Dedication: To Himadesu for her birthday (I sorta forgot to get her a birthday card :(). She doesn't read Hikago. I don't write anything but Hikago. We came to a compromise. (Have igo boys, will travel!)
As always, much love and lollipops to Imbrium for the awesome (and much needed) beta! Four years and still going strong!
Also for everyone and anyone who's ever read or reviewed my fics. Thank you.
(I can't believe I'm doing this ...)
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The Will of Stone
Shindo Hikaru waited, hands loose by his sides. Patience hadn't come easy to him, but it was second nature now.
A quick flicker of chakra signaled his opponent's move. Hikaru felt more than saw it; the sudden swish of air, the displacement of pressure, and Touya Akira was behind him. There was a slight clink of metal as Hikaru blocked the shuriken with his own kunai. He twisted and flipped, landing on the balls of his feet with Touya in front of him once more. The wood branch beneath them creaked slightly; a quiet, inner voice chided him for the mistake. There should have been no sound.
Touya said nothing. But Hikaru knew that he had noticed -- and probably disapproved. Touya did not display any expression, of course, but the stiff way he had palmed his senbon was as apparent as any frown.
The thin metal needles arced in the air. In the moonlight, they should have flashed silver like rain, but Touya's clan had never been much for show, and their weapons weren't polished so as to not catch the light. Hikaru listened closely, hands tense as he predicted where each piece would strike. Even as Hikaru's kunai deflected the falling metal, Touya closed in.
Hikaru had expected this -- but there wasn't enough space to retreat or attack, not with the senbon still in play. He dodged, twisting to his right frantically, but it was too late. The cold tip of a kunai nicked his throat. Hikaru dropped his hands back to his sides.
Third blood.
He had lost.
"Makemashita," he said.
The kunai at his throat lowered. As always, Touya bowed formally. "Thank you."
It was not through mild gossip that Touya's clan was known as the courteous assassins. And there wasn't a trace of discourtesy in those words. Hikaru felt the sting in them nonetheless.
He sat at the edge of the tree branch, wincing as the other old cuts reasserted themselves alongside his three new ones. This would be the second time this week, he noted, that Touya had drawn third blood. It did not bode well. The chunin exams were only two months away.
The branch dipped slightly as Touya crouched beside him. It did not creak.
"You can do better," Touya said.
"I know," Hikaru murmured. "But I blocked all the senbon this time," he remarked. His wrist still ached from when he hadn't last time.
"That was never in question," Touya's voice hadn't changed inflection, but his chakra flickered, intensifying. "Your skill at calculating your opponents moves is undeniably your strength. But what use is knowing exactly how you're going to die?"
Hikaru's hands tightened against his kunai, but the words could not be parried by metal alone.
"The jonin exams are in four months," Touya said. "I will renounce you as a rival then."
"Whatever," Hikaru muttered. "Like that means anything." Their rivalry was tenuous enough already; he knew the village elders did not approve.
After all, who was he to claim rivalry with one from the oldest and most powerful clans in the village?
He, with no bloodline limit, with parents who were not ninja, whose entry into the world of cloak and dagger had been an accident. A forbidden scroll, a bit of blood -- how was he to know that he would release an ancient summon with a millennia's worth of unknown jutsu? It was just a dare. Kuwabara-sama still hadn't figured out how he had gotten through the wards. A civilian should have never gotten that far.
Who was he? One with unearned power.
The village had been too frightened to give him time. Instead they gave him a seal, burnt in blood on his chest.
Hikaru twisted slightly on his branch. The elders had also forced him into the ninja academy, into long days and nights of vigorous training, learning the basics when most of his fellow students had been trained from when they were but toddlers. To better control the seal, they said -- with enough training, perhaps he could even safely unleash it.
It was ironic, in a way. As a seal, it should have been the end of it all. Seals were meant to contain power, lock it away safely.
Instead, it was as if everything had been released at that moment, with a purpose he had yet to fathom.
"I'll pass the chunin exams," he vowed. "I will. I'm not letting you get that far ahead of me! Just you wait."
"I am not going to wait," Touya said. His eyes flashed briefly, and Hikaru turned away.
The night the forbidden scroll had unrolled, the flash of awakening power -- it had taken nine jonin and a single chunin to stop him. And it was the chunin who had broken through, who had calmed the wild release of chakra so the seal could be applied.
Hikaru did not know what the other ninja had seen. He could only remember those blue green eyes and the hunger within them.
When he asked Touya, it was with those hungry eyes that the other ninja had replied, "the perfect jutsu. The hand of god."
Touya's eyes held none of that hunger now. Whatever the ninja had seen that night, he apparently did not see it anymore. "I am not going to wait," he repeated softly. "Jonin do not have genin for rivals."
There was a slight hiss of air, and Touya was gone.
For a long moment, Hikaru sat on his branch, breathing in the scent of pine and watching the moonlight slit through the needles. Within him, the seal stirred, and he rubbed a hand across his chest.
"No, Sai," he whispered. "I'll do it on my own. I'll make him see me."
Who was he?
Shindo Hikaru, ninja of the Hidden Village of Stone.
He hadn't ever considered becoming a ninja (he had really wanted to become a ramen stand owner) but a ninja he was now.
And unlike other ninjas, he had no need for masks.
With a quick flick and a jump, Hikaru was aloft again. There was only the wind to mark his passing.
-end
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Um. Well. Errr.
There really isn't an explanation for this except that Himadesu is a really really big Naruto fan. And unfortunately, while I like the series, I'm don't know the canon well enough to really write anything remotely believable about it. So I went with a canon I knew moderately well, and this unholy hybrid was the result. Originally, this was written in February 2007.
Thank you to everyone who ever replied me on FFNET. It's been a long time since I posted here; I have trouble interfacing with FFNET and I have to recode everything in HTML by hand, which is sorta time consuming (not to mention I'm not exactly the world's best coder!) Plus, I'm very lazy! XD
Moreover, FFNET battles with my inbox at times. I get really embarrassed because I'll find that I have reviews which I never replied to -- and not because I don't want to but because I never knew I got any reviews. So if anyone has ever sent a review to me and I didn't reply ... it probably got eaten by the mailbox. I am sorry.
But all that aside, I thought it might be time again to try to see how FFNET was now. There's been a few changes since I was here last. The reason I chose this particular story to test out the waters again ... um now that I think about it, I probably should've chosen something else ...
Anyways. Yeah. At least it was short!
Thank you, as always, for reading.
It's still a blast to be in the Hikago fandom!
-muri
ps: I have also come to the conclusion that I absolutely STINK at coming up with summaries. I will be severely surprised if anyone actually reads this ... and made it this far ... is there anyone out there? Really? Wow, you are brave ...