( Alvarcus )
Four sickening squelches echo out into the clearing as I pull my loyal minions back into me. Then I put my shirt back on and swing my coat over my shoulders. I'm back to my usual outfit.
~Should we go check to make sure some of them lived?~
"No need." I turn away from the pillar of thick black smoke towards my own personal destination.
~I thought we were supposed to let some of them live?~
"A few probably did since that was an attack based completely on luck. We bombarded the area, someone probably was in the right place to survive it. Who knows, maybe someone over there knew a jutsu or something to defend themselves. But it wouldn't matter if every single one of them died."
~Why not? Ah, I get it. The Hunters.~
"Correct. They will spread the news about me like wildfire." I sigh in both contentment and resignation. "I'll probably never be able to use this combination attack as effectively again. It's been a very long time since a single shinobi destroyed a base. Usually a stealth team sneaks in and rigs it to blow with tags but Orochimaru wanted it to be flashy. He wanted memorable. He wanted me to send a message and to show off just how strong I really am."
~This is him saying fuck off to the world.~
"Well... yeah." I cringe as I start to move again. "It sounds a lot worse when you say it like that."
...
( The Konoha Team )
"Stop." Kakashi orders the entire group and the other four members are quick to join him. They're all perched high in trees around the clearing where the base is.
Used to be. The base is nothing more than smoldering ruins now. All of the buildings have been demolished and resemble little more than rubble. There are giant craters and rents in the ground from some form of advanced technique, obviously it's the one that brought this destruction down upon the unsuspecting Kusa shinobi.
"Shikamaru I'm taking over for this." Kakashi's tone brokers no arguments.
"All yours." Shikamaru readily agrees. He has no idea how to react to this situation. He has no experiences to fall back on. Hell he's never seen destruction of this magnitude before, even when Konoha was invaded there were a few leveled building but you could tell that they were buildings. But here they're just crushed into unrecognizable heaps.
"What happened here? Who did this? Who can do this?" Naruto asks the questions that everyone wants answered.
"We'll figure that out later." Kakashi rises up from his kneeling position. "We're going to go look for survivors. Be wary, it's possible they will attack us. They just went through this, they're sure to be jumpy. Just remain calm and let Anko and I do the talking. You three are strictly observers. Do not engage anyone unless they attack you, even then only defend yourself. This is a very delicate situation. It's one I hoped you all would never have to see."
"Kakashi? Anko?" Ino hesitantly asks. She's very shaken up from seeing the ruthless destruction. "Does... does this happen a lot? Is this normal? Will we be expected to do something like this too?"
"Not in times of peace." Anko quietly says as she shares a look with Kakashi. Neither of them will sugar coat this. They're telling the kids - the shinobi - exactly how it is. "But in times of war, that's a different story."
"Have... have either of you done something like this?" Ino gestures out at the indiscriminate destruction. Whoever did this didn't care who they caught in their attack.
Kakashi and Anko share another look. Each one is asking the other to respond to this question, neither of the jonin want to portray themselves in a bad light to the others. But it's Kakashi who folds first, even if it's only temporary Ino does look at Anko as a sensei. He won't let that relationship be tainted so soon.
"Yes. I have." Kakashi admits to everyone else present. "It's as you all have said before, I am one of Konoha's top shinobi. I'll be given missions that no one else can do. Sometimes I'll get assigned to systematically dismantle an entire base with cold and unforgiving precision. Other times I'll be told to blow up a bridge that hundreds of enemy forces are depending on to bring them food and medical supplies. Usually it's with a team. Sometimes it's not."
He feels four unique stares at his back. The first one is full of thanks and pity, this one is Anko. The second is one of shock and fear, this one is Ino. The third is one of surprise and then hate, this one is Naruto. The fourth one is calculating and morbid sense of awe, this one is Shikamaru.
"That does not mean I enjoy such things. They are the things that keep me awake at night. They're the things that haunt me to this very day. They're the things that I've done so no one else had to."
An awkward silence falls onto the five shinobi.
"We've wasted enough time." Kakashi breaks the tense atmosphere. "Let's go check for survivors."
...
At the Ruins of the Base
"Are there any survivors?" Kakashi calls out from the middle of the town. "My name is Kakashi Hatake, I'm with a Konoha team that was passing close by then saw smoke and came to investigate. We're here to help."
"Do you really think anyone will respond to that?" Anko chirps to the more experienced jonin. She's trying to give off a not hostile vibe so they're more likely to respond.
"I hope so." Kakashi responds in an equally loud voice. "Kusa is our ally, it's only natural that we help each other."
A wet cough comes from off to their left and all five shinobi reflexively take up defensive stances. Kakashi even zoomed to stand between everyone and the sudden noise in case the person who made it is hostile. They'll have to go through him to get the others.
"Konoha... HACK... shinobi?" A weak voice says from beneath part of a destroyed building.
The owner of the voice is male and he's on the verge of dying. Upon closer examination everyone can see that the only reason he's still alive is because part of the collapsed building is still on him. It crushed his lower half but it's also preventing his organs from spilling to the ground. They can't lift the rubble off of him or he'll die but if they do nothing he'll die anyways. There's no hope for this man.
And from the resigned look in his eyes he knows it too.
"You're lucky... wheeze... you weren't here an hour ago." The Kusa shinobi forces out.
"What happened here?" Kakashi kneels next to the Kusa shinobi. "Who did this?"
"Not enough time." The Kusa shinobi weakly says between labored breaths. "Dead. Soon."
"Eito-san?" Ino gasps out as she finally looks at the Kusa shinobi's face.
"You know him?" Kakashi gently asks Ino without leaving Eito's side.
"Yes." Tears form in her eyes. "He was the proctor for the Chunin Exams I just went to."
"Leiko." There's a spark in Eito's eyes for just a fleeting moment. "Tell Leiko... tell..."
Eito trails off. He's no longer capable of speech, he only has moments left in this world.
"Shh." Ino steps forward to kneel down next to Eito with Kakashi. "Don't speak, just think. I'm a Yamanaka, I'll skim your surface thoughts. Not enough for a full possession but enough so I can read you. Don't worry about me, we're not connected enough to do any damage. You can tell me that way."
Ino gently lays a hand on Eito's head as bursts of fragmented images assault her mind.
"Fire rained down from the sky." She quietly says to her other teammates. "It was Hell on earth for just one minute, but in the minute everyone died. Everything broke. It all ended so quickly so unexpectedly. Just like that. No one even saw who did it."
The Konoha shinobi analyze the destruction again with a new eye. There's a lot of smoldering boulders at the epicenter of most of the craters and rents in the ground.
"There were three other survivors." Ino continues. "Somehow they came out nearly unscathed but they've long since fled back to Kusa. They saw Eito like this and left him here. No, he told them to leave him. He knows that he's going to die."
A new burst of images flows into Ino's mind. They're not of this senseless destruction, they're softer. Gentler. A new tear forms in Ino's eyes, but it doesn't carry the same meaning as her previous tears.
"You truly cared for Leiko. You saw her as the little sister you never had and she looked up to you so much. You want to apologize to her, not for dying, but because you can't see her grow up. I'll make sure she knows."
"Thank you." Eito speaks despite the agony it causes him.
The connection between him and Ino is severed but Ino wasn't the one to break it. He's dead.
"You're welcome." Ino removes her hand from the corpse.
...
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