Disclaimer: ...D;

PART ONE:

The sad thing is, to the children of tomorrow, our battles will be nothing but numbers in a text book. - Unknown

War fires burned the once strong village walls to scorched shells of their former glory, the tears of the fallen lost in the wreckage. It was truly a great victory for the Akatsuki, the mighty Fire Country had fallen at last. They had used every ace in the hole, dead kages, the seven swordsmen of the mist, infamous killers. There was a stench of rotting flesh in the air that only added to the effect of Kabuto's 'zombies,' as they fussed around and killed the scraps of ningas and those who had holed up in shelters. They were pressuring down the remaining forces of the Leaf, they had won, Madara was going to get his wish. Revenge; sweet revenge, complete control over everything and anything at will.. Ultimate power, that was what the masked man had almost contained. It was inches away from his fingers. Who would have thought that the war could have been one without the last Jinchuriki? Perhaps it had just been fate that he had won, or perhaps the fact that his plan had gone perfectly, as usual.

The resurrected section of the Akatsuki stood guard in different places around the rubble, keen eyes keeping watch for strugglers that tried to slip through the woods. No one was supposed to be left alive. In fact, the Akatsuki members themselves weren't supposed to be alive, the souls of those haunted men belonged to the fiery pits they had been dragged from. They were brought back by the whim of a mad man, in a trade for Sasuke's life and a forbidden jutsu Kabuto had inherited from Orochimaru. They should have been burning in hell, not standing over a town of smoke that resembled it, but there they were and they stood proud. It seemed a silent, invisible force had deemed that these men weren't finished with what they had started in their previous life.

Deidarastood watch at the corner of a field, just a mile away from the village below him. He was posed on what could be called a rather pathetic hill, blown up from it's former glory by one of Nagato's 'ultimate pushes.' Surely, defeating the leaf like this was a triumph but Deidara, irritated as he had been for quite some time, narrowed his smoke glass eyes at the smoke that he sucked into his lungs. Fuck, it wasn't like he could get cancer. In fact, the only thing that sucking in the smoke would do to him was sting, and help him feel just a little bit more alive than he had felt before. Pain was the only thing that seemed to be giving him that adrenaline rush these days, that rush that had been close enough to have been a quality in his previous life was lost in this one. Perhaps it was the fact that he had learned his last piece of work had failed, or that his team mate who he had trusted turned out to be the leader of the fucking Akatsuki .Oh, or lets try the fact that Tobi wasn't Tobi, he was Madara Uchiha. Yeah, that about summed it up.
Art had just lost it's zing.

Deidara's blond locks brushed his cheek in the slight breeze that had started to clear the air, wincing his eyes shut against the sting of smoke that was directly pushing itself it his direction. Madara had decided to set the village on fire as a sign of triumph over the Leaf, for his revenge had been achieved upon the once peaceful village. It had been a middle finger to the Leaf metaphorically in itself, seeing as fire tended to eat up trees like honey bees ate up pollen with their little feet.

As the smoke cleared past, however, Deidara was shaken from his trance by a pink haired woman who tore through the grass, small child in the crook of her arm. She wasn't badly burnt, only the ends of her unnaturally pink hair were fringed with black ash, and the child looked unmarred to his eyes. She dashed for a blind spot, anywhere that she could find to get out of the clutches of the Akatsuki, but she didn't understand that her swift movement caught the pair of icy blue eyes, so blue they could have been mistaken for part of the sky, so cold they could have been mistaken for ice.

She was most certainly an enemy ninja, he recognized her as Sasori's murderer, and if she got out into the outside world all of the battle techniques and what she had seen would get out. There was already rumors of a rebel army outside the boundaries of the land of fire. Supposedly, it had formed even outside of the continent, but that was only rumor. The Akatsuki had yet to find any proof that such a rebellion had formed so soon, but one couldn't be too careful.

"Wait girl, Uhn!" He called after her as she zoomed past him into the black of the forest.

As his voice rang out against depths of the woods, she gained speed. He realized that he had just made an awful mistake, seeing as his own legs still had some stiffness in them. He had been dead for so long, and somehow he appeared that he hadn't even touched the grave soil the bits and pieces of him had been buried in. Deidara supposed that it was all account of Kabuto's reanimation jutsu, and it was all connected to the heavy silver ring that weighed heavy on his index finger. If he took off that symbol of his allegiance to the Akatsuki, he could possibly live a normal life. If he continued to wear the ring, he could be just as immortal as Hidan. Every hit ever placed on him would only regenerate, but he would still have to hold connections to the Akatsuki. Wearing the ring enabled Madara to know where he was, when he moved and what he was thinking. It was all so much trouble, Deidara had tried not to even think about it. He already knew that living as an ex-Akatsuki member was stupid, especially when the Akatsuki had just won a war and planned to start on the rest of the fucking world.

All of that aside, he shook his head and tried to rid his mind of it.

"Girl!"

She turned her head towards him, only catching a glimpse of his cloak before kicking it into high gear, and completely leaving him in the dust. Fuck, Madara would kill him. He was dumb for calling out to her in the first place, he could have just taken advantage of her with the tactics of surprise. She was trying to watch over a kid as well as run away from him, her skills shouldn't be at their best seeing as she'd be distracted. She wouldn't have sensed him if he'd gone along with his plan like that.

Eventually, Deidara needed to stop running, she was long gone and he didn't plan on chasing after the traces of herself she left. He pondered on the idea of lying to Madara, and saying that no one had escaped. Surely the masked man wouldn't have noticed that Deidara had been gone from his post for so long, and what was a woman with a child? Not much, not really, unless Deidara thought back on old man Tsuchikage's teachings. He had taught Deidara that all women shouldn't be taken for granted, seeing as the old man himself had been jumped once or twice by his other apprentice..

Deidara stopped himself, before going off into countless memories about his 'little sister,' the feeling of nostalgia becoming a little nauseating just at the thought of those warm afternoons in Iwa. He turned back in the direction of the field instead, and trudged back into the war zone trying to brush that nagging notion off of his shoulder. You see, not long after thinking about his 'sister,' he had begun to ask himself a question.

If a ninja like Haruno could simply step away from her village, her duties, and a pledge she had made to the Leaf for just a small child that didn't even look like it was hers, why couldn't he simply step away from the Akatsuki, his duties, and the bind that held him there?

He had never thought of that before, as simple as the thought was. Well sure, back before he had died he had thought about busting out, he had felt caged in the Akatsuki. He was a bird that needed to fly free, back then anyway. Now he had been tamed, he knew he had been tamed because he no longer dreamed of soaring off into the sky. Only recently he had even been feeling like walking, and running. Perhaps discovering the truth about the Akatsuki had killed his spirit.

The attack came on like a firecracker that had been cast off as a dud. You come closer to the damned thing to throw it away, thinking that it isn't going to light, but then it does right in your hand. The flames and sparks lick at your skin and leave behind the bruised and bloodied battlefield that are yours hands. Fire caught onto buildings that held precious memories, and soon the infection spread. Invaders took down our ninja like they were pieces of paper in the wind, one hit and they went down. It was an army of the immortal, the ones that we did manage to knock down getting right back up like they hadn't even been hit. By the time reinforcements from the Sand would come in, The Leaf would have already ceased to exist.

Sakura was already running by the time the first quarter of the army dropped, cursing herself for being a coward. She flew past the infirmary where the people wailed in front of the entrance, people crying out for the ones that had been lost. Soldiers hadn't even bothered laying the wounded out, there were so many. The dead and half-dead lay unsorted in piles. And then she was far past there, her eyes blurred with the weight of her betrayal.

A mother screamed inaudibly from inside a building, brown scorched hair pushed behind one ear as she coughed, smoke cascading out of the open window. That was the only reason Sakura would stop today, to look up at the woman as she pleaded soundlessly with her.

A crack shot through the air as the supports inside the building broke, and the walls groaned with the weight they now carried. Flames ate away at the bottom floor of the building, threatening to eat up the mass before it could even give way to the ground, and the mother did what she could in that moment. She pushed her baby through the window, and her eyes shone with the true terror of death, the questions she had that would never be answered.

What if Sakura didn't catch her precious little love?

The skyscraper would hit the ground before the mother even knew.