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Chapter one: High Tide
Inhale.
There is something haunting in the final breath of a dying man. When his wild gaze breaks, dulls, and his body relaxes into oblivion, the air rushing out in a rattle.
Exhale.
"Tell me, children, do you know why we are Uzumaki?" The shinobi carefully pulled together the threads of the tapestry he was weaving, his words absent.
"Cause the island has a bunch of whirlpools!" one of the girls chirped, her hair more orange than their traditional red, her fingers clumsily threaded with her sister's.
"I don't suppose you are particularly wrong. Can you tell me where those whirlpools come from?"
"Come on Kenta! Stop trying to be all mysterious and tell us."
"Youngsters these days, so bossy." Kenta sighed, making a big show of inspecting his fingernails as his other hand carefully smoothed out his work "I guess you don't want to know about our names-"
"No!" The choirs of small voices interrupted him as several children began to climb over each other to reach him like some amorphous mass of discontent.
"Alright, alright, settle down you little demons." He laughed again, "We Uzumaki are not named for the whirlpool, but rather the whirlpool is named for us. This story was passed down my family line from, parent to child until it was told to me, now I'm going to tell all of you so take care to listen."
Each child stared wide-eyed, their mouths slightly agape as they waited for him to continue.
"In the beginning, before Chakra, there was merely nature. Wild things like the currents of the sea and the towering forests of old, of creatures so unlike those we know now lumbered through as giants. Of these creatures, we remember best the Dragon Turtle, he who's shell all else lives and by his hand we take shape.
You see, before the turtle, before everything, there was a shapeless, lonely, and tired energy held in silence. Dark and twisting it hung until the first noise, bright and white tumbled upward. It collided with the dark peace, and they spun endlessly into each other. In their collision, the turtle came to be, and so the first life he brought upon his shell was these beings."
Kenta carefully spread out his tapestry, detailed there was the Turtle Dragon, an entire world full of towering trees and shifting lakes.
"It was then that the turtle took a bit of both energies and dropped it onto his shell, perhaps to thank it for his birth, perhaps he didn't place it there himself and instead it splashed up onto his shell, nothing more than an afterthought, a happenstance. Either way, it was then that the first whirlpool was born. They spun endlessly, two but one and innocent and young. They were powerful and clever, they learned quickly and made friends with many. But like most stories, something went wrong.
The whirlpool grew arrogant, they boasted and bragged challenging all to battle, and with each victory, they only grew more prideful. Their energy was endless. they knew if they could not beat the enemy head on they merely had to keep things moving, for that was what they were at their core, movement, and precarity."
"What happened to the whirlpool?" one of the children from the group leaned forward, worried.
"It was the sea in the end that grew tired of them first." Kenta smiled at the child, "they challenged the whirlpool to a battle, and being much older the sea knew they would easily fulfill their plan. The Whirlpool being young and foolish accepted."
There is something odd about the sea at the shores of the island, there has always been a strange, otherworldly, quality to the shifting tides and lapping waves. In this sea, there used to be a coral reef, behind the protection of whirlpools not too far off the beach in shallow water. It was a brilliant flash of color, a flourishing habitat that provided a carefully maintained nursery for fish and untold beauty. It was beloved, sacred, to the natives of the island.
No one really understands the ecological impact a dying whirlpool has. When the meeting of two conflicting currents, a wild fight the pulls everything it can into it, just ends.
"The sea tore the whirlpool apart, shredding it into two. Two were one, four were two, one was devoured by the sea the other, still clever and wise, fled." Kenta carefully rolled the tapestry up, his voice low and eyes tired. "We licked our wounds, the missing part of ourselves gone due to our hubris. We now live close to the sea in hopes perhaps one day they will release the part of us they once stole."
In the end, it wasn't the death of the wild protection that killed most of the reef. It was instead the deaths of whirlpools that lived inside flesh and blood. That would probably be the most devastating thing to them, not the fall of their village or their people, but that the fight they had given to protect it had poisoned the thing they loved most about their island.
They were never really ones for tragic irony after all.
"You cannot falter like this Tatsu." The man's voice cut through her concentration causing her to fumble her wire, adding another injury to her now growing list.
"Forgive me sensei."
"It's really hard I know, are you sure you don't want to try something," the man paused scratching he head sheepishly with a wide smile, "something cooler like everyone else your age is clamoring for?"
"Uzushiogakure has plenty of masters-to-be in sealing, ninjutsu, and kenjutsu," Tatsu flashed a smile of her own, "someone has to be there to cover their backs."
"You're not the support type though." The statement he was making somehow dissolved into a question as he watched her continue to practice in trap setting. "You've neither the disposition or the talent for it. Besides it's a downright crime seeing how far along in sealing you are and how many jutsu you can memorize in a moment."
"You're not a good sensei," She responded impishly, "I'd even say it was a crime you were allowed to teach, yet here we are."
"Stop bullying me."
"You just make it so easy. Besides it's not like I don't need some mastery in seals to be able to set up these traps."
"It's such a waste of talent!"
There are a lot of different ways to capture a nightmare.
There are legends of monks who can pluck them from the heads of the dishonest and turn them loose into the waking world. There is always the shinobi who can craft their own with nets of chakra over the senses warping reality as we know it. There are others yet who speak of beasts and demons who gift nightmares to the sleeping and feed on the fear they create. The eldest, before genjutsu, before monks and demons, was to sleep with keepsakes under your pillow or to weave a dreamcatcher above the afflicted.
Dreamcatchers are said to be the best preventative, they do not rely on will alone to overcome fear itself after all.
"Release." A halfhearted pulse of charka sent dreamcatchers scattered around the room spinning.
No matter what nightmare you may find yourself living when all the dreamcatchers are full, and your will found lacking; the sun always brings a new day.
"Are you awake Uzumaki?"
"Do I deserve that?"
"Make sense when you speak." Old weathered hands gently helped Tatsu up, strong and steady against her back.
"Do I deserve the name Uzumaki?"
The old woman paused moments before she had managed to remove the bandages from Tatsu's torso, a bitter laugh like the rustling of dried leaves rushing out from her. "From that question alone you deserve the name Uzumaki, all of you are so dramatic."
"You say that like there are others to be dramatic," She pushed the old woman away, her wounds pulling at the motion, "I failed to protect my people and my home. I failed to do my job. Do you understand that, Hisa?"
The world around her was falling apart, and she couldn't keep it together. There was nothing she could do because it was already over, she had already failed, and there was no going back. She had lost everything in the span of three days and all she had left to show for it was a broken village and half-healed wounds.
It was too much, it was too little, she was dying with every breath, yet her heart refused to stop beating.
"Of course, I understand that child. We have owed a debt to Uzushiogakure for as long as we have lived under their protection, and now we will never be able to repay it."
"The fact you want to even bring something like that up right now speaks more than you ever could. It's more than just a set of stupid debts and honor! My people are dead!" She dipped forward folding into herself, her voice cracking with the force of her own words.
"Your people still live yet, little Uzumaki." The woman gently pressed a cloth against the now reopened wounds on Tatsu's back, "you are alive, and your people are scattered, but the whirlpool isn't finished yet."
Tatsu refused to respond.
When the war on Uzushiogakure started, most didn't even notice. It wasn't so much that they were negligent of their people or that their enemy was particularly stealthy, but the attack was on a day of celebration. People set off seals that would light up the sky and cause the earth to shake; they stamped their feet in a wild dance as they lost themselves to their joy heads thrown back and voices lost to the wind. The clay beneath the dancing feet of the Uzumaki gleamed red as the sun set above them casting them all in a soft, warm glow. It was the first of spring, after all, the day the first whirlpool was placed on the back of the dragon turtle, and they took their first breaths, their very creation.
It took hours, and by then so many were already lost.
The brown clay beneath the Uzumaki's feet gleamed red in the moonlight, cracked and stained with blood.
To those who remain, it's now a day of mourning, those who remind would wonder if it was history repeating itself. Where once two were one, and then four were two, until now there was a faction of one, and another yet was still bound to the sea.
Scattered, they wandered.
"How do you get the paper to look so smooth?" the other child's voice was almost grating as they demanded the older woman's attention.
"Patients mostly, child."
"That's dumb," he huffed rolling his eyes skyward, "This is dumb. I'm going to go do stuff that's actually fun, are you coming Tatsu?"
"No, I think I'll stay."
"Come one! Yours looks even worse than mine!"
"Shut up will you Sachi, not everyone wants to hear your stupid voice."
"At least my voice is the only stupid thing I have, you spotty freak."
"Whoever told you that is a liar."
Sachi rolled his eyes again, threw his poorly crafted origami fish onto the table, and stomped off.
"You two would make a lovely couple one day." The woman cackled loudly waggling her finger at Tatsu.
"Gross?" Tatsu responded baffled before narrowing her eyes in concentration as she attempted to produce a prettier crane, "Besides if I am going to marry anyone, it's going to be a princess."
"Oh?" She laughed again, somehow louder and with enough force to leave her wheezing, "I wish you luck then, kid."
"I don't need luck."
When whittling there is a method, a way one is supposed to go about everything that ensures the safety and control of the carver. Special knives and careful carving, steady control working with the wood rather than against it.
The knife slipped, the tip of the kunai sunk into the bend of her left middle finger.
Tatsu had long passed the stage that she couldn't feel the grain of the wood, that she couldn't feel when she should pull back and try another angle or technique. The crooked wabbly turtle partially carved in her hand was a victim of her impatience, as much as anything else was, she was fully aware of this. She knew how much easier, simpler it would be if she just-
The knife slipped again, slicing across the pad of her thumb. She sighed, carefully applying pressure to stop the bleeding.
Everything would be so much simpler if she weren't so stubborn.
"The tide's a bit too high for the season."
"Takumi, no one cares for your superstitions, just accept my money for the fish."
"You may not care for it Atsuko, but you still know it." The fisherman leaned forward, his red hair dreadlocking and eyes near wild, "there's something in those if it's passed on enough that everyone who hears knows the trouble brings."
"Whatever," the tinkling of metal hitting metal sounded as the other man shook his head, "thanks for the fish, old man."
People all react differently to loss. Some turn to a higher being, others become spiteful and sours, the options are as endless as they are predictable.
They all have the same common theme, they all move on.
Tatsu has never been that strong, she often wondered if it made her less of a person, how much she clings to the past.
Maybe she's always been a ghost, or maybe somewhere down the line she died with them and is now haunting the ruins of a fallen village like a wreath, vengeful and dark. It didn't really matter.
In the end, she was nothing but a groundskeeper for a cemetery, a monk for a monastery better left unattended. She fixed the homes first, the wood splintered and the patch-jobs ugly. She wasn't an architect and it was in these times she wished she spent less time with the blacksmith and more with the carpenter. Eventually the storage would deplete, the wood meant to expand used to mend, and still the only thing she could see when she looked out onto her village would be corpses now buried.
Like many things, it remained like this for a while, until it simply didn't.
It came to her in a dream, a nightmare, she never knows anymore. The Guilt sprouted up before her twisted and deformed with legs and teeth, it gargled and mashed at her in anger
"How dare you."
It repeated it over and over deafening in her ears, until she would awake to her dreamcatchers hanging uselessly above her. it was recurring, night after night, sometimes with faces she had seen and remembered well and sometimes with those she could barely recognize.
It was a cacophony of voices all calling out to her, all asking the same thing, over and over again.
"How dare you."
And truly how dare she? How dare she do anything, how dare she be anything. It was just as she thought she would go truly mad it asked.
"How dare you act like the dead one?"
Then there was silence, and in the wake of this silence she could feel the missing pieces. It was like loosing them all over again, it felt strange, it felt wrong. She still saw her Guilt every time she slept but now they simply watched, they simply judged.
A month after the nightmares truly started she left the broken village of Uzushiogakure with the promise to one day come back and rebuild hanging in the air. Among the bleached skeletons some of the reef still lived, among the ruins of a fallen village a caged whirlpool still stirred.
"You understand what you are training to become don't you?" The Kachūkage asked his eyes narrowed.
"Yes sir, I am aware."
"I don't think you do. Again and again I am told by all who teach you how well you would do in other fields and how much you struggle with this one."
Tatsu could feel her heart drop, her pulse ramping up as panic began to set in.
He sighed a cloud of smoke, looking far too tired for his relatively young age, "Give me a reason to let you keep doing this Tatsu."
"Sir, we don't need another front liner. We haven't had a true spy master for nearly a decade, any information we pick up is old news by the time we can do anything about it. We are becoming isolated on this island and I am terrified." She wasn't sure when her eyes had fallen to her hands, but she could see the fine tremors there. "I am so scared that something we can't see will come for us and I want to do something to prevent it. I know I'm not very good right now, I know that this isn't something that comes naturally to me, but we need it and no one else seems to be willing to do it."
Silence filled the air between the two of them. It was true enough that Uzushiogakure had lost touch with the rest of the nations, but it was also true that it may be too late for them. At the moment they were relying on Konaha's sky network and intelligence to keep them out of trouble, it seemed to be working so far and it was entirely likely that Tatsu would fail. It would not be for a lack of trying but rather because there were no teachers, no master to keep their web stable and healthy to pass back onto an apprentice.
"You are an arrogant child to think you will be able to do this especially when you obviously lack the talent. You will-"
"It is not arrogance if I have no other choice, I will make it happen or I will die trying for the sake of my village. Test me however you want, I will succeed." Tatsu interrupted sharply, "I beg of you sir, give me a chance."
He stared at her blankly, the hairs on the back of her neck rising as he weighed her worth. The Kachūkage had always been a mysterious man, very few could understand what he was thinking, but it was known that he was not a cruel man. He loved the village hidden in the whirling tides and the village loved him, but in all his kindness he was also stern and grim.
"You will begin a small primarily spy network that encompasses the near by land, I want to know every thing from small gangs to rumors about our shinobi. If you fail or bring me false information, you will quit this endeavor and join the seal brigade."
She could almost cry.
"Thank you, sir, I will not let you down."
"I'm going to be honest with you Tatsu, I want you to. I want you to fail. You are the best seal dancer we have had in a long time and, your fighting style is brutal and efficient." He took a drag from his pipe, the embers in the mouth of the dragon motif glowing, "But beyond all of that child, the path you have chosen will be a hard and lonely one, it is not something I would wish on anyone let alone my own shinobi."
She set her jaw stubbornly and narrowed her eye, "I will not let you down."
There was a storm brewing in the distance, the waves already harsh on the dock slamming their small fishing boats against them. The boats that were a bit too large to pull onto shore safely were sailed out into deeper waters and secured with anchors, it was still a gamble, but it was the best the people of the tiny island Takikawa could do.
"You look like hell, Uzumaki."
"I have a proposition for you, Hisa."
"It's been nearly a year, and you want to come to me with a proposition?"
"Well you said it yourself old woman," Tatsu's smile was odd on her face, a little too sharp in all the wrong places, "The whirlpool isn't done yet."
Notes:
I've been going through some stuff, so it took me a while to get this started. This is the first chapter and all I currently have written, just trying to introduce the character and set the plot in motion in one go. I'm making my own lore for Uzushiogakure and its people, I'm actually kind of excited to get to play with it. The next chapter will be detailing the next 6 months of her life hopefully, setting up her plan and investigating the difference economically the fall of Uzushiogakure has made on the rest of the elemental nations.
Please review and tell me what you think of the story so far.
Overall Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto