face, leaving tracks of clean skin amidst the blood.
She had told Seek, Bear, and Juke that they had been captured, that Sparrow and Bat were killed in the cross fire of the battle. She didn't tell them that they had been decapitated because she had made a grave mistake, and had underestimated the enemy. They had been distraught enough over the loss of their comrades. Though they never really looked at her the same way either.
"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Kakashi finally asked. Hurt was evident in his voice.
"I couldn't. I thought you would hate me. I never even told Seek the whole story. Though I'm sure they know. It wasn't hard to tell what had happened from the scene." Akira balled her hands into fists. "It was my fault they died. I was reckless, and it was my fault."
Kakashi was silent for a long time. Akira could sense his turmoiling emotions in the darkness of his chakra, but didn't try to discern them from each other. If they hadn't currently been on a mission, she would have retreated back into herself and cut off all connection to anyone else. But she had to keep her senses aware in case anyone came knocking.
Kakashi finally placed a hand on Akira's left one.
"It wasn't your fault, Akira. You shouldn't blame yourself for their deaths. You were trying to get them out of a bad situation to the best of your ability."
"It was my fault we ended up in the situation in the first place. I didn't sense the trap coming, I was too focused on tracking them. If only I had just–"
"No. Don't do that to yourself."
Akira looked up at Kakashi. His eyebrows were furrowed, but this time it was out of concern and not anger.
"Did you know Bat had a son?" She asked quietly. Kakashi didn't respond, but his shoulders did slump slightly. "I was there when his mom told him dad wasn't coming home. I felt awful, so I went myself to tell Bat and Sparrow's families that they were gone. That their loved one wasn't coming back. I thought screams on the battlefield were bad. But they are nothing compared to a child screaming for his father." She lowered her head and squeezed her eyes shut. Bat's son's scream echoed in her ears. It was another thing she heard in her nightmares now.
"If Sparrow and Bat's deaths were your fault, then Rin was mine."
"Rin was not your fault, Kakashi. You know that."
"I could've done a million things differently. I could've gotten to her faster, to prevent the mist from putting the three tails in her. I could've protected her better." He said. He squeezed his right hand into a fist. "But that doesn't change what happened. If I keep losing myself in the past, I can't protect the comrades I have now, and I can't protect the future."
Akira considered what he said. If only she had been stronger back then. Maybe she would have been able to protect Sparrow and Bat. Maybe they wouldn't have died. How was she supposed to move forward with that weighing her down?
She remembered Bat's son, staring up at her with wide eyes full of hope. Asking her if her daddy was home yet. And when they crumbled, when his mom said his dad wouldn't be coming home anymore. She remembered the funeral, the tears that had been shed. She herself had not cried, but the sky had cried for her. Akira had felt despair that day. She wanted to run away from the village and never come back. Never face the team she had destroyed.
But Naruto had kept her there. The kid wouldn't have anyone at all, not even a shadow to protect him if she left. So she had stayed.
In a way, Bat's son and Naruto represented a brighter future. But would she be able to do it? Would she be able to survive the darkness so that others could breathe light? That was what it meant to be in the ANBU. Was she really cut out for it?
"What if I can't protect the people I care about?" She asked Kakashi. "What do I do then?"
Kakashi's face tightened, grief stricken. He closed his eyes and lowered his chin. "You have to learn from your mistakes. And swear that the next time, you'll be stronger."
"What happens if I lose everyone?"
He reached up and took hold of her right hand with his right. He raised his eyes to look at her, and she was surprised at the determination she saw in them.
"You find someone else to protect. There will always be people that need you, Akira. Don't lose sight of what you fight for."
What did she fight for?
She fought for her friends. She fought for her family. She fought to bring a better future to the kids who didn't even know how to hold a shuriken yet. She fought for the future.
Akira nodded.
Kakashi stood and pulled Akira to her feet. Then he handed her her mask. She held it in both of her hands, staring at it. The red markings, the blood spatter.
"If you're going to be a demon, do it for the village. Not for revenge. Fight for the future. Fight because of the past, but not for it."
Fight because of the past, but not for it.
She raised her head to look up and Kakashi. She nodded.
He gave her a small smile. "Let's go help somebody else find a better future, yeah?"
The corner of her mouth lifted the slightest bit. "Yeah. Let's go."