Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters… etc, etc. If I did, then the Akatsuki would be more of a big player in the story!
I apologize for not replying to my reader's reviews… sorry, but I've been pretty busy what with summer's break coming up and stuff… you know, end of the year type things. Anyways, here's Chapter 18!
Azu's Akatsuki Tale, Chapter 18: Four Directions
I woke up a few mornings later, completely frustrated. As hard as I had tried, I'd gotten no further on finding the sword or getting more information on Akatsuki. Here I was… clueless as ever.
Sitting up in my old room's bed, I grabbed the chunk of milky-white diamond sitting on the sheets and continued scraping it against the Samehada. It was an impressive blade… it was a good six or seven feet long, and was taller than I was and a lot heavier than me, too. You had to keep your mind sharp while whetting this thing… I'd already been pricked by it three times.
Kisame was too lazy… Call me weird, but I'm pretty sure he didn't ask Itachi to sharpen it before I came along. But hey, I was the newbie. And so goes the fate of all newbies.
I was so newbie that I didn't even know what Akatsuki's goals were.
ARGH! My mind kept spinning back to this. It was getting annoying.
"How're you doing?" Kisame stuck his head through my open doorway.
"Slow and steady… you lazy-butt, you." I stopped a moment, admiring the shine and gleam of the newly sharpened blade. "The Samehada's really a fine sword." Glancing at him, I asked, "Where'd you get it? Did you make it or somethin'?"
"Nah," he answered, "I got it off of this traveler." Kisame grinned toothily. "Poor bastard, he stole it from some other guy and now that other guy's men were after him. He couldn't even carry it properly. That kid didn't know how valuable it was… I'd been tracking it down for a while. He practically paid me to take it."
"Do you know who made it?" I asked, out of curiousity.
"Eh, probably one of those four greats out there."
Four greats…? "I'm sorry, who're the 'four greats'?"
Kisame gave me an impatient look. "And you call yourself a weapons expert… Hello, only the most famous four sword-makers of all time…"
And suddenly, I had my lead.
That evening, I headed towards the Akatsuki headquarters' gates. I formed the seals, the massive stone block sliding upwards smoothly.
"Um, hey, Azu…" echoed a voice nervously behind me. I sighed loudly. "Tobi, what do you want?"
"Can Azu-chan help me with something?" He waved his apparently broken wrist at me. "Deidara-sempai was pretty harsh today in training."
Snorting impatiently, I answered, "Get Zetsu-san to fix it or something." Inside, I was screaming with impatience. Every single time I'd tried to get outside for a breath of air, I'd been delayed by someone in the Akatsuki. In my head, Aoi's orders to Itachi to keep me around the headquarters echoed…
"No, I really need you to-"
In a fast fit of impatience unusual for me, I shot out the door, leaving a flustered Tobi chasing behind. There was no way he could keep up with me at this speed, I thought. Man, Tobi could be persistent sometimes though. A flash of blinding white and, randomly, nausea for a second –probably moonlight reflecting off the lake- overwhelmed me. As my head cleared quickly, I noticed that his footsteps were gone. Yup: He'd given up.
Speeding across the rock of the mountain, I mindlessly traced the long scar I had on my face now. It ran from the left side of my chin, across my cheek, ending in a whitish blur just above my right eye. I'd never been vain about my looks… so it wasn't too cruel that Sasori had refused to heal this one completely. A reminder, he had said, not to make such a stupid mistake again.
Sorry, Sasori, but I don't think that's gonna work out too well…
Patting my pocket to make sure the scroll hadn't fallen out, I continued on.
When I arrived at the small town nearby, the sun was just setting in a blaze of color. Still amazed at it, after all those sunless years, I watched it fall beneath the mountains. Slowly, lamplight sprung up in various buildings. The sky was still a fading blue.
I stopped a stranger in mid-stride. "Excuse me madam, but I was wondering if there's a sword expert somewhere around here, or someone who sells weapons…?" Since this town supplied many a ninja city with weaponry, I knew there had to be someone around.
The young woman I'd stopped looked fairly honest. "Oh, sure…" She took out a piece of paper and pen and jotted down something. "This shop's across town, but it's the best."
Thanking her, I headed to the other side of the town. I found the shop in a nondescript alley, with only a small sign in front declaring "Tenkechi and Company: Weaponry and Fine Swords."
A tinkle of bells rang as the door swung open. Small blasts of scented air hit my face as my vision flashed green in the sudden darkness.
Two young girls sat in front of me (by the looks of it, in the middle of a tea ceremony), both in elaborate kimono. "Welcome to Tenkechi and Company…" One of them asked cheerfully, "How may I help you?"
"Good evening." People like other people when they're polite… Taking the scroll out from underneath my regular black cloak, I untied the green silk ribbon around it. "I'm researching this sword… I was wondering if you might have some information about it?"
One of the girls started, seeming startled. "Oh, but this is the work of a Master…" She glanced at me. "I'll go get Mother, she'll know more."
A few seconds later, an extremely dignified looking woman stepped out of the darkened back room. "What've we got here, hm?" She glanced at the drawing of the sword I'd found that I'd drawn, and took it up in her hands. Holding it at arm's length, she sharply said, "Oh, definitely one of a Master's works… The shape of it, and the design… Young lady, where'd you come across this?"
"Oh, I saw it in my mother's museum and was curious. We had to research the history of an object of our choosing for school, and I thought this was as good as anything… Someone referred me here; I'm from out of town." I'm not sure if it was good thing or not, but I could tell utterly complicated lies without batting an eye. "Mother" didn't seem to suspect anything.
"Ah… well, I've a bit of explaining to do. Come, sit." She patted the bamboo mat next to her. "This is the sword of one of the Four Greats in weaponry design. Each has their own style and specialty, though all are possibly unmatched in their weapon's quality and beauty… I think your might be a Tatsumimo.
"Now Tatsumimo, she's a wonder at daggers. Your's-"
I broke in. "Ah, excuse my interruption, but it's not really mine. Actually, it's my mother's…" I didn't want her getting any glimpse of the truth.
The old woman nodded. One of her daughters poured tea, and scent filled the air. "Tatsumimo's works are, as I said, mainly daggers. The sword you are researching is –excuse me, might be- one of the few she actually made, though you obviously can see that it doesn't follow the conventional sword's design, as it is double-bladed and shaped differently…
"Tatsumimo of the East… she's a wonderful girl. Then there's Nakanan of the South… you'll never see better in the form of great swords." She gave a sarcastic chuckle. "Unfortunately, there are few that can lift swords of that size, he included of course. My, the man certainly has great strength. Watching him train is watching the strength of mountains themselves bestowed upon a human…
"Hinkai of the West designs weapons of any kind that can fly. Of course, she mainly uses shurikens herself. Hinkai is a great warrior and is the match of most ninja, but that was in her youth. She'll be almost sixty-five today… My, how time flies.
"But the forbidden one…" Her voice lowered. Her two daughters had crowded around the small table, one of them getting up to turn the "Sorry, We're Not Open Right Now!" sign on the door. Suddenly it was eerie in the flickering candle light. "That was Sainth."
I tasted the word on my tongue. "Seth… that's a foreign name, perhaps?"
"No one knows where he came from. He appeared one day on a great white bird, riding a blizzard. Seth of the North designs swords, and strangely enough, he also has designed many double-blades." She shuddered. "Maybe he was the most skilled out of all of them… but he was the cruelest. Seth had an enormous, unbreakable bloodlust. And he had a mind colder than the blizzard that brought him here. He loved no one, and spent all day with his weapons. Some say he was insane.
"He'd slaughter an 'unworthy' customer in an instant. His blades were worth nothing less than your life… he'd lend one to you: A month, a year, a decade… but in the end Seth would come for you and kill you. His blades allowed one to obtain inhuman strength and power… but there was a price. You would lose your mind; become a killing machine that lives on blood. The weapon would control your life. It would take you over, destroy relationships, love, family bonds and entire clans… even the strongest felt the tug of its will. And it's thus he became known as the Destroyer of Lives, the Demon of the North.
"A rumor came around to these old ears that once he's lent a sword out to someone and taken it back, neither the sword nor the dead owner is ever seen again. I don't know, but he is terrible for sure."
"Is he… still alive now?"
"Again, no one knows. I believe so: He simply disappeared someday. But I am not sure." She shuddered. "He could still be alive, though if he was he'd be over a hundred and sixty years old.
"Now, young lady, if this had been one of Seth's swords, I would have destroyed it an instant. I do not wish to see such impurity on Earth, for even in Hell this would stand out. But I do believe if your drawing is accurate, it could not be his. All of his swords had a symbol: A rose caught in a blizzard, drawn on them." She sighed again, seemingly tired. "Forgive me, the night is late. But I've been studying the works of the Four Great Masters for years, and I know basically all of their works. I've never seen this one before… assuming it is new, it cannot be Seth's."
"Ah, thank you…" I stammered out, my mind reeling from new information. "I'm sorry to disturb you this late."
"It is not a problem…" The old woman's eyes seemed to gleam. "Good luck with your… quest…"
As I left the shop, the eerie tinkling of bells ringing behind me as the full moon shone overhead. The names swung in my head: Tatsumimo of the East, Nakanan of the South, Hinkai of the West… and Seth of the North.
When I entered the Akatsuki headquarters, all was silent… at least for that instant, it was. Then I heard voices ahead.
Zetsu was leaning over someone in the corridor, Kisame, Hidan and Deidara leaning overhead.
"Guys, what's up…?" My sentence trailed off as I saw Tobi.
"Tobi…TOBI, what happened to yo-" I broke off as I realized he couldn't hear me.
The horrible tang of metal rose up to meet me as I saw too late the pools of blood splattering the floor. He didn't even look like he was breathing. Zetsu was quickly plucking needles out of Tobi's motionless body. They gleamed like metal eyes in the light of the lamp Kisame held nearby.
"We found him like this, not too far from the entrance to the headquarters." Deidara's voice was low, subdued, totally unlike his normal self.
"Oh, God… do you know who did this?"
Hidan shook his head. "Little idiot got himself attacked…"
Zetsu interrupted us: "I've gotten most of the bleeding to stop, but the problem is the poison… strangely, it's pretty similar to some I've seen Sasori-san make. We shouldn't move him." Zetsu's other half narrowed its eyes at me. "Little brat, go away. This is adult's business…"
I was all too happy to run to my room, feeling like I was going to throw up again. Again and again, the blank moment when I'd been running flashed through my head. Moments later, the answer lay in front of me…
My pack of throwing needles, almost entirely emptied. And, with a little "plink", a bottle of poison Sasori had given me earlier fell on the floor.
The noise seemed to echo horribly as I saw the red wax seal on the bottle… broken violently.
Somewhere else…
The wall is covered with them. Thousands, millions of magnetic disks hang on the walls, arranged neatly on the chalk grids that cover them. All the size of a small plate, they vanish in to darkness, hundreds of feet above on the never-ending walls… Disks constantly disappear in a black color and reappear, a bleached white.
A hand moves towards one of the disks. In a strange, semi-clear reflection on it, there is a picture of a girl with short black hair and a long scar across her face, staring at something on the ground.
The disk is dark grey, the person observes. And that boy with the orange mask, lying motionless… that disk was even darker, almost black… almost time…
The hand moves, a disk gliding with it… on the wall, the girl's disk slides two spaces closer to another one across the wall from it. It skids around three disks, two containing images of young sisters and one of a dignified old woman. It is now slightly closer to a disk of a black-haired young man with a serious face and oval-shaped, red eyes… It is also a dark grey.
A voice speaks. "The world's but a chessboard, and we but the players, and life's all a game…it's all mine, it's my game…"
Echoing from the walls is a faint sound of demonic laughter. An empty scabbard clacks against the being's hips. Almost time, almost time… they were near, so near…