@howlingthunder liked for a starter!
Secrets. So.. many... secrets. Konoha on its surface was just. It was kind. It did no wrong, no undue harm. Any blood spilt in the village's name was a rite of passage, a pledge of devotion that filled the trunk of their community and nourished the fruits and leaves. But Konoha was no different, in the end. For in the Root, they fed on the corpses of their enemies beyond and within their borders.
It was why he and Kakashi had been assigned this mission to begin with; pruning, as it was. ANBU dealt with their own. And they did so with prejudice. So it was only natural when reports of ANBU attacking travelers in the northern territory sidling the mountains came that they were to be dealt with immediately.
But neither of them could have anticipated a situation like this. The whole area was infested with them. At one point, Tenzo reasoned, they had been human. Most looked to be travelers, perhaps even the ones reported missing, a shinobi here and there. But they all bore the same ghastly appearance in their color sapped skin, vacant eyes, bloodless wounds and various states of bodily decay. Some were missing entire limbs, others, heads. Corpses, reanimated and hostile.
Never in his life had Tenzo run as fast as he was now. Every and any obstacle was met with brute force, pillars of wood impaling and crushing any corpse in the way of his warpath. It had been foolish to separate. And with the way the night sky ignited with chidori after chidori, he knew it did not bode well. And the further he tore into the woods, the more his progress was contested. It was like... a goddamned nest, and they had provoked the hive.
"Kakashi!" Tenzo bellowed finally breaking into what he thought was a clearing, only to be horrified by the grisly scene awaiting there. Massive flower buds filled what was once a meadow with pulsing vines and bodies of various states of decay. Some were just rags and bones, siphoned completely of nutrients. Others were freshly broken piles of semi-solid goop that seemed to try to reform.
Disgusted, Tenzo stamped the sludge under his foot wildly searching for where Kakashi's battle had brought him.
"Kashi!" He shouted again, a bit more desperately this time.