Tsuchi Kin wiped her damp forehead with the hem of a grey sleeve, slightly coarse from the wear and tear of time and labour. The location they had chosen for the orphanage stood high on a cliffside plateau, the walls of which rose up beyond ground level. It crafted a neat basin, invisible from the ground, filled with its own small forest and wells of spring water rising from beneath.

It was the perfect place to disappear, and the perfect place to help others disappear, too.

Quick footsteps drew her eyes up from the loose earth holding well grown potato plants. They belonged to a small, honey-eyed girl wearing a simple navy cotton dress, with a beaming smile and a basket full of berries and nuts.

"Inori-chan," Kin said, smiling back.

"Emi-sama!" Inori cried Kin's pseudonym happily as she came close, and held up the basket for Kin to inspect. "Look! Me and Daiki-kun gathered lots today!"

Kin stood, leaning to the side to crack her back, before reaching out and tussling the girls mess of brunette hair. The movement uncovered the small, ivory-white horn protruding from the girl's skull for only a moment, but it was enough to send a flush of white hot fury rushing through her.

She forced the smile to stay on her face, and gave the girls head a gentle pat. "Great work, Inori-chan. Why don't you take them into the kitchen and get your hands washed so we can start to prepare food?"

Inori's face twisted as though she'd swallowed something particularly bitter. "Do I have to, Emi-sama?"

Kin raised an eyebrow. Outright refusal was unlike her. "You don't have to, but it's not like you to not want to help."

"I don't mind helping!" The girl insisted loudly, before putting her hands behind her back and kicking idly at the dirt with her head down. "It's just...She's back. And she smells funny. Again."

Kin blinked, brain slow to kick into gear as she processed what the girl had said. She's back. Anko.

Her feet were moving before her mind caught up, immediately into a mad dash across their slapdash little farmland area, and past a half-dozen waving and giggling children. Ahead, stood their pride and joy. A log cabin buried between the trees, two stories high and large enough to hold dozens more children comfortably than they already did, with a broad thatched roof and grey stone chimney that was already billowing smoke for their return.

On the doorstep, Daiki leant on the door frame with folded arms, and a deep scowl writ large across his scar-lined face. At thirteen, he was the oldest of those they'd taken in, and had appointed himself as something of Kin's second in command, and the designated protector of the other children.

"She's inside," he huffed, obviously annoyed, but keeping a lid on his tempter so as not to offend Kin. "I don't understand why we have to put up with her. All she does is eat too much of our food and frighten the others."

Kin sighed. "I understand your frustrations Daiki-kun, but she's stronger than any of us. Besides, she's the best warning we'll get if he's not really dead."

Daiki flinched, but made a visible attempt to suppress his discomfort. "Her word is the only thing that says he isn't, and I can't for the life of me see why you would trust that. She's probably only saying that to freeload from us."

Kin smile grew wry. "We're all victims of him, one way or the other—her included. You don't have to trust her though, you just have to trust me. Do you trust me, Daiki-kun?"

The younger boy flushed and looked away, but managed to mumble an "obviously."

"Good man, now why don't you round up the others and get them ready for bed? It'll be dark soon, and we don't want anybody outside when that sun sets."

"Of course, Emi-san!" Daiki nodded and set off at a jog, leaving Kin to attempt to rub some of the tiredness from her eyes before heading inside.

The hallway was dimly lit, but sure enough, Kin's nose caught the stench of stale alcohol, and followed in to the study, where Anko was slumped across a pallet in the far corner of the room, opposite Kin's own desk.

"You know, you could make even the slightest hint of effort with the children," she called out.

Anko twitched, her eyes never opening, yet a kunai lanced out from her direction at impressive speed. Fortunately, Kin was already shifting her head to the side as she spoke, anticipating the older woman's opening gambit.

"Fuck 'em," she slurred, voice half muffled by the blankets she was face down in, and Kin rolled her eyes.

"I take it you've had no luck?" Kin asked softly.

Anko rolled over, revealing a face utterly devoid of emotion. "Not a sign of any of them. Not Jiraiya, nor Tsunade. Couldn't find any evidence the bastard himself was active again either."

Kin worried her lip before saying hesitantly, "It has been over two years, Anko-sensei. Are you positive he's—"

"Bitch, he is alive. I can feel it. That creepy fucker is just biding his time until he can do the most damage again. He'll rear his ugly head again, and when he does—"

"—When he does, we will kill him. For everything he's done, to all of us."

Anko glanced back at her, and nodded. Kin smiled and began to turn, but Anko's voice stopped her right on the threshold of the room.

"Thank you, Kin. I know I'm not the easiest to deal with... Lotta baggage. I can be a real bitch, especially to the kids..."

"You're a touch on the rude side, but I've never seen you be cruel with any of them. A touch terrifying, but never mean. If you ever gave them a chance and let them past your walls, you'd see they all get it. I mean, how could they not? They've all got the same baggage we do."

"I know that, I do," Anko said finally. "I just—can't. Not again. I already did that with everyone back at the village, then had to watch it all go up in flames."

"I know, Anko-sensei. It's okay. The kids are my responsibility, not yours. All I need from you is to help me get strong enough to keep protecting them until they're able to leave and do that for themselves."

Anko grinned for the first time. "And so we can finally kill that snake-faced fucker for good."

"Of course."

But, as she walked away to begin to prepare food for the children they'd spent the previous two years rescuing from Orochimaru's now abandoned labs, Kin couldn't help but shake the vision of vivid blond hair and reliable smile that had changed her entire world. The children weren't the only reason she wanted to get strong—Tsuchi Kin owed a debt, and she always paid what she owed.

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

Humans teemed between ramshackle wooden market stalls like ants, industriously scurrying to and fro in desperate search for food to bring home to their respective colonies. Aburame Shino had never understood the collective human fear and disgust for insects. Logically he understood it as a genetic holdover from a time where an unfortunate encounter with the wrong creature would be enough to end a life.

The illogical side of him, his emotions, simply couldn't understand how others couldn't see what he did. They were so alike to humans in their nature that it was almost impossible for Shino to separate them. His colony was as much a part of him as any of his family or friends. It was impossible for him to know that many individuals personally, of course, but he could feel each of them. Feel how they were all unique, with their own personalities and quirks.

Shino threaded his way through the crowd, moving in the same half-harried way of the rest of them. He was the best of them for this, besides Kurenai-sensei, of course. HInata was too timid, and these days radiated far too much sadness. She drew attention, sympathy–and gave it too freely to match. Kiba, on the other hand, shone with anger, even two years on. He walked with too much swagger, and glared challenges out at anybody who might dare to take him up.

He did not blame his team-mates for their failings. They were quite understandable. Two week after their escape from the village, news had reached them of the Hyuuga's demise. The main branch had been cleansed, root and stem, destroyed for their unbreakable loyalty to the Sandaime. As far as they knew, the Branch family remained, as sealed and imprisoned as they had been before, only with a new master holding their leash.

Shino thought about Hinata's difficult relationship with her infant sister and father, and the clan elders for a moment, and gave thanks that she had not actually been there to see it for herself. That would have been a blow from which she may have never recovered. Just losing them seemed to have brought her close enough to that point already.

Kiba had not been so fortunate. Team 8 had been visiting the Inuzuka compound in the aftermath of Danzou's coup deciding on a course of action when they had come. The Inuzuka were too loyal. Unlike the Hyuuga, Danzou did not even bother to offer them a place in his new Konoha. Root came in force, and Team 8 had joined the defence of the clan compound, nailing their colours to the mast in the process.

His team-mate had seen each of his nearest and dearest pulled down one by one, the Inuzuka imprint driving him into a bloodier and bloodier fury with each cut down member of his pack. The imprint was a peculiar clan quirk that few knew about, a pheremonal marking where an Inuzuka will create an unbreakable bond of loyalty with those that share it. The clan head, Tsume, imprinted upon the sitting Hokage by tradition, a promise of unflinching loyalty to the death.

Danzou's betrayal meant she would find it impossible to curb her need to avenge her packmate, and so she had to die. The rest of the clan, who shared the same bond with her, had to be dealt with the same.

For a short, horrifying moment, Shino had been forced to try and come to terms with the thought of leaving Kiba to die with his clan, his imprint making it all but impossible to drag him away from their murderers. It was his sister Hana that saved them. A twist of genetics–her own bond had failed to set in as a child–meant that as torn by grief as she was, she maintained enough of herself that she could help drag her brother away from the fight.

Shino nodded his thanks as a too-thin stall owner handed him a too-small selection of supplies, and he melted back into the crowd, just another face among the swarm of regular townspeople and recently arrived refugees.

A small ripple of chakra on his hand drew his attention–one of his scouting kikai had returned, and Shino's back straightened as the danger pheremone it was leaking found him. Enemies. Two, if he was reading the trail correctly. But there was something else mixed in, a warning apart from the simple presence of enemies.

He pulled his collar high and followed the movement of the throngs, allowing himself to be carried along towards the source of the danger. A few moments brought some more scouts from his colony, and their own individual interpretations of the enemy. Pair. Came through a lot. Male. A rough approximation of height and build. A mixture of Chunin and Jonin level chakra reserves between the two, though the insects transmitted this as a size of meal.

It was the last, slightly fraught message, however, that sent ice lancing through his veins. Hive. One. Immediately, Shino issued the command to recall his entire colony, and set to scanning the crowds desperately, heartbeat in his throat. The message ruled out other missing nin looking for a bounty, or Kami forbid one of the Akatsuki Kurenai grew increasingly paranoid about.

No, the warning of hive all but guaranteed Konoha-nin. Danzou's men, and one of them possessed a kikai colony of their very own.

Finally, Shino laid eyes on the pair. It could have been nobody else, even disguised in civilian garb and lounging easily on the chairs of a sake stand as they were. Aburame Tombo was a Jonin level member of the Aburame, and had been well respected even before the coup. Shino had liked him very much–he had more of a sense of humour than most Aburame were inclined towards, and he had often taken time out of his day to mentor and support the training of the younger Aburame.

Shino was careful not to stare. Tombo would recognise him just as easily as Shino had him, and it was incredibly likely that he had been sent with Team 8's recovery specifically in mind. The other, the Chunin level man, had dark, chestnut hair and suspiciously pale eyes, though he wore contacts in an attempt to disguise the thankfully inactive Byakugan.

His jaw worked anxiously beneath his collar, as the colony within him stirred in anticipation of a fight. He quieted them, mindful of the ability of skilled Aburame to sense the unease of nearby colonies, and strode past the pair with as much nonchalance as he could muster. The others must be warned. It was a shame, Shino had enjoyed his time as part of this ramshackle little community.

That said, he'd felt much the same about the dozen they'd fled from before they'd arrived here.

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

Shadows warped around him, wrapping him in comfortable invisibility. He was no stranger to the dark, as a shinobi it was perhaps one's greatest ally. However, in recent years, he'd tried his utmost to step back into the light, no matter how it burned.

For burn, it surely did. Oh, he hid it with an easy smile and eccentric habits, but every second he spent apart from the shadows was an exercise in resilience. His comrades had helped a great deal, shielding him from the worst, and forgiving his peculiarities. Despite it all, stepping out of the shadows, shouldering the pain rather than fleeing from it, had been the hardest thing he had ever done.

He inched forward, every movement lithe and graceful, his silence a dagger keener than any he could have held. His targets lay below, utterly unaware. They kept the standard Anbu watch pattern. Two figures bearing the plain masks of the Root division patrolled the perimeter of their encampment, whilst two slept.

Two more remained out of view, sharing the darkness with him–albeit unknowingly. It was a difficult to maintain watch schedule, with sleep deprivation being all but guaranteed throughout the unit. It was a deficiency their master expected them to be able to overcome with no loss in performance–shinobi were to him, after all, tools rather than humans. These men in particular had been in the field for nearly a month, and the strain had long since taken its toll.

Even if they had been tools once, these were men. Exhausted, hungry and struggling beneath the strain of their false Hokage's impossible expectations and the stress of being constantly under threat by their enemies.

Danzou's actions after the coup had continued to be unforgivable. The Suna Massacre had resulted in mass militarisation of the entire elemental nations. Each waited with baited breath to find out if they were to be the next target of Danzou's thirst for power, and each plotted and planned their own potential strikes and alliances for the day war began. The world lay upon a bed of gunpowder, and all knew it would only take a single spark to set everything alight once again.

He stepped from the shadows, blade gleaming, and the first of the hidden entries fell with his hand silencing the pained gasp. Blue eyes met cold grey, and he watched life disappear from them as he had a thousand times before. It had been scary at first, how easily he had fallen back into old habits. How quickly he had fallen back to taking life without a moment's hesitation. HIs sensei would have been disappointed, had he been alive to see it. The Sandaime would be even more so, he after all, had been the one to put so much effort into bringing him back into the light.

The next man died just as quickly, his leaf headband catching the firelight for the barest moment before the body was laid carefully beneath the forest underbrush.

Death was as natural to him as breathing, and he hated himself for it, even as he pulled the headband from his covered eye, and the world exploded into colour, and he saw the vivid chakra flows of the last four targets shining out ahead of him.

Kakashi had tried for months to locate Jiraiya and Naruto, for that was surely where the fight to take back their village would begin, but it was no use. He had guessed they were hiding in the summon realm of the toads, most likely training Naruto and gathering information. He'd then hunted down some of his old comrades, familiar faces to keep him from the dark.

Anko was nowhere to be found, she and the Sound girl had seemingly vanished without a trace since that night in the forest. Kakashi thought that a good thing. Neither, for that matter, was Might Gai. This was less reassuring–Kakashi was yet to find evidence that Gai had even escaped Konoha, nor any trace of his presence from his sources within.

Kurenai had been easier to pick up the trail on, but only long after she had moved on. The entirety of Team 8 seemed to by roving far and wide, hiding out and evading Konoha pursuers to the best of their abilities whilst scraping an admittedly miserable living. Asuma, on the other hand, had been the easiest to find. He and Team 10 seemed to be operating openly as freelance shinobi, taking on contracts at a steady rate.

That, Kakashi could only assume, had been a decision made in anger. The death of the Sandaime had hit every loyal Konoha shinobi hard, but for Asuma, the loss of his Father was incredibly personal. They had never fully recovered their old relationship, and now they never would. Operating so openly could only be a direct challenge to Danzou and his Root agents.

He peered back at the Root right in front of him, still painfully ignorant of their fates. Kakashi understood Asuma's anger, his own had fuelled his path since the coup. Unable to find Jiraiya, Kakashi could easily have joined either squad. Helped them. Remained in the light.

In the end, he had chosen the darkness. One day soon, a battle would be fought, those loyal to the Will of Fire, against those not, and Kakashi was certain in his heart that Uzumaki Naruto would be leading the charge. Kakashi had chosen the darkness, as he was sure that the most help he could be to the cause was to ensure there were as few standing against them as possible when the day came.

After all, like his father before him, Hatake Kakashi had always been a true shinobi. A deadly weapon, a dealer in death. And deal he would, until he could bring the light back to his comrades and restore that home, no matter how far into the darkness he himself had to fall.

His targets took their last breath with the terrible tune of the Chidori ringing through their ears. 

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