Training Ground 3

The elation of having regained his ninjutsu had lasted a full day. For a full week, Kakashi had run amok around the village, causing general mayhem for others and entertainment for himself. He messed up several training grounds and disrupted several electrical appliances. He played with his dog summons. He tortured his cute students. He nabbed free drinks from both sides of The Rusty Kunai and The Polished Kunai several times by alternating through several disguises and left a variety of different people with the tab. He exhausted himself several times firing off every single one of the thousand ninjutsu in his book (that was approximately one ninjutsu every ten minutes) and got yelled at by Tsunade for it. He had a good day. Several good days.

Then reality caught up to him, and he remembered part of the reason why they had been so desperate to find a solution to his chakra dilemma in the first place.

"Congratulations. You've all been promoted," Kakashi said, tossing his team the papers.

Shikamaru sighed. "I thought ANBU was outside the regular chain of command? So this isn't exactly a promotion; it's just administrative clearance paperwork."

Kakashi glared at him. "So you knew this was coming, then. Great. Saves me the trouble. You could be a little more grateful, you know."

Shikamaru smirked. "Sure, sensei. You're getting promoted too, right?"

"I don't want mine any more than you want yours."

"Fair enough." He cocked his head. "I heard from…eh, sources, that a certain genocidal clan killer was supposed to get that position. And then all of a sudden it was retracted. Know anything about it?"

"I know bits and pieces. I suppose Jiraiya would know more about the whys than me."

Naruto shuffled through the fine print, narrowing his eyes at the more difficult kanji. "We're like, Chunin, and ANBU, and we still have you as our Jonin sensei?"

"Firstly, yes; secondly, no you're not ANBU yet and won't be until you complete your specialized training; thirdly, yes, you do, and you will still have a Jonin sensei even if you become Jonin yourselves with students of your own."

Ino's eyes were glittering with stars, in a fake and sarcastic sort of way. "We'll be one big family! With a happy ending. Just like in the movies."

"Will you be training us?" Naruto asked.

"Yes and no. Training you directly could be construed as favoritism. Not that it matters, but I don't want to give anyone any preventable ammunition. I will, however, be supervising. It sounds so fucking stupid, doesn't it? But it's really for your own protection." If it even counted as protection, when said "protection" was potentially worse than whatever danger they were being shielded from.

They'd look for any weakness they had. Any slight chink to turn into fragmentation within the Yamanaka clan, or instability within the Kyuubi jinchuuriki, or danger from the Nara clan. Anything and everything would be taken advantage of.

"Sort of like why they stuffed us into the Chunin Exams early," Shikamaru noted.

"Exactly." Kakashi knew as well as they did that with Ino as a teenage clan head, anything he could do as a mere Jonin sensei wasn't enough. It was never enough. "Which is why we're going through this ANBU thing in the first place. You're not ready now. But you will be. We'll make you ready."

Ino swallowed. "What if I'm not – "

"You will be. That is all. There is no other option," Kakashi told her shortly. "You will be ready. No matter what it takes."

He had to become Hokage to protect them. Fuu Yamanaka – even if he couldn't really do anything substantial – his mere presence showed that simply staying as a regular Jonin sensei simply wasn't enough anymore.

He had to accept that this was going to be his life now. The hat, the robe, the trappings of office and rank that came with it. Even if it left a sour taste in his mouth, for reasons he couldn't explain. Every time he tried to explore that part of himself, he found his mind wandering off in a different direction, as if someone had put a mental block there. A mental block cleverly disguised as a hallway slanting in the opposite direction, a whisper of a suggestion rather than an outright denial.

The only reason why he ever noticed it at all in the first place was because whenever he thought of the word "Hokage" he thought of Minato-sensei and Obito. Both of them sunny in ways he decidedly was not. Somehow, there was this thing in him that knew having a Godaime Kakashi Hatake would turn out to be the complete opposite of Minato-sensei's and Obito's visions, and therefore disastrous.

He would be competent, of course – Kakashi was always dreadfully competent in everything he did. And the history books might even applaud his reign. Whatever influence he wrought wouldn't rear their ugly heads until a couple generations down the line, when the current people in charge could conveniently take the fall because no one alive could properly affix true blame to him. Only he would know the truth. And maybe his ever-perceptive students.

"Why not the Uchiha?" Naruto interjected. "I mean, Sasuke is technically a clan head, too, but they're not bothering him any!"

"The Uchiha clan isn't a clan any longer, Naruto, even if officially the papers still say they are. He's the only one left. Sure, they can spend time and resources on him, but if they do, he's just one person. Even though the Yamanaka is a more minor clan, in terms of political influence they far outclass the Uchiha."

This seemed to get through to Naruto. "Right, because Choji's clan and Shikamaru's clan are allied with her clan. So she's technically carrying the weight of three clans. And since Choji is on the same team as Hinata and Sasuke, they're bringing the Hyuga and Uchiha along too. So it's actually five clans in this pyramid."

"Exactly."

Naruto rubbed his nose. "But why are they trying so hard, though? Anyone who knows Ino, and that's everyone, knows that she's not dumb. Plus, she's got us. They can't just, y'know. Control her so easily. Can they?"

"I should hope not!" Ino interjected.

"Doesn't stop them from trying. I mean, the Sandaime's not a fool either, but that doesn't mean he can't be influenced," Shikamaru pointed out. "Maybe Fuu's there as some kind of reverse psychology thing. Establish himself as a bad guy, and then just say the opposite of what he wants everyone to do."

So they were all on the same page here. Good. Kakashi himself was still trying to figure out Fuu's purpose. So far Kakashi couldn't tell what Fuu was for except for to sow chaos and distrust. Danzo was smart; he knew that if Ino died, Shikaku would make sure everyone thought it was him, even if he had no proof – the clan heads, thanks to the presence of Shikamaru's Butterfly lady in the capital, and Danzo's own secrecy over the past few decades, had the edge on propaganda.

Not to mention, if Ino died, Kakashi would definitely go berserk and hunt him down. Anyway, even if Fuu somehow managed to become the Yamanaka clan head, the rest of the clan wouldn't listen to him anyway, and in fact try to "accident" him at the first convenient opportunity. He'd be losing on both ends.

It would be more advantageous to allow Ino to live while having Fuu control her behind the scenes, but even that was too stupid for a man like Danzo to consider. Ino was too smart and headstrong to have some random cousin she'd never met suddenly come into her life and boss her around. The clan knew that Fuu was Danzo's obvious puppet, so they wouldn't listen to any orders Fuu tried to push through Ino. That was obvious. Fuu doesn't need to order around some clan members, anyway – what's he going to do, make them rearrange the flowerpots in the window display?

"We considered that. Right now we're just making sure he doesn't get to talk at all," Ino said.

"So, going back to our conversation before – This is the plan. I am rejoining ANBU. You guys, on the other hand, are not ANBU material yet. But you will be, after you complete the pre-ANBU training program. This thing that you three are about to go through is specifically designed to get people up to speed, so they can match the high standards set by the black ops – standards of a very different nature from the regular forces."

"Different?" Naruto asked.

"We-e-e-llll, technically." Kakashi tapped his chin. "I say technically because I've already put you guys through a little bit of it myself. A lot of the stuff I do to you guys is outside of the regular training program."

"No, really?" Ino snarked under her breath.

Kakashi whacked the back of her head with his book. "Hey, don't get cocky now. I said a little bit. Remember all that fuckery back in your early Genin days that you guys were constantly whinging about? Yeah, that. But multiply by ten, or twenty, or a hundred."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes and muttered, "Joy."

"Physical exertion is only one part of it. It's the psychological conditioning that weeds out most recruits. It is designed to break you down to your core and rebuild you back up like a brainwashed pile of goo. That is why not any random yahoo can slap on the mask and join, even if they technically have the 'skill', because it's not just about strength. There is a reason why certain Chunin with no outstanding power of their own are given the mask and armor without a second thought, while men at the level of Gai-sensei can badger the committee their entire life and never even be considered, except as a joke. There is an unimaginable mental strain that comes with completely sacrificing your own identity, with turning yourself into a nobody – and then an even greater strain that comes with trying to remember yourself after the mask comes off," Kakashi explained. "Once you have survived through that, and only then, will you be allowed to formally join ANBU. But when you do so – and this is the second part of this non-mission – it'll be on your own terms. Killing two birds with one stone; you will not only gain the experience you need to shut up any naysayers, but you'll also directly be under the control of the Hokage. So no one else can tell you what to do. Officially."

Shikamaru blinked, as if having already expected this speech, and said, "If this is how the game will be played – if it's inevitable that we must join – then we will play to win. But no matter what, we're staying together. I'm in."

The choice we have is not a choice at all.

"I'm not letting anyone in this team go in there alone. Either they take all of us, or they take none of us," Naruto added.

Ino smiled, not happily. She was the one who'd need this the most. You couldn't exactly be a proper Yamanaka clan head without being able to lead Konoha ANBU Intelligence services, and you couldn't exactly lead an ANBU division without having gone through the basic ANBU training. "Then it's settled. We're all in this together."

It had been hard on Ino's mother, ever since her husband had died. It was only going to get worse for the poor woman. He'd promised her he'd keep Ino safe, too. And then Shikamaru's parents, stuck in whatever trap system the power triangles of Konoha had set up for each other, were also begging him to make sure that the resident boy genius didn't bite off any more than he could chew. And, of course, Naruto. His smiles were rarer now, few and far between, and less bright, but they were still there, and Kakashi couldn't possibly let them be extinguished. He had too much respect for Minato-sensei and Kushina to let that happen to their son.

Whatever happened, they were sticking together. If he didn't do something now, anyone else might pick them up. And he did not have the time, nor the resources, to find out where Danzo had hidden all of his moles. At least, this way, he'd know exactly who was influencing them.

"Above all, remember this: do not get cocky just because you're a bunch of fourteen-year-olds being recommended for the special forces. ANBU is elite, not simply because of strength. They are elite because of the power that comes with being faceless. You can kill an ANBU soldier, sometimes even more easily than a regular Jonin. But you cannot kill ANBU so easily. Get it?"

"A little," said Naruto. "So what you're saying is, for all the hype, they're just glorified pawns."

When did he get so…he used to be so innocent, Kakashi thought. Oh, well. That'll make the desensitization process less difficult for me. "ANBU have neither names nor faces for a reason. There is less guilt over sending an ANBU squad to do something a known Chunin or Jonin squad is fit for. The main forces are trained to minimize losses. ANBU are trained to succeed no matter what the cost. They are expected to die."

"That's screwed up," said Ino. "I thought the entire point of this was to not die."

"And you won't, as long as I have any say in it," Kakashi declared.

"But what if – "

"Everybody shut the fuck up," Kakashi suddenly snapped. "Nobody is fucking dying, do you hear me?"

All of Team 7 went ram-rod straight in shock, Kakashi himself included. He had allowed himself to visibly display his anger outside of the battlefield. That almost never happened. Usually when he was pissed, he'd still hide it behind an equally infuriating smile, all the while planning the offending party's slow and miserable death by a thousand petty annoyances.

"How do you know that?" Ino ventured.

"Because even the Hokage knows that if any of you die the one responsible will be a new name in the graveyard, consequences be damned, even if that means me being a new missing-nin in the Bingo Book," he said. "That's why."

They all stared at him in shocked silence. Not horrified, thankfully. More like awed. It was a little awkward, to be honest.

Kakashi cleared his throat.

"As long as I'm alive none of you will die," he declared. "I – "

Here he faltered, because his promises really meant nothing. But the words came out with conviction anyway.

"I promise."

This was an oath he'd die before breaking.

He'd break every other promise he made before breaking this one.

He would keep them safe.

"Okay!" he clapped his hands, and suddenly he was back to his normal, fake-cheerful self. "Who wants ice cream?"

"As long as you're not the one making it," Naruto muttered.

"Am I hearing disrespect, hmmm?"

The Yamanaka Clan Compound

Ino wasn't as shocked as she should have been at the revelation that her teacher would be willing to go so far as tarnish his own reputation and honor for a bit of revenge. Really, the only reason why he hadn't gone berserk already, was probably because he knew it would hurt Team 7 if he pulled something like that for no reason.

No, she thought, relaxing. They wouldn't dare provoke Kakashi Hatake. The established powers already had too much to lose. They and their carefully laid plans, surely as a row of falling dominoes. Danzo, the Sandaime, even Shikamaru's father – they were incapable of taking certain risks because were bound by their responsibilities and obligations. Their decisions were a constant state of cost-benefit analysis. Was this life worth that consequence, was this advantage worth that action? All of them wanted to kill each other, and yet all of them would not, for the time being, because they all had too much to lose. A state of mutually assured destruction, if you will. And this uneasy balance will continue as long as neither of them had a distinct advantage over the other. Neither of them would strike until they were sure that doing so would not draw disproportionate retribution.

But Kakashi-sensei was a random variable, the one ticking time bomb that threatened to tip over their carefully balanced game boards and blow away all their meticulously positioned little pieces to smithereens. He was the bowling ball in their game of chess, the tinfoil square in their deck of cards. No one was safe from him, because he had nothing to lose except his own life and those of Team 7, and the first of that was questionable because sometimes Ino was unsure if he even cared if he died.

It made her oddly proud, knowing despite all their influence and might, they still had to tread carefully around just one man. They feared him – not because he was any more powerful than they were, but because he had more freedom to act than they did.

Freedom. Since she was small Ino had always believed it to be such a lovely word. How could something as wonderful as wanting autonomy…ever be bad? Wasn't free will something that every mind and every soul were all supposed to be entitled to?

Wasn't it?

She didn't want to answer that question. Kakashi-sensei was a free spirit, after all, and look at him. The only thing keeping him contained was Team 7's survival.

Freedom and truth; truth and freedom. Odd, wasn't it? That was the main thing about Shikamaru. He didn't need any other sort of persuasion other than the truth. She'd tried to give him hypothetical moral dilemmas before, on boring days when there was nothing to be done except convince herself that she was a good person.

They never worked on him. Shikamaru always thought about everything in a realistic manner, and realistic situations usually always had a third choice. If there was no third choice, then always choose the one that's more likely to save more people. A staunch mathematical calculation. No emotions involved. Numbers didn't have feelings.

To him, there was always another way out, an exception to the rule, if only one thought hard enough, using his brain and not his heart. If the situation was not realistic, he would not consider it, because then there was no point.

Ino had then tried the classic "teammate captured, which one do you choose" thing. As usual, the answer, according to him, depended on the situation, because there was always the prospect of a double-capture and trade, or using Naruto's clones and Kawarimi, or summon animals…

"But what if we couldn't do those things – "

"Well, we can, so don't worry about it."

"But what if there's a massive chakra plague and we're all useless except for taijutsu, and these guys are crazy bastards who aren't going to negotiate anyway – "

"They're forcing me to choose between two people, so I'm pretty sure that's called negotiating. And before you go into a different scenario, no, I'm not going to kill an uncaptured teammate to save a captured one. That's just stupid. Either way, one person is going to die, and if they revoke the deal they made with me and kill the captured teammate anyway, that's two people dead – except both of them are dead because of me. One because I'm a treacherous bastard who would kill my own ally, and the other because I'm an idiot in thinking that people like that would keep their word."

"But what if we're both on opposite ends of a battlefield and we're dying and you're too low on chakra to make a clone and you can help one of us but you won't have time to help the other?"

"Whoever's physically closer to me, obviously."

"What if we're the same distance away?"

"The exact same distance? The odds of that are astronomical. But if I'm too low on chakra to make a clone, I'd pick the person who's less injured, who I have a better chance of saving."

"What if we're equally injured – "

"I'd go for whoever I happened to see first, and stick to that decision."

Shikamaru in a nutshell. Then again, her too. She cared about both Naruto and Shikamaru equally, and would never sacrifice one for the other, even if it was the logical thing to do. He had the right of it, she realized. Don't bother with making a choice. Let the numbers decide. Saving one was better than saving no one because you couldn't decide.

Maybe she was not so different.

It wasn't as if any of them were good or bad. They were ninja; they made war and lies for a living. There was no point in trying to justify what they did, because there was no point in it. The only thing they could do was accept it, and move on.

This paradox – that her self-determination was by definition bound to the self-determination of another person, effectively proving all that she had worked for and grew up believing might be impossible – was too terrifying to contemplate. And so Ino just shut that thought down and pretended that she had never entertained it in the first place.

She'd be leaving her nice little bedroom tomorrow for – she wasn't sure what, but some ugly dome of concrete, surely. Best to get in a good night's sleep now while she could.

The Hyuga Clan Compound

Hiashi Hyuga knew something was off when he passed through the doorway.

"What is the meaning of this?" he snarled, shoving his way past a random Branch Family member. Not even a shinobi; some insignificant child whose name he couldn't be bothered to remember at this moment in time.

"Good to see you too, Hiashi-san."

He came to a hard stop and nearly choked. Hinata was there, brazenly wearing the formal clothing and regalia that was normally reserved solely for the clan head. Hanabi and Neji stood a few steps behind her. Around them were a mass of Branch Family members. It was as if the whole clan had come out today.

"Hinata. What on earth do you think you're doing?"

She cocked her head at him in an arrogant little smile. "I'm the clan head now, so I believe…whatever I want."

The nerve of that – ! It seemed that while she was no longer quite the failure she was before, she had learned the same lack of respect from Tsunade. If she thought that sheer force of numbers could overwhelm him, she was wrong. Quality beat quantity every time when it came to the Hyuga clan. Hiashi reached out to the mass of Caged Bird seals with his chakra, intending to yank the chain of punishment.

But it was gone.

He stumbled in the dark, expecting solid ground and instead tumbling down a step that hadn't been there before. "What did you do?"

"Nothing that shouldn't have been done a long time ago," Hinata said. She brushed her hair back from her head. Her bangs fell away and revealed –

A seal.

What on earth –

It was a seal, but not a Curse Seal.

"You can't – "

Hinata flicked the ground with her finger.

And the courtyard.

Fucking.

EXPLODED.

Cracks opened up in the concrete where her strike had come into contact with the ground. The pebbles in the stone gardens jumped around like sparks from firecrackers. Tree roots were shoved above the ground, ripping cracks into the terra cotta walkways that wound between them.

The soil was ripped to shreds.

"From now on, no one shall wear the badge of slavery," she declared. "We shall all be equals. Our eyes will all be protected by the same seal – one that does not allow me to dominate any one of you! Make me the clan head, and we shall all walk free! This I swear to you!"

"The authority to choose the next clan head does not reside within the branch family – " Hiashi Hyuga burst out desperately.

The largest clan in Konoha all turned to face him as one. Hanabi and Neji each took up their positions directly on her left and right. And even a blind man could see – with the backing of the masses, and the approval of both the second and third in line – there was no arguing with her.

Hinata smirked. "It does now."

Kakashi's Apartment

If only the other sort of pain faded as quickly as physical pain. It hurt Kakashi so much, to have to do this.

His precious team. He wanted to lock them away from all the horrors of the world, chain them up in a box forever and never let them out again.

But in this case, trying to shield them would only do them more harm. For their sake, he'd have to let them go. All of this was only because he didn't want to lose them; he was a selfish bastard and proud of it.

The choice we have is not a choice at all. Either we say yes and succeed, or we die.

That night, Kakashi unlocked the hidden panel in the back of his closet for the first time in seven years, and dragged out the box of secrets he'd hoped he could hide away forever.

Kakashi stared at it wordlessly.

He had written on this in permanent marker, "DO NOT OPEN", and "TO BE BURNED ASAP", the latter of which he for some reason kept procrastinating for no reason and the former of which he was about to disobey right now.

He had sworn to give this up forever. But if it meant keeping his teammates safe – and he swore he would, this time –

Then by the gods, he would.

They're my cute little students, he laughed to himself joylessly. I have to.

Promises were meant to be broken, weren't they? What's putting this armor back on for a few hours, compared to what I had promised you, Obito? What are a few skeletons in my closet, compared to the hundreds of skeletons I've put below the ground?

I would rather have them despise my very soul than watch them die.

Mask.

Armor.

Katana.

Konoha's most beloved and hated son had returned.