To the Ends of the Earth
By Jack Manson
It was drawing nearer to midnight in Konoha when a young girl tugged at the leg of her father with her petite hands. She did so impatiently until he set down whatever he was busy with and gave her his full and undivided attention. She pleaded for him to tell her a story before she was mercilessly forced into bed for the night.
The father was happy to satisfy the request of his little princess, and sat her on his lap as he positioned himself on the chair behind his desk. He questioned what story she'd like to hear on that fine night, and she demanded a tale she had yet to hear.
He chuckled at her assertiveness. "A new one? I can do that. Would you like to hear a story about how I fought with a boy named Haku when I was much younger?"
She shook her head quickly. "No, no," she said with childish exasperation, "I want to hear a story about the Green-eyed Kunoichi."
Her father let his smile fade ever so slightly, but his daughter didn't seem to notice. He thought about it quietly, and after less than a moment of contemplation, he began the tale that did not belong to him. He started, "this story takes place shortly before I ever became Hokage, and before you were ever born. It started on a cold, rainy night in the wilderness surrounding Konoha..."
Standing before the infamous Otonin, and speaking for her squad of elite Konoha Shinobi, the Green-eyed Kunoichi adressed her target with formality and respect, and partially with distain.
"You are wanted in every country for your affiliations with the terrorist group known as Akatsuki, and for your accountability in the numerous attacks on allied nations and the village of Konohagakure. If you come quietly and obediently, we will show you the same courtesy we show our own citizens." She held out a scroll clentched in her fist before her. Everything which called for the arrest of lower Akatsuki members was written within it, and the civilized terms of his containment were as well.
The Otonin was a tall individual who always had a smug sneer on his face and spoke with misplaced superiority. After thinking of their request mockingly and falsely, he merely smiled wider than he already was and pointed his pecuilar hands at the Green-eyed Kunoichi and replied less-than-formally; "Girlie, you may have aided in the defeat my partner, but I am not so easily swayed. So I refuse that terribly wordy request of yours flat out."
His reoccuring arrogance and resitance meant the Green-eyed Kunoichi and her team of elite had to try and capture the Otonin with force. He knew too much information to kill him, but keeping him alive would prove to be very difficult. The Otonin was a very strong Shinobi, despite being the enemy of almost the entire world. He fought using his sculptural bombs that looked like birds and beasts, and when he was ready to attack, he would egnite them with a bang. He considered his creations artistic; fleeting destruction.
As the Konoha elite fought the Otonin, it was the Green-eyed Kunoichi who impressed him the most. She was the strongest Kunoichi in all of Konoha at that time, and she had been trained by the Fifth Hokage herself. With a punch, she could level the ground below her in an erruption of passion that shook the ground for miles. With a kick, she could make a mountain split in two.
When she tried to hit the Otonin to crush his leg and cripple him, he dodged grcefully and watched as her fist smashed into the bark of a tree, making it implode into a million splinters. The remainder of the monstrous trunk fell to the ground with a God-like rumble that shook the sense out of all the surrounding elite. The commotion gave the Otonin an opportunity to escape to the trees above, while the team remainded on the ground below, a bit dazed.
With newly found excitement, the Otonin called down to the Green-eyed Kunoichi and said, "you're quite the artist, girlie. If I am ever attacked by Konoha elite again, I do hope you'll be among them."
And with that said, the Otonin dissapeared into the night, leaving his pursuers and his newly discovered interest behind, soaking in their cloaks and exaughsted from chasing the arrogant criminal.
The little girl tugged at her father's sleeve excitedly. "Did the Konoha elite give up?"
"Many of them did," he explained, raising his index finger. "Konoha at the time was in the middle of political dissagreements between boardering nations and villages. After the failure to capture the Otonin, they thought it best to leave him be."
His daughter bounced on his lap expectantly. She said with enthusiasm and admiration, "but not the Green-eyed Kunoichi, right?"
"Right, she didn't give up. She had a sour history with Akatsuki, and she felt it was her duty to bring all the few remaining members to justice. So she asked the Fifth to make catching the Otonin her main priority while the village busied themselves with potential war. It was another year before they two met again, it was in the golden meadows outside the Village Hidden in the Grass..."
They faced each other in the waist-high wheat, her expression stoic and emotions carefully concealed, while his was a look of unashamed enjoyment in seeing her emerald eyes once more.
He told her, "I'm surprised you came after me alone this time, girlie, but I'm not dissapointed." He held his arms out wide, and held a charming smile on his face. "Let's make art together, yeah?"
It is said their battle could be heard in every Shinobi nation, the rumble of crumbling earth, and the shaking of the Otonin's shocking explosions. From what many have said, they dueled until the light of two days had passed and night came around to darken their feeble spirits. They collapsed in the tattered earth facing the sky, unable to continue fighting. They lay in the ground, parallel to each other and trying to catch their breaths. Their bodies were sore and their muscles throbbing. Neither could even lift their arms any longer.
As they rested, staring at the starry sky, the Otonin turned to look at his opponent with a weak smile on his dirty face. He said to her, "we'll be at this forever, you know, you can't kill me due to orders, and I don't want to kill you, because you're such a catch, yeah..."
She rolled her green eyes and look at him with a look of indifference. It was for a long moment that they stared at one another in the dark, and after that time, she started to smile a little, and then she started giggling. When she started laughing, she couldn't stop, and it felt good feel a little joy for once in a long while. Their predicament was astonishingly ridiculous, she had never expirienced anything like it.
From his perspective on the ground, the Otonin grinned widely, enjoying the sound of her laugh. He liked it so much, he even started to join in.
"Did they keep fighting?"
The father shook his head with a slightly saddened smile. "Not then, they didn't, no." He sat in thought for awhile before continueing. "The Green-eyed Kunoichi and the Otonin both agreed that their fight could continue another day. He climbed onto his clay bird and shook her hand from the ground before flying off into the dawn, his form dissapearing in the coming light of day. She had no choice but to return home, to Konoha..."
After their second fight, another year passed by, followed by two lonely months. During that time the Green-eyed Kunoichi was forced to serve her village during war, in both combat and medicine.
On the nights when the sounds of battle had ceased and the world was quiet, and the hospitals were silent with death, she thought of the man who made her laugh like a little girl again. She thought of him very often, and was sometimes ashamed that she wanted to see him again. She spent her days performing surgery and medicine on injured shinobi from the front, and often went on missions to destroy certain camps where the enemy lay and wait. She went through many losses, including her teacher, her parents, and her friends, and through every hastily put together funeral, she never cried, but she always desired to meet the Otonin once agian.
When the war finally ended and Konoha began to rebuild, the Green-eyed Kunoichi came to me in my first month as Hokage, requesting to resume her duty in locating the now sole survivor of Akatsuki. I granted her permission to do so, despite my vauge suspicions of obsession, looking back on her mission reports. With my word to go, she once more left the village to search for the Otonin.
She was gone for a long time, in search of him, until she finally caught a rumor that lead her to the mountains of an unfamiliar country. The Green-eyed Kunoichi spotted the tattered cloak of an Akatsuki on the edge of a cliff. It had been quite awhile since they last met, and the first thing the Kunoichi could think to say to him was, "here were are, at the top of the world."
He had told her that she could not kill him, and he did not want to kill her. But he had been wrong, at least afterwards, because she no longer wanted to kill him. Something had awoken inside of her they day they last parted, something that hinted to her that she was missing something important in her life.
On the mountain side, high above the world they were a part of, they fought with passion and no words. From the ground below the mountains, the people could see the erruptions of rock and soil, and the explosions of clay and earth.
The battle this time around was ended with the Green-eyed Kunoichi pinning the Otonin down on the rocks and pressing a kunai close to his neck, drawing the slightest amount of blood. With his death just a movement away, she smiled warmly at him, and he returned the feeling. She let the knife fall from her hand and leaned down close to his face while he closed the distance and they kissed in the rubble of the mountain; the art they had created together.
"Did the fall in love?"
"Yes, somewhat. You should know, hun, that before then, the Green-eyed Kunoichi was a very troubled individual. When she was very young, her heart was broken by the boy she was first in love with, and for a time she was often looked down upon as being the weakest Kunoichi in the village. Once, she found love in the form of her genin instructor, a man with hair like a scarecrow's. But the life of her lover was taken far too soon, and she gaveup, and never seemed to laugh again. The joy seemed to have been squeezed from her, but in the meadow, when the Otonin made her laugh, somehow, she felt that he gave her hope, and it stayed with her even in a time of war."
"So..." The little girl twirled her thumbs almost nervously, "what happened next?"
Her father smiled. "Well, they both knew that they couldn't really be together without hardships, so they parted for the third time. The Green-eyed Kunoichi returned to her village with her head held high, only to be greeted at the gate by the Shinobi with onyx eyes." He said the last portion of the sentance with mock fear.
His daughter squealed excitedly, clapping her hands. "Uncle Sasuke!"
The Shinobi with onyx eyes did indeed meet the Green-eyed Kunoichi, and issued her immediate arrest. She demanded to know what the blaspemy was all about, and he read her her accusations.
"Under orders by the Hokage and statements from an eye witness, you are under arrest for purposely letting an enemy escape during a mission and for engaging in illegal affairs."
The Green-eyed Kunoichi withheld her right to face her accuser, and from the restraining squad stepped the eldest Hyuuga son. His face was stoic as he let his opaque eyes greet her own. He had been sent to spy on her while she was on her mission on the orders I gave him. I had suspected her previous failed attempts were suspicious, and I had been right.
Under the court of law, the Green-eyed Kunoichi pleaded guilty for falling in love with the enemy. She was stripped of her rank and title, her mission records, and her hitae-ate was burned before her as a symbol of disloyalty. She was confined to the village of Konoha, forbidden to leave, for the rest of her life.
However, three months after she and the Otonin kissed on the mountainside, he grew tired of waiting for her to come and find him once more. He did the opposite, and went after her, only to discover her situation in the village. Under the cover of night, the Otonin slipped into her quarters in disguise, and revealed himself to her when she demnded to know who he was, for she could see right through genjutsu and disguises.
She was shocked to see him, yes, but she urgently told him to escape quickly, because her appartment was monitered to make sure she never tried to escape the village. But before he could follow her advice, they found themselves surrounded by ANBU Shinobi, accusing her once again of involving herself with the enemy and being disloyal to Konoha.
The Otonin refused to be taken capture and to watch her become a prisoner in her own village, so he stole her away into the night on the back of a clay bird. It wasn't until they were well away from the borders of Konoha when she finally spoke to him. She called him crazy, she called him a fool. She tried to slap him, but all he could say was how lovely her pink hair was in the dark of night. When he tried to kiss her, she pushed him away.
She said softly, and sadly, "I care about you more than anyone else. But I have a sense of loyalty to my village and my companions."
The Otonin believed she was telling him she wanted to return to her village and face her punishment, and as he was about to turn the bird around for her, she grabbed him and kissed him.
When they broke apart, she looked at him with sorrowful eyes.
"Run, and I will chase you until we reach the ends of the Earth."
And so, they continued to fight like enemies, but together they knew that they wanted nothing more than to be together, and they fought only to find that kind of perfection.
Although his daughter had long since fallen into slumber on his lap, Naruto couldn't help but finish the tale with a pair of wet, blue eyes, and a heavy heart. He smoothed back the black hair of his child and smiled sadly, wiping his eyes. He whispered to her, "Sakura would have loved to have been your Godmother..."
Without waking her, he brought her upstairs and tucked her into bed, and when he returned to the staircase, he found someone waiting for him at the below in an ANBU uniform. They were the same height a he was, and beyond the openings of his mask were eyes are black as ink.
Naruto smiled, "the Shinobi with Onyx eyes..."
Sasuke removed his snake mask and scowled unappreciately. "Are you still calling me that?"
"She likes it," Naruto shrugged, reffering to his slumbering daughter.
"Well, maybe you should start adressing yourself as the Annoying Idiot." Sasuke, unlike Naruto's other friends who knew he adressed everyone differently in the stories he told his little girl, was not a fan of being called tacky, dramatic names.
Naruto changed the subject, "so, you're back from the mission..." He looked at him expectantly.
"Yes, we found them."
Naruto raised his brows, excited. "And?
Sasuke's face looked a little weary, and uncertain. He rubbed the back of his head and tried to smooth down the spikes of his hair. "Jesus, I don't know where to start..."
In fact, nobody was sure how to describe the two missing shinobi that they had found on their search. Sasuke Uchiha took with him four other ANBU elite, all of whom were friends of Sakura, and still in shock that she had abandoned the village two years prior to their newest search mission. It was Naruto who had continued to issue these missions, still in denial that his oldest friend would partake in such a queer change in priorities.
In the darkness and chaos of a hurricane attacking the seas surrounding unknown lands, the squad had found the two shinobi. In every direction, there was nothing but ocean and storms. Massive waves of salt water emerged from the violent sea and crashed into the ocean with a ear-rattling noise. In the distance, thunder struck the water's surface, and rain attacked from the sky.
It was here that they found them, after two long years. They were not cooperating, but fighting, as if too the death. Blades struck each other, bombs exploded, and sometimes tsunami's errupted from where Sakura stood, when she struck the surface of the water with her fist. The ANBU squad seemed unsure of what to do, congugate with Sakura, their companion, or let the fight decide the fate of the other.
Perhaps even now, as Sasuke retold the events of their mission to his best friend and Hokage, the two Shinobi were fighting, out of mixed feelings toward each other and their misplaced loyalties. And they would continue to duel each other until, as Sakura so painfully claimed, they found the ends of the earth.
Fin