Fire and Lightning
Chapter 1 – A Girl and her Tiger
Screams and bloody murder.
A woman awakes. Her son runs into the bedroom clutching her daughter's hand. Their fearful silence and terrified gazes are almost enough to drown out the cries filling the night.
She leaps out of bed, and draws a knife from beneath her pillow.
A glance out the window serves only to fill her with nausea; the streets are flooded with the blood of the people she had once known. Friends, family, acquaintances, and rivals. None of that matters to her now; her children are all she sees looking down at them.
She faces a choice – challenge the enemy out there, as is her duty as a Ninja, or save her children.
In the end, it's not really a choice.
She does not have the luxury of time. Whatever demon is out there could be at her door at any moment. She can almost feel their breath on her neck.
The process of sealing can take hours, if not days. She has a sparse few minutes at most. She never let her children into her sealing room before, but now is no time for rules. She will save them at any cost.
She begs their silence and they obey, sensing her fear. She can brook no distraction.
In an instant she has a scroll laid out before her and a brush in hand. Her hand moves faster than it has ever moved before as she begins to draw the pattern that will save their lives.
Letters, symbols, patterns within patterns. The seal grows in size until at last it covers the entire scroll in an intricate, indecipherable and somehow beautiful design.
She wipes the tears from her daughter's eyes and sings to her, even as the pattern reaches out and takes her into the scroll to safety.
To her son, she imparts as much as she can. She apologises over and over, and at the very moment that the scroll takes him, she leaves a kiss on his forehead.
She can only hope that her knowledge will be enough to keep them safe.
She rolls up the scroll and places it into a secret drawer. She has done all that she can for them and now her focus changes. Out there is a murderer. A madman or a demon, whose blade runs red with all she loves.
She walks down the stairs, throwing a robe over her bedclothes and takes several kunai in hand. Opening the door, she steps out into the moon's light.
She never sees the dawn.
But her children do.
In the morning, they are released from the scroll and found by those scouring the area. They are told at what cost their survival has come, and are left to find their way in the world.
Together, they intend to change the world.
/~X~\
Shirane placed the bouquet of white carnations at her mother's resting place. It was a small tombstone, but better than most – for many who had died that day had been interred in pauper's graves.
She had seen and heard too much the day her mother had died, and it sent a deep pain through her – even now, three years on.
Shirane was a slight young girl – the sort of small child who never seems to run out of energy. She was quick and gymnastic, with the flexibility of the cats she loved so much. Her hair was as white as snow, and cut about her neck in the proper manner – a Kunoichi should have short hair, after all.
It was strange, then, to see a girl who was usually so full of life and energy being so sombre and quiet.
Apart from the flowers, she was also carrying a baby tiger with her. Quite what a girl her age would be doing with a baby tiger remained to be seen.
It had to be a summoning animal – no animal from this world could look quite like that after all: its fur was a snow white, and there were red markings in lieu of stripes. Despite its youth, it had an almost divine appearance.
A prayer left her lips. Today was her mother's birthday. Her older brother, Gekido, had reminded her of that fact. It was to Shirane's immense shame that she had never learned such things while her mother was alive.
But she remembered now.
"I'll be a Genin soon, mum," she spoke out, hoping the spirit of her mother would hear. "I'm working extra hard at the academy, so keep watching! I'll make you proud."
There was nothing else for her to say. Her brother would visit when he came back from his mission.
"Are you okay, Shirane?"
She didn't answer right away; she was still trying to hide how close she was to tears.
It had been the tiger that had asked and while most would have been surprised, Shirane had often heard his voice before.
"It's okay, Torabi. I will not be sad. I'm going to be the best Kunoichi that there ever was," she told him at first gently, then with conviction.
She stayed silent for a few seconds more, hoping that her words would reach her mother somehow. Then she turned and walked.
Her footsteps were as silent as the two bells in her hair as she bounced off.
It didn't take her long to smile again – her brother was away on mission, so she had the house to herself, and that meant that she could eat whatever she wanted!
Sure, he had left her all sorts of everything in the fridge, but she had a very different idea of what she wanted tonight.
That meant shopping! She could not keep being miserable when there was the prospect of shopping on the horizon, what wonders a little retail therapy did for the soul.
"Can I have fish?" Torabi asked, giving Shirane one of those looks that only kittens were capable of.
"You always have fish!" Shirane replied, puffing out her cheeks. "Why don't you have something different, something else that you like?"
"I like fish," was Torabi's simple reply, to which Shirane could only sigh, letting out the air she had been storing.
The market was busy – it was Sunday, and the merchants were in town. There would be a lot of different foreign food from other nations.
Boiled sweets from the Land of Waterfalls, meat pastries from the Land of Rain, and fish from the Land of Rivers. For some reason fish had stopped coming from the Land of Waves, but that was fine by Shirane. Freshwater fish were always cheaper, though perhaps smaller.
With the spoils all wrapped up in brown paper packages, Shirane skipped back home with Torabi by her side.
By now, she was used to coming home to a dark and empty house. Her brother was a Chuunin and was often on missions but he always left a little money whenever he went away. 'For emergencies,' he always warned her.
Well, she would be a Ninja soon as well, so he could just consider it a loan – she would be able to pay him back tenfold then.
The house was exactly how her brother had left it. A small, two-bedroomed apartment with a kitchen and a bathroom as well as the front room.
Of course, her brother wasn't the type to relax and the front room had been taken over by a workshop – the tools he used to make his bow and arrows were hanging up on the wall alongside his unfinished models.
There were also their mother's books.
Sealing. It was a difficult subject with a steep learning curve, and the books they had found were only a small part of their mother's former collection – meant for masters of the art, not beginners. The rest had burned.
They intended to learn it inside and out, for their mother's sake. It would be a shame to let everything that she had worked so hard to learn go to waste.
The house was flooded with light now – Shirane having flung the curtains open – and she set about cooking for herself.
After that, training.
She would always train whenever she had spare time. Her brother tried to dissuade her, to get her to play and have fun with girls her own age. Just because she spent every spare hour honing her skills did not mean that she was obsessed.
She had tried to associate with the girls in her class, but they seemed like a whole other species to her. They were obsessed with makeup and flowers and for some ungodly reason, Sasuke. The only exceptions were Hinata – who was too shy to have a meaningful conversation with – and Shirane herself.
No, Shirane had higher aspirations than fretting about whether or not she looked pretty.
She would be the greatest Kunoichi that the world had ever seen.
But in the meantime, she had a pie to bake.
Her brother was the chef in the family, and though he had tried to teach Shirane, she just could not grasp that subtle art.
She knew enough to throw a pie in the oven, however, and did so with ease, setting the heat to medium and waiting for a moment until she was sure that the gas had been lit.
"Please may I have my fish now, Mistress?" Torabi spoke, looking up at her from the kitchen floor.
"Only if you stop calling me Mistress and start calling me Shirane," she replied, puffing out her cheeks once more. Would it kill the tiger to treat her as an equal rather than a superior? She certainly did not feel like a Mistress.
"Eh? I couldn't do that! It'd be super rude for me to say Mistress' name so casually," Torabi replied in surprise.
"What if I told you that I would find being called by my name less rude than being called Mistress? It makes me sound like an old lady!" Shirane said, the very idea making her feel annoyed.
"If that's what you'd like Mist– I mean... Shirane? Gosh that feels strange to say. May I have my fish now, please?"
"Very well," Shirane replied, still not entirely convinced that he had gotten the point. She was not about to renege on a deal, however, and she took the fish out of its wrappings.
Torabi snatched the fish the very moment that it left her hands and jumped straight into his bed, happily playing with his meal.
She left the pie – it would be a while before it was ready – and went back into the living room.
Her brother always left some half finished project on his workshop and today was no different. Shirane studied the arrows he had left behind. It seemed he was experimenting with writing seals onto the shafts so that they would have different effects when they hit their target.
It seemed he had attempted to make exploding arrows by writing an explosive seal on the shaft. Certainly, the seal work he had used to make it was circular, with too much between the start and the end point. If he had wanted to delay the explosion then there were patterns to allow just that. It was just shoddy. She hoped that he hadn't taken such work on his mission.
She left it alone, however, as her brother liked to fix his own mistakes. How else was he supposed to learn? She could not go around cleaning up all of his messes. Still, the horrible syntax of the seal made her cringe and she would have to make her own seal later just to ease the sour taste it left in her mouth.
She was at a loss now of what to do; she was too full of energy to relax but she couldn't go and train it off. If her pie burned, she would have no–one to blame but herself and that would upset her to no end.
She turned her energy to tidying up. There were wood shavings on the floor and scratch marks on the walls where Torabi had sharpened his claws. Getting wood clippings out of the carpet was difficult, but it kept her occupied just long enough for her egg timer to go off.
Torabi had long since eaten his fish and bounced up beside her, as she sat down with her meal.
"Are we going to train again after this?" Torabi asked as they settled down.
"Of course! My exam is tomorrow so I have to make sure I pass. I keep telling you, Torabi, I'm going to to be the best Kunoichi that there ever was," she told him, her voice full of confidence. There was no way she would be caught out after all her hard work.
"You could stand to be a little less serious, you know," Torabi chided her, the effect of it lessened due to the fact that he was a fluffy little tiger kitten.
"You sound just like big brother," Shirane told him in a huff. "I want to train hard and work hard. Can't I have aspirations?"
Her childish anger could only last so long – who could be upset with a little ball of fluff by their side?
The pie was excellent, even more so once she'd smothered it with gravy. The salted meat and crust blended together in a flavour that sent a wave of warmth through her body. She let out a sigh of pleasure.
"Wouldn't you like to have pie every chance you could get?" Torabi asked her, still going on about the fish thing.
"No, because if I ate pie every day I would be the size of the Hokage monument and what's more I would get bored of it. We humans say that absence makes the heart grow fonder," she chided him. Despite this, she could not keep her hand away and continued to tickle him behind the ear.
Her big brother told her that she spoiled Torabi too much. Shirane replied by telling him that he and his tiger fought too much. It hadn't been exactly the sturdiest of arguments but it had put him on the back foot long enough to rush off before he could recover.
Her meal was finished far too fast and she was sad to see nothing but a few crumbs and the occasional splatter of gravy left over. Not for long: she licked the plate clean immediately.
Still, it had filled her up and that was the beauty of pie. It always left her feeling full and satisfied, no matter what.
She let Torabi stay in the room, lest she be tempted to splash him with water as she washed up her plate. Let it never be said that Shirane was a messy child.
"Torabi, we're going out now," she called to him by way of preparation, pouring the soapy water down the drain and drying off her hands on the kitchen towel close by.
She wanted her brother to come home to a nice and clean home. He worked hard – incredibly hard – so that they wouldn't have to go hungry.
As she had expected, Torabi was waiting for her and she smiled at him as she unlocked the door. She tested the intrusion seals that were placed there to make sure that any attempt on their property would be immediately thwarted. Not that she expected it, really. Thieves never prospered, and that saying was doubly true in a Ninja village where everyone knew the punishments for thieves were harsh.
But now was not the time to think about that; now was the time for training. She would let her meal settle while she walked to the training grounds, but once she got there she would be going all out.
Her Genin exam the following morning weighed on her mind. She was short and thin and no matter how hard she tried, muscle definition just seemed to evade her – Taijutsu, then, was not her style.
Instead, she had learned as much as an academy student was allowed to learn about the art of Genjutsu. There was no reason for her to focus only on her weaknesses in other areas.
There would be the written test of course, but Shirane felt she could pass that with relative ease. Still, she would go to bed early tonight. She would not allow her confidence to become arrogance. She could see certain others falling to such vice, but she could not allow it of herself.
She was sure of the abilities she had and that was what made her confident now.
She had grabbed some kunai on the way out. They were going to train for everything that she expected to be on the test. She would do the three main Academy Jutsu, make sure that her Taijutsu form was at the very least serviceable and work on her aim.
She also hoped to gather some herbs and flowers – the girls had spent the last few years being taught about plant and she believed that would be on the test as well.
Finally, Genjutsu. This was a matter of personal pride. She had been studying the arcane art ever since her brother had mentioned it to her in that off hand manner of his.
She didn't want to show off, exactly, but it could not possibly hurt her chances to show that she had gone the extra mile. She had learned something on her own and with her own initiative.
"You're not going to put a spell on me again, are you?" Torabi asked, worry in his eyes.
"It's not a spell, it's Genjutsu. And I'm sorry but I can only know that it's working if I use it on someone who can talk to me. I promise to be more gentle this time. Besides, who is it that tests his new Lightning Jutsu on me every time he learns one just because it makes my hair go poof?" she added, placing her hands on her hips.
"Come on, Shirane, it was just the once," Torabi replied with a whine in his voice.
"Well it doesn't matter, we will be saving that till last. I need to work on my transformation, I'm not entirely sure that I'm doing it right."
For the next part of the evening she went through the Ninjutsu that the Academy teachers had beat into the student's heads over and over again.
The Transformation, Substitution and Clone techniques. These three ancient arts were said to be the first Ninjutsu ever created and were widely regarded as the most basic techniques available to Ninja.
Transformation first. She focussed on the image of the Hokage in her mind and molded her Chakra around herself, forcing it to take his form.
"Does it look right?" She asked Torabi, her girlish voice dissonant with the appearance of the elderly Hokage.
"As far as I can see," the tiger replied, looking her over to see if she'd made any mistakes.
She nodded and allowed the transformation to fade as she let out a breath of air. She found that doing breathing exercises helped her with her Ninjutsu.
The Clone technique was next in line and she had never had problems with it at all. Still, it it never hurt to make sure that one was properly prepared.
She focussed her mind and rose her hands in front of her face, allowing her Chakra to take her image and copy it. The she pushed that Chakra outwards, making a perfect copy of herself. Of course, it was an illusion, a distraction at best.
She looked the clone over. It was like looking into a mirror. The clone was just like her, it had the same short white hair and childish round face. It had her sharp, black eyes and healthy complexion, as well as her gymnast's body. As always, she had made a perfect clone.
It dispersed into thin air as she turned her focus towards the final technique. Substitution. It had been the technique that she had been most thrilled to learn. To replace oneself with a log to avoid attacks? It was a useful and amazing technique.
Now just to perform it.
"Well then, might as well do this properly," she said, reaching out to do her stretches once more. "Okay Torabi, hit me."
"Eh?!" Torabi cried out. He had been sat watching her with a grumpy look on his face; it had been too long since she petted him. "Why do you want me to do that?"
"I need to practice the Substitution technique, and to do that, I need someone to attack me. At least this way, I won't feel bad for putting a Genjutsu on you."
"If you're sure," Torabi said, standing up and walking to face her.
The tigers had all sorts of ways of fighting. They were creatures of war, once even revered as warrior spirits. Torabi was only a child, and he didn't have much to work with, but he didn't intend to hurt Shirane. Well, not much anyway.
Sparks danced over his body as he gathered the pure electrical energy that the tigers had in lieu of Chakra. He wiggled his behind and then pounced.
Shirane had seen it coming and yet the Substitution did not come and Torabi hit her in the stomach.
"Shirane?!" Torabi gasped as Shirane doubled over, the sharp shock having sent a wave of pain through her.
"Again," she demanded angrily.
"But-"
"Again!"
In all, it took another three tries for her to pull the technique off, and then another three for her to accept that she had the technique down. She would do this perfectly or not at all.
Nursing an aching stomach, she moved onto the target practice. She had a sharp eye but, unlike her brother, she had a weak throwing arm and her strength let her down. Still, she managed to get five kunai to stick in the eight point ring – the one right outside bulls eye – by the end of the session and felt suitably proud of herself, as well as ready to move on.
There wasn't much she could do to prepare for the written test out here. Torabi might be a mean little kitten in a fight but he wasn't exactly all there when it came to general knowledge and history. Well, at least he played to his strengths.
Instead, she worked on gathering herbs and plants. There were not many, as any Ninja worth their salt had already ripped most of the plants that were worth anything out of the ground and had planted them in their own personal gardens.
Still, she was pleased to find and identify some Blueroot Shilwist. It was not the most potent poison – an annoyer at best that loosened an enemy's bowels and made them feel the wrath of what they had eaten. She would not be using it herself – at least, not at the moment – she was in no rush to make enemies and as far as she was aware she had not made any yet.
Of course, she had not really made any friends either, but that was beside the point.
"Genjutsu time, Torabi," she trilled, smiling at him with the same smile she had given her brother after he had eaten all her boiled sweets.
"Is there no way I can convince you not to do this?" he begged.
"Nope. Come on, it'll be over in a flash and you know how to get out of it now. I just need to get this right before tomorrow," Shirane wheedled. She did not technically need his permission but it would not feel right to force it on him out of nowhere.
"Fine, but I hope you know what you're doing this time," Torabi replied in an impetuous tone.
Shirane could not help but roll her eyes. For a kitten who had been calling her Mistress for so long, he could be very disobedient.
She untied one of the bells from her hair – a cardinal sin had anyone else attempted it – and gave it a single tap.
In the chime that echoed out were whispers of her Chakra – gentle and insidious, that creeped into Torabi's mind and changed his very thoughts.
She didn't want him to see something outlandish, nor did she want him to know pain – instead she lulled him gently to sleep.
Oh, he fought, of course. He battled to stay awake for as long as he was able, but his ears were sensitive and it would be harder for him to stop the sound piercing him than it would be to stop looking at her eyes or hands.
She had many bells on her person: there were two in her hair as well as four smaller ones at the hem of her skirt. Most assumed they were ornamental – how else could a girl so bouncy move about so quietly when she had literal bells tied to her?
But they were real and the high-pitched tone was perfect for hiding a suggestion in. The sound was gentle and soothing, too – exactly what she needed.
It was no wonder that Torabi called this magic. It was so very different from the Ninjutsu that the Tigers and her brother both threw about as though it were nothing.
She would not be launching lighting bolts like that for a long time – perhaps not ever. Her small body was unlikely to be a great reservoir of Chakra and unless puberty hit her like an Earth Jutsu, that wasn't ever likely to change.
That did not matter to her. She did not care about being flashy anyway, and she was almost certain that she could achieve ten times as much with Sealing. If only there were someone in the village to learn from.
That was neither here nor there – her Genjutsu had done its job and Torabi was curled up in a ball like... well... a kitten, a purring snore leaving his mouth. She always found that cats made the funniest shapes when they laid down. Her brother compared them to loaves of bread and she could not help but agree.
Shirane picked him up gently and carried him close to her chest, stroking him with her fingers as she returned to the high street. The sun was lowering and the horizon began to bleed orange as the Sun Goddess stumbled clumsily to her sleep.
She would have to wait a little longer – the shops usually were open from dawn until dusk, and she needed a new set of kunai and shuriken. The ones that the academy provided for the test were bound to be old, crooked and bent after years of constant abuse.
No, she wanted to be sure in her tools, especially when they could be the deciding factor between whether or not she became a Genin.
She knew precisely where to go.
Tenten was the closest she had to a friend. Unfortunately, a year had separated them at the academy, and now that Tenten was a fully fledged Genin their free time very rarely matched up.
"Hello Tenten," she called out as she entered the store. Tenten, like her father, was a blacksmith as well as a Ninja. A person couldn't have such a strong affinity for weapons without having crafted a few.
"Hello Shirane, it sounds like this isn't just a social call," she said, popping up from behind the counter. Whatever she had been doing back there, Shirane would never know.
"I'm afraid not, Tenten, I need to stock up for the exams; a couple of kunai and shuriken from the finest smiths in the town will do. Which is of course why I'm popping over to Makar's after we've had this chat," Shirane joked. Tenten likely knew it to be a joke as well but still responded with the customary one finger salute and a mouthed profanity.
"I should have known that you were only here to love me and leave me," Tenten replied with a mocking shake of her head as she finally put her middle finger away.
"Whatever could you be implying?" Shirane replied, turning the innocence in her voice up to eleven.
"I'll tell you when you're older."
"Mean."
Tenten rolled her eyes and tapped the counter. "Are you buying or what?"
"Fine, fine," Shirane grumbled. "A full set of kunai and shuriken. I want to be sure that I hit my mark tomorrow."
"You better pass with flying colours, and what's more you better flaunt the fact that it was my tools that got you to Genin. You'd obviously be totally lost without them," Tenten said with a devious smile.
Shirane shook her head with a sigh. She had already planned on doing so but Tenten didn't need to know that.
"If I remember – and that's only an if – I'll tell all my classmates exactly how good your tools are," Shirane told her, altering her tone in that subtle way that bordered the line between a joke and an insult.
"Now who's mean? Come on, shell up – we'll be closing soon."
Shirane was tempted to throw the money at Tenten but reeled herself in and placed the coins gently on the counter. She'd nearly squeezed her wallet dry now and would have to make do with whatever had been left in the fridge, but it was fine. She didn't regret anything she'd done today.
"Right, right," Tenten mumbled, counting the coins. She wasn't exactly suspicious, it was simply that if her she was caught having forgotten to count the change by her father then the shouting would be heard three blocks away.
"Here you are then," she said brightly, presenting Shirane with a set of kunai and shuriken.
"Thanks Tenten, I didn't mean it; I'll make sure that everyone knows who's the best smith in town," Shirane told her, just in case she had crossed a line.
Tenten waved her hand dismissively. "It's fine, really. I'm glad to help. Come round for tea some time, okay?"
"I will try my best, Tenten, thank you," Shirane said with a smile, waving goodbye. It was only now, after the noise and jostling, as Shirane exited the shop, that Torabi awoke.
"Mmmm? What time is it?" He asked, pawing at his eyes.
"It has only been ten minutes or so," Shirane told him in a quiet voice as she petted his head.
"Did you have to put me to sleep? If I can't sleep tonight, it's your fault and I'll wake you up," he told her, trying to mimic his elder's growls.
"Don't you dare," Shirane said, looking down at him with a piercing gaze. "It is my test tomorrow and if you wake me up I shall tie you in a box and post you to my brother."
Shirane was very rarely so serious and her death–glare made her threat all too real to him. He bowed his head and mumbled an apology, incapable of responding to her anger.
"That's better, now come along and let's get home before it's too dark to see," Shirane spoke, resuming her petting to show him that no harm had been done and that he was welcome to go back to being his usual self.
It didn't take long to get back. There was no point turning on the lights; she would be going to bed once she had her affairs in order.
She had kunai, shuriken and was modestly confident that she would be able to pass the written and practical sections of the test. So long as she slept and was alert she'd be ready.
Ready to become a Genin.
As she changed into her fluffy bedclothes and set a clean blanket over Torabi's bed, she considered her goals: to surpass her mother as a great sealer, and to be the greatest Kunoichi that there ever was. Maybe she should add Hokage to that list? It was a tempting idea, to sweep the position from under Naruto's over–eager feet, but she wasn't interested.
The idea had merit of course, but she wanted freedom. The Hokage had to be both a Ninja and a politician, dealing with the Fire Daimyo and all the wants and needs of the clans, as well as the Civilian Workers' Unions. It was a surprise that the current Hokage hadn't pawned the position off on someone else after all this time.
Still, she couldn't help but imagine the look on Naruto's face if she became the first ever Kunoichi Hokage and beat him to it. The image alone made her laugh.
Still giggling uncontrollably, she tucked herself into bed and with a wide, silly smile, fell asleep.
/~X~\
Fire and Lightning
By – Ignise
A special thank you to everyone on the /r/narutofanfiction Discord channel for all of your help and advice. Without their guiding hand and the rivals I have there to sprint against, this may never have been written... so blame them.
I hope you keep reading.
Fire and Lightning is a fan written piece of fiction intended only to entertain and amuse. I do not own Naruto, or any of the copyrights associated with it. Those rights belong to Kishimoto and his associates. Please support the official release.
Original characters and plots are of my own creation and therefore my intellectual property. Please ask before using them.