Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Chapter Four
~ O ~
The grey smoke covers the clearing and the light of the glow stick renders it a ghostly hue of aqua. Mizuki swipes impotently at the glowing smoke which remains steadfast in miring him. He sweeps his kunai again but something cold and metallic wraps around his arm and stalls it. He sees it clearly; the glow stick near his feet casts articulate shafts of light through the links of a black chain. It comes from somewhere above but gives him no time to imagine what its source is.
The chain contorts sharply and breaks his arm in two places.
Iruka stands at the edge of the clearing and tries in vain to peer through the smoke.
When he hears the sound of Mizuki's bones snapping he knows now is the time to throw himself back in and end this.
He closes his eyes and silently evokes his family's signature jutsu which reveals to his mind what his eyes are incapable of seeing. A bright pulse sweeps over everything within his zone of perception and all solid matter hidden by smoke or darkness is highlighted by a soft blue glow. The thrashing form of Mizuki is clearly revealed; the traitor is on his knees cradling an arm that has been broken and contorted in an almost cartoonish manner.
Refusing to let another easy opportunity slip by, Iruka rushes into the smoke before he can think too much and stall himself some more.
His knee dashes against Mizuki's face and cartilage grinds against bone with a quick but fleshy 'pop.' Blood trails from the traitor's nose as he falls sideways onto his chest; Iruka quickly straddles him and twists his unbroken arm against his back. To complete the takedown, Iruka presses the tip of a kunai against the back of Mizuki's head. Right where the spine meets the skull. The smoke finally disperses to reveal the end of the battle.
Iruka only has a bloody shoulder but Mizuki has become a mess of blood, sweat and saliva made even more abominable by the unflattering lighting.
With the traitor secure, he quickly turns his attention skyward and again evokes the echolocation jutsu. He sees the entire breadth of the tree canopy, rendered in blue, materialize in the darkness overhead. The crisscrossing network of branches is dazzlingly apparent, but there is no sign of anything human. No sign of his anonymous supporter; the one whom he owes his survival to. If those grinning apparitions hadn't emerged to swarm Mizuki then odds are the bastard would have succeeded with his boast and left two desecrated corpses behind as his final gesture of betrayal to Konoha.
He spits some fluid before speaking, "Just let me go, Iruka. Lemme go and I'll forget all this. Yeah, we were just sparring. That's what we'll tell them and things'll go back to the way they were. Come on, Iruka. I was just messing with you."
The scarred chuunin grits his teeth as he wards off the desire to drive the kunai into Mizuki's cerebellum.
"Shut up."
"Let me go right now or else I'll-"
"-Or you'll what? Pat me to death with your broken arm?"
The traitor's bloodied face curls in a sneer, "That's a helluva lot more than you were doing before when I was kicking your ass! Don't act like you've won this. You'd be dead right now if someone else hadn't come along and bailed you out!"
Knowing he's right, Iruka responds by wrenching Mizuki's arm just short of dislocating it.
"Umino-san," says a soft yet authoritative voice.
He looks over his shoulder and sees a team of half a dozen ANBU approach. The light of the glow stick weakens but has just enough potency left to throw moody shadows upon those blank, expressionless animal masks. Always an unnerving sight, but Iruka nonetheless feels relieved and breaks the remaining tension by exhaling a deep, shuddering breath. The squad leader, a man wearing an ape mask, steps forward.
"It would appear you don't need our assistance," he says in a neutral voice that borders on genial.
Feeling vastly unworthy of the implied praise, Iruka has to stop himself from scoffing.
"Don't worry; you won't have to waste effort on this bastard. But I sent Taro your way; Mizuki must have planted something on-"
-The leader holds up a closed palm, it opens and reveals a round plastic pouch covered in milky white stomach bile.
Mizuki sees it and growls angrily, "That useless little shit!"
The leader nods once, "A traitor like you is in no position to speak ill of anybody. It was clever to smuggle the storage seal out of the village by hiding it in the stomach of a civilian child. Clever and not at all your idea. Right?"
"Cut a mouth in that mask and blow me!"
"Charming," mutters the leader as he walks toward the downed traitor.
Iruka moves off of Mizuki who is given no time to act before the leader's heel crashes down on the back of his head and presses it into the dank grass.
Shadows spread over the ape mask as it looms, "I'm sure that a few hours with Ibiki will make you more cooperative. In fact, by morning you'll be begging to tell us everything. Most confessions are taken by coercion, but you will throw yourself on your knees and plead for the opportunity to confess. You won't be given that opportunity for quite a while because Ibiki likes to muzzle his captives before going to work on them. You could try and scream the truth a hundred times and it won't be heard because we want way more than that. We want to know everything, and it will be the happiest moment of your life when Ibiki decides he has had enough fun, takes the ball-gag out of your mouth, and finally allows it all to come out like a flood. Not that it will save you."
Terror seizes Mizuki's heart and he begins to thrash frantically.
"Wait. Wait! There's need for any of that; I'll tell you everything right now. Right now, damn it! It was one of-!"
-The traitor's desperate attempt to purge himself is cut off when an operative kneels down and slaps a leather muzzle over his mouth.
The leader, Ape, steps off and allows him to be lifted up and hoisted away like a sack of waste. He thrashes and cries impotently under restraint as he is carried off into the dark. The masks of the remaining operatives look on apathetically while Iruka can only shake his head; the mildest expression of how crestfallen he is. A better ninja would not have allowed such an ugly matter to escalate the way it did.
"Come, Umino-san. The Hokage will want to debrief you," says Ape as he fellows after his subordinates.
Iruka is about to follow but instead looks over his shoulder, up into the tree canopy. It feels humiliating that whoever helped him didn't deign to reveal themself to him. As if his performance was so lacking that he didn't deserve to know his saviour's identity. He looks up into the branches and darkness in hope that some small last-second acknowledgement will occur. Ideally, a pair of glowing eyes would appear and wink at him at him in a good-natured way that conveys he has been forgiven. But nothing of the sort happens; the breeze sways the branches and the darkness holds steadfast.
With a dejected sigh, he turns and follows the ANBU.
Taro's mother, a plump middle-aged woman wearing a nightdress, stands outside her son's room and listens to the loud, pitiful sobbing coming from inside.
She knocks gently, "Taro-kun? Sweetie, it's not that bad. Some dreams are just not meant to come true. If everybody became whatever they wanted to be then nobody would want to work the dirty jobs and we would always be knee-deep in filth. Sanitation is everything and you have dozens of career options open to you in that field."
The muffled sobs don't let up.
"Now come on, sweetie. Compromise is a part of life. It's not always bad; if I hadn't given up on medical school then you probably wouldn't exist. See? Compromise can be good."
A pause, contemplation, then the sobbing intensifies and wracks the whole household as the worst day of Taro's life finally reaches its sorry end.
The worst day so far, at least.
The small plastic pouch, now cleaned of Taro's stomach contents, sits atop The Hokage's desk like a black potato. Though small and innocent-looking, it is the focal point of the office with all occupants eyeing it carefully. Sarutobi scratches his whiskers then nods once to Ape who stands opposite him along with the rest of his squad sparsely populating the room. Though the intentions of most are hidden behind masks, all in the room are clearly concentrated on uncovering the core of tonight's attempted subterfuge.
Ape performs a small sequence of handseals and the facade of the plastic pouch gives way in a small burst of smoke to reveal a velvet-wrapped scroll the size of a large fire log. He takes a minute to carefully but quickly inspect it for any lethal additions left behind by the thief. Finding none, he lifts and places it back on the Hokage's desk for the final assessment and decision on the matter.
Sarutobi sets down his pipe and blows a nostril's worth of smoke over the scroll, the lifeless object that has been haunting his mind like the worry of a dangerous fugitive loose within the village.
"I hate getting so worked up over mere trinkets like this. Using the ANBU to search for what is essentially lost paperwork feels like another one of our bureaucracy's sad little jokes. But I wish it was the worst of our problems right now. The traitor still within our midst poses an infinitely greater danger than the contents of this scroll."
Picking up on the lull in his leader's dialogue, Ape interjects.
"Do you think it likely that the traitor intended for Mizuki to get caught with the scroll? Why would he or she go through the trouble of pulling off such an elaborate theft then leave the prize in the hands of an utter incompetent?"
A shrug, "Indeed. Either Mizuki's capture was part of the plan or the smuggling of the scroll was meant to be easier than it turned out to be. Mizuki was clear of the ANBU patrol routes; once he procured the sealed scroll from the boy then there would be nothing between him and freedom. It all went wrong when Iruka-kun intervened, and I highly doubt that he was part of the plan. Mizuki was meant to get away with the scroll, but the scroll must not have been the highest priority otherwise the instigator of this scheme would have done the task personally and done it right. But staying in the village was more important, so this instigator handed what should have been an easy task to an expendable asset like Mizuki who managed to bungle it all anyway."
Sarutobi chuckles once before lifting his pipe to his lips.
"Incredible. But we're still left pondering the identity of Iruka-kun's saviour. A shinobi who can use kage bunshins so efficiently. That should narrow the field of search down considerably because a very limited number of ninja are even capable of performing the jutsu, much less in such an elaborate way as Iruka-kun described."
"Is it possible that Umino-san's 'saviour' and the scheme's instigator are the same person?" asks Ape.
He would like to say no; that the motives of anybody who aides the village are pure and beyond reproach. That is what he would like to believe and would have done so years ago before cynicism seeped into his soul. But Sarutobi has lived long enough to see benevolent acts used as the facade for many black-hearted schemes.
"We already went over how nonsensical it would be for this instigator to sabotage his own plan. I can't imagine why it would be done, but I won't put our security at further risk because of my lack of imagination. I'll rest just a little bit easier knowing what the identity and motives of Iruka-kun's helper are. If there is a definite connection with our scroll thief, then that may generate a lead toward unravelling this conspiracy. If not, then I would at least like to know who to thank for assisting us in getting the scroll back. Either way, I want to know."
The steel door slams and Mizuki is left alone in a dull grey room with a single light bulb beaming harshly down on him. He can't look away because his head, like the rest of his body, is held firmly in place by leather straps winding up from the table he is laid flat upon. An operating table, or rather a torturer's equivalent of one. Efficiently designed but likely for the opposite purpose for which it was soon to be used. He whimpers and squirms under the pitiless restraints for his broken arm has received no thought of care whatsoever.
Both arms are held straight out to the side and give him the appearance of a martyr eager to embrace what's coming to him. He stops thrashing as the shock and anger of being caught wears off and the despair finally sets in. The future was bright and glorious an hour ago, but now it likely won't extend far beyond the dimensions of this ugly little cell.
"They'll be gone long enough, so there's no need to rush this," says a familiar voice from somewhere outside his limited field of vision.
His head thrashes in reaction but doesn't budge against the straps.
"Then again, you probably had the same complacent attitude and that is why you are here after failing in a simple task. No point in dawdling just because I like seeing idiots like you taken down a few pegs."
Before Mizuki can reply, he winces upon feeling a sharp pain shoot through his arm.
"What the hell did you just-" he trails off as a sudden and heavy drowsiness hits him.
The light bulb hanging over him, already harsh, suddenly blooms brighter as if sunlight had broken through thick clouds. A wave of calmness washes over him and he finds it easy to give in to after the barrage of mortal terror that came with being captured. Then his brain kicks in and reminds him of his present circumstances; the calmness he feels is nothing but the deceptive first stage of the effects of a lethal injection. Though his energy ebbs away, he still thrashes against the leather restraints and the effects of the seductive poison that is like a void of comfortable, rapidly expanding non-existence that has opened inside him.
That voice, as fatally pleasant as the poison, speaks up.
"You know there's no point in struggling; down is the only direction left to you. I'm not doing this because there is any chance of you exposing me; you know absolutely nothing. I was careful to make sure of that from the beginning. This is simply punishment for failing Orochimaru-sama. If I left you to the dull savages of the interrogation division, then there would still be a small chance that they would leave you alive. I'm sure you would beg and crawl for that chance, even if it means spending the rest of your life as a useless cripple."
Mizuki gasps as everything begins to distort and darken but the glare of the light remains steady throughout it all.
"Goodbye, Mizuki. Hopefully you'll be reincarnated as someone more useful. Then maybe you'll have another chance at becoming a decent pawn of Orochimaru-sama."
The growing darkness claws away at the light as the rest of his strength and will leave him. With what little he has left, he summons it all for one last stand against the end of his existence. He lets his mind be flooded by all his dreams and ambitions so that maybe they will spur and give him the strength to rise above the mire and seize that slim chance of survival. Avenging himself upon Konoha, being welcomed to Otogakure, rising through the ranks and standing gloriously as part of the vanguard of a new world power.
But none of it is enough.
The poison holds dominion over everything and all that escapes is a weak, strangled cry that crawls from his throat like a feeble soul.
Somewhere, in the depths of Hozukijo, the chains stir.
A heavy ironclad door, like that of a bank vault, grinds open and allows artificial light into the starving gloom of a large antechamber. With the light comes the shadow of a single man; it is Tokubara, the young head doctor of the prison. His shadow passes over a smoothly polished granite floor decked with yellow and white track lines. The floor of a gymnasium. That is what it was built for, but the removal of key lights along the walls and ceiling also remove any other feature identifying it as such. Shadow has rendered it completely featureless as though to draw the urgent attention of all occupants to the grim centrepiece.
Under the only light stands a cell the size and shape of a small bedroom and made of clear plastic. Covering every side are hundreds of explosive tags; the first and hopefully last line of defence against the cell's occupants. Dozens of black chains case the inside of the cell like the tendrils of a beast feeling for any exploitable weakness through which it can escape.
All originate from under the bed of the comatose Kushina like some childhood nightmare creature too big for its hiding place. Once a stunning beauty, she has devolved into a frail waif with skin and sinew clinging desperately to the bone. Her face is a sickly serene mask and the chains betray only a small hint of the turmoil waging beneath the surface.
The only sound that can be heard in the expansive gloom is the tap and squeak of Tokubara's expensive shoes upon the granite.
He stops ten feet from the cell, at the edge of a large seal array drawn on the granite floor with blood that has dried black. Only a fuinjutsu master would immediately recognize the danger of stepping over a single scabby line of this morbid arrangement of kanji symbols. But there is no need for the young doctor to become versed in the art since a simple memo was enough warn him of the burning death that awaits should the seal be desecrated by human contact.
He puts his hands in his coat pockets and sighs at the sight. A jounin silently joins him from the shadows; a tall man wearing dark gear and sporting an eye-patch over jaggedly scarred skin. Damage caused by something of cruel design.
"Tokubara-san," the jounin utters.
"Goro-san," replies the doctor.
A moment passes that the two men spend silently watching the chains scale the insides of the cell like some demonic zoo exhibition.
"Anything noteworthy happen?" asks Tokubara.
Goro shrugs, "No. She sleeps like a baby while those damn things crawl around endlessly like huge centipedes. Creepy, but that's all."
Tokubara nods glumly to himself; while the doctor in him is satisfied that the situation here is stable, another part of him wishes that something, anything, would happen if only to force the prison administrators to do what needs to be done.
"Does anybody from Konoha ever come to check on her?" asks Goro.
The doctor is pleasantly surprised by the question which is in line with his own thoughts.
"Only for the first two years of her imprisonment. You know how it is; they're self-conscious about being seen near a place of ill-repute such as this. They must have figured that all must be well if this facility is still standing. Those who entrust their dirty secrets with Mui-sama do so because they know what he will do to keep total containment."
The jounin scoffs quietly, "He has to because he has his own dirty secrets to keep. I was just asking because, well, accidents happen."
Tokubara raises an eyebrow, "Oh?"
"Seal arrays are complicated, aren't they? And like anything complicated, they can malfunction easily."
He goes quiet after that statement, not willing to turn the implication into an obvious announcement of intent. His position in this facility is too tenuous to risk by expressing his discontent in such a way. But the young doctor goads him on anyway.
"Go on," he says a like an encouraging friend.
Goro doesn't bite immediately; he takes a moment to articulate his thoughts before speaking.
"Nobody from Konoha comes to verify that she's alive, so they're happy to think that she's a secret safely buried. It wouldn't be hard to bury her for real. Twelve years of containment; something is bound to go wrong. Also, it's not our fault that they didn't inform us of all the dangers she posed. If they ever found out then they wouldn't be able to blame us."
A chuckle, "Are you plotting, Goro-san?"
The jounin suddenly becomes self-conscious, "No, of course not. I'm just talking."
The doctor holds up his hand in a calming gesture, "Relax. It's perfectly normal to have such thoughts after, well, the incident."
He scowls and shadows creep through the contours of his facial scar like water filling an ugly imprint in the dirt.
"Which incident?" he says coolly.
Tokubara relents his psychological nudging and goes quiet; there is no need to go into explicit detail about an event in which the guardsman has painful first-hand experience. The seed has successfully been planted. The bitter memory is the soil in which it will grow and the young doctor now knows that at least one person on this level will be with him in carrying out the venture that lurked in implication through the background of their conversation. Now he is closer to finally correcting what is probably Mui's greatest mistake and bringing Hozukijo back from the brink of its own self-destruction.
That, and the money from Kumogakure will be ample compensation in case Mui misunderstands his good intentions.
It is morning in Konoha. From where Naruto sits, the emerging sunlight has yet to reach into his apartment from over the roof of the taller residential building across from his. It will in another hour, but until then, his apartment feels like it is still caught in nighttime and waits silently for the morning light to breathe life into it. Artificial light isn't as invigorating as natural light and the musty, yellow-hued kitchen light situated over the stove does little to stoke Naruto's untapped energy.
The sombre redhead sits at the meal table wearing only a pair of black boxers and dispassionately eats his breakfast. Bacon and eggs done sunny-side up; his fork breaks the yolk centre and its pleasantly bitter contents spill out over the bacon for added flavor. Eventually the taste manages to cut through the dreary morning haze and a smile of contentment etches onto his face. He might as well try to enjoy the meal since it will likely be the high-point of his day. It regretfully is, most of the time.
Until today, it was mere existence within Konoha that wore his spirit down like the dying daylight. Skulking through alleyways and across rooftops to avoid the villagers whose disdain was like choking fumes to him. Now, by today's end, he would be acquainted with a whole new world of frustration.
Teammates.
The few relationships he has were forged slowly and painstakingly, but today he was going to be abruptly thrown together with three strangers and expected to risk his life both for and with them. He knew this day was inevitable, and he never prepared himself for the social aspect of. Everything else he prepared for except the little part about getting along with his teammates without killing them or getting them killed by indirect means. The village had made him an outsider, that was fine with him, but now it was drawing him in and forcing him to stick his neck out for the very people who had shunned him to the outer fringes. That is the only way he can be allowed to survive through this new and harsher stage of his life that began when a Konoha hitai-ate was placed trustingly in his hands.
Taking a sip of tea, his eyes drift down to the middle of the floor where that damn hunk of metal lays like a stray sock. He doesn't remember how it got there, though he should probably start paying it more attention. For an inanimate object it has an odd tendency off getting away from him at embarrassing times. Almost as if the very symbol of the village were mocking him as well.
Desperate for a brighter mood, he thinks back to last night's venture with the kage bunshins. The ease with which he used them was almost a paradox within the cross-section of social anxieties that defined his daily routines. A paradox in that it, at the time, it made no sense for him to feel so at ease among so many bodies. He ran the handseals, channelled an unnecessarily large portion of chakra and suddenly he was at the heart of a crowd. The last place he would ever want to be. For an instant he felt the old impulse to duck out of sight, but he stopped upon seeing that all those around him shared the exact same impulse. The same fear. When the whole lot of them flinched at the initial sight of one another, he couldn't help but chuckle and sigh in relief. A number of them did the same. There were no hostile minds and accusing glares in this crowd.
However, his enchantment with the use of the kage bunshins led him to commit one grievous error when assisting Iruka: he forgot that the jutsu was only used by specialists and would be easy to trace. Not many shinobi are capable of using it to the extent that he did. If Iruka or anybody else were curious about who had assisted in last night's battle, all they would need to do is run a background check on those few who have permits to use the jutsu.
But if anybody did manage to trace it back to him, then what would they persecute him for? Aiding a comrade in subduing a traitor? Hardly a crime, but nonetheless, it will cast greatly unwanted attention on him. It is suffocation for one who only wants to keep himself to himself.
He probably should have known that no good deed goes unpunished, but then what would have become of Iruka?
Later, with pink and orange morning light just starting to fill his apartment, Naruto stands in front of the bathroom mirror wearing nothing but a white towel around his waist. He runs his hands through his damp hair and looks at his reflection framed on all sides by the foggy condensation of the shower steam. Looking himself in the eye, he notices a detail in his features that, though subtle, is unnerving on the face of someone so young.
An aspect of frailty.
His wild red hair, sharp blue eyes, modestly tanned skin and claw-like whisker marks are a strong testament of youth and energy. What offsets all of it are the subtle stress lines under his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. The lines commonly seen on the weary faces of harried old men and haunted veterans of bloody battles. His blue eyes, brimming with strong but controlled intent, are underlined by shadows that almost seem to be at odds with the glint of spirit.
An articulate summary of any person's life can be gleaned from the lines and contours of one's face. The most striking example that comes to mind is of old man Sarutobi whose face is an elegantly overwrought tapestry weaved by decades of stress. Of the thousands of people the old man has been responsible for, the redhead wonders if any of the lines on his face were caused by worry over just one person. Maybe a son, a wife, a hated enemy, or even the jinchuuriki of the world's most powerful demon have left at least one stress line on his weary face. The redhead is still young and his face, like a new canvass, is only beginning to capture the silent but grim story of his life in harsh strokes.
What will the finished work look like?
He wipes a wet hand across the mirror and terminates the moment of introspection.
Since today is meant only for team allotments, he dresses in casual clothing without his customary weapon and item holsters. He throws on a baggy charcoal-coloured t-shirt with a white leaf symbol on the chest and crimson gym pants. Before he sets out, he has one last step in his morning routine to finish. Kicking his hitai-ate out of the way, he positions himself in the middle of the apartment and assumes the stolid first phase of a taijutsu kata. He holds it and crushes his eyes shut in concentration; from out of the neck of his shirt rises small wisps of pungently black smoke. Or at least something akin to smoke, for it passes up over his face and nostrils without eliciting a choke or a cough from him. As if it were darkness in a gaseous form arising from someplace where it is so deep and concentrated that it has taken on substance. From where it emerges comes something solid that crawls down his back and presses against the inside of his shirt with the shape of a spinal column. The blunt end of a black chain pokes out from under his shirt shyly before abruptly spilling out and trailing up through the air. It hangs weightlessly above him with its end jutting downwards like the hooking slope of a scorpion's stinger.
He remains motionless while the demonic links hover over him patiently. Then, with eyes still closed, he bursts into a lethally quick taijutsu sequence that ends with a devastating flourish from the chain which whips around his body and comes a fraction of an inch from dashing off the knuckle of his reclining fist. He opens his eyes and looks up at the head of the chain which is curled in a manner that makes it seem almost anthropomorphic and animal-like. He chuckles and holds out a fist; the chain responds by gently bumping against it.
A minute later he is out the door, and half a minute after that he burst back in with a grumble of annoyance and scoops his always wayward hitai-ate off the floor and stuffs it in his pocket.
~ O ~
End of Chapter
Author's Note: Hey all, how's stuff going? I don't have much to say except that I have been confronted a few times by valid complaints about how I write this story in the present tense. I know that almost everybody is used to reading literature written in the past tense and I hope that is the only reason why people find fault with my style. But if the general consensus is that most people prefer the past tense, then I will gladly reformat the whole story in that style. Let me know what you all want.
Thanks for reading and please review.