Before long, all the Jōnin who had come to the assembly were gathered outside, and the community centre was left empty. Breasts bobbing wildly, Sakura rushed out into the street with Kakashi and Sasuke at her side. She could hear cries of pain and fear in the distance, and the horizon was aglow with flames rising from houses.
Consummate professionals, many of the Jōnin of the Leaf quickly sought out high ground to get a better grip of the situation. Sakura had the same idea, hopping onto the roof of the community centre and squinting into the oppressive darkness of the night with her Sharingan. Sasuke and Kakashi quickly joined her.
"Timed explosives?" Sakura muttered to herself. "Akatsuki's Deidara?"
"Couldn't be," said Kakashi, frowning. "The Sensing Barrier would have detected him long before he even reached the town centre."
In the distance, Sakura could see fires blazing and people in their pyjamas, dashing about the streets with water buckets, or sending jets of water from their mouths to quench the flames… yet she couldn't make out any real signs of fighting.
"Anyone have eyes on the enemy?"
"Sensors, we need enemy emplacements NOW!"
In the street below, a few of the remaining Jōnin were exchanging radio frequencies, hoping the sensors amongst them might discover the enemy's location while they rushed out blindly to help the villagers in distress, prioritising saving lives over preserving their own.
!!!
It was then that Sakura caught a dark shadow whizzing by overhead at the edge of her vision. It lasted only a heartbeat, yet something above her had definitely blotted out the light of the stars. She looked up, and…
"The enemy's above us!" said Sasuke grimly.
"It's an aerial raid!" Sakura hollered. "Everyone, get away!"
There was a high-pitched whizzing sound as a bomb streaked across the sky, plunging past Sakura while she hurled herself to the ground on the roof, and exploding in the street before the community centre, carving a deep crater that lay bathed in the electric glow spilling from the neon lights of the entrance hall…
"I see them!" came Hyūga Tokuma's voice, craning his neck to peer skywards. "Hundreds of shinobi on gliders, in the sky!"
While the Hyūga clan's Byakugan could see in a nearly perfect sphere around them, that clarity reached only a few dozen metres. When they relied on their telescopic, long-ranged sight, they had to tighten their cone of vision considerably, and really… who could have possibly expected the enemy to slip past the Barrier Team by flying over the sensing bubble that enveloped the village?
Nobody ever looks up, after all…
"It's nighttime, so they're targeting light sources," said Sakura, recalling how her grandfather used to ramble at length about the air raids over Tokyo in her previous life. "A blackout! We need to get everyone to put out their lights!"
"There's no time for that," said Kakashi seriously. "But there's a high-voltage substation nearby. If we shut it down, we might be able to limit the damage to the civilians' residential district."
It was then that Sakura had an idea.
She remembered reading in Kakashi's mission report that, around the time they had captured Deidara— which had actually been nothing more than an Explosion Style Clone— the entire team's radios had failed simultaneously, coinciding with her taking down Sasori of the Red Sands… with a Lightning Style: Rasenshuriken.
"Hang on, I think I might have an idea," said Sakura, thinking aloud. "My Lightning Style: Rasenshuriken should be able to generate an EMP capable of knocking out the entire village's power grid… though there's a risk it could permanently damage the network and everyone's appliances…"
Kakashi shook his head.
"I'm not sure what you're talking about, but you're forgetting the hospital," he said. "Lady Tsunade and many patients rely on the hospital's machines just to stay alive. The building's emergency generators would keep everything running even if we cut the power to the district, but if your jutsu permanently disables the electronics…"
Sakura's face turned pale. As a medic, how could she have possibly forgotten about her patients!?
"No, the Hokage's disciple's idea is a good one," an old man's voice rang out behind her. "Do it."
Sakura, Sasuke and Kakashi whirled around.
Who else could it have possibly been? Shimura Danzō's wizened face and his followers' animal masks glowed ominously in the pale, flickering light of the firestorms springing up around the village as bombs continued to rain down. To Sakura's surprise, Danzō and his men had not gone into hiding as they had during Pain's invasion, but had gone up to the roof to get a better view of the situation— probably because they deemed the threat of this attack negligible.
"Didn't you hear what Kakashi-sensei just said?" Sakura said blankly. "I'd be executing every last patient in the A&E department if I used that jutsu!"
"A great many more will join them in the hospital very quickly, unless you do as I say," Danzō said coldly. "As Acting Hokage, I command you to use that jutsu!"
Kakashi's words echoed in Sakura's mind:
"In the Ninja World, those who break the rules are scum, that's true... but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum!"
"No," said Sakura firmly, crossing her arms below her chest. "I won't do it."
Danzō's face darkened, but within a fraction of a second, his expression returned to its neutral state.
It did not matter if the village suffered a little more preventable damage. Once this whole debacle was over, he would simply pin the blame on the previous administration's weakness and manipulate public opinion to direct the citizens' anger towards the Fifth's disciple.
In fact, even if Sakura had obeyed his order and used her jutsu, he would still have laid the responsibility for the deaths of the hospital's patients and the Fifth Hokage squarely on her, and reaped all the acclaim she would have deserved for saving the rest of the village!
"There will be consequences for disobeying the Hokage, mark my words, girl…" said Danzō impassively, narrowing his exposed eye. "Now begone from my sight, all of you. I need to coordinate the village's defences."
Sakura licked her lips nervously.
Surely nobody would notice if she decapitated Danzō right here and now, right…? Oh, but she had left her sword at home. She had never anticipated that the village would be attacked completely out of the blue, months before Pain was supposed to come calling.
"Come on," said Sasuke, pulling at Sakura's sleeve. "Let's go find that substation of Kakashi's."
A sinking feeling settled in the pit of Sakura's stomach. She wouldn't put it past Danzō to take advantage of the chaos to finish the job.
"Actually, you two go ahead and do that," said Sakura darkly. "I'm heading to the hospital to check on Lady Tsunade."
No matter what, the Fifth Hokage had to live…