After practice, they all held some reluctance because deep down, they didn't think Shino's insects would actually find something in the South. They each showered at the facility before meeting at the back entrance, nerves jittering and blood swishing in their ears. Akamaru stayed curled in the front of Kiba's jacket as they joined together in a tight circle, each of their arms draped across another's shoulder and the tops of their heads touching.
"On a scale of one to ten," Kiba started, his voice barely above an inaudible murmur. "How fucked are we?"
"Depends," Sakura whispered back, just as quiet. "We can turn back now and not dig ourselves a bigger hole or keep going and deal with the consequences later. I, for one, am willing to dive in head first into this mess. If you guys don't, I won't blame you." And she really wouldn't, because what they were doing was too big to be ignored. Now they knew Hiruzen held too much empathy in his heart to kill them or lock them away, but 'Fortitude' was nothing of the sort. If the Hokage wouldn't handle them, someone else would.
"So an eleven."
"Basically."
Shino's hold tightened. "We got into this as a team, we leave this incident a team. I will not back away from this now—not with everything we know and what strangers have done to keep us in this loop."
Kiba blew out a stream of troubled air, decided. He brought his right hand into the circle, fingers curled into his palm, and held it out far enough so it stayed in the middle. His fist was immediately met with Sakura's right and Shino's left.
What did it mean to seek answers for the sake of the people?
"The weak are meat, the strong eat," Sakura said, "was my father's favorite saying. We need to push through because we have to, and if we don't, it'll be the end of us."
"The weak are meat, the strong eat, huh," repeated Kiba. A pleased growl rumbled low in Akamaru's throat as his partner grinned, masking his nervousness. "I could get used to a saying like that. If—When we get outta this alive, we gotta make that our team slogan or saying or somethin'."
Shino drew in a deep breath. "Then it's settled. Let's go."
::
The entrance to Orochimaru's lab was a hole in the ground, the sides covered with purple-tinted stone carved with runic designs and the top sealed with a tough wooden plank. The undergrowth had taken to be its natural cover that Team Eight peeled away, and the man-made cover was pried open by Sakura's bandage-bound fingers. Peering eyes would've never noticed it there, but there were insects that buried deep beneath the earth and dug up secrets faster than any human ever could.
Kiba stumbled back when the entryway was revealed; he brought a hand up to cover the bottom half of his face and coughed. Akamaru whined and skittered back as well, and Sakura and Shino didn't need their sensitive noses to pick up on the faint stench that wafted in the air.
Sakura frowned. "Decay," she informed. She remembered that once, in Ame, she'd overheard Konan and Leader-sama speak of moving Orochimaru's lab to outside the village. The smell had been the same then—putrid and suffocating, but the smell now compared to then was far less painful. "But the smell shouldn't have lasted this long. It's been over a decade since Orochimaru left and the bodies should've been cleared out."
"... Unless they wanted to seal everything away, untouched. It's a madman's work, after all," Shino noted. They waited for Kiba and Akamaru to adjust themselves to the horrid scent before they all stared down and at the pitch blackness below.
"Doesn't seem too far down," Sakura said. Kiba, knowing her for as long as he had, tried to reach out to grab her shirt before she decided to jump down, caution to the wind. Of course he wasn't fast enough, he thought, and she sailed down to the bottom without a sound.
"Sakura? You good?" he called.
Her voice was distant. "At least there's a kerosene lamp down here. And it still works," she returned. Kiba rolled his eyes and Shino snorted. "I've got a couple lighters in my pack if the fuel and the wick run out, but it won't be the same." There was another pause as something began to glow in the depths. "Are you two just gonna stay up there or are you coming down?"
Kiba and Akamaru jumped next.
Shino took the plank in his hands and slid down the entrance, sure to cover the hole above them before his feet hit the ground with a light tap.
Outside, it was still. Like nothing had been stirred in the first place.
Then a shadow loomed over where the three genin once stood.
::
The preservation of the lab wasn't... bad. It aged well for a place that was neglected for the past decade. Reluctantly, Sakura admitted the architecture of the whole underground compound wasn't too shabby. Kiba vehemently disagreed.
"This place's built like a maze," he hissed. They walked slowly with every step a calculated measure and had yet to pass any rooms, but the number of forked paths they'd had to pass was starting to stack. "What kind of creepy bastard does something like this?"
They made a right, Sakura at the helm with the lamp held out in front of her. She stopped. And in turn, the rest of the team stopped as well.
The section they only just entered was lined with steel cells, rust on the bars and chains hanging from their insides. "The type of creepy bastard that keeps prisoners from escaping," she answered. Her lips pressed into a grim line. "We'll start a search here. I'll leave the lamp in the middle of the section, but if you find any more, let me know."
All the cells were open, or at least had been rusted enough to push through. Shino peered into one and saw a skeleton laying on its side on the floor. It was far smaller than him and still wore the clothes it probably had been when it was still a person—nothing but a few rags and paper clutched in its finger bones.
He gulped and walked in before crouching down, taking the paper, and unraveling it.
mama y arnt u heer
i havnt seen u in a long tym
waz i bad?
is that y the man took me
becuz i waz bad?
The letters were dried and brown and he couldn't convince himself that it was written with a peculiar brand of ink that just so happened to be lying around. He set the note back down, took one last look at the bones of a child forgotten, and headed to the next cell.
Meanwhile, Kiba had found a room in the midst of the cells. A desk and a chair lay inside with dilapidated shelves and files that filled them. Each tab bore a name, and he pulled one out at random and flipped it open.
And he dropped it like it scalded his fingers.
Because the first page was a photo of a body so disfigured it no longer looked like a human, but a description of what a child would say was the monster that lived under their bed except bloodier, gruesome, sickening, real. He wanted to back out of the room, but he knows he can't. There were more files meaning more research and he couldn't let the opportunity slip from his fingers and let down the rest of his team. He needed to do it.
Somebody had to.
Sakura stood with two more kerosene lamps hanging from her fingers, limp and on the verge of slipping. What she should've been doing was lighting the new lamps she'd found so her team could look for clues and research better, but for the moment, she could only stare.
Inside the cell were bed sheets fitted into a rope, one end tied to the pipes running above the ceiling, the other end tied in a loop and hanging over a pile of bones.
"I can't keep you from the world you were born into," she heard her father's voice sigh in her ears. He sounded sad, like he always did when he talked about her future or whenever she asked about the Akatsuki. "I'm a murderer—a traitor, a villain. I can't hide that from you. You don't deserve to be lied to, not when you never had a choice in being here."
What did it mean to be a "villain"?
Her father had always been astoundingly honest with her, now that she thought back to all the things he told her when she was younger. Sometimes he would be hesitant, but he was blunt. He told her what he thought she needed to hear, and sometimes he'd tell her what everyone else thought that he didn't agree with.
"They say you won't survive in this world," he said. "There aren't kids like you that have moms or dads like me. You've been on the run since the day you opened your eyes and I'm sorry that it had to be this way."
Sakura was six. They were seated at the kitchen table, a light flickering over them as her father stared down at his hands with a glassy sheen to his eyes. She didn't understand why he couldn't look at her. "You and your mother are the best things that ever happened to me," he admitted quietly. "I was selfish for bringing you into this life. I'm sorry."
She took one look at his face, climbed out of her seat, and crawled into his lap to take his face into her impossibly small hands and squished his cheeks together. "I love Papa," she stated firmly. "I love Papa because he tucks me in at night an' remembers my fav'rite breakfast an' when he fixes my hair every mornin', he says he'll do better next time even though he always does a very good job. He trains me to be the bestest shinobi an' makes me laugh with his silly jokes an' tells me how much he loves me all the time because he's a good Papa."
His shoulders started to shake.
"He takes me to see Mama an' lets me pick out flowers an' lets me know if she thinks they're pretty or not. An' when he's not doin' that, he tells me stories an' lets me read an' keeps me safe." She nodded and patted his cheeks. "You can't be a murde-derer or traitor or a vil-layn 'cause you're my Papa and you're my bestest friend."
Sakura couldn't forget that day almost six years ago. That was the first time she'd ever seen her father cry.
She touched her cheek with her free hand, realizing the tears on her face must've streaked down her face when she was caught up in a memory. Quickly, she swiped at her eyes with her arm guards and took one step closer to the cell, the lamps clinking at her side. "I won't forget you," she whispered to the bones. "I promise. Not when you never had a choice in being here."
Her eyes snapped to the corner of the hall and up to the ceiling, but there was no one. Nerves, she told herself, are more trouble than they're worth.
But no matter. They needed to keep moving. Her eyes lingered on the horrifying display for a few seconds more before she turned to light the two lamps and went to look for Shino and Kiba to hand them over.
::
Eventually, they all found their way to join Kiba in the office to sort through the files to see if there was anything they could account for. Sakura's and Shino's initial reaction to the information were akin to Kiba's: horror-struck, disgusted, resigned in the way no one wanted to be.
Shino was tired; tired of knowing that these missing children were taken, tired that no one tried to save them, tired that he knew they had to suffer tortures unimaginable, tired that it finally sunk in that their corpses had been left to fester and their families had to live never knowing what happened to them.
Sometimes Sakura wished her memory wasn't as good as it was. This was one of those times.
They timed themselves at an hour to get through as much as they could before they decided to move on to see if they could find anything else besides experimentation files. But just before they left the office, Shino had a handful of insects copy a sheet before quartering them in a part of his arm on standby, the three of them reaching a silent agreement not to mention it until they were in a safe place.
They continued on.
Until they found the experimentation room itself.
In the very center was a metal table with thick leather straps hanging off the sides. Beside it was a long tray that held an assortment of instruments that ranged from scalpels to saws to needles, each crusted with blood and dulled from use.
That wasn't the worst part of the room, no, not by a kilometer. Wooden boards line up against all four walls and took up every centimeter, each equipped with cuffs for wrists and ankles and straps for necks. But each board—every single one—held parts of withering skeletons. Dead that were never freed. Dead that were never laid to rest. In some places, there were pots with an assortment of bones in each, most likely used as trash piles for unwanted limbs, stained with brown and covered in webs.
There was another door in the room. Kiba, quick to try and shake the heavy feeling of nausea from his stomach, pushed it open and hoped that it wasn't as bad as the room filled to the brim with tortured ghosts.
There were... glass tubes. Tens of them, some filled with liquid the color of jagermeister and others broken to reveal thin rubber pipes running down from the top. Test tubes.
Files were there too. Each with a number and a picture of a child.
A child, he imagined, that matched one of the sixty or so small skeletons that littered the room.
"A name..." Kiba whispered. Akamaru, who'd been observing their surroundings with wide, terrified eyes, took the handle of the lamp in his mouth and slowly backed away from his partner. Sakura stepped into the room with a face blank and unfeeling.
"Did you say something, Kiba?" she asked tonelessly. Suddenly, the file in his hands was thrown onto the floor and he screams.
"A NAME!" he cried. "The LEAST he could've done was WRITE their NAMES! Kids aren't NUMBERS! Kids aren't EXPERIMENTS! How come when he ran off, no one came?! HUH?! WHY DIDN'T ANYONE COME?! They should've been buried or cremated or-or SOMETHING! Over TEN FUCKING YEARS they've been here! THEIR BODIES SHOULD'VE BEEN TAKEN BACK!"
His fist went through an already broken tube and glass crashed onto the floor as a hand comes to cover his eyes.
"Breathe," Sakura's voice told him. He struggled.
"Their bodies—"
"In... two... three... four..." she said. "Out... two... three... four... In..."
Eventually, eventually, he calmed down with Sakura's bandaged palm pressed to his face that he found strangely soothing. And now that he calmed some, he noticed the lack of emotion in her tone and in the way she carried herself and he didn't blame her. When things like this happened, she retreats and becomes the strange new kid who's having her first day at the Academy again.
"I'm good," he murmured, thoroughly drained. Her hand fell back down to her side and she approached one of the filled tubes. The liquid inside, she decided, was viscous. Meant to hold bodies in suspension, probably. She took the file Kiba threw onto the floor and read the information inside.
Subject 01: FAILURE
Failed to merge with Senju Hashirama's DNA
Bloodline not passed on
Reaction: Incompatible blood types. Body rejected compound. Death imminent.
Instructions: Dispose of body. Move to next subject.
Sakura sighed heavily and placed the file back onto one of the tables.
Shino slowly entered the room and took in the defeated droop of his teammates' shoulders and felt his body do the same. "These children and these subjects... they're different than the ones 'Fortitude' had been allowed to take," he commented. "Why? We agreed 'Fortitude' couldn't have been Orochimaru."
"'Fortitude' had been kidnapping children for decades before Orochimaru took his sixty," Sakura added. "That's over a hundred children. And we're not even counting others he might've taken on a whim or the adults he decided were fit enough for other experiments."
Kiba turned around to face them. "The Will of Fire," he spat. "Is nothing but something the Hokage's been hiding behind for years. We asked why he stepped down the first time, but that doesn't matter. We should be asking why the hell he was allowed to take his position back in the first place!"
Red face, clenched fists, pupils that narrowed so much that he nearly resembled a savage animal ready to strike.
"Kiba—"
"I wonder whose fault it really is," he seethed, his voice acid. "'Fortitude' for the children, Orochimaru for their suffering, or the Hokage, who knew everything that was happening but didn't do a damn thing to stop it."
Shino began to try and placate his friend, but he was stopped by a pair of gloved hands that erupted from behind him and covered his mouth.
::
Tenzou didn't know why he would be assigned to follow a group of three genin until he trailed them to the outskirts of the village and somehow, by some miraculous way, they unearthed the lab he once was taken to as a child and hadn't seen the light of day for months. It wasn't the one he and Kakashi had searched before, because this one was newer. Left to be forgotten.
He watched them crack open the entrance as the scent hit the air and his stomach flipped. Not because it smelled of death, but because it was beginning to bring back memories of yellow eyes and a glass tube.
They stood there for a bit, conversing, before the girl—Sakura, his mind supplies, the orphan with no surname—jumped down without signal before the Inuzuka boy—Kiba—can grab hold of her collar and stop her. There were a few more exchanges before he jumped down too with the Aburame Heir—Shino—taking up the rear, but not before covering the hole back up with the plank.
He let a full five minutes pass him by before he jumped down from his perch, silently pried the plank off, and followed. By the time he'd caught up to them they'd already found the cells. Tenzou remembered which one had been his before he was hauled off and stuffed in a tube where he always felt as if he was drowning but just couldn't seem to die. His was the cell right next to the office with flooring of coarse dirt and sharp, tiny pebbles. He'd wished he'd never see it again.
Crouched in a high corner of the sector, he watched as Shino pried a note from the bones of a starved child. He read through it, tensed, set it down, and moved on.
Tenzou understood. Death was never easy.
When he went to observe Sakura, her eyes had glazed over as she stared at the bones of a child who thought they'd found the way to freedom. He didn't know if she was lost in thought or dissociating, but tears leaked from the corner of her eyes and she made no move to stop them. Though when she does, she moved closer to the cell and began to whisper. Tenzou leaned forward to try and catch her words.
"I won't forget you," she said. His heart started to hurt, and he didn't know why. "I promise. Not when you never had a choice in being here."
Then something in her face changed. He was given a split second chance to hide (which he does or he wouldn't have been regarded as the highest performing ANBU operative to have worked under the Third Hokage) before her eyes flicker up to the spot he'd just been in.
She knew he was there? Sakura shouldn't have been capable of something like that in any way shape or form according to her file.
The three of them congregated in the office filled with the case files of those who were there before Tenzou and the other children were taken in to try to get their bodies to mesh with Hashirama's DNA.
His fists balled up. He was the only experiment to survive and was the only one able to walk away with another chance.
And it was painful. To be the only one that remembered.
He stayed outside the office because adding one more body, even in hiding, was too risky a move, especially since one of them displayed the proficiency to target his location. And if she raised alarm, he didn't know if he could avoid the collective efforts of thousands of insects and a scent-sensor without being caught or abandoning his mission in the process.
He heard the shuffle of papers and the occasional pause to stop bile from climbing up their throats.
An hour passed and they left. Tenzou still didn't know what they came here for.
Then they find the experimentation room. They haven't spoken since their initial discovery of bodies and it was disconcerting, even to Tenzou. These children had been exposed to something they truly shouldn't have and he could see it wearing them down bit by bit. As the team walked through the main labs, he tried to push down his memories.
The skeletons in the test tube room were once children he knew. He spoke with them, once. He prayed with them, once.
Now, he didn't remember what they looked like.
As Kiba gazed around the adjoining room and picked up one of the folders, it was the last straw. Tenzou knew he'd be angry, but he wasn't prepared for what the boy was angry for.
"A NAME!" Kiba screamed. It was the type of scream that ripped at the vocal cords and flayed the skin from the muscles in the neck. It was a scream that went as far as to hurt him from his spot in the shadows. "The LEAST he could've done was WRITE their NAMES! Kids aren't NUMBERS! Kids aren't EXPERIMENTS! How come when he ran off, no one came?! HUH?! WHY DIDN'T ANYONE COME?! They should've been buried or cremated or-or SOMETHING! Over TEN FUCKING YEARS they've been here! THEIR BODIES SHOULD'VE BEEN TAKEN BACK!"
As Sakura calmed him down, he tried to understand. Kiba was angry over these children... well, it was instinct to be upset, but not at such an astronomical level. It was something personal now, but Kiba must've been a month or two in age when this tragedy occurred. He wouldn't have known. Shouldn't.
Shino came over, rubbing his eyes from beneath his glasses. "These children and these subjects... they're different from the ones 'Fortitude' had been allowed to take."
'Fortitude?' Tenzou thought warily. Taking children? That sounded like a Danzo type action. Perhaps it was code name for that horrible man.
... Wait.
Were they implying that Danzo had been allowed to take children? On whose authority?
"Why?" he continued. "We agreed 'Fortitude' couldn't have been Orochimaru."
"'Fortitude' had been kidnapping children for decades before Orochimaru took his sixty," Sakura said. Tenzou frowned. 'Fortitude had to be Danzo, no question about it. "That's over a hundred children. And we're not even counting others he might've taken on a whim or the adults he decided were fit enough for other experiments."
They were seeking justice, Tenzou realized. For years, no one cared because no one knew—couldn't know—but somehow these children had come up from nowhere with the desire to have whoever had done this to face the consequences of their actions.
Stop, he wanted to tell them, sorrowfully, emphatically. It won't work. You won't win. Danzo and Orochimaru are too powerful for you to stop.
"The Will of Fire," Kiba growled. "Is nothing but something the Hokage's been hiding behind for years."
... Hokage-sama? What did he have to do with this?
"We asked why he stepped down the first time, but that doesn't matter. We should be asking why the hell he was allowed to take his position back in the first place!"
They weren't saying—
"Kiba—"
"I wonder whose fault it really is," Kiba said. Hate filled every inch of his voice. "'Fortitude' for the children, Orochimaru for their suffering, or the Hokage, who knew everything that was happening but didn't do a damn thing to stop it."
That one accusation shattered Tenzou's whole world.
Then he leaped.
::
It was a bright day outside, Hiruzen thought, as he gazed out the window in one of the conference rooms in the Hokage Tower. No one was in the hall and no one would be there the rest of the day, so he was alone. But not for long, he imagined.
Orochimaru inevitably came to mind and he sighed. He'd made many, many mistakes in his past. Why were they coming up now?
What did it mean to take the fall for a traitor?
The smell of chakra smoke invaded his nose and he turned, the ends of his robes brushing against the floor. His number one ANBU operative Cat arrived with three genin and a nin-dog in his arms, all hazy and disoriented with the subduing jutsu used on them as they're deposited on the ground.
He didn't know why those children would even consider entering that lab, and how they even managed to find it was beyond him.
He patiently waited for them to collect their bearings so he could begin to ask them questions. Shino was the first to look around blearily and laid his eyes to the man before him. Hiruzen expected him to be somewhat nervous in the presence of his leader and perhaps a touch afraid, but he didn't expect true fear to cross his face and for him to stand and scramble backwards until his back hit the wall.
Cat stood in front of the door to block the only viable exit. He didn't flinch.
"Shino-kun," Hiruzen tried gently. "There's nothing to worry about. You've only been taken here to be asked a few questions."
But Shino didn't answer. Instead, as Sakura became aware of her surroundings, his hands wrapped around Kiba's upper arm. Was he that put-off that he felt the need to cling on to his other teammate? Hiruzen was bewildered. Surely his appearance couldn't be that intimidating.
Sakura's eyes focused in and landed on the Hokage. For reasons unknown that both surprised and intrigued him, they settled into coldness as she pushed herself onto her feet and stood next to Shino. She was a bit ahead of him and her shoulder covered his in a show of protection.
"Why did you have an ANBU take us here?" she asked quietly.
"You were trespassing in a place you weren't supposed to be in, Sakura-kun," informed Hiruzen. "Now the question remains, what were the three of you doing there in the first place?"
Kiba finally gained awareness and lifted his head. To Hiruzen's even grander surprise, a guttural noise erupted from the boy's lungs as he tried to lunge, but Shino pulled and pinned him against the wall. Sakura looked over her shoulder.
"Kiba, wai—!"
"How could you leave all those bodies in that lab?!" he demanded. "You already let children get kidnapped! The least you could do was given them back to their families and own up to everything else you've ever done!"
::
No one was in the halls and no one would be there for the rest of the day, and Tenzou didn't know if that was a good thing or not. Kiba's outburst hit him just as hard as his earlier accusation, but he showed no outward discomfort. From behind his mask, he watched as Shino kept an arm across his teammate's chest to hold him back and how Sakura swallowed her words and stared back at the Hokage.
She stopped because she wanted to know as well.
Tenzou's eyes moved back to his Hokage. He should just deny the accusation, shouldn't he? The kidnappings had all been Danzo's fault, hadn't it? There was no way he would've allowed it; there was no way he could've just sat back and watched. He himself had heard the stories first-hand—Danzo secretly created ROOT and once it came to the Third's attention, it became too large of an organization to stop. The Third had been blindsided, he had no choice.
Hiruzen... had saved him from Danzo. Both him and Kakashi. Surely, he could have nothing to do with that wretched man's schemes.
But then Hiruzen's face grew tired, heavy with the stress of his civic duty. "And what, child, are the things you think I've done?"
The three genin exchanged glances before Sakura stepped up with squared shoulders and a tongue, Tenzou learned, that was lined with liquid silver. "No one knew why you stepped down as Hokage your first tenure and it's still widely debated to this day, according to Hiruzen Sarutobi: Twice a Hokage. You'd just signed the peace treaty with Iwa to end the war and only one person on your council hadn't agreed with your decision and we'd narrowed that council member down to Shimura Danzo, the person who'd always been at the opposite end from you, even in the face of the First War. You were rivals and you'd never agreed. Not even back then."
Tenzou didn't know what was happening. Didn't know where it was heading. But he didn't like it.
"Shimura Danzo is your 'balance'," Shino said. Gears turned in his head as he spoke as if new revelations were only just unfolding before him. "That's why there's correspondence between him, 'Fortitude', and you, the 'Absolute Truth'. You, Hokage-sama, allowed him to create ROOT, ignored the kidnappings his organization conducted for operatives, allowed the abduction of children, looked away when..." His hold on Kiba slackened as he paled. "... I was a young child," he started, his voice lowering with each breath. Sakura's and Kiba's heads snapped to him. "I was a young child when I saw Danzo-sama for the first time. And that was the last day I'd ever seen my cousin, Torune. He was like a... a brother to me... he... you allowed Danzo to take him, didn't you?"
Tenzou froze. Tell them what they're saying isn't true, he begged silently. Deny them. Tell them you're wrong. You wouldn't do something like this, Hokage-sama!
Hiruzen, old and torrential and powerful, closed his eyes and turned away. "Danzo had always expressed an interest in someone from the Aburame Clan," is all he replied. But his message was clear. I did.
The silence that followed rang too loud in Tenzou's ears that he feared they might start to bleed.
Shino couldn't continue, his arms falling limply at his sides. Kiba grasped one of his clammy hands and squeezed. To keep him grounded. To keep him here. His angry eyes met Sakura's and she nodded, taking the reins of the conversation back into her hands.
"There are things about Orochimaru too, we've learned," she said. Her voice was strong—powerful, enough to knock at Hokage's slowly crumbling wall. It was what she wanted, though. He needed to feel every hit, every blow she would deliver. "You called him 'a genius with talent, knowledge, and determination—a prodigy found once in a generation'," she quoted verbatim. "You 'couldn't wait to seem him grow into a proud shinobi'. But he's been twisted for a long time. He'd been doing experiments for a long time, I imagine, to seek immortality for one and to merge Senju Hashirama's DNA with children for another. The latter he tried doing when he took sixty children right after Namikaze Minato's ceremony to become Hokage. Why the timing? What was he waiting for?"
Hiruzen had his back turned to them, and Tenzou couldn't envision the look on Hokage's face. Was he going to lie—again? Lie like he'd been doing this whole time?
"He... was waiting to be sure."
"Sure? Of what?" Sakura questioned. Hiruzen heaved a terrible sigh and sagged into himself.
"Sure that I was not to make him the Fourth Hokage. Before... I'd made it my plan to. He showed so much promise."
"He's a twisted bastard!" Sakura shouted. She remembered his sickly lips and bile-yellow eyes and the way her name rolled off his tongue when they met for the first time. She remembered all the people who would go into his lab and never come out and she remembered how her father always made sure she was never alone with him.
And now, she remembered the skeletons and the make-shift bed sheets and the pictures she could never even hope to forget with the way they burned into her mind like someone forced a bucket of boiling water into her mouth.
"He was like a son to me!" Hiruzen snapped. He spun around with impressive grace and she flinched. He wilted. "He was like a son to me," he says again, softer, sadder. "And when I caught him in that lab, I couldn't believe he was capable of such an evil, but I—"
"You caught him red-handed?" she interrupted. He allowed the interruption and stared her down warily. Her acute intelligence already displayed when she listed the consequences of his shortcomings in a way that was never documented in her profile. She was supposed to be the set average, but there was nothing average about the situation they'd entrapped themselves in. "The books say Orochimaru was caught red-handed before he made his escape and got away. Are you saying that he, miraculously, got away with both you and him unscathed?"
Hiruzen didn't know she'd just taken a shot in the dark and hit the bullseye dead center.
Tenzou didn't know how much more of this he could take.
The Third stared her in the eyes and she stared back. Lying would be pointless now, especially since the three of them already knew too much. "... He was like a son to me," he repeated for the third time. "And I couldn't bear to be the one to strike down my own son."
What did it mean to love someone?
The strained silence that followed was smothering.
Kiba's eyes were alight with unholy fire. "We saw the bodies in that lab," he hissed. "We saw the case files and their pictures of when they were getting experimented on. People were looking for them when you sealed the lab." Akamaru started growling with the rise of his partner's agitation. "You disrespected them by letting them be taken and you did it a second time when you left them to rot. Did you even know their names?!"
Hiruzen's eyes flickered, but he said nothing.
Kiba's eyes turned to slits and Shino looked up. "We do," he said. "When we were looking at their files to figure out what was going on, what went wrong, we memorized their names," he stated shakily. "Why? Because they deserved to be remembered by someone. The least they could've gotten were graves or a mention in a solemn speech, but even then, they had none of that. Their families to this day are left wondering and you couldn't even muster the decency to tell them that their children are dead and you set their murderer free. Do you think he's still experimenting to this day? I do, and I know it's your fault."
Tenzou wondered why a team of genin would go so far out of their way for something like this and how they could stand there and dig themselves a bigger hole for the sake of people they would never meet.
Then he wondered why he slowly found himself wanting to stand by their side while they did it.
"And still to this day, it seems you do your fair share of wronging those who don't deserve it," Sakura continued, relentless. "Uzumaki Naruto is just another name on the list."
Hiruzen winced as if struck.
"He's a happy-go-lucky sort of kid. Not much of a studier, but he tries his best, you know? I moved into my new apartment not knowing he was my neighbor, but he happily greets me every time he sees me and we'll walk to the training grounds together. Last week he helped me make dinner, and do you know what I thought of then?"
Hiruzen, ashen and dwindling, went along with her narrative. "What was it you thought of, Sakura-kun?"
"I wondered if Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina would grieve if they saw the way the village treated their son."
"I truly care for the child. I changed his last name so that Minato's enemies couldn't target him—"
"I watched Naruto get thrown out of a store by the store owner and punched in the face so hard he got a black eye by a passerby," she told him bluntly. "The black eye was gone by the next day, though, but I suppose since a jinchuuriki's healing factor is so strong it's an excuse not to act on open scenes of child abuse, correct? Or is it because since everyone thinks he's a monster, it's okay, because monsters aren't supposed to be treated like people?"
Even Tenzou had to resist the urge to flinch at that. From behind his mask, he witnessed a flood of emotions wash over the Third's face before they're shut out and sealed tightly behind the visage of a strong leader. His face grew stony but sorrowful as his back straightened and he opened his mouth. "Cat, restrain."
For the first time in his career under the Hokage, he didn't want to follow orders.
But still, he did.
He placed his hand on the wall and pillars of wood rushed out, taking Shino, Kiba, Sakura, and Akamaru into its bindings and securing them nearly a foot off the floor. They flailed and writhed, shouting to be let go.
No one was in the halls and no one would be there for the rest of the day, so there wasn't a single person that heard their cries for help.
"I agree that I've made far too many mistakes in my time. But please understand, some of those mistakes stem from the fact that no other choice could be made," he admitted. He looked even more tired now with deep trenches between his wrinkles and a truly apologetic shine to his old eyes. "You've all made a stand here today that many would be afraid to start. You've conquered and you've proven yourselves, but you all know too much." He took in a shuddering breath. "This, I cannot allow."
"So what?!" Sakura barked as she jerked her shoulder against the wood. "You're gonna kill us? We're gonna be three more kids Konoha's never gonna see again?"
He shook his head morosely. "For the sake of the village and its secrets, your memories will be altered."
"Then you'll have to remove weeks from our minds! People are going to notice and they're going to ask questions," she refuted. "Naruto's going to ask me why I don't remember some of things things we've done together and he knows my memory's damn near photographic! He's going to get suspicious! I'm going to get suspicious! And when it gets to that point, we'll figure it out all over again!"
The mention of a photographic memory was certainly news to his ears, but the mention of Naruto wasn't. Whenever the boy came to his office to talk about his day or his week, he always spoke so highly of her; Sakura-chan who was his first real friend, Sakura-chan who didn't hate him like everyone else did, Sakura-chan who always gave him the time of day.
He was stuck. What else could he do but—
"Perhaps I could be of use, then?"
Danzo seemed to melt out of the shadows and Tenzou truly did flinch then. Hiruzen turned to his old friend with a crease in his brow, the genin still struggling in their bindings.
"How long have you been there?"
"Enough to listen to them tear you a new one," he remarked readily. His one eye peered at each of genin's angry, exhausted, frightened faces before turning to the Hokage. "But truly, I do have something that will keep them quiet without having to resort to memory tampering and that will keep you from having to monitor their every movement."
"They won't be killed, Danzo—"
"No, never," he drawled. His cane tapped against the floor as he walked up to the genin, delighted that they stared up at him in pure loathing. "Children, have you ever heard of the Curse Tongue Eradication Seal?"
What did it mean to do what you knew was wrong?
Tenzou's head whipped up to his former master. "They're not ROOT members," he protested. He shrunk slightly at the man's piercing glare and resumed his silence. Danzo turned his attention back to the team.
"It's a curse seal, normally given to ROOT members, just as Cat mentioned." The ANBU's code-name dripped off his lips in disgust. "It's to ensure no information about me nor my organization falls into the wrong hands. It can also solve your plight here and sew your mouths shut so you can never speak of anything pertaining to what you've learned. In essence, should you speak of your newfound knowledge to any other that isn't me, Hiruzen, or another person that holds the seal, your body will paralyze itself and remove your ability to speak or move."
His eye roved over to the Third. "Of course, the implementation of this action will all be up to the discretion of your kind, truthful Hokage."
Hiruzen frowned at the clear sarcastic tone before looking at the genin. Team Eight, under Kurenai, meant to be tracking/intelligence team. He always thought they'd grow to be fiercely loyal shinobi that fought for Konoha's Will of Fire.
What did it mean to never change?
His gaze shifted back to Danzo. "If there is another means than altering their memories, so be it." He doesn't look at the three betrayed, petrified faces as his old friend smiled and drew closer to them. Sakura, who tried to recoil from the approaching figure of a bastard of a man, shot a dark look towards the Hokage who hadn't the decency to face them as they themselves were forced to face what would come.
"Everyone has a choice," she said. Her words echoed and Danzo's fingers shone blue. "And you've only been making the wrong ones."
Tenzou, though they were shackled under his own wood jutsu, shut his eyes.
No one was in the halls and no one would be there for the rest of the day.
So there was no one else that would hear the screams of those whose tongues were branded for silence.
::
They stumbled onto the floor of Sakura's apartment in a small explosion of smoke. Shino hit one of the plastic chairs in the kitchen and knocked it down, Sakura's back collided with the corner of the fridge, Kiba rolled into the wooden entryway of the kitchen, and Akamaru skidded to a stop underneath the table.
Their tongues burned and they could do nothing but hold their mouths and think back to what just transpired.
That same ANBU who'd watched and done nothing to stop it, Cat, stood and stared in the same unfeeling way all operatives seemed to do. Then, he spoke.
"You may want to rinse your mouths out with cool or salt water first," he said softly. "Over-the-counter painkillers should work just fine, and if you desire, you could either hold an ice cube in your mouth or sprinkle sugar on your tongue to try and ease your pain." He paused. "And I apologize for the rough landing. You were all struggling too much for me to get a proper hold on."
Sakura hefted herself up to her feet, staggering only slightly, and slowly made her way over to the cabinet. She pulled out a tin that Tenzou could only deduce was sugar and she set it down on the table. Then, she went to the fridge and pulled out a tray of ice from the top freezer and placed it down as well.
Kiba managed to get himself up with a groan and lent a hand to Shino to help him up to his feet. The latter set the toppled chair back on its right end and all but collapsed in it, the former falling into his own seat. Sakura crouched, pulled Akamaru from the floor as he whimpered and pawed at his mouth and laid him atop the table. She was the last to take her place and promptly propped her elbow up and dropped her head into her hand.
There was the clinking of the sugar container, the crack of popping ice cubes from their tray, and the singular shuffle of an ANBU operative shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Sakura sighed.
"What more do you want?" she asked. Her voice was deflated, all passion and indignation steamed away along with the brand she was forced to carry. "We said all we wanted to say and were punished for our actions. There's nothing left for you to do."
Tenzou had so many questions on the tip of his tongue. He wanted to ask her why; why they went so far, how they could've mustered up all that bravery to speak to the Hokage in such a manner, why one incident mattered so much that they sacrificed everything for it.
All he wanted to know was why.
But instead, he said the other words that were eating at his mind. "I wanted to say thank you."
They all stared owlishly at him.
"Thank you?!" Kiba sputtered. The ice cube he'd been keeping on his tongue slipped out of his mouth and splattered onto the table. Sakura slid the paper towels over to him without taking her eyes off the ANBU standing in her hallway as Shino's brows furrowed.
Tenzou moved his mask to the side so just the bottom half of his face was exposed and showed them his tongue. On it was a seal of three solid lines and two broken ones, appearing in the form of something similar to an incomplete rectangle that served an identical match to the seals given to Team Eight. "All of ROOT are given the seal, both current and retired members bear the symbol," he explained, placing his mask back over his face. "You all are the first outside the organization to receive it, for I once again must apologize for. I did not think Hokage-sama would resort to such... measures."
Sakura scoffed and Kiba batted her arm for the action.
"But you went down to Orochimaru's lab and prior to that, I assume, found the truths you spoke of earlier. I want to thank you for that." He stopped and tried to search for more of the right words. "And I want to thank you for trying to bring us justice."
Shino blinked. "You were one of the sixty?"
Tenzou didn't answer the inquiry. "None of us knew the things Hokage-sama had done because we were never given a reason to be suspicious. I don't know how you came up on the situation or how you managed to follow it through, but thank you."
Kiba sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "But we didn't really do anything. No one else found out about it and we can't tell anyone else." He popped another cube from the tray, stuck it in his mouth, and grimaced. "They sealed our mouths shut. Literally."
"I found out," Tenzou reminded them quietly. "I can't hope to tell my fellow shinobi the things I've learned today, but I will not allow you to say you haven't made a difference."
And he meant it, because once he escaped the darkness that was Danzo, he'd been in the dark for so long that the shadow the Hokage cast looked leagues brighter than ROOT could have ever hoped to give him. But all it took were a few old kerosene lamps to show him the way, and there was nothing more he could be but grateful for what he'd been allowed to see.
Sakura sat up. "Sunday, eight in the evening, the red bridge near Team Seven's training grounds," she said. Tenzou tilted his head. "We'll be doing a little thing you might be interested in, so you can come if you want."
He nodded once. "I will keep that in mind. Take care."
He disappeared, and they all sat back with a collective sigh.
"So I mean, I think we got a solid fifteen on the scale of getting fucked," Kiba said, trying to lighten the mood. He grinned slightly when he received a chuckle out of Sakura, but then trailed off when his gaze landed on Shino. They'd never heard of Torune before, but by the sounds of it, what the Third did ran a lot deeper than they first thought. "You okay?"
Shino's head raised and he regarded his friend. Okay? None of them could be really okay after that experience and after they'd been sworn to secrecy against their wills, but then he thought back to the point he presented that made him go numb. "Oh. You're speaking of Torune?" he asked, albeit distantly. "It's... fine. Why? It was a long time ago. I'm glad to know he isn't dead."
Sakura clapped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He wasn't alone, he knew that much, and he was glad that he now had a team to fall back on.
Then another thought came to mind as he extended his hand and ushered a cluster of insects to crawl out. "Sakura, do you have a sheet of paper I could use? There's something I need to them to copy."
She nodded and walked to her room. She came back, placed a notepad in front of him and watched his insects flood the page and write what they'd found in the lab earlier. Akamaru padded over to sniff at the sheets, and Kiba stood and walked around the table to Shino's free side.
When the insects finished their task, both Sakura's and Kiba's eyes went wide.
"Is that..."
Shino pushed up his glasses, his eyes tired but with a spark of victory. "We couldn't walk away from that situation with only a memory of those experimentation files. The least Orochimaru could do for us is share some knowledge on a few of his jutsu."
::
On Sunday there were stars.
Night fell over Konoha and Tenzou found himself crouched in the brush near the river that ran through Team Seven's training grounds. It was quarter to eight and the red bridge remained empty, and he sat there wondering why he even decided to come in the first place. He'd said his dues and thanked them for their work; there was no reason for him to arrive on their invitation. Nothing had changed. Everyone form that lab was still dead, save for him.
What did it mean to be alone?
His eyes drew to the sound of approaching shinobi. Sakura, Shino, and Kiba walked towards his direction, each carrying a small bag as Akamaru trotted alongside them. They stopped in the middle of the bridge and sat in a circle with the bags at their sides and the space in front of them clear.
Tenzou narrowed his eyes. What were they doing?
Kiba reached into one of the bags and pulled out two thin, flat planks of wood and tied them together in the shape of an 'x' that was about the size of his palm. He nicked notches into each side before passing it on to Sakura. She pulled out a tea light candle, glued it in the center of the 'x', lit it, and passed it to Shino. He took it and reached into one of the bags for a small sheet of lantern paper. Unfolding it showed it to be cylindrical with no top or bottom and he fit four wooden bars equal length apart to form a rectangular prism, and he carefully set it in the notches of the 'x' before slipping it into the water.
"Sato Aki," he said.
The process repeated the same way, but Sakura spoke next.
"Matsumoto Zenzo," she said.
Then they do it again, and Kiba spoke.
"Suzuki Daichi," he said.
It took a few more cycles before Tenzou heard a familiar name—one he'd been made to forget through steel bars and needles and test tubes. 'Tenzou' was what he accepted himself as because he couldn't remember what he'd been called no matter how much he tried, but then he heard it fall from their lips and it was just like meeting an old friend. They said his name, and they set a lit lantern to float slowly down the weaving river.
Kiba's eyes turned to slits and Shino looked up. "We do," he said. "When we were looking at their files to figure out what was going on, what went wrong, we memorized their names," he stated shakily. "Why? Because they deserved to be remembered by someone. The least they could've gotten were graves or a mention in a solemn speech, but even then, they had none of that."
Tenzou pushed off his mask and cried.
He cried because a team of genin fought to free him from the dark.
He cried because they let him remember his own name.
And he cried because they promised to remember even if he would forget it again.
::
Hiruzen sat in his office with one hand hovering over the crystal ball he had pillowed on his desk. His eyes filled with the sight of tens of glowing lanterns before he cast off the jutsu and closed his eyes.
He'd just punished those who did no wrong but bring up ugly truths that brought him to his knees. He silenced them, took their tongues, destroyed their loyalty and knew they would never look at him the same way ever again. Team Eight would be forever lost to him.
He should've killed them or locked them away.
But he set them free.
What did it mean to not go far enough?
Hiruzen stood and pushed himself away from his desk, old bones creaking and old resolves breaking.
They told him he couldn't be the Hokage his people deserved.
And he couldn't take their lives because they were right.
::
Here's the link to the tumblr I've created to show all the fanart, covers, etc. I've ever received!
https://writer168.tumblr.com
It's also been posted on my profile and message board for easier access.
::
And here to end this chapter are awesome fanarts by:
and AwesomeDragonTamer (caleb-crow on tumblr)!