| To the Rescue | [Sep. 23rd, 2013|10:12 pm] |
[Takes place Yondaime year 5, April 29, a short time after Take the Heartland]
The message came by radio, garbled and static-broken. The genin who received it had been drowsing at her installation, at the end of a long shift; the transmission had been repeating for some time, she reported, before she startled awake and dragged her headphones on.
She was ashen-faced, trembling, holding the paper with her transcription in shaking hands. "Hokage-sama, I didn't— I didn't know. I'm sorry. I—"
"Just give me the message," Minato said quietly.
The woman swallowed hard, nodded, and looked down. "I caught it midway through the repeat," she said. "...palace guard uniforms. The Palace is burning. The Daimyou's whereabouts are unknown. The Guardian Twelve are in combat. At least six have joined the rebels, or are leading them. Urgent assistance requested. Damn you, send the Hokage!" She flushed, red on white, and said unsteadily, "Then it starts over. Konoha One, this is Fire One. S-Class transmission forthcoming. Repeat, this is an S-class transmission. There is fighting in the Fire Daimyou's Palace—"
"That's enough." Minato kept his voice even. Maybe too flat; Oita Gennosuke, standing by the window, turned to give him a sharp look. Minato ignored him. "Give Oita the transcription," he told the radio operator. "Is the transmission still repeating?"
She shook her head. "It cut out just after I recorded this."
Fire had reached the radio room, or the rebels had. Minato locked his hands behind his back, knuckles cracking. "Where's Sagara?"
"On her way, Hokage-sama," the ANBU guard at the door murmured. "She should be here— Ah." He stepped forward to open the door, just in time for Sagara to sweep in with her owl-masked vice commander and three captains behind her. They slapped perfunctory salutes, gloved hands to tattooed shoulder. "Hokage-sama," Sagara said, and stood waiting.
"You're dismissed," Minato told the radio operator. It took him a second to pull her name up, but he found it at last: "Thank you, Sugimoto-san."
She bowed, still shaking, and backed out. The ANBU closed ranks behind her.
"Brief them," Minato said, and went to open the closet concealed in the wall paneling to the left of his desk.
He shed his coat and zipped on a flak vest while Oita's low, pleasant voice outlined what little they knew. Minato barely listened, finding belt pouches with shuriken and explosion tags, two holsters of his seal-modified three-pronged kunai, a box of the marked kunai to distribute to the members of the assembling team...
"Is the Daimyou alive?"
That was Hajime, squirrel-masked, a solid captain with three years in command and six behind the mask. He had two veterans on his four-man team, only one rookie this year—Fukui Ayane, the kenjutsu user. She'd do well. Minato switched sandals for boots, while Oita said quietly, "We don't know. If members of the Twelve have turned, it...may be unlikely."
"The Sandaime's son was a member of the Twelve," Vice-Commander Kuroda said.
"Then hopefully we'll find the Daimyou sheltering behind his back," Minato said, flinging his coat on again. "Where are your teams?"
Hajime tapped his shoulder. "We've summoned them, Hokage-sama. Fifteen minutes."
Fifteen minutes might make a great deal of difference on the other end, but it didn't mean much here. Minato set the box of marked kunai on the edge of his desk and came to a swift decision.
"Oita, I want an Intel team. A handful of your best, and one or two of Shibata's. Get me a couple of jounin-level medic-nin, too. Have them here in twenty, ready for possible combat. Don't pick anyone with a weak stomach. I'll be moving us."
Oita nodded, lifting a hand to the concealed earbud he never removed. Sagara said quietly, "Will three teams be enough?"
"I won't strip Konoha of its defenses, even for the Daimyou's sake." Too many ANBU teams were out on missions already. Was it really only three days ago that he'd scaled the threat level down from A to B and told ANBU to resume business as usual? Not quite two weeks since he'd worried about a diversion at the ANBU Trials, an attack calculated to draw his attention away from Konoha and leave his village vulnerable.
If this was Orochimaru's doing...
"Escalate security to level S again. I want eyes on every meter of wall. Sagara, you're in command here while I'm gone—don't let the Council try to override. We're under martial law as of this minute—"
He strode to his desk and scribbled briefly on a scrap of paper. His chop and ink-pad were buried somewhere beneath the paperwork; he bit his thumb instead of hunting for them, and pressed the bloody print to the paper. Straightening, he passed it to Sagara. "There's your authority. Oita, make one of your agents a radio expert; we'll try to re-establish communications as soon as we can."
Five minutes down. What else?
"I'll be back," he concluded, and stepped through the universe.
The three-pronged kunai hung from a cord in the corner of Naruto's bedroom, a safe distance from the bed, but Minato had learned to land crouched on the ceiling or walls ever since a hasty arrival had broken some fragile toy and left Naruto inconsolable. He chakra-clung for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. Naruto was asleep already, sprawled out on his stomach and clutching his stuffed frog.
Minato eased down, and crossed the room to sit on the edge of his son's bed. Naruto had kicked the covers off, as always. It was a second's work to tug them back up. Naruto made a mumbling little noise and curled against him.
He'd meant to wake the boy, to say goodbye. Was it wrong to sit here in the dark, carding his fingers through his son's soft yellow hair, hoping that the steady breathing and the peacefully slack face meant a night without nightmares, for once?
He let the minutes slip by until there were no more. "I'll be back," he whispered at last, bending to kiss his son's forehead. "Sleep well."
His office was crammed full of ANBU armor and jounin blues when he arrived again, landing in the little circle of floorboards marked with a black seal that they'd respectfully left clear. The box of marked kunai he'd left on his desk was empty. "All ready?" he asked sharply.
Masked and unmasked heads nodded.
"Good. Squirrel, Deer, Rabbit, take hold of my coat. The rest of you, grab each other. We've got 320 kilometers to jump so hold tight, you hear?"
Hands gripped the loose cloth at his waist and sleeves. He took a deep breath, steadying himself, and gathered his chakra.
And went nowhere.
After a very long moment, someone at the back of the office murmured, "Was something supposed to happen?"
Minato clenched his jaw. "They've destroyed the seal," he said. Accidentally, as the palace burned, or intentionally, hoping to stave off any anticipated aid. The Guardian Twelve were the Daimyou's elite bodyguards, almost all former Konoha nin; they knew the Hokage's capabilities, and they'd know where the seals would be.
He'd placed six Hiraishin seals at various locations through the Daimyou's palace, some in public areas, others less accessible. By this point most of them were likely destroyed. And he couldn't risk that any of the remainder wouldn't be guarded, that shinobi groggy from a cross-country teleportation would be able to defend themselves against a trap...
But there were other seals scattered throughout the Daimyou's city, Hikouto, left there from old missions or more recent diplomatic excursions. The fire—or the Twelve—couldn't have found all of them.
"Get ready to fall," he said, and opened the universe again.
A long, howling heartbeat later, he landed on the narrow ledge of an elevated billboard overlooking a city in flames. Ninja stumbled around him; a few fell, catching themselves on the catwalk below or the tiled rooftops, further down. A quick headcount told him he'd left no one behind, at least, though one or two of the unmasked jounin looked queasy. The ANBU managed to hide any adverse reaction behind their masks, though Rabbit kept glancing down at the advertisement for Yellow Dragon Energy Drink as if she couldn't quite believe where they'd landed.
Minato pointed towards the flames. "Squirrel, your team is on fire suppression. Deer, take down any combatants. Use any method short of lethal force—I want questions answered. T&I, you're with Deer. Intel—where's my radio operator?"
"Here," a short, comfortably chubby woman said.
"Find the installation, or a replacement, and get it working again. You two, you're with her. The rest of you, with me. Keep your chakra clamped down. If you run into trouble, and especially if you find the Daimyou, throw your marked kunai. I'll come." He looked around at them, and nodded. "Move out."
They flung themselves into darkness, blurred with speed. Rabbit's team, the two remaining Intel agents, and both medic-nin followed on his heels, across rooftops, along wires, down into the street when the boulevard widened too far for jumping. Panicked civilians scattered to clear their path.
The palace gates were a slagged ruin. Gardens where he'd politely argued with the Daimyou had turned into charnel yards. Squirrel's team darted to bring up water from clogged springs, and choking smoke billowed where water-dragons hit. Minato twisted through fire and smoke and stunned palace guards, arrowing through the palace for the only spark of shinobi chakra he could feel.
Bodies barred the way. Most of them wore the armored uniform of the palace guard, but some were servants in plain kimono, one a minister of state in rich red. At the far end of the corridor, two young men slumped against a metal-clad door. One was shaven-headed, tattered black robes soaked in blood from the broken spear that had pierced his chest. The other was dark-haired, with a scorched leather jacket and a face smoke-blackened nearly to the color of his short, fringing beard. The ragged sash tied at his waist should have been white, but it was mostly red.
He was still breathing, at least.
"Konoha is here," Minato said, pitching his voice to carry across the bodies between them. "Is the Daimyou safe?" |
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