Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto
Summary: They've found it among the flamed debris in the entrails of the forest. Wrapped up in woolen blankets, there was a snake.
Yamata no Orochi
Prologue
They were heading west.
The night, chilly and starless, blanketed heavily a vast expanse of the spacious field. Their squad had been en route for two hours already, going at the steady pace, their chakra inforced feet leaving no marks on the thick snowy cover of the frozen grounds.
Kazuki exhaled a cloudlet of the heated air; it clashed visibly against its frigid outward counterpart.
The mission had been an abrupt one. The night patrol reporting on the rapid chakra surge in the northwestern area, the origin unidentified.
The task being plain and simple reconnaissance, Kazuki believed their randomly put together team of chuunin would do the trick quite effortlessly.
Instead the three of them were saddled with Hashimoto Junichi, a thirty two year old jounin, his square jawed face the irretrievably frozen mask of profound aloofness and deep indifference. If Kazuki recalled correctly, the rumors of various degree of credibility circulating among the Konoha shinobi stated the man to be a member of the ANBU. Though one must give that crowd some credit for being quite competent at keeping all the dubious, shady secrets to themselves, in a place like Konoha, full to the brim with bored and nosey shinobi, all that effort was sometimes rather futile.
Be as it may, one does not question orders.
Though one needn't be happy with them either, Kazuki thought grimly.
They were nearing their destination now. There, on the dark horizon, the indistinct patch of the dry winter forest could be seen. The temperature was steadily going down, and Kazuki was recalling with mild longing the warm cosy duty post that had to be forsaken in favor of this midnight pleasure excursion through the wilderness of the Fire Land.
They reached the line of the trees. Going up the branches was of little use now; it would gain them nothing in terms of speed or concealment, their coloured garment taking care of the latter sufficiently well.
Kazuki glanced up towards the night sky, thick murky clouds over their heads just beginning to strew the forest with the fluffy snowflakes, nearly invisible in the dim light. To his right, the blond haired kunoichi named Yoko, the young medic-nin, run with the steady broad strides despite her being rather short statured. A few paces behind them the Hyuuga girl (Kamiko, he recalled the name) was casting lazy idle glances over the surrounding trees. Hashimoto took the lead.
Most of the short time on the road had been spent by the makeshift team in unobtrusive silence, being acquainted with each other too superficially for small talk, even if the mission would allow such a conduct.
In front of them, Hashimoto abruptly lifted his palm up, wordlessly calling a halt, the three chuunin silently gathering around him a few moments later.
Up ahead, from below the small hill they currently stood upon, a faint sound could be heard, quiet but perfectly familiar.
Kazuki knew, even before they set foot upon the hilltop and looked around, that his earlier wish against the bitter cold, directed vaguely to some vacant kami, was suddenly and unexpectedly granted.
Down below, surrounded by the forest and the dark hills, one of which being that their team currently stood upon, a small valley situated, housing an even smaller village.
Or what used to be the small village. Because presently it had taken a form of the huge, grand bonfire, which spread its flames up for several ken high and was steadily consuming what was left of the wooden huts and some unlucky trees happening on its way.
"Keep your guard up," Hashimoto said quietly, looking around the wreckage with impassive, yet sharp eyes. "There are traps all over this place."
Kazuki took a moment to consider why the man seemed to be so confident with this statement, but then quickly dismissed the strange feeling. The time they lived at every self-respecting shinobi (or even, in some cases, civilian, given the right amont of paranoia, reasoned or not) settlement tended to convert the whole surrounding area into a one big booby-trap.
And this place, though might seem to be harmless at first glance, was currently gobbled up by the wildfire, clearly the chakra produced one. The fact was making you wonder what secrets it had to hide to earn such a fate.
Kazuki reasoned with himself that his hesitation was most likely the result of the initial distrust he harboured towards this emotionless, secretive man they were collaborated with by chance and would likely never have to interact with again. So for now, Kazuki would just keep quiet and do his job.
"Split up," Hashimoto was saying presently, "and scout around the perimeter. Send a signal if you notice anything."
But there was nothing for them to notice, the place eerily empty aside from the number of dead and burned bodies littering the ground and residual chakra emination lingering lazily all over the place, and ten minutes later they all gathered up at the previous spot.
"Kamiko, check for any survivors."
This time the request drew the surprised gazes from not only Kazuki, but the other two chuunin as well. Nevertheless, the Hyuuga girl nodded her assent and peered around intently with that quaint eyes of hers.
For a couple of moments no one spoke. Then Kamiko's fine dark brows furrowed slightly.
"I think, there's something..." she drawled out. "Yes. There is a definite presence here, in the underground premises under that building," she pointed out the large structure, probably the main housing from the look of it.
Kamiko had not even finished the sentence, and Hashimoto was already moving towards the burning remnants of the village. Kazuki and Yoko traded glances, and the three of them tacitly followed their taichou.
Navigating their way around the debris, the four of them reached the large structure, the heated air leaving the skin of their faces unpleasantly hot and burning, making it hard to breathe.
Junichi, though, took care of the flames with the quick Suiton jutsu, using the large amount of snow coating the silent forest around them and melting it to extinguish the fire. Its flames carrying only small residual traces of chakra now, the fire quickly dissipated, giving them a clear way in.
They passed the dark, ash covered remnants of rooms and corridors with Kamiko leading the way. More bodies were scattered carelessly around the floor, forcing the four shinobi to watch their steps closely.
At last, they reached the basements.
There, in a pitch black darkness, Kamiko lead them to a heavy door, the only reason the three remaining team members being able to distinguish it in the dark being a large glowing seal, its intricate patterns engraved beautifully upon the wooden surface.
Kazuki absentmindedly noticed the basement being spared from the fire completely (though not from the heat), even with no seals guarding its upper entrence, or at least no seals that he was aware of, for Kazuki was no fuinjutsu specialist.
Junichi, though, seemed to know what he was doing. He took some time studying the sophisticated looking kanji plexus, and as the silent minutes dragged and extended leisurely on, the vague sense of disquietude began to overcome Kazuki's mind. He eyed the idly, pacifically glowing thing, not yet showing any hints of succumbing under the jounin's careful ministrations, and knew with sudden clarity that this all would not bode well.
Here they were, trying to get inside the heavily sealed rooms obviously containing the very same thing that was the manifest reason for this whole place to become the charred embers not even three hours ago. Moreover, the thing was alive. This was way beyond the mission objective.
Next to him, most likely noticing his troubled expression even in this tomb-like darkness, Hyuuga lightly touched Kazuki's right arm to get his attention, then said quietly:
"There's only a child inside."
While Kazuki was trying to fit this new, confusing information into his various theories of tonight's proceedings, the heavy door suddenly gave in and opened with a terrible creaking noise.
As he recalled it afterwards, he had trouble reproducing accurately the several moments that followed after that. For he had only half a second to react and save "only a child", as the little room that came into their view with the door opened instantly replicated the earlier, already familiar scenario.
It flared up.
Kazuki had just come out of the Hokage tower a few minutes ago after finishing the mission report along with Hashimoto and Hyuuga, while Yoko had taken off to the hospital as soon as they arrived back at the village. It was an early hour of the morning, and he was free to go and finally have some rest.
Instead, he found himself walking through the bright corridors of Konoha's Main Hospital. The clinical whiteness of the interior lighting in these pre-dawn hours was making his tired eyes ache desperately.
He wandered around the empty corridors, hoping to find some nurse and ask where Yoko was. Maybe he should-
There it was. As he rounded the corner, he saw a dark haired woman strolling down the corridor, shifting through some papers.
"Excuse me, have you seen Egawa Yoko? She's just returned from the mission about half an hour ago."
The woman abruptly lifted her head up and looked at him with strange expression on her pale weary face. Then, as if waking up, she blinked once, twice, and answered slowly.
"Uh... Yes. She's still at the A&E, I think."
"Thanks."
As he continued to travel among the blinding whiteness of the hospital maze, now with the set destination, he recalled idly the events of a few previous hours. The skin on his hands and face was still stinging slightly, for his reaction to the fire trap within that underground chamber was not swift enough to prevent some injuries, though otherwise effective in regards of saving all of their bloody lifes.
He hadn't seen the child wrapped up in many layers of the thick blanket, and frankly hadn't wanted to. If Kazuki's skin had been almost burned during that half a second of exposure to the fire, he did not want to see what it had done to that thing, being stationed by someone strategically in the very center of the raging inferno.
Alas, as soon as they were able to set a foot on the red hot basement chamber floor and reach the little creature, it happened to have some really nasty burns on its arms and feet, but that was that.
Yoko had been able to patch the worst wounds up a bit, but not enough to prevent the scarring, and after that they had to hurry and return to the village.
Unbelievably, the child had still been deep in the realm of sleep (as it had been when they first opened the door). Or, with more probability, unconsciousness, he had thought, as the one must undoubtfully be when one's arms were melting.
Kazuki sighed lightly, strolling down the corridors towards the slightly more populated area of the Accident and Emergency department.
There were too much unexplainable things about this whole event. Little ditails that could easily be overseen if one did not look close enough. At first he had thought that the sole survivor of tonight's was their unknown attacker's objective. But why leave it behind after having dealt with the guards? The idea of them being deterred off by the patrol was laughable, those guys hadn't even set foot near the village. Plus, there was no seals constraining the way inside, aside from that on the chamber door, and though it seemed tricky in appearance, it had yielded after mere ten minutes of work, with Hashimoto Junichi being in no way a genius.
But the most disturbing thing of it all was still making his irritated skin hurt. The thought of someone being willing to rather have the thing destroyed than give it up to an enemy was... unsettling. The sheer luck was the reason that it had lived through this.
And now this tiny strange creature would have to stay here, in Konoha.
There would never be any peace in this village.
At last, he reached the A&E area. Sparse amount of nurses, clad neatly in white medical gowns, walked slowly down the corridor and between the wards. Yoko, though, was nowhere in sight. He was just intending to go find some other information source, when his peripheral vision caught something through the open door of the small ward to his left. He turned his head and slowly came to a halt, carefully eyeing its occupant.
He had already seen the sickly looking whiteness of the skin and pointed dark markings of the eyelids, which had appeared black in the darkness of the forest, but now reflected the bright hospital lights with a deep purple sheen.
It appeared to be around two year old. Kazuki didn't know its gender, it was hard to tell with so young a child, especially this one. It sat, motionless, on the hospital bed, enormous in comparison, with its little arms bandaged tightly up to the middle of the humerus, feet wrapped up in a similar fashion.
As he watched mutely, he understood what was so discouraging in the sight in front of him. While a normal, healthy two year old child would now be fidgeting around or crying or doing only a two year old knows what, the creature sat perfectly still. It occupied itself with eyeing indifferently the sterile gauze its miniature hands were swathed with. Then lifted its dark head up and looked him right in the eyes.
That he had not seen yet.
The large, disinterested eyes staring him down were of the vivid, light amber colouring, with the snake-like slit shaped pupils that were now nearly invisible. Kazuki realized with sudden coldness creeping over his tired body that for all the time he was silently watching the creature, it had yet to blink.
Kazuki blinked, severing the eye contact, turned around and left the hospital. He really needed to sleep.
