Obito sighed as he shifted his aching leg to a more comfortable position. Here he was, thirteen years old, and he was moving like an old man thanks to an injury he'd received during his last mission. While he hadn't been forced to stay in the hospital for any length of time, he had been taken off of the active duty roster for two weeks which was almost as bad. After his sensei had sent him home telling him to hold off on training for a while, his father and his uncle had decided that rather than lazing about around the house while he recovered, he should be doing something useful with his new-found free time, and he had been duly assigned to a temporary posting at the station until he was returned to active duty status. He had been given the desk of one of the rare female recruits who was currently out on maternity leave to work at until he left since he couldn't run patrols with his leg the way it was, and had been told that due to a certain lack of personnel, they wouldn't be holding his hand while he tried to figure out what the heck it was he was supposed to be doing here.

Back before the war, this place had been a crowded and exceedingly busy hive of activity. Now, with very few who could be spared from the battlefield for any length of time, the KMPF station was virtually empty. The few who were here in the bullpen alongside him were here because they too were on medical leave, some of them indefinitely. A cousin of his who didn't seem to share the popular opinion that he was a nuisance at best and a disgrace at worst was learning to get by with two fingers missing from his dominant hand after having fallen victim to a particularly nasty trap three weeks ago since there hadn't been time to retrieve the fingers, much less re-attach them that day. Another cousin who had lost a leg last year was on duty as a file clerk.

Until he was deemed fit enough to return to the field, he himself was here to fill out reports and file complaints on the behalf of local citizens, as well as whatever else those who were actually officers rather than temporary substitutes told him to do. So far, that had mostly been to act as a gofer.

Right now, he was writing up a report on an open and shut case against a drunk guy who had tried to steal a street sign that was currently sleeping it off in one of the holding cells. He had been at it for over an hour, since the paperwork involved was different from the forms he usually used when he was making mission reports, and doing paperwork hadn't been his forte in the first place. The general lack of activity was making it hard for him to focus on his task as well since he'd always been the sort who ran around and did stuff.

Being stuck behind a desk was practically torture, hence his abysmal scores on the less practical subjects at the Academy. If it hadn't been for the war, he probably wouldn't have graduated until he was like fifteen considering the number of tests he'd bombed and all the homework he'd missed.

"Put that away for later. We're going out on a case." his cousin Yagami who was hiding his left hand in his pocket, probably so he wouldn't have to see it said, startling him because he hadn't been paying attention to his surroundings.

"A case?" he asked warily. So far, in the two days he'd been here and the two times he'd been told he was going out on a case, what had followed had been anything but fun or exciting. After dragging him out into the field, his cousins had laughed at him while they had made him hunt down a shoplifter and a drunken sign thief.

"Yeah, someone's grandmother wandered off." Yagami said. "Since you're always helping the elderly, this should be up your alley."

He groaned as he got up to follow his cousin who, despite previously being nice to him, had turned out to be like all the rest. He couldn't wait until the two weeks were up and he could go back to doing missions with his team. At least then he'd be getting it from one direction instead of a dozen.

As he traveled through the village trailing after his cousin, Obito shivered slightly, wishing he had his jacket as the warm Spring weather that was due to show up any day now according to the old-timers who had been watching the signs had yet to appear. If he could, he would be wearing his jacket right now but, he'd been ordered to wear the uniform, which was basically the standard Shinobi uniform aside from the KMPF logo on the sleeves where the Uzu spiral was usually located for the two weeks that he was assigned to the KMPF. In order to meet the standards of the KMPF dress code, he'd been forced to undergo the expense of purchasing a new Chunin vest, as he'd outgrown his old one since he last wore it on the day he got it as Minato-sensei had been a bit more relaxed about the Shinobi dress code when it came to his team, and had pretty much let him wear whatever the hell he wanted while on missions as long as he didn't turn up naked. In contrast to Minato-sensei, Fugaku-sama hadn't been nearly so understanding.

Today was not a good day to be out, especially if you were wearing an outfit like the one that the missing old lady had been described as last being seen in. There were small signs that Winter was giving way to Spring everywhere you cared to look, but Winter's grasp on the world was still a strong one. It was February after all, less than a week after he'd celebrated his thirteenth birthday by pulling a prank on that stuck up bastard Kakashi which had left Minato-sensei laughing until he had tears in his eyes.

Kakashi may have been on the fast track for being Jounin, but that didn't mean that the rule obsessed boy out-ranked him yet, and he wasn't going to let his teammate get away with acting like he did so until he actually did. When he got off medical leave and was back with his team that was.

Back in the old days before the war, the days he could barely remember, when he'd wandered into the station looking for his father and found it to be a buzzing hive of activity, a thirteen year-old wouldn't have been given any position whatsoever in the KMPF, much less the one he was taking now. Now however, most of the patrols were being run by Genin while the more experienced members of the clan did what they could to make sure the station didn't collapse into complete disorder before the war ended and things got back to normal. The only reason he wasn't currently on patrol with the Genin at the moment was because he was injured.

He wasn't injured so badly that he couldn't walk, and that was why he was going out on these small fry cases while his older, more experienced cousins were tied up with managing the patrol routes or other more important things. The incident with the shoplifter had been quickly resolved when the moron had been caught trying to steal from a store that was run by a retired shinobi. By the time he and his cousins had arrived, it had been a matter of rescuing the hapless shoplifter from the shopkeeper. The would-be sign thief that he'd been forced to deal with next had rather quickly been found passed out on his loot in an alley near the street in question. This case would be slightly more difficult however if only because the amount of time it would take to search the village and the surrounding woods for the old lady in question while hobbling around on crutches so he didn't strain his injured leg too badly and end up being stuck on medical leave for even longer. The search would go faster if he could take to the trees and rooftops, but he couldn't in his condition.

One of the things that made his current task more difficult was that while Konoha was called a village, it could probably be more accurately described as a small city. It probably had been a village when it had been founded more than fifty-five years ago, but in the intervening decades it had grown. This meant that there were literally thousands of places where an old lady who was reportedly senile could hide, and it could take days to find her, days that the old lady didn't have in this weather. If she hadn't died of hypothermia or run afoul of one of the traps that had been set up to deal with intruders already that was.

An hour into the search, one of the patrolling Genin raced over and started begging him and Yagami to come and help deal with some sort of disturbance in one of the local parks.

"...and Shisui doesn't know what to do with her either, so I came and got you..." the boy who had been out of breath moments before said as he continued his rather rapid explanation of the situation.

Apparently their old lady had been found, and for some reason only known to her, the old woman they had been searching for had set up a small fire in the park, and had camped out next to it. When someone had tried to move her from her little makeshift camp, she had objected violently, and neither Shisui nor his companion were sure exactly how to deal with her, as they didn't want to harm her since she was a fellow Konoha citizen, and they couldn't think of a way of removing her from her campsite that wouldn't harm her that hadn't already been tried and failed. The boys she was defending her campsite from were also afraid that rendering her unconscious through means of a sedative or even a quick and careful blow would kill her considering her advanced age. All attempts at putting her to sleep through Genjutsu had failed.

When he and Yagami reached the park where the old lady had been holding the young Genin at bay, Shisui - who had just made Genin and had been put on patrol duty when he wasn't training with his team - was clearly at his wits end, and anyone who could have helped the poor boy had taken up the position of observer since "it wasn't their problem now that the police were here to deal with it". The old woman who was dressed in a thin short-sleeved nightgown that only reached her knees and what appeared to be a pair of toilet slippers was holding the boy off with a kunai that she had somehow acquired in her wanderings. Based on the way she was holding the kunai, it was clear that she was a retired kunoichi, which wasn't all that surprising considering the fact that she was from a minor cadet branch of the Senju clan, and looked to have been a full-grown adult at the time Konoha was founded.

Though he was somewhat nervous and off balance and uncertain as to what to do, he moved forward knowing that he should be doing something to help Shisui. The woman who'd been keeping Shisui at bay sensed his approach and moved to defend herself from him. As he watched her move towards him ready to defend herself, he noted that some things clearly moved past the conscious mind and into the realm of instinct when they were used often enough. While, by all accounts, the woman couldn't tell what day of the week it was, much less what year it was, she still knew how to move like a ninja.

"Um, Senju-san, do you think you could put that away?" he asked nervously, after dodging out of the way of the woman's first strike.

The woman paused at this, and studied him for a moment, as if she was sure she'd seen him somewhere before, but couldn't quite place his face. After a minute or so, recognition seemed to dawn on her.

"Kagami-kun?" she asked, almost hesitantly.

He hesitated, wondering exactly how he should respond to this. It wasn't every day he got mistaken for his grandfather after all. If he replied in the affirmative and she realized he wasn't Kagami, the situation could spiral out of his control and things could get dangerous right quick. Ninja learned early on to be wary of potential impostors, and even with her mind being the way it was, she would eventually catch on to the fact that he wasn't Kagami. While he greatly resembled his grandfather, the two of them weren't identical.

"No ma'am, my name's Obito." he eventually replied, having come up with a plan on the fly which he hoped and prayed would work, but seriously doubted would do so. "I came to tell you that your relief is here, and that you can stand down and go home now."

Taking his cue, two of the ninja who had been standing around watching the scene as if they'd had nothing better to do moved forward to take the roles of the woman's fictional replacements. This ploy seemed to work however, since the woman lowered her kunai and moved into a more relaxed stance.

"Home..." the woman said vaguely. "Yes, It'll be good to be home."

After standing down, the woman gave them no further problems until they reached her doorstep. The door had been answered by a woman who was maybe twenty-five years of age who was either a civilian, or more likely a semi-retired kunoichi based on her movements. Upon seeing her, the old woman they'd retrieved stiffened up and started backing away. Yagami caught her though, and helped bring her inside the house.

"Thank you for finding my grandmother Uchiha-san." the woman said as he helped the old lady who looked like she didn't want to be there get situated.

"It was no problem." he replied, wanting to be gone as soon as possible. The situation had been embarrassing enough, and he wanted it over with as quickly as possible. He had the feeling that he would be receiving a great deal of ribbing over his solution to the problem that had stymied Shisui and his patrol partner when he got back.

Sure enough, as soon as he got back to the station, he was greeted with the laughter of his cousins, including little Shisui who'd spent more than half an hour trying to figure out how to deal with the situation he'd fixed before he got there, but it didn't bother him as much as it usually would because he had something else on his mind. It had been while he was writing up his report that he realized what it had been that had been bothering him since he'd dropped the old lady off at her house. The old lady had a large number of scars, which was to be expected considering her former career but, the burn scar on her arm had looked way too new to have been gotten during a mission and way too old to have come from the fire in the park. He should know, just about every Uchiha had several of their own.

Obito sighed as he made his way through the village to a place he wasn't sure he would be welcome at. The last week had been exceedingly frustrating and had contained humiliation after humiliation, but none of that had anything to do with where he was going at the moment. Well, one of the denizens of that particular dwelling had been the source of some of the teasing he'd received, but aside from that, where he was going had nothing to do with the humiliation he'd been forced to suffer through for the last seven days.

The fact that Yagami had liked him hadn't stopped him from picking on him like the others, including little Shisui and his diminutive tag-along Itachi who was barely able to string a full sentence together. In addition to the shoplifter, the sign thief, and the old lady, he'd been forced to hunt down three dogs, a cat, a runaway from the orphanage, and a guy who ate and ran at a couple restaurants, and he'd been forced to resubmit the paperwork on the sign thief twice since he'd filled out the forms incorrectly. To top it off, he'd nearly dislocated his shoulder when he'd slipped and fell in the bathroom while climbing out of the tub two days earlier, and his leg which hadn't stopped bothering him for the entire week had been keeping him up most of the night every night.

Throughout his exceedingly crappy week, he hadn't been able to get that old lady out of his head. If he wasn't thinking about her in spare moments between tasks, he was having nightmares about what it would be like if he survived to reach that age himself. He had stopped and told himself several times a day that he'd most likely been imagining things when it came to the cause of old lady's injury. The burn on the old woman's arm could very easily have come from a prior camp-out that the police hadn't been dragged into, and the woman's reluctance to stay at her granddaughter's home could stem from the fact that it wasn't the home the old lady had lived in in whatever time frame her mind was lost in, which was most likely sometime during the First War considering the fact that the woman had mistaken him for his grandfather. There was no reason to believe that anything else was going on.

Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something wrong with the situation.

That morning, as he had been preparing himself for yet another day of frustration at the station, he had decided to check up on the old woman and put his mind at ease. As soon as he had been given the lunch break he hadn't been certain he'd get that day considering the amount of work that had been piled on his desk when he'd arrived that morning, he made his way to her home. When he finally arrived, the woman's granddaughter answered the door, though he could hear a couple of small children that hadn't been there the week before in the background.

"How may I help you Uchiha-san?" the woman who didn't seem all that happy with his presence asked when she answered the door.

"Um," he said, feeling somewhat embarrassed since people didn't generally drop in to visit strangers. "I was in the neighborhood, and I thought I might drop by and see how your grandmother was doing, if that's okay with you."

It apparently was fine with the woman since she led him inside her home, and to the small room in which Senju Hanako aged somewhere around 75 or so lived. The room was painted in neutral colors and traditionally furnished. Since he couldn't see a bed, he assumed the old woman slept on a futon which was currently put away for the day rather than one of the other styles of bed which had become more popular in recent years such as the bunk bed he had shared with his older brother. The room smelled of old lady, which was to be expected considering its inhabitant. Hanako herself was sitting in a corner fiddling with something which on closer inspection turned out to be a piece of ninja wire.

"I don't know how she keeps getting into my equipment." Hanako's granddaughter said as she snatched the piece of ninja wire away from the woman. "One of these days, she's going to kill herself while I'm not around. Today isn't a very good day for her, so I don't think she'll realize you're here."

Despite the advice of the old woman's granddaughter who was currently out on maternity leave, he tried to talk to her anyways. She was too lost in her own little world to respond though, and hadn't even registered his presence in the room. After a while, he gave up, thanked the granddaughter for letting him see her, and left.

As he made his way back to the station and the remaining paperwork that had been piled on his desk since Yagami hadn't wanted to deal with it because his hand had been bothering him, he found himself pondering the fresh looking bruise on the old woman's face that he'd noticed during his recent visit. Such an injury could have easily been gotten in a fall, and old people fell over all the time. But, on the other hand, there had been the rough manner in which the granddaughter had taken the ninja wire the woman had been fiddling with. Then again, the younger woman was probably concerned that the old lady would hurt herself with the ninja equipment she was absent-mindedly messing around with, as was often the case when one negligently toyed with things that were meant to be used as weapons. There was no reason to suspect the worst.

Feeling slightly guilty for both suspecting a fellow Konoha ninja, and what he found he was planning in order to put his mind at ease, he decided that he would watch how the granddaughter treated the old lady when she didn't think there was anyone watching. He was reasonably certain that he could make sure that she didn't even know he was ever there despite the fact that they were both Chunin and she the more experienced of the two. As Minato-sensei had once said, if hiding were a sport, he'd take the gold medal every time.

Odds were that there was nothing untoward going on in that home and that he was imagining things, but he felt that he had to know for sure, and that was why he had turned up at the old lady's granddaughter's home on the day off that Fugaku had given him after he'd learned that everyone had been giving him their paperwork to do. Getting into the home uninvited had been easier than anticipated. He'd gone in in the middle of the day while the old lady's granddaughter and her children were out at the park rather than during one of the hours one would expect a thief or a prowler or another such undesirable such as a brat who should be minding his own business rather than breaking and entering to enter a home. There had been fewer traps around the house than were usual for a shinobi residence since there were small children who could get into them living there, and there was a perfect hiding place for him at the top of the closet in the old woman's room.

As he settled in to watch and wait, he noted that the old woman had been left at home unsupervised, but since she seemed to be sleeping, that didn't necessarily mean that she was being neglected. After several hours, during which the old woman had gotten up and had aimlessly wandered about the house for a while, the granddaughter and her children finally returned. From the sounds of activity he could hear from his perch in the old lady's closet, the granddaughter had put down some groceries that she had purchased while she and her children were out before leading the old woman back to her room, and shutting the door. After a while, he could hear and smell dinner being prepared. As the meal was being made, he prayed that the growling of his empty stomach wouldn't give him away.

Eventually, the granddaughter came in and got the old woman for dinner. As soon as the meal ended, the old woman was returned to her room. As the granddaughter opened the closet and got out the old woman's futon which smelled as if it hadn't been properly aired out in a while, he held his breath and silently prayed that the woman wouldn't notice the Genjutsu that was hiding him from her sight. As soon as the futon had been laid out, the granddaughter who was as yet unaware of his presence bade the old woman good-night and shut the door, shutting him in with the old lady.

He remained in his hiding place waiting for an opportune moment in which he wouldn't be caught leaving by the residents of the home he'd broken into to depart. As the night wore on, the old woman grew increasingly restless, and eventually got up. Soon, he could hear her wandering the house checking the windows, locks, and traps as her granddaughter had done before sending her children to bed, and as his own father did every night. This apparently either disturbed the granddaughter's slumber, or disrupted some other quiet activity the younger woman had been engaged in because a minute later, the granddaughter forcefully dragged the old woman into her room.

"You are supposed to be in bed!" the granddaughter snarled as she forcefully shoved the old woman onto the futon.

He'd seen enough. His suspicions had been confirmed, and now that they had been, he was going to do everything he could to rescue the old woman from her situation. As soon as he was certain that the granddaughter was asleep, he dropped the low-level Genjutsu which had kept both him and his Chakra signature hidden and left his hiding spot. After packing a bag with a number of the old woman's belongings, he went to the futon and gently shook her awake.

"Senju-san," he whispered when the woman finally focused on him. "I'm going to get you out of here."

Getting the old woman up and dressed seemed to take forever, and he grew increasingly nervous with every passing minute he was in the house with the Genjutsu down. All it would take to cause his hastily made plans to crash and burn would be for the granddaughter to wake up and realize that someone besides her relatives was in the house, or for one of the granddaughter's children to wake up and find him leading the old woman away. He knew of a place where the old woman would be comfortable, but he couldn't get her there if they got caught, and the old woman was moving so incredibly slowly...

After what seemed like an eternity, he and the old lady were out the door and on their way, with him thanking every deity he could think of that they hadn't been caught in the process. Had he been caught, it would be his cousins answering the call, and it would be his word against the granddaughter's and he'd only seen her shove the old woman. Since he'd been hanging around the house without the family's permission, trouble would have been the least of what he would have been in. Now however, the old lady was safe, and no-one would hurt her again.

After removing the old woman from her granddaughter's care, it had taken Obito a full day to realize that he'd technically committed a kidnapping. Even though his intentions had been good, chances were that others wouldn't see his removing the old woman from her home as the rescue it had been. If, or more likely, when he got caught, it would come down to his word against Hanako's granddaughter's, and all he'd seen were a burn scar and a bruise that she could have gotten anywhere, and the granddaughter being a little rough with her but not causing her any injury that he had noticed when he'd helped her dress for the day the morning after he'd removed her from her home. When that day came, it would be him who was in trouble, him who was arrested, him who was stripped of his rank and put in prison for his actions.

While the bolt hole which had been used as a supply cache by his clan back near the founding of the village that was now as Hanako's new home hadn't been bothered by anyone but him and his older brother in years, there was a chance that it wasn't as forgotten as he believed it to be, and that someone would find Hanako while he was away. That led to another problem. Because of the work he had to do during the day, he couldn't be around to provide all of the care that the old lady needed, and the situation regarding his absence would only get worse soon considering the fact that he'd soon be off medical leave and taking missions in the field. While he would never intentionally hurt the old lady, neglect could be just as bad or worse than anything that Hanako's granddaughter would have done to her. At least the woman was actually around most of the time.

He wished Minato-sensei were here, since he'd know what to do. Minato-sensei, Kakashi, and Rin were out on a mission without him though, and it would be several days before his sensei returned. If he returned. Before his team had left, they had told him that they would be back by the time his medical leave was over, but during times of war, things happened. He hadn't received any news that they had been hurt or killed, but that didn't really mean much because with the covert sabotage missions they had been taking, it could take days or weeks before anyone realized something had happened to them.

Worrying about the old lady had distracted him from his worries about his team for a while, but with her somewhat dealt with, his worry for his team who would have been able to help him for this situation had begun to return full force. Over the next several days, during which he had waited for his sensei and his teammates to return and worried himself sick over both their absence and the possibility that he'd be caught in regards to the kidnapping of the old lady who had once again been reported missing at any moment, he took every opportunity to check up on Hanako to make sure she was fed and tended to. Since he'd taken care of babies during D-ranked missions, the slightly ickier parts of elder care didn't come as as much of a shock as it would otherwise have done to a boy his age. He didn't like it, but it had to be done, and since he'd taken on the responsibility of tending to the old lady, it was up to him to do it.

Each time he visited the old lady to tend to her, he found himself looking over his shoulder the entire way there, afraid that someone would follow him for whatever reason, and find out what he'd done. So far, nobody had bothered to see what he was doing, even if only to gain ammunition for whatever barbs they wanted to hurl at him next but, that didn't mean that nobody would.

On the fifth day since he'd removed the old lady from her home, while he was at his desk at the station, a familiar looking blond arrived.

"I've come to report a missing person." the man said with a bright smile when he reached his desk. "One of my students seems seems to have vanished and been replaced by a police officer."

"Minato-sensei!" he cried happily as he practically leaped over his desk in order to hug his teacher, truly glad to see him.

If his sensei was in such a good mood, it meant that his teammates were alive and well as well. They weren't standing there with their sensei, which in the case of Kakashi wasn't all that odd, but in the case of Rin was somewhat unusual. When one of the members of the team was left behind due to an injury however, both of those who had been uninjured usually tried to visit that team member the instant the mission was over. Rin was more apt to do so than Kakashi was however.

"Come on, lets go get lunch." Minato said, smiling brightly.

"I would, but..." he started, wondering how or even if he should tell his teacher about what he'd done.

"But what?" Minato asked, looking slightly apprehensive, as if he didn't want to know what sort of idiocy his student had been up to while he was gone.

"Not here..." he finally said, giving the officers that surrounded him a furtive glance.

As soon as they reached an isolated training field where they'd more than likely not be overheard, the entire story spilled out, from the moment he'd met the old lady at the park to the day he'd kidnapped her. After he'd told the story which had left his sensei staring at him at a loss for words, he brought his teacher to see the old lady while he brought her her lunch.

"I'll help you until you make a decision about what to do with her." Minato said with a sigh as soon as the visit was over. It was clear that his sensei didn't entirely approve of his actions, but what was done was done.

Despite what his sensei had said, the decision about what he should do with Hanako was taken out of his hands two days later when he and his team had received a mission assignment Despite the fact that Minato-sensei had done his best to keep them away from the battlefield and on the slightly less risky sabotage runs, they were being sent to the front. He didn't know what he would do with the old lady while they were gone, especially if the worst happened on the mission, because he couldn't just return her to the granddaughter who hurt her after he'd gotten her away, and he didn't know anyone he could give her to who wouldn't return her to the woman who had hurt her. After deliberating on this for a long while, he told his sensei as much.

"We'll bring her with us." Minato said after several minutes of silent contemplation on the problem.

"But we're..." he started, wondering why his teacher would make such a decision. The front lines were no place for an old lady. She could get hurt or worse.

"I know." Miinato said. There was a peculiar look in his eyes as he said it.

All too soon, it was time to go and they left for the front, moving at a pace that accommodated the team's newest and slowest member. Both Kakashi and Rin complained about the exceedingly slow pace at which they were moving the entire time but, Minato-sensei always silenced those complaints rather than turn back and return the old lady to the village as they had repeatedly suggested. Fortunately, the old lady didn't wander off along the way, and cause even more problems or an even bigger delay.

They eventually reached the front lines, though they did so much later than they would have had they not been hindered by his burden. While most of the war was fought guerrilla style with hit and fade attacks being carried out in enemy territory, larger battles involving Samurai and foot soldiers as well as ninja often would and did break out. The battle he and his team would be participating in was just the latest in a series of battles over a hotly contested piece of territory that had been fought over for years. Neither side had managed to hold onto these few square miles for more than six months at a time.

After reporting in, they prepared themselves for battle. Something seemed to come alive in the old woman's eyes when Minato-sensei handed her his spare vest, a hitai-ate, and several weapons the minute they reached their comrades at the front. Hanako shrugged the vest on without assistance despite the fact that she'd constantly needed his help to dress, armed herself as if she had been doing so forever, and tied the hitai-ate around her neck the way she had done in the one picture he'd seen of her from around Konoha's founding, back when his grandfather whose Genin team had run some missions alongside her Genin had been a small child.

He started to say something when he saw her standing there dressed as if for battle, but his sensei silenced him with a look. All too soon, the fighting in their area picked up, preventing him from questioning his teacher, and it was time for him and his team to join the battle. Hanako joined in as well, showing the same skills she had shown on that day at the park over two weeks earlier. He did his best to keep her safe as she fought alongside him and his teammates, but they were eventually separated in the chaos.

After what seemed like an eternity, the battle finally ended for the time being, and he was finally able to search for her. After searching for a good long while, hoping that she'd just wandered off somewhere, he eventually found her. She lay near where he and his team had been fighting, surrounded by the corpses of the enemy. It was obvious that she had gone down fighting until her last breath.

Minato-sensei found him sitting next to her body and crying an hour later.

"Why?" he asked his teacher when the man sat down next to him.

Why had his teacher brought her here to die, and why had he helped him?

"Because, sometimes the best we can hope for is to die with dignity." his teacher replied.

Edited 12-9-12

Two Weeks In Hell Chs 1-4 Combined into one June 1, 2017.