A/N: Sorry again. I got mildly depressed because of some stupid shit.

Last ANBU training chapter, I promise. I wish I could have made it shorter, but I needed to show the three stages of indoctrination: replacing your will, replacing your identity, and replacing your relationships.

If you reread the earlier chapters involving Gaara, they're all going through the same basic process, except ANBU is more obviously stressful (less carrot and more stick). Next chapter they'll be starting their first mission as Black Ops team members.

ANBU Training Complex #2

At first Ino wondered, was that Kakashi-sensei?

And then she realized, that was Kakashi-sensei.

They'd never heard him sing before, so to say it was unnerving was a severe understatement.

He was neither bad nor good. He did not go off-key, but his musical choice was simplistic enough that there was barely any key to screw up in the first place. She'd grown up with some of them, things that they taught to three-year-olds that hadn't developed proper vocal chords yet.

…Things that said three-year-olds would then sing to annoy their parents.

Oh gods, now it makes sense.

Because what he lacked in talent he made up for in persistence. Although, technically, that wasn't completely fair – Shikamaru had supposedly identified a little skip in the beat around the 40-second mark that would repeat every three minutes, meaning that they were either listening to a recording or some new weird auditory genjutsu that they'd never heard of. Kakashi-sensei had been in ANBU for a very long time. It was likely that he'd helped design some of the modern training programs. Ino could imagine, years ago, a teenaged Kakashi-sensei and some of his buddies sitting at a table, compiling a list of the worst earworms in existence, giggling at the idea of hazing the newbies with nursery rhymes.

She wondered if all certified ANBU training instructors were taught to do this, the ability to spout the same thing on repeat for hours on end and not get tired. See, there were certain songs that were just designed for torture. Mind-numbing, repetitive, distracting, obnoxious, and, worst of all, catchy. Songs that were guaranteed to continue playing in their heads, long after they were turned off, and all their trainers knew it.

They had gone from copying ordinances on building standards for bar counters to that. If they were lucky, they'd get something mildly entertaining, like highly complicated ninjutsu scrolls or mathematical formulas behind the operational mechanics of space-time sealing to study.

Of course, the fact that they were operating on less than three hours of sleep per every three days made that knowledge completely useless.

They were not meant to learn; they were meant to confuse. It was all gibberish to her. She'd have better luck reading on how to use a kekkei genkai she didn't have. Shikamaru might be able to make some sense of those things Kakashi-sensei had tossed at them, but she and Naruto were both reduced to brute-force memorization.

The punishment for making any mistakes, even the smallest ones, was more paperwork. But it wasn't really much of a punishment, because the reward for completing the given task perfectly was also more paperwork.

Also, there was that thing where random ANBU mooks would deliberately ruin their work. Spilling ink, ripping pages, knocking the well-organized stacks to the ground and forcing them to pick it up as if it was their fault. Kakashi-sensei was a bit more subtle; he'd shift a single paper from the top to the bottom when they weren't looking, ensuring that everything after that would be off by one.

And, of course, force them to do the whole thing over. Again.

It had frustrated her to tears at first.

After several – minutes? Hours? Days? Weeks? She didn't know – of it, however, she got used to it. She'd resigned herself to the mundanity. It wasn't as if she was doing anything useful, anyway.

It was like those other times, when Kakashi-sensei had led them to missions by taking the long way around Konoha to "teach a lesson in patience" and whatnot. And then, when they had asked him "how long until the end", he'd answered with something morbid about death coming when it wanted to.

Here was no different.

Look underneath the underneath; all of this was just them being trained to accept the pointless, the meaningless, the utterly delusional nature of their lives.

In the meantime, they were constantly blasted with the most blatant propaganda. Every single working minute. And then some mook would come check to see if they were paying attention to the pointless distractions from pointless labor by quizzing them on his pointless lectures. She never thought she'd live to see the day where Kakashi-sensei was actually boring – and yet, here he was, reciting the shinobi rulebook from memory.

Like, what the hell. She knew Kakashi-sensei was a good ninja, but only in the chaotic sense. She never realized that he actually knew this stuff. Then again, maybe the insanity he'd shown to them was just yet another mask, built on top of however many other personalities he had. It wouldn't surprise her.

Yes, that was probably right. On the inside he was a strict, dedicated shinobi, just like those guys who stood at attention at the gateways all day long. He only acted like an idiot to throw everyone else off-balance. Though he behaved like a special snowflake, it was all just a carefully contrived image. Like those really annoying people who worked really hard at pretending that they didn't care about their own appearance, except they actually did. Trying too hard, being too perfect, and in the end you got neither.

But perhaps that was not the entire truth, either. For all she knew, the insanity was not a mask. Rather, it was just one side of him – one side of many – that he allowed to expand until it consumed the others. He was human, after all, and every human had his complexities.

And yet he chose to disrespect that part of himself, and squash it all down.

These facets of himself that he exaggerated, he did so because they were the least vulnerable. And the only reason why men like him did things like that, was to compensate for everything else that was weak. A sculpture of spun glass, that was what was hidden behind that brick wall decorated in the ugliest and most annoying migraine-inducing wallpaper ever known to man.

Kakashi Hatake had chosen to reduce his character to a mere caricature of himself because he was a coward, afraid of getting hurt, afraid of losing the people he cared about and yet simultaneously afraid of letting people care about him. Which was why now, he was destroying them for their own good and taking everything without giving any part of him in return.

The irrational hatred she had felt for him before no longer felt irrational. In fact, it felt justified.

Sunagakure

"Kumogakure is going to betray you, and you're counting on it?" Kankuro repeated, confused.

"Yes. As soon as I saw his face, I knew the old man was going through strategies on how to get away with both of the jinchuuriki in his head," Temari said. "And he's probably going to team up with Iwa to do it, because that's just the sort of thing an old man like him will do."

In all honesty, Temari didn't blame him. But mainly because she had already predicted it. As treacherous as those Iwa bastards were, their past two bijuu hadn't been that great or easy to control. As a result, their plans wouldn't conflict with those of Kumo, and they would also be unlikely to betray Kumo in the same way as Kumo was turning on Suna.

Then, also, there was the matter of military might. Baki had been right on one thing, though she still despised him for it. Suna didn't have so much manpower, and their economy was still recovering, even after the change in power of the Wind Daimyo. On the surface, Iwa was definitely the more attractive ally to the power-hungry Cloud nin.

So the path of backstabbing Suna and offering the pieces as a peace offering to Iwa had been the optimal choice in the perspective of the Raikage.

The meeting with Gaara had taught her a bit about that. Thinking from the perspectives of people apart from herself. It allowed her to make better plans while being less affected by her own feelings of indignance.

Either way, someone was going to smash Konoha by the end of this. Hopefully, it would be more successful than the last time. They were working with – well, more like using, since cooperation was pretty much out of the question by now – real ninja villages now, not some creepy Konoha missing-nin and his ragtag band of failed science experiments.

"I know Iwagakure was all backstabby, but how are you going to deal with both of our supposed allies just not being allies? That still doesn't explain how we're going to get what we want," Kankuro pointed out. "Or, rather, what you want. I could care less about Gaara – "

Temari shot him an ugly look.

" – but if you want to bring him home, I'm not going to fight you on it," Kankuro added hastily.

"If Konoha is destroyed by the end of this, they get to collect the spoils. If they're not, well…" Temari trailed off. "Let's just say, it'll really screw those two up. If there's one thing Konoha knows how to do and do well, it's put up a fight. We might call Rock nin hardheaded, but they're nothing compared to the Leaf, with all their 'Will of Fire' crap."

"And where will Suna be during all this?" Kankuro asked.

Temari shrugged. "We'll just not show up."

"We…that just doesn't make any sense."

"Yes it does. We are going to hide in the middle of our desert and watch those old men bleed until they ruin themselves – "

Kankuro interrupted, "But how does that help us? What's the point of waging a war and winning concessions if the fight is all the way over there while we're sitting all the way over here?"

"Let me finish, all right?" Temari snapped. "We are going to hide in the middle of our desert, except for a few of our men, who are going to sneak into the confusion and get Gaara out of there before anyone realizes he's gone. I know it sounds crazy, but it's really not. Because of our population and training, a little thievery like this has a higher chance of success than an extended siege. Let Kumo and Iwa spend their resources and money whittling away at a village with similar economic strength and siege resistance. They have so much gold, they can afford to spend some of it. We, on the other hand, optimize our efficiency. Get in and out and leave no trace, like the shinobi we are."

"Easier said than done. This isn't some palace of civilians. This is another ninja village. They do the same stuff we do," said Kankuro.

"Well, what other choice do we have? Sneak in and steal him back while they're on high alert, or do it when they're busy dealing with a fight from the North? And if we're lucky, and Konoha is successfully destroyed, Gaara will have nowhere else to go but back home to us." Temari chewed her lip. "Although, I'm wondering if I should tip Sarutobi off. I still hate him, but I mean…who do I hate more? Because I'd rather have power divided between Konoha, Kumo, and Iwa than just Kumo and Iwa, you know?"

Kankuro blinked at her. "Okay?"

"So, let's see. We tip off the Leaf, just to make the fight a little more entertaining, because let's face it – one-sided curbstomps are boring. And then, we pin this information leak on Kumo, so Iwa thinks Kumo is actually double-crossing them by leading them into a trap they planned with Konoha beforehand…oh, yes! So Kumo and Iwa team up against Konoha, but Iwa hates Kumo, and Kumo is just confused! Send all three of them up against each other, and all three of them become equally weak and spent!" Temari exclaimed victoriously. "Don't you see, Kankuro? This is absolutely brilliant!"

To his credit, Kankuro remained silent, except for maybe shooting her a concerned look.

ANBU Training Complex #5

I wished I could stab Kakashi-sensei in the back. But I didn't, because I'd lose. He seemed more well-rested than we were, even though he was always there every time we were awake. Either he was more insane than I had originally pegged him for, and was always bright and chipper no matter how much sleep he got, or he was switching out with shadow clones while we were sleeping.

Where did the others go? I could have sworn we were just being kicked around by some mooks that weren't trusted in the field yet, but sometime in the middle of the endless days, they'd been swapped out.

For Kakashi-sensei. And only him.

"ANBU have no identity. They have no past, no present, no future. They are nothing. They are shadows. They live and they die like any other, but they are true shinobi. ANBU are faceless. ANBU are nameless. They are only what they are, and nothing more. So let me ask you this: who are you?"

"ANBU – "

SLAM. I saw Naruto's vague silhouette make contact with the wall.

"Wrong!" he said, and even behind the two layers of mask – the white ANBU one and then his regular face mask – I could see his one eye smiling sadistically. "You're not ANBU yet, you stupid children. I'm asking you again: who are you?"

"Trainee 547," I said.

"What's your name, Trainee 547?"

Trick question. We weren't supposed to know. ANBU were faceless. ANBU were nameless. As soon as we walked through these doors our identities had been forfeit. Only when we left, would we be allowed to breathe freely again.

"I…don't know," I tried.

SMACK. "Liar. You do know."

"No, I'm pretty sure I don't – "

He slammed his palms onto the interrogation table. "Yes, you do."

Keep going on like that and I'll forget for real, I thought. "I'm…Kotetsu," I said, scrambling for the first name that came to mind. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The first name that wasn't the name of any of my teammates, anyone who could be considered a direct connection to me, anyone who had once been an integral part of my identity. We weren't supposed to remember that, either.

"You liar. Who are you?" he asked, shining the light directly into my face. I saw stars, and for a second dozens of random memories flashed through my head. Me bumping my head on the playground slide when I was three, my mom making dinner, Kiba splashing mud on the girls on our first day at the Academy, just – all of my synapses firing at random and conjuring up these images of absolutely no importance.

Except for one. That one time out of a few when I snuck into my dad's study without his permission, picked the lock on his desk, disabled his seals, and read the first random file that peeked out.

Briefly, an extremely mean little part of me wondered if I should say "Sakumo Hatake" and watch his reaction.

Kakashi-sensei had told us about his old team. But he hadn't told us about his father. No one had. I wasn't supposed to know about him; the Academy had never talked about him. We had no direct connections to each other. Kakashi-sensei had a direct connection to his father, obviously, but as we were all in ANBU training right now he couldn't reveal any of it. Therefore Sakumo Hatake's name was fair game. More than fair game. I could watch him squirm.

I wondered if I should do it.

Then, I realized what I was thinking and became horrified at myself for even considering it. For even considering doing something so cruel to someone I was so close to.

How could you even THINK of doing that to your own sensei? The man that's been sacrificing his entire being for your sake since you were placed on his team?

This was what the indoctrination was, I realized. Reducing me to so much anger and frustration and hatred that nothing was sacred anymore. What next would become normalized to my melted brain, I wondered? Kill Naruto? Torture Ino?

Besides, it was a stupid thing to do, even if I was the sort of psychopath that didn't care about other people's feelings. Even though he couldn't do anything to me within ANBU training, I knew we would leave eventually. And then Kakashi-sensei would really let me have it. First, he'd ask me how I knew. And then, once he dragged that out of me, he'd make me miserable for the rest of my life. I had seen firsthand, what my teacher could do to people who angered him. He was a vindictive bastard. Especially with personal matters. He loved us. But that didn't mean he couldn't hurt us. Anyway, part of our continued survival was the high esteem in which Kakashi-sensei held us, and I didn't want to diminish that for any reason.

"I'm…no one."

"Oh, really? You don't look like nobody."

"You got me, sir. I'm actually a somebody."

"And who is this somebody?"

"…nobody?"

"Oh?"

"Just kidding. I'm actually a god."

He slapped me. "Stop messing around. Answer the damn question."

"I'm not lying. I'm nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore I am perfect. And since I am perfect, I must be some sort of god, right?"

There was silence. And then he leaned back, and started chuckling. It was not a nice chuckle. It was a creepy one. A laugh that meant I was off the hook for now, because my smart-aleck gamble paid off, but a laugh that also promised extra pain later. And the anticipation of that pain was scarier than just receiving it.

That was how they broke people. Not with pain, but with the anticipation of pain. It drove men mad, expecting something rather than experiencing it. There were few things worse than being in debt to someone who you could not trust. Debts of favor, or debts of punishment. It kept people in line.

Once the trial was over with, one felt free, perhaps ready to commit the same crime again. But, a trial that was never over…being on probation for eternity…well, there is no need for other men to drive you when your own fear drives yourself.

"Very well, then. Who are you, trainee 546?"

"A…person?" Ino said, trying the same thing I had.

"A person," our interrogator repeated.

"Yep. I'm just a person."

"What type of person?"

"A…human?"

"What type of human?"

"A…person?"

"And you, trainee 548?"

"Stuff."

"What sort of stuff?"

"Things."

"What sort of things?"

"Stuff."

Needless to say, both Naruto and Ino received the same smackdown I did. But they held on to their dignity in the process. That was generally the rule. During an interrogation, the one asking questions was the one in the position of power. The one answering the questions, on the other hand, was giving away bits and pieces of himself to someone else. They put themselves at another's mercy.

But, if you played your cards right, you could always turn the situation around in your favor. Get the other guy angry and unstable, and suddenly you're the one on top.

He stared at us. There was something not quite right about his visible eye. He no longer looked sleepy, or lazy. Behind the eye-holes of his mask, there was one blotted out side. The one with his dead Sharingan. And then, just barely, a flicker of red. A spark of electricity.

They'd fixed him. Somehow, when I hadn't noticed, they'd fixed it –

Was it for this?

"Remember this: it is better to lie than to speak the truth, but it is better to give an empty truth than a bad lie. Lies are a maze. The liar wants to get you lost in the maze he made. The interrogator wants to get the liar lost in his own maze."

When there is no way out – when everything you can possibly say is obviously false, and your tormentors know it – keep your answers as simple as possible. They will hurt you anyway. You might as well hurt them back while you do it.

"Now, back to your paperwork, brats," Kakashi-sensei ordered.

Suddenly, the hate rolling off me in waves crashed and broke against the shore. My heightened feelings dissolved into apathy. If it was truly necessary, then I'd do it. For Ino, for the team, for Konoha. I knew what was at stake, and I knew what Danzo Shimura wanted. I would rather suffer at the hands of someone I trusted than a stranger on the battelfield, and I would rather be trained to pieces by a man I knew would try his best to glue us back together properly than a man who would reshape us to his own design.

Was this it? The last stage of the training?

"When you enter a fight – a real fight – there are four choices, and you will get two of them. You can live or die. And the other guy can live or die. If you win, then you live and they die. And if they win, then they live and you die," Kakashi-sensei was saying, still walking around our table and intermittently handing us more useless paperwork.

"What if there's a tie?"

"Then, the choice is up to you. Either you both live, or you both die."

His voice droned on and on. Sometimes he deliberately made it as sleep-inducing and monotone as possible. Other times, he made it exciting, and worth listening to. I tried to pay attention, to figure out what he was up to, because the techniques behind our conditioning were really interesting. But I couldn't. It was just too stupid and boring.

"Death is cheap, and life is not," Kakashi-sensei droned on and on. "The more you hate someone, the easier it is to kill them. But no matter how much you love someone, nothing you do will bring them back to life. And – oh, will you look at that. It's past your bedtime."

Kirigakure

Chojuro immediately threw himself out of the way, coughing and wheezing. Even though he had been prepared for Mei to use her Lava Release, it still terrified him every time he saw it.

A sea of blinding red heat burst from her lips and rammed into the wooden doors, shredding them apart and tearing the plaster and brick from the cement in the walls. The sour stench of sulfur clogged his nose and throat, suffocating him with its yellow putrid smoke. As the marble floorboards melted and gave way to the corrosive orange flow, they left behind glowing embers and dark twisted ashes, warped and morphed by the sheer force of heat and chemicals.

Little yellow bubbles grew and burst, each one expelling little pockets of poisonous gas. They came in contact with the fire left behind by the running lava, and ignited like a thousand little fireworks, singing the air and leaving behind little hazy, shimmering clouds of caustic fuzz.

Most of the ANBU bodyguards that were supposed to protect the Mizukage had already turned tail and abandoned Yagura years before. The remaining ones had also fled, defecting over to Mei's side when they knew she was coming. The very few that had stayed loyal to this madman until the very end had died in Mei's initial blast.

Chojuro could see their black bones and sagging blackened skin floating among the mess of molten rock. Their hair hissed and curled. The acrid stench of burning keratin and corpses joined with the brimstone.

If hell must smell like anything, Chojuro thought as he gagged and retched, this must be what it is like. There was truly nothing like it.

"Terumi," Yagura hissed. "So you've come back. I always knew you kekkei genkai lot were a bunch of filthy, good-for-nothing traitors."

Mei chose not to respond. No one gave a shit about what Yagura thought anymore. This was the end for one of them, one way or the other, and they both knew it. Her hands flashed through a myriad of seals – Chojuro thought he recognized some of them, but then the hand signs for the Water Dragon faded into the hand signs for the Water Dragon Bullet, and even then a few of them were wrong, or swapped out, or –

What on earth is she doing?

"Boil Release: Acid Steam Dragon Bullet!"

Yagura's empty eyes grew wide and he shifted to the side in a blink, throwing up a wall of coral. The little purple lumps disintegrated on contact with the boiling acid, but it slowed the flow down enough that Yagura was able to slam his hooked staff into the ground, splitting the earth into a deep ravine that swallowed up the rest of the lava.

Mei spat into her hands, forming another ball of lava, and tossed it at his head. As it flew, it elongated into a giant tailed comet, until it whipped around and became a thick, snaking ribbon, slamming its way through every obstacle like a steel whip.

"To hell with your tyranny! You're not worth the sack of skin you're made of!" Mei screamed, and sent the coils of fiery earth flying at Yagura, tightening with every swing.

But Yagura only laughed, a mad, arrogant cackle. "Water Style: Aqua Mirror!"

And with a single circular twirl of his staff, an exact copy of Mei appeared, holding the same exact flume of lava.

Chojuro watched in abject horror as the two Meis crashed into each other, and canceled the technique out.

"Don't you get it, traitorous rebels?" Yagura asked. "It's hopeless. Anything you throw at me, I can throw right back, and sooner or later you'll run out of chakra. I'll just wait to see you die, if you like. Or I can end it now, if it's all the same to you."

Mei grunted in anger but did not rise to his taunt. "Boil Release! Corrosive Mist!"

Immediately the room – or what was left of it – filled with a translucent, hissing cloud. The one great weakness of the Aqua Mirror; it could only deflect from one direction. It looked like in between the years they'd left the village and now, Yagura still hadn't figured out how to curve his water mirror or otherwise make it bubble shaped.

For a split second, Chojuro thought that they might have genuinely gotten the drop on him, and any second now, he'd be emerging from the steam with his skin sloughed off his flesh in great ugly blisters, like so many other victims of Mei's acidic steam. Gods knew Chojuro had seen its effects enough to have that particular image seared into his brain forever. He still had nightmares from the first time he saw it.

Then Yagura shook once. Twice.

He disintegrated.

"Mizukage-sama – "

"Shh!" Mei snapped.

Then Yagura reappeared, coated in nothing but black chakra. His wide, yellow smile and round, yellow eyes bulged from the squirming mass of worms and corals.

"Chojuro," Mei whispered.

The – thing – crawled forward. Large, hideous, legs bent at unnatural angles like a turtle with crab feet. It waded through the pool of lava and acid Mei had left earlier. The drying fluid shrank away from it, the dark chakra slurping it up, not at all caring of the fact that it should be burning. It shimmered and writhed. All the poison that it ate only served to make it grow more powerful, more terrible, more destructive.

In his shapeless form, Chojuro saw the mass partition itself into three long strips.

Mei threw up an earth wall and screamed, "Chojuro, RUN!"

Yagura had gone into tailed beast mode, and there was a bijuudama forming in his mouth.