notes: the rewrite of from somewhere.
chapter one :: tipping scales
Everything is so eerily familiar, and for some reason, she's frightened.
There's something about the slow, creeping awareness in her dreams. Like bleach, it seeps into her mind, bleeding and blending in with every other thought in her head.
A stunning clarity of glass pillars piercing the sky, filled with sun gold lights and gleaming like mirrors; the picture-perfect image of a shining wooden floor and night dark couches; voices warped by distance and trees with sunset coloured leaves— a multitude of things she swears she's never seen before, her imagination running so wild that she's not sure where her reality begins or where it ends.
Mother says, "Minato?" and Minato ends up answering, "Ah, morning, mother!" in sounds that sound like sense to her, even though it's all nonsense, really, and Minato pauses, feeling out of control and out of her depth. Even though it should be nonsense.
But she's not really out of control. Today's the same as ever.
There's not much of a difference in her routine.
With a placid smile on her face— uncomfortably, Minato knows that mother is getting used to her babbling baby words, and humiliation washes over her own face— mother only ends their short exchange with, "Be careful!" as she catches sight of Minato, crouched on the steps in the front of the house, as Minato usually was.
Minato nods, although mother cannot see the motion, and slips out the door. She lets the city view around her swell up and encircle her without complaint, as she continues on her way.
It's been ten years, and the city hasn't become any less pretty to her.
Salt white towers, polished cobblestone paths like the downy feathers of doves— this city is built of bright white and grey and gold. The walls are painted with dark ink, sand gold sweeps and coral colored streaks, like sunshine and flowers and rainbows, little trinkets waving in the wind.
Her shoes thud on the stone underneath, and Minato hides in the shadows of the buildings looming over her small frame, following the route that she usually traveled with nary a sideways glance from other people lingering on the streets. On the contrary, some of them wave or give her a grin, freely.
"Minato-chan!"
She tilts her head to the side, acknowledging the calls, but doesn't slow down. Quietly taking in the sight of the sea glimmering in the distance, obscured by the heads of man-made structures, Minato lets a smile slide onto her expression.
Even from this far, she can tell— the tides roll and dance, lacy sea foam swirling and glittering with the light of the dawn that scatters across its surface like miniature stars.
Minato takes in the sight of the sea with an easy smile, and she feels so very sick.
She can taste the salt in the air, and she wants to spit it out.
As she nears the shore, Minato starts to slow down. She breathes in, taking in the salty taste of the air, and watches the sun begin to emerge as a bright, rosy line at the horizon, too much to stare at for too long. She eventually lets her gaze drop—
Only to be shoved face first into sand with a cut off shout of surprise.
"—what the heck," she spits out eventually along with a mouthful of white sand, making a face as she raises a hand to rub off sand grains from her face rather futilely. It only serves to smear more sand all over her cheeks, and Minato just gives up her attempts in favor of turning her head to give the person lying on her back a dirty look. "What the heck Tatsuya, what was that even for?"
Tatsuya just snickers, sea glass colored eyes bright with mirth. He doesn't bother with apologies, posing proudly with both hands on his hips instead. "Need to bring you down to earth every so often," he says, waving off his actions airily, "and it's funny when you flail around like a stranded fish."
"Wow, thanks," Minato grumbles half-heartedly, flopping about uselessly just for show. "I only do so since you're so fat and heavy."
The boy bristles, mock offended. "Muscle is way heavier than fat!"
"Still heavy," Minato snickers under her breath in a voice that's not quite quiet enough to be called a whisper, getting to her feet as Tatsuya backs off.
Then, curious, she probes, "So, what're you doing here?"
"...Nothing much." Tatsuya darts his gaze to the sea in the distance, as the waves crash onto the shore and make enough noise that Minato can feel the sand shudder underneath her feet.
The quick dismissal only serves to fuel her curiosity. Tatsuya isn't the kind of kid to bother coming to the beach alone without his older brother. Or well, go anywhere without his older brother, what with his complex and all. "Reaaally? I don't think you'd usually be hanging around here, though."
"It's not like you come here every day, either," Tatsuya snipes back, starting to pout. "...I just wanted to be here, okay? Stop being weird!"
"Liar."
"No, I'm not!" Tatsuya immediately refutes, incensed.
Tatsuya wasn't old enough to properly learn from the Glorified, so Minato wasn't too worried about him sneaking into her house to switch out her sink water with berry juice, but with that kind of tone, she makes a mental note to ask her mother for more barrier seals later.
"Yes, you are!" Minato sing songs, grinning, letting the subject drop temporarily as she takes off running across the hot sand underneath her sandals. "Don't make me set your pants on fire to prove it!"
As expected, Tatsuya's easily provoked. "I'll set yours on fire, you liar!" He shouts after her.
"But since you're a liar, if you call me a liar, that makes me not a liar, yeah?"
The redheaded boy stops running, partially because his breath is coming out short and partially because he needs a moment to think that over. "...What?"
Minato takes his hesitation as an excuse to stop running too, and she makes a beeline for him, her own eyes bright with mirth. "What, was that too much for your head to wrap around?"
Tatsuya doesn't answer her verbally, shooting her an annoyed look that Minato just finds a little too pouty to actually scare her. She doesn't have enough of a wish to incur the ire of one of the instructors for upsetting Tatsuya again to tell him that, though.
Giggling at the look on his face and sliding beside him, Minato takes his hand into hers rather easily, before she turns around so that she's walking backward and tugging Tatsuya forwards forcefully. Might as well take advantage of his sullen attitude right now to drag him around wherever she wanted.
"Come on, Tatsuya," she says breezily, easily, "If you're going to come to a beach without hovering all over Tsuyoshi all the time, then you've got to see what I found!"
"...What you found?" Tatsuya parrots; Minato takes note of the curious gleam in his eyes smugly.
She continues dragging him along, though, even though it seems like he might be willing to go along with her on his own. It's the easier to herd Tatsuya around this way or get him to go anywhere, really, in this manner.
"Mhm!" Minato hums, "But you can't tell your older brother, okay?" The redheaded girl brings a finger up to her lips, her previous grin still fixed firmly in place.
"Okay," he agrees readily.
"Yeah, follow me, then!" she cheers, though her hands get all clammy, and her voice somewhat feels off due to her nerves. "I've never really shown anyone else, but...I think you'll like it."
Tatsuya's grip on her hand tightens. He looks at her suspiciously. "...Fine."
"Just hoard the secret and it won't end up in pain for you, dragon," Minato rambles on, a little irked by the increased pressure on her hand. It wouldn't kill him to stop enhancing his muscles with chakra— her hand hurt. Also, she speeds up a little, just because she might as well take him there now that she's said so. It wouldn't do for her to go back on her word, and for Tatsuya to complain about for forever.
He still won't let go of that moment during lessons when she got ink all over her face.
"...That joke's getting old. Don't think that the harbor's seen a thousand oceans yet, let alone a thousand mountains," is all Tatsuya needs to say.
Indignant, Minato whips her head around to give Tatsuya an incredulous look, letting go of his hand as if burnt. "Speak for yourself, you hypocrite! And don't copy my idiomatic way of talking, I'll fight you!"
He just laughs at her.
He's not laughing when Minato scoops up a handful of sand and flings it in his face, though.
Following that minor setback with the miniature sand war, Minato had somehow led Tatsuya far enough that the sandy beach had started to become rockier and littered with seashells washed up everywhere.
Panting, Minato runs across with a wince from a bruise on her leg where she had accidentally slammed into a rock while she wasn't looking properly at what was in front of her. Her arms are scuffed and dusted with sand, and Minato hasn't quite hit that runner's high, so she is acutely aware of every injury she has gotten just by chasing after Tatsuya. Which was ridiculous, because she should be the one leading him, but Tatsuya got the bright idea to explore and wander off her itinerary, so here Minato is, looking like a mess.
She's had enough.
"Wait up, Tatsuya!" Minato calls, her legs already feeling like jelly underneath her. She leans forward, hands on her knees, in order to try and catch her breath rather futilely.
Tatsuya, the absolute prick, doesn't even bother looking back or slowing down. Minato could feel the chakra focused throughout his body, and she doesn't even bother to fight down the twitch of annoyance she has when Tatsuya casually speeds up even more. She could feel his smirk.
"Cheater," Minato grumbles underneath her breath before she's jogging behind him with a put-upon look on her face. Any other time and she'd be competitive enough to enhance her own muscles with chakra too, but it would just feel like a waste of effort to try to do so when Tatsuya was relying on her to show him where to go.
That loser was just flaunting and showing off, so Minato doesn't really care too much.
Doesn't stop her from ducking to the side and taking a shortcut to her destination, though.
It takes him a few moments to realize.
"—Hey!"
No one ever said Minato wasn't passive-aggressive. Still, she speeds up, if only because where she wanted to go was just a few steps away, and she wanted to see Tatsuya's reaction when he laid eyes on it.
When she does reach the place, Minato turns around and waits rather impatiently for his chakra signature to come closer.
"...I can sense you too, you know! You can't get rid of me that easily! Weren't you going to show me..." Tatsuya stops, and Minato watches him look around suspiciously before he hones in on her location.
"There? Behind a wall, seriously?" he deadpans. "How'd you even get there? Climb in due to a secret midget entrance?"
"Well, walk straight over here already," Minato snarks back, "Hopefully doing so will knock some sense into you."
"...There's rock right there."
Minato rolls her eyes, even though he can't see her. "Yes, now walk through it."
Tatsuya's chakra seems to flare up as if he was gearing up to argue back before the burst of emotion dies down just as quickly as it came. Instead of a witty remark, he huffs, "Whatever, I'm not that stupid."
The girl ponders that for a beat. Well, she couldn't exactly blame him for thinking she was joking.
Minato emerges from the rock to the sight of Tatsuya's turned back, and she takes pleasure in pulling him rather violently backward. It does the job, but Minato underestimates Tatsuya's reaction speed, and the boy just falls straight on top of her.
He even has the audacity to groan, as if he was the one suddenly crushed against sand and stone by a heavy kid who would eat all of the shrimp in the whole village if he could.
"Not this again; seriously Tatsuya, I know you're heavy already from just this morning, alright?" Minato grits out.
He makes a weird sound as he rolls off of her at last, and Minato sits up with a rather unamused face.
"Ugh...who was the one who just gave me a heart attack?" Tatsuya argues, spinning around with his mouth open to say something else for sure, but nothing comes out. Instead, he gapes rather unattractively.
Smug, Minato basks in his reaction. Too bad she couldn't preserve this face of his for eternity anywhere but her memory. "So, you like it?"
Snapping out of it, Tatsuya faces her with wide eyes, looking put off balance. "You...what is this place?"
Minato takes a moment to look around again herself, as Tatsuya surveys the entire area.
Polished stone of a multitude of sizes and colors, rough minerals set into the walls, sparkling soft sand, winding paths, various plants curling up from the ground and blooming— this hidden cove seems to stretch on for eternity on all sides. It's possibly even bigger than the main house.
Not the mention the trees that leap and spiral up, looking like pillars as the branches and leaves rustle in a small draft, branches intertwining and archways scattered around like flower petals. The quiet sound of running water trickles and echoes from what seems to be a long way back, refusing to be drowned out by the loud sound of the crashing sea outside.
Light comes down from above as a finishing touch, washing the entire place in a dim glow, and making everything seem ethereal and washed out. Unreal.
"...How did you find this?"
Winking playfully, Minato shushes him. "Remember, keep it a secret from Tsuyoshi!" she reminds him, glibly ignoring his question.
The teasing mention of Tsuyoshi, while intentional, had been meant to uplift Tatsuya's mood, but instead, a conflicted look flits over Tatsuya's face at the mention of his older brother's name. He buries it down quickly, but the change in facial expression doesn't manage to escape Minato's notice. Her expression changes into one of surprise.
Her curiosity about what had happened with the redheaded boy only heightens due to his reaction. What had happened? Did Tsuyoshi steal all of the senbei from Tatsuya, or something? Minato didn't really know what else would warrant such a reaction other than getting food stolen by someone and plotting out where to bury their body for a week straight until they gave more food.
Well, at the very least, Minato bets that some kind of drama had gone down when she wasn't present. If Tatsuya felt discomfited by Tsuyoshi's mere name, they had at least clashed over something. If not, Tatsuya would be praising Tsuyoshi to the high heavens, considering Tatsuya's temperament. Also his reputation as the resident boy with an awful brother complex.
Minato shoots him a pensive look, though she makes the effort to keep her placid smile in place. "Eh, that kind of face...did Tsuyoshi do something?" she ventures.
"W...what's that supposed to mean?" Tatsuya rallies angrily.
"He wouldn't have done something for no reason," Minato offers. "...Probably. Unless you did something stupid as usual. Did you..."
She trails off meaningfully, giving Tatsuya an expectant look. In response, the green-eyed boy just purses his lips. Stubborn as usual.
The hard way it is. "...break into his room and steal his clothes?"
"W-what the!" His face turns almost as red as his hair, which was kind of hilarious to watch. "What kind of image of me do you have?"
"If not that," Minato plays with a strand of her red locks almost absentmindedly, a Cheshire grin forming rather ominously as Minato gets more into her teasing, "Did you kill off your parents, and now Tsuyoshi has a blood feud with you and your bloodline is going to separate?"
"No!"
"Reaaally? Then what's the real reason...?"
"..." Tatsuya glares at her, though his flushed face ruins the intimidation aspect of the whole look.
Minato leans in, widening her eyes and smile to the fullest, before keeping her face completely still in a creepy looking face.
Eventually cracking, Tatsuya looks freaked out as he leans away. "...Okay, okay! Stop that!"
Generously, Minato relents and immediately starts laughing, one hand covering her mouth as she shakes. "Your face!"
"Your face!" Tatsuya says in a very different tone of voice, moving back a little bit more for security's sake.
Eventually smothering down her laughs, Minato raises her eyebrows at Tatsuya. "So, what happened?"
"That is not how you get people to spill to you," he mutters under his breath. Just had to get in the last word, didn't he, Minato thought, put off by the fact that she couldn't get a single word in before he continues, the words tripping over each other in their haste to get out. Tatsuya wasn't very good at bottling things up, what with how honest he was, really.
"...Oniisama hid away my bokken."
She blinks.
Tatsuya stares back at her rather mulishly, mouth closed.
"That's it? Really?" she asks after a long silence. "You're fighting because he took away a piece of wood from you?"
"That piece of wood is my practice sword!" the other boy defends immediately. "It's mine! I wasn't even doing anything dangerous with it! All I did was knock Haruki down a few pegs with it, and he got mad at me!"
"...Praying for Haruki right about now." She puts her hands together with a cheeky grin, before she wipes it off her face and continues, "Well, Tsuyoshi's probably just worried that you'll start going after all of your classmates and whack them into unconsciousness with your newfound weapon for perceived slights against your honour," Minato says flatly, though the smile on her face just makes the whole effect of her tone null and void.
"I don't whack people!" Tatsuya fires back, but rather tellingly he doesn't refute the part about him going after all of his classmates.
Minato covers her face with one hand, smothering her mocking grin, and the ten-year-old just saunters over to pat his shoulder a few times. "Aha, don't worry, don't worryyy! Here, let's see..."
The reasonable, mature piece of advice would be telling Tatsuya that he should calm down and stop being aggressive.
"...If you play enough practical jokes on him, your older brother will give your bokken back eventually," Minato says cheerily instead. "Out of irritation, but you'll get your wood thing back!"
At that, Tatsuya looks ridiculously pleased. "Yeah, I have. I've been distracting him by ambushing him with random sealing tags everywhere in the places he'll least expect them, at really inconvenient times. I hid all of the ones I got from Aunt Konami all over his study room, in fact!" he gloats, enthused.
Minato stares. "...Tatsuya. That...go home, now."
He stares back at her, not comprehending. "...Uh, why?"
"Aunt Konami," Minato hisses out at him, incredulous. She waves her hands around for further emphasis. "Ko-na-mi! Don't you remember what Aunt Konami did to Kazuhi? She had to spend days in the hot springs just to get the tomato smell off of her! At this rate, Tsuyoshi might end up hiding up in his room forever, never to come out again, slowly wasting away as he wonders what the purpose of his life is, all because you made him smell like vegetables...!"
"I never got that kind of stuff from Aunt Konami! And oniisama wouldn't die like that!" Tatsuya yells with all of the confidence of a truly passionate fanboy. Even while he was mad at Tsuyoshi, he was dedicated. Minato would be impressed, but she's more envious than anything else. If only she could get a minion too.
"Death isn't the problem! What if you blow up enough sparkles onto him that he can never walk into the sunlight again as a newfound immortal, cursed to wander the lands forever...?!" Minato probably gets a little too into it, if her dramatically turning her face to the side and covering her mouth with a hand while resting the back of the other hand on her forehead says anything.
Tatsuya stares. "...I don't think that'd happen, ever, you weirdo."
Minato just shrugs, stopping her antics. "The truth hurts," she says in a falsely wise tone. All Tatsuya does is make a face at her though. How rude. Minato makes a face back at him, though her eyes glitter with suppressed mirth.
He does pause and look back towards the exit with a contemplative expression, though. Minato wasn't too surprised. His attention was easy to rouse, but Tatsuya wasn't one to focus or linger on one thing at a time, and he tired of things rather quickly. Plus, other than the beauty and artistry of the cove, it wasn't like Minato had revealed a secret treasure chest in the back or anything. He probably would leave just because he lost interest.
In line with her thoughts, Tatsuya sigh resignedly before grudgingly making his way out of the cove, leaving her with only an exasperated farewell. Minato watches him go and seemingly fade into the white-sand colored sunlight filtering in from the outside with nothing more than laughter and a wave.
"That's right! Tsuyoshi doesn't deserve to live, cursed with sparkling in the sun forever!" Minato calls after his back, only to receive a rude hand gesture in return.
Then, Tatsuya can't be seen anymore from where Minato was positioned. She waits a few seconds, just to make sure that his chakra signature was a little farther, holding her breath before Minato crouches down and looks around for a bit.
Now, the secret she was going to keep for herself.
When she finds a piece of glass that's just the size she wants, Minato reaches out and lets the hardened sand cut into the pad of her left pinky finger until blood wells up, as red as her hair. Unperturbed, the ten-year-old twists around and heads to a seemingly random wall, pressing the finger against it and concentrating.
No dice. Frowning thoughtfully, Minato trails her finger across the walls, until—
Her chakra flows easily to gather and become tangible, and the golden light sinks into the droplets of blood greedily, before the sunset orange shade spreads quickly and all at once.
She stills, not daring to move.
Minato watches the seals appear, one after another, runes and characters bright and intricate, a beaming smile rapidly beginning to form on her face. It gives her such a thrill to know that all of these markings were brought to life by the energy inside of her and her only.
She basks in the feel of her life force surrounding her, shimmering as it forms a dome. The chances that the last few times she had tried this weren't flukes seem to have increased, at least. That was a relief.
Minato plops down on the floor, head tilted up towards the ceiling of the whole place, where rocks glitter and protrude from the roof. Her smile widens until she's giggling, listening to the peals of laughter bounce off her man-made cage.
This didn't get old.
Leaning back against a rock, her laughs quiet down until Minato's just giggling to herself. Her hurt thumb idly rubs along the sides of washed off glass stabbed deep into the ground next to her until Minato's heartbeat slows once more and she shifts to bury the glass piece in more sand.
In a place like this, Minato feels suspended in time. Her chakra seems like artificial sunlight, but better. It's a part of her. She can feel its warmth humming like a soothing murmur, and Minato can't help but relax.
Humming along under her breath, Minato lets the sound of the waves in the distance lull her asleep, and she lets unconsciousness wash over her as her eyes close to the sight of golden sigils shining as they ran across the stones stretching high above as if reaching for the sky.
After all of this...
Minato feels drained.
endnotes:
i felt that this was a good place to stop before the mood shifts, so brace yourself for that if i ever get to it!
for this story, the arc titles are probably going to be puns too. the one for this chapter could be interpreted as "tipping balance scales", or the scales can be "dragon" scales, or "tatsu" scales.
anyways, since "tatsu" is another way to say "dragon", minato's basically referring to tatsuya when she talks about dragons hoarding things away. likewise, "minato" means "harbour", and tatsuya references the japanese idiom "海千山千", or "a thousand oceans a thousand mountains", which usually is used to talk about someone cunning enough to be able to handle anything, as they've seen a thousand oceans and a thousand mountains.
fair warning, it'll be a while before canon characters start showing up, since this is the warring states era and all.