⌠ a promise to my heart ⌡ 00 || prologue
There was nothing to salvage, nothing to save, nothing to rescue. Nara Shikaku stepped through the still smoldering, perfectly circular gateway and was overcome with a sense of hopelessness. Helplessness. Dread. Pessimism. Nara Shikaku could only stare and feel overwhelmed with a sense of loss he had not felt since the death of the fourth Hokage.
The central courtyard had been incinerated. Completely demolished. What used to be pale marble with silver inlay was now a pile of rubble. The elegant tangerine and cherry trees were mere stumps that gave off faint sparks every so often. Bodies weren't littered across the grounds so much as they were piled upon each other in heaps. Within one heap, he saw the hand of a child; neither twelve nor ten, but probably four years of age. It shone a bright, morbid red with blood and clutched at a shuriken.
Shikaku was sickened. He was also terrified. This was the complex that housed the Megamiko Clan, a clan of shinobi that found their roots long before the establishment of any Hidden Village. According to legend, they were the descendents of gods. Common knowledge, just everyday word of mouth, whispered the mysterious tales of the Megamiko.
And they were dead. In a single night, they ceased to exist.
"I want..." he croaked to the equally stunned medic-nin that trailed his every step, "...survivors. Search the entire estate, every nook and cranny, every closet. I want ... survivors ... and th–these bodies cleaned and identified ... I want... I want..."
One tear that he was not supposed to have shed broke free of his control. It slid down the roughened, scarred expanse of his cheek, onto his chin, and fell down into the pool of drying blood at his feet.
As he moved, his shoes left prints. As he moved, his sanity left slivers within his wake.
Kami. His thoughts could only process this. Kami, Kami! KAMIII!! Not with any of the reason he was famed for. Not with any calmness and temper. Just the sensation that no one had any control. Oh my god... oh my god.
It was black. It was black and cold and empty and silent.
Not the night. Never the night. The night had stars to guide the lost home. The night, even in winter, held the warmth of fire burning somewhere. The night was fill to the brim with fauna that croaked and creaked and howled and groveled.
This was not the night. Dawn had always followed night, a promise of a new day, an oath of a new beginning that would come again and again and again, without fail.
But this darkness, this black, it was frightening because it promised, without fail, that this was all there is and will ever be.
I cannot see, I cannot hear, I cannot feel, I cannot smell, I cannot taste anything beyond this darkness. I was completely numb to any kind of stimuli.
I tried to scream but found that there was no air. I tried to move, to reach out, but found that I could not move.
I tried to cry but found to something just short of astonishment that I no longer existed.
"None," the medic-nin murmured quietly. Nara Shikaku looked long and hard at the boy, who looked no more than seventeen. There, in his eyes, there was a wildness that flickered about his dark brown eyes. It was wild and terrified, like a cornered animal in the eyes of a serpent. "We've ... found no one. O-only c-c-corpses..."
"...how many? How many bodies are there?" asked Shikaku of another medic-nin. Here was a woman who had seen many years of bloodied bodies, gaping wounds, and innards spilled across the shinobi arena.
"One hundred and nine, Nara-san." She replied, small and stiff. Even she was frightened. She, a woman who had seen the wars of decades and had her hairs grayed by them, was frightened. "But among them, a few were outsiders."
"Outsiders?"
"Nine known mercenaries, a Swordsman of the Mist... two, I think, are the strongest shinobi from the Village Hidden in the Rocks."
"That makes ... ninety seven Megamiko dead. How many members of the Megamiko family do we have in total?"
Hatake Kakashi stepped forward, a fluttering eye showing, dreading, observing with disbelief. "One hundred and four. Of the seven missing, Ronin is on a mission abroad."
Someone keeled over and retched into a puddle of blood. Soft sobs were heard from around the large, sprawling complex. A boy, probably ten years of age, had been brutally pinned to a large wooden door. His lower half was a mess, to say the least; immortalized on his face was a scream. His eye (the other had been plucked out) seemed to stare out at the shinobi who stood awestruck, many feet before him.
His mouth was widened to its largest extent, and when Nara Shikaku stared at him, he could almost hear the child's last shriek
And, out of the darkness, came her voice.
"I want her soul."
In any other context, by any other voice, that statement would have been depraved, sickening, and just plain weird.
From this darkness that I could not escape was her voice; her voice ... it was warm and soothing, and as her voice glistened with glowing fluidity and unnamable familiarity, I knew that could exist once more. It was a flare of light, a shimmering, iridescent gleam of hope.
"Why?" A silken, glacial voice sounded, curious and deadly. I felt it coil around me. I felt it drive away the warmth. "Why do you take such an interest in her, Amaterasu?"
"You need not know why; her importance to me is none of your concern."
The response was a shrill cackle of delirious laughter. "What's in it for me, sister dear?"
"Ten of my golden wolves," The woman bartered, chilly annoyance slipping through the warmth that was her normal voice. "That, and the past one hundred sacrifices."
"My dear, I have no want for past sacrifices, I want fresh—"
"Fine, you bloodthirsty bastard!!" screamed the irate woman. "The next one hundred! The next thousand!"
A pause ensued, and I grew scared. Her voice, her voice, I couldn't hear, I couldn't feel it...
"Done," was the sibilant response; his voice seemed to echo softly and I could feel myself being shifted from one place to another. The surroundings warmed, they brightened, and even within myself, a sort of kinship to this new place, this new heaven, a haven.
"—her body?" The man, I think it was a man, asked, curious like a great big cat that saw a new type of prey.
"I have already retrieved her body," the woman clipped brusquely. She paused for a moment, and then continued, a new emotion seeping through her levees. The levees, they were breaking, "I couldn't believe ... what had happened... Her brother, her sister, and two score of the world's greatest fighters, killed them, all ninety seven of them. Susanoo and Tsukiyomi will not be happy. Ben-chan and Shina-chan the same. I don't even want to think what Kagu-Suchi-, O-Wata- and Nai-No -sukes would do when they find out…"
"Ahh ... she is from that clan?"
"Hai."
"But that still does not explain why you have such an interest in her."
"Why does not matter. The only thing that matters right now is her revivification." A pause, as her voice caught and squirmed. With a façade of catty snobbishness, she continued. "That's your cue to leave."
"Very well, Ama-san. Just remember the consequences; you know them well, and I hope this child is worth it."
"You concern is touching, but I remember telling you to leave." The woman clipped dispassionately. I felt a shift in the surroundings and all vestiges of the cold, unending darkness disappeared. The air, or rather, the space, since it cannot really be called air, brightened and heated as the dark and cold was chased away, far away. His presence receded, and I was left in the cradle of the sun, a place of incredible bliss, tranquility, and permanence, one that was without the hopelessness of the dark I had been drowning in before. It was hard to believe that just seconds (or had it been years?) ago, despondency was all that I knew.
I could only hear the soft swishing of silk in the background, the muted click of diamond on porcelain, a hushed heart, pulsing away in the distance, and the winds whispering tritely treacherous things.
"Kira?"
Her voice blossomed out of the light in a flowering flare of tenderness and hesitation, like gold upon yellow, silver upon white.
"Kira ... I'm not sure if you can hear me," murmured the feminine and maternal voice, one that had its façade of confidence breach faintly, showing uncertainty and anxiety. "And if you can ... you will not remember... this is not what I wished for you; it is not something I would wish on anyone, but it is for the best — I am sorry."
And through the background hum, there was a distinct sound of a drop of water falling into a small pool. Heat flashed and burned and pushed at me. I felt the weight of the earth on my shoulders, the pressure of the sea on my body, the pull of the air in my lungs, the scorching fire upon every surface of my body, pain of the world on my mind. There was pain, pain that I was sure that no person could ever survive, should ever survive.
I might have screamed, but I could not recall doing so. Shrieks bounced about my conscience, echoes of my own unsounded cries.
A truly potent anesthesia graced so lightly upon my wrists, my upper arms, my ankles, my thighs, my forehead, my neck, my back, and my chest. From those small points, they spread out, exorcising the pain until the initial bliss returned and all was left of the hurt was the woosh-woosh of my blood in my ears.
"When the day comes, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me."
"Nara-san! NARA-SAN!! We have a heartbeat! We have a heartbeat!!!" A young intern shouted from beside a long line of corpses. He had and seven others had been assigned the task of cleaning the remains and identifying them; after laboring away for more than seven hours, he had finally reached the last few bodies, one of which belonged to an emaciated girl with blood-stained hair that might have been a brilliant silver. In the middle of gently rinsing down her bloodied limbs, he felt a pulse start and grow beneath his hand. He had held the hand in disbelief; at times, it had paused and stopped altogether. Then it sped up and pounded away, only to splutter and beat erratically.
He quickly scanned for wounds across the body; there were none that could have possibly been fatal; just two leg wounds that nearly amputated her left knee and a deep gash that ran from her right elbow to her wrist. He disbelievingly placed two fingers to the girl's neck, only to be shocked and repelled by the weak pulse that whispered quietly at his fingertips.
"WE HAVE A PULSE!!" He screamed, garnering the attention of everyone on the Megamiko estate. Eyes, eyes with hatred and ire and annoyance, glanced his way, completely set in grief. After all, all the bodies had been checked and double-checked for any signs of life more than five hours ago. How was it possible? The intern had got to be joking. That, or he was delusional.
"What are you doing?" A dangerous voice hissed from behind. Mitarashi Anko stood alongside Nara Shikaku, her face etched with revulsion and disdain, her eyes shining from a fresh layer of unshed tears. "If you think this is funny, I recommend you go buy yourself a conscience and a new sense of humor."
"But—" The intern protested indignantly, only to have his complain cut off by a curt jerk of Shikaku's head. He knelt down to brush a lock of hair from the doll-like child's face.
"Go home; it's almost light and we are nearly done, Hideki—"
Shikaku's command was cut short by a sharp and desperate intake of breath.
Her eyelids had fluttered, betraying irises of steel and sky.
Everyone fell silent, waiting, anticipating, not entirely believing...
With wide eyes, Anko kneeled into the pool of red, coppery water and grasped the hand.
"There's a pulse..." she breathed as she watched Kira's formerly still chest rise and fall. "There's a p-p... WE HAVE A SURVIVOR. I WANT MEGAMIKO KIRA TRANSPORTED TO KONOHA HOSPITAL THIS INSTANT!"
A cheer rose from the silence that shrouded Megamiko estate and resonated all parts of Konoha.
My tongue felt dry and enormous within my mouth.
I take that back -- my entire oral cavity was in dire wont of any form of hydration. My tongue actually felt like sawdust, my gums might as well be the cuticles of a desert-dweller, my teeth ached, my throat and lungs seared with the texture of sandpaper but felt with sensitivity of an infant's eyeballs with every breath I drew and released.
Speaking of eyeballs, mine were stiff and apparently sealed from disuse. Still, I could see feel light just before me, a bright red through my membranous eyelids.
Kira, Kira, a part of my mind whispered, a voice that might not be a voice, but rather the breath of the wind as it streams past a willow tree, the sigh of the stream as it winds across polished pebbles, its time to wake up.
Just let me sleep a little more, I wanted to say. I'm so tired, so so tired.
Its time to wake up child; your adventure starts today.
Author's Note
050909
Ah.... yes. I am still alive.
Well, here it is. A Promise to My Heart, revamped. Its just the prologue, but anyone should be able to see the next two rewritten chapters by ... July? I can't guarantee them any sooner, as I have two AP exams within the next week, two sweet sixteens in the next three weeks, my SAT IIs on June 6, my ACT exam on the saturday following, and then my fabulous finals. Welcome to hell, AKA Junior Year.
But don't despair! Lyra will actually finish APtMH if its the last thing I do. Why? Because I intend on having this completed and renown enough so it is protected from any possible idiot who thinks they can get away from plagiarising my work. Yes, Lia Diaz, I am speaking to you.
The original APtMH can be read on quizilla (dot) com, under the user SkyDancer15's (ME, MYSELF, and I) work. The latest journal has a link to this account, ocarinachild. This version will be completely different from the original only in the first eight or so chapters; expect updating to pick up from chapters 8 to 25 and slow down from then to the end.
heartskisses&&feedback -- A. Lyra. T-Z.