Here is the first chapter of my first Naruto fic. Hope you ladies and gents enjoy this first bit, you can count on more soon.
Sadao is pronounced 'Sa-day-oh'. A chawan is a tea bowl. Tsuba is the metal guard on a katana, just above the grip. A saya is a katana scabbard.
Do not be angry that Itachi has yet to materialize; he will make his appearance in time!
-1-
Uchiha Fugaku had a wide chin and a noble grimace on his face, not smiling per se but expressing his filial pride through a subtle twist of his jaw. His wife, on the other hand, smiled prettily from under straight black hair -- her name was Mikoto. Fugaku himself was darker of skin, his hair touched by a hint of brown.
In front of his father was a smiley kid, face pale as his mother's and hair the same color exactly. It was clear which side Uchiha Sasuke favoured -- even his childish grin was a mirror image of the woman's.
Sadao frowned and leaned in at the photograph.
Itachi was a different story again than his brother. The oldest Uchiha son wore a scowl as dark as his father's on a face one shade lighter. His hair was dark enough brown to look black under most light, and yet his chin and cheeks were sharp like those of his mother and brother.
If Sadao had been asked to identify the psychopath murderer in the photograph, be probably would have pointed to Itachi, but then that was a stretch in itself. Itachi just looked the most sullen out of a decently happy looking family.
Sadao looked up as the waiter arrived with his tea. He accepted the steaming drink and took a brief slurp -- jasmine flavoured, shot up his sinuses instantly -- before setting the chawan on the table. The photograph had caught the light again. A hazy white blob sat on Fugaku's face, so Sadao flattened the photo down with one finger and leaned forward.
He wondered, again, why they'd given everybody this particular photo. Surely there were official pictures of Itachi around. The kid probably had dozens of school pictures, graduation pictures, ANBU pictures. Sadao thought again. Maybe ANBU members were erased from the records; he didn't know much about ANBU but that didn't seem unreasonable.
Maybe they hoped that this photo would invoke some kind of deep rage within the hearts of those they gave it to, to imagine this perfectly ordinary nuclear family shattered. Sadao snorted with disdain. The reward money alone should have been enough incentive for most.
Right now, Itachi was the most valuable missing-nin in the world.
When Sadao went to register himself, the line had stretched all the way outside Konoha's mission bureau. He stood behind a young group who complained loudly of the wait and the heat, and talked about what they were going to spend the reward on. A trickle of people were coming out in the opposite direction, some in groups, some alone, all bearing a couple of scrolls and one photograph.
The clerk inside had given him a brief once over when he finally arrived at one of the three desks reserved for the line of bounty hunters.
"You're not going to get the reward," she said finally, with a small chortle.
"Is that what you tell everyone?" he had asked.
"If anyone gets Uchiha Itachi, it'll be the ANBU squads. I don't know what they're thinking posting a reward."
Sadao shrugged. "Not your job to worry your pretty little head. Just sign me up."
The clerk raised delicate black eyebrows at pretty little head, but said nothing. She shrugged and whipped out a pen.
"Name?"
"Sadao."
She gave him a look. "Family or given?"
"Both. Neither. It's my only name."
She chortled again, shook her head. She had black hair, tied up in a bun, and a head protector with the Konoha leaf engraved on it.
"And you're alone?" She sounded amused.
"Yes."
"Very well," she rolled up a scroll for him, handed it to him, and then another. "Don't get in ANBU's way. Matter fact, don't get in the Uchiha's way either. Go home and forget you ever saw or heard of a reward."
Sadao twitched one shoulder in a shrug.
"No," he said.
She extended a small hand, and in it was the photograph. She wore a wry frown. "Good luck, then."
That was a week ago. Now Sadao sat in a restaurant beside the dusty streets of Shikuba, sipping tea. He'd looked over the scrolls days ago, of course. They explained Itachi's career in detail, his strengths, but failed to mention a weakness of any kind. Sadao wasn't worried. He downed the last of his tea and placed the chawan on the table, watching the little green flecks dance in the last drop at the bottom.
Apparently Itachi had spared his little brother. Sadao hunched again over the photo, this time focused on the child. His smile was genuine and unbridled as children's smiles were wont to be. Why had Itachi killed everyone in his family except for his brother? Love?
Sadao supposed that Itachi had to be crazy. It seemed the easiest explanation if not the most in-depth, but Sadao didn't really want to understand Itachi anyway. Just to kill him. The reward would be given for Itachi's death or his return to Konoha as a prisoner, but Sadao knew ANBU would be aiming to kill anyway. Simpler and less dangerous, surely.
A waitress in a frilly apron came around, arriving at Sadao's table with a teapot and a pretty smile. Nodding, Sadao absently gestured at his empty chawan and she topped it off. As she withdrew with a slight bow, Sadao saw the door swing open and three individuals enter the restaurant. He thought they looked familiar.
A waiter led the trio to a booth across from Sadao's, and they settled in, placing orders Sadao couldn't hear. The waiter nodded, moved off, and then the only woman in the group pulled something from inside her cloak; Sadao recognized it. The woman placed the photo of the Uchiha family on the table and shook her head slightly, her straight red hair trembling with the movement. Her skin was pale and clear. Her companions were both men; the one beside her had a shaved head under a bandana, and the man across the table was tanned like a farmer, his black hair coarse and long over his neck.
Sadao was gently surprised to see them, but immediately he reasoned it out. With that many people in line at the mission building in Konoha, the few cities around the hidden village were likely filled with Itachi-hunters by now.
The woman spoke, pulling her red hair behind her ear with one finger. "He's the handsome kid on the right side, correct? What a shame. Under different circumstances I'd like to bed him."
The shaggy haired man grinned. "You'd bed most anything. Why not him? Just 'cuz he's a killer?"
She shook her head. "Because we have to kill him. Can't mix business and pleasure."
The man with the shaved head spoke slowly. "What did the old man say when you showed him the photo?"
The red-head grinned, flashing teeth the color of cream. "He said he'd definitely seen him. He was real quiet apparently, but polite."
The black haired man visibly shuddered. "The Uchiha kid scares me. Someone who could do what he did and still act the way people say he does. Creeps me out, what must be going through a mind like that."
The woman extended a single white finger to flick the man's forehead in annoyance. "Shut up, Yuka. He's just one prematurely good ninja kid. Nothing the three of us can't handle."
Sadao sat and watched them. He reached for his tea, calmly, without looking at it. Sadao wondered what it was that made them confident. Had any of them ever fought a ninja?
"We have to find out where exactly in the city he is," said the bald man.
The waiter arrived, then, with three bowls of udon, three tumblers and a large bottle of sake. There was momentary silence as the trio dug in, and Sadao turned his attention back to the photo. He frowned. Itachi was here? It seemed too lucky to be true. Sadao had set out the very day he had received the photo and scrolls, heading for Shikuba -- rumours placed the young Uchiha on the road east. Sadao contemplated following these three to see what they found, if anything.
When the waitress returned to fill Sadao's chawan a second time, he took a brief sip and then grimaced. The jasmine was bitter and concentrated -- he was drinking from the bottom of the teapot. He waved away the serving-girl's ineffectual attempts to beg his pardon. He liked his tea strong anyway. The three across from him were drinking their sake with devotion, speaking little. Sadao pulled a scroll from his pocket and carefully rolled the photo of the Uchiha family up inside it. He replaced the scroll inside his cloak.
Sadao stood up. He was six feet tall and his cloak was the color of sand. It flowed down from a high collar he had unbuttoned for tea, obscuring his body underneath its coarse folds. Sadao's hair was a shade lighter than black, short, and his eyes were brown pools in his pale face. Sadao's hand emerged through a gap in his cloak, and it placed several coins on the table. Then he came around his table and headed for the door.
It was chilly and dark outside, so Sadao buttoned his collar up and hunched his shoulders, making tracks for the hotel. With each step he could feel the scrolls bounce against his hip. The moon was huge and white, glowing. He could make out each grey valley or depression on its surface, hundreds of thousands of miles away. Sadao walked into his hotel and ascended one flight of wooden steps. His footsteps creaked on the floor. He stood in darkness and unlocked his room, then went inside and shut the door. His longbow and leather quiver lay on the bed where he had left them.
He undressed and went into a dreamless sleep.
Sadao awoke the next day beneath the warm heaviness of a good night's sleep. He lay awake in the large bed for an indefinable period of time, then all at once threw the covers back and hit the cold linoleum floor with his bare feet.
Diffuse white light seeped in around the corners of the curtain as he dressed himself. The beige cotton pants went on first, then the soft tabi boots which he wrapped around his calves and tied tight overtop the trousers. Lastly he donned a light v-necked shirt and swept the cloak over his shoulders. He shoved his katana behind his belt and clipped the small quiver to his waist, then slung the longbow over one shoulder. He checked out of the inn, bought black tea and muffins for breakfast, and headed into the midday heat of the Fire Country.
Shikuba bustled during the daytime. The street vendors were all out, their stalls which had been hidden or locked up during the night all bright and flashy, seemingly competing for the prize of most vibrantly painted sign. The sun beat down on Sadao's face and neck, so he dropped five ryo on a wide straw hat.
He tried to imagine a psychopath killer lurking somewhere in this city, but whenever he was on the cusp of visualizing this sort of thing it slipped away. What was Itachi's goal? Sadao shook his head suddenly, willing himself to give up on trying to understand his young target. Itachi was insane. That was all. There would be no predicting him, no rationalising his actions.
When Sadao bought his hat, he showed the vendor the photo of the Uchiha family. He wasn't surprised when the man shook his head disinterestedly. Sadao moved down the street, stopping intermittently to ask people if they'd seen Itachi. It only took him a few minutes to fully regret not tailing his three rivals from the restaurant. He might have given up the only lead he would ever get. He continued on futilely, and the sun gradually tracked across the sky. Finally, when Sadao was barely even paying attention, the middle-aged woman he'd been talking to leaned forward in interest, staring at the photo.
"The one on the right, you say?"
Sadao twitched, suddenly attentive. "Yeah. That's the one. Uchiha Itachi, mass murderer."
The woman bit her lip and shuddered, "if only I'd known, I would have acted differently."
Sadao leaned forward coaxingly. "You mean you've seen him?"
She nodded, and all of Sadao's hairs seemed to leap to attention.
"I said good morning to him just yesterday…" she put a hand to her chest, clearly affected. Sadao wasn't looking; he cast his eye furtively around, as though expecting Itachi to spring out of nowhere with a bloody sword. "he went into that Inn," the woman pointed.
Sadao was already walking. His hand, inside his cloak, was on his sword. His thumb pressed against the tsuba, feeling its cold iron weight. He went quickly into the Inn and made for the front desk. The man there had a black moustache and looked up in surprise at Sadao's fast approach.
Sadao's right hand shot down the sleeve of his cloak and came up holding the photo. "Uchiha Itachi, bottom right. He here? He's a dangerous criminal. Mass murderer."
The man leaned in, looked at the photo, did a double take.
"Why… yes…that's him," he looked taken aback. "He's been here for two nights, never said a word, and I didn't see him leave today… murderer, you say?"
Sadao nodded, finger rapping impatiently on the dark wooden desk.
"What room?"
The clerk was momentarily silent. He seemed reluctant to give away his client's private information. Sadao was infuriated. "Room number," he said. "Now. No time for this." He shifted his balance as he said so, and his cloak swung open to reveal his left hand, white knuckled on his katana.
The man stared at the sword for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. "Right. He's on the ground floor, room seven -- that way -- " he pointed.
Sadao all but ran down the hallway. He checked room numbers hastily as he went. Three… four… five…
A couple of women lunged out of his way as he barrelled down the hallway with his hand on his sword, and then the number seven loomed on a door, the brass -wrought numeral glittering dully. Sadao's heart hammered in anticipation. Now that he was here, he paused. He tested his chakra, sending it flickering throughout his body for the first time in months. Sadao removed his sword from his belt and held it in his left hand, his right ready to draw it from the saya.
Then he kicked the door in.
It flew open and slammed into the wall on the other side. Sadao charged in after it, already feeling the chakra buzzing through him in the precursor to a combat-high. His muscles tensed and his senses hummed in activity as he scanned the room.
It was empty. The bed was made.
Three seconds after his revelation, the window on the far wall burst inwards in a cloud of glass. Sadao didn't even really get a good look -- he had kicked in a bit of chakra induced speed and flung himself into the bathroom, was kneeling on the linoleum, listening. He heard booted feet hitting the wooden floor in the room like a drumroll -- more than one pair.
He heaved his longbow off his shoulder with his sword-hand and grasped an arrow between the thumb and forefinger of his right. He nocked it backwards, slapping it onto the left side of the sword just above where his fingers clamped the katana and bow together. He drew the bowstring back, resting his four fingers on his cheek, and stepped back into the room.
It wasn't Itachi.
Sadao sighed in disgust and lowered the bow. He eased the tension but kept the arrow nocked, facing the ground, not threatening but definitely there.
The three from the restaurant stared at him in obvious surprise.
"What are you doing here?" the red-haired woman had the density to ask.
Sadao ignored her and moved towards them, looking around the room for any sign of Itachi. He had slid the closet door open with one foot -- empty -- and was kneeling beside the bed when he felt her approaching.
Her hand missed his shoulder by an inch, and she looked at him in surprise. "What -- "
"He's been gone for hours, or maybe was never here," Sadao interrupted, fuming. "maybe he checked in here, making no effort at deception, making sure people saw him, and then immediately left the city without anyone knowing."
"Oh," she said stupidly. "You're after the Uchiha kid."
"He's smart," Sadao admitted, already walking away from the woman. "Or maybe this was all just a colossal misunderstanding."
Sadao turned his back on the trio, removing his arrow from the bowstring. He dropped it back into the quiver at his belt and slung the bow back over one shoulder. He replaced his katana behind his belt. On his way out, the man at the desk looked at him expectantly, but Sadao ignored him.
Itachi had surely left the city, perhaps as long as two days ago.
Which direction was he likely to head in? Sadao mused on that one for a long while. The ANBU squads and bounty hunters would be moving out methodically from Konoha, their search unfolding like a blooming flower in all directions. Anyone else would probably be fleeing from the general vicinity of Konoha as quickly as possible.
That afternoon, Sadao left through the south gate of Shikuba.
He headed back for Konoha.
His first night in the forest, Sadao shot a deer with his bow and cut out its guts with his sword; then he skinned about half the animal, cut out its flank, rump, and round, and dropped the pieces of raw meat in a cloth sack, about a quarter full of salt, that hung from his belt. He made two fires in two fire pits, about a hundred feet from each other, waited until they were hot, then kicked them apart. He roasted the venison on the hot coals, half the meat in each fire pit. He himself waited in the darkness between the two fires, intermittently emerging into the light to turn over the meat.
After the venison was cooked satisfactorily, Sadao speared the chunks with his katana and dropped them back into the salted bag. He left both fires simmering and walked three hundred paces away into the forest.
Sadao ate one of the pieces of deer and drank from a flask of water, in the darkness, then cleaned his katana with a damp rag, dried it, and sheathed it. He climbed a tree and hung the sack of venison from a branch, then went to sleep on the dirty ground under his cloak, ensuring that no body part, nor even his hat, remained visible outside it.
This time, he did dream. Whether it was the uncomfortable conditions or something else, Sadao dreamed of death. He saw pale clammy hands and limbs, floppy and boneless. They lay in the mud, encrusted with filth, and their eyes all stared at him, wide-irised inhuman portals of black glass.
The chill woke him, and a cacophony of morning birdsong. Dew saturated his cloak; it clung to his body clammily, making him shiver. He lay still for a few moments, listening, then flung the cloak back and rose in a single motion, katana clasped in his left hand. Steel-coloured light bathed the forest. The ferns and bushes drooped, droplets of water forming and trickling off them.
There were insects in his clothing, so he let go a little blaze of chakra, a white humming aura over his skin, and struck each of them stone dead. A spider the size of Sadao's thumb dropped from his shoulder, twitching.
He wandered blearily back to one of his fires, the sour taste of the deer on his tongue. He tried to blink away tiredness but his head was pounding. Grey steam slithered up from beneath the mound of ash and the brittle remains of logs that had once been the fire pit, and Sadao crouched before it.
He peered down at the soft earth. It was moist and brown, sprouting lime coloured grass in places. Here and there Sadao espied tracks that obviously belonged to a very large dog -- he ignored these. He also saw a series of raccoon prints in the mud, circling the fire, no doubt attracted by the smell of meat.
By far the most interesting footprint of all was that of a booted human, the mark telltale and deep. Sadao smiled. These prints did not belong to he himself, no -- Sadao's footprints were those of the monstrous dog. The tough leather soles of his boots were shaped to mask his trail.
He was being tracked. Most likely by the three he'd left in Itachi's room. They had come to his campsite during the night and already passed on.
Sadao was not worried.
He backtracked and climbed the tree he'd hung the meat from. He'd half expected the sack to be gone or at least ravaged by squirrels and birds, but it seemed in fine condition. Sadao clipped the sack to his belt, the harsh scent of the venison floating up to tickle his nostrils. He stood on a thick bough, pensive, and closed his eyes, fifty feet above the forest floor.
He knew, then, that only thinking like Itachi had worked so far and only thinking like Itachi would work in the future. He'd reasoned to himself that it would be possible to avoid this sort of thing, but now he saw the folly in that. The only way to catch the Uchiha boy was to get inside his mind.
An uncomfortable feeling came to Sadao; that perhaps this would be only a marginal shift in mentality from his own. But no -- Sadao pushed the impulsive thought aside. He looked up.
Sadao flickered with motion, and then the branch was quivering where he had stood, the emerald understory of ancient trees as empty of Sadao and as full of everything else as it had been hundreds of years before.
