Published: 6/25/2016

Edited: 1/24/2018

Minato - 1 (Chapter 4)

"Taichou, there's something you need to see."

"What is it?" Minato asks distractedly, not looking up from the pile of scrolls he is struggling to juggle. Too many reports have come in at once; the scouts are all over the place. "You might have to get back to me—I've got a lot going on here…"

"Taichou, they had a team from Konoha in an underground bunker," Hajime says urgently. "It's a genin team. It's… not good."

That gets Minato's attention.

"What's their status?" he asks as he lets his load drop haphazardly onto the table in front of him. "Why is a genin team here?"

"It seems village dispatched them with an emergency message. They must have been the only ones available."

Hajime motions with his hand before he takes off running. Minato lets himself be led through the forest until he is brought to a stop in front of a small, square hole in the ground. It is half-obscured by a thick, bushy shrub, but parting the leaves reveals the entrance to a dimly-lit underground room.

"The jounin sensei and two of his students are accounted for," Hajime says, "but there's no sign of the third. It seems the Iwa-nin were trying to extract information from them in a last-ditch effort…"

"Torture, then," Minato sighs. He knows they would have been desperate. He has been chasing them all week, herding them into a corner, and they had known they were trapped. They would have been willing to try anything to find a foothold.

Hajime makes a small noise of confirmation. Minato rolls his shoulders before he drops down into the hole.

The humid summer air is slightly cooler down here, but only slightly. It is not much of a relief. The whole bunker smells exactly like what he imagined a bunker full of trapped, unbathed enemy ninjas ought to smell like. It is small and the atmosphere is stifled; there is no wind to stir the air down here.

This, he thinks exasperatedly, is why hiding among trees is so much better than hunkering down below the dirt. Truly their enemies were Rock shinobi.

As his eyes adjust to the light Minato makes out three figures. The two students are lying on the ground in a dark pool of what can only be blood. Their instructor has crammed himself into a corner with his head pressed against his knee. Kei is kneeling next to him, gently trying to coax him into speech, but he remains still and silent.

When Minato's vision has finally righted itself he finds himself thinking that this jounin seems rather familiar. Slim frame, long brown hair… he looks almost like Suzu's—

"Itsuki Mikawaya?" Minato breathes, dread swelling in his gut. Slowly, the jounin lifts his face, and the countenance of Team 11's leader is unmistakable. Itsuki takes one look at Minato and drops his head back onto his knee.

Minato rushes over to the pair of bodies lying on the ground. Both still have their arms bound. Minato drops to his knees beside them and the first thing that meets his gaze is the lifeless stare of brown eyes. Yoshiya Miyazawa is dead; his expression is vacant and his face gone gray and still. There is a large tear in his black shirt that reveals the stab wound responsible for the bloody puddle. Minato looks frantically to the blond head next to his, half-hoping it is the other boy, Akihiko.

His hopes are disappointed. The blond one is indeed his cousin.

"Suzu!" he gasps, hand darting to her shoulder. The movement provokes a violent flinch and a small, panicked gasp. Her eyes are screwed shut as if anticipating a blow. Minato cannot help but flinch a bit himself when he sees the force with which her teeth come down upon her gruesomely abused bottom lip. But unlike the boy next her, she is moving. She is pale, yes, but she is also shifting and breathing and alive.

"Oh," he lets out a half-relieved, half-hysterical breath. "She's alive. Kei, she's alive!"

Minato can only assume that Kei had thought both of the students had died; when the medic whips his head around his expression is one of utter shock. The iryou-nin gets up dashes over. His hands light up with green chakra.

Minato holds his breath as the medic examines Suzu's body. The results of the diagnostic leave him feeling a nauseous mix of horror and outrage. Three broken ribs, internal bleeding, a concussion, a black eye… she has cuts and bruising from beatings all over, but the worst is at her throat, which has not only been repeatedly throttled, but screamed raw.

Itsuki, huddled in his corner, tangles a hand in his disheveled hair. As he listens to Kei rattle off his findings, his shoulders begin to shake with strangled, broken sobs.