Author's Note: WOW 68 HITS IN 1 DAY! I LOVE YOU GUYS! THAT WAS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. YOU'VE MADE MY ENTIRE MONTH!

Yes a whole month has gone by and I'm STILL smiling about the number of hits this story got last January. Thank you all for reading it or at least taking the time to scope this fanfic out. I appreciate it. I will warn you now. This chapter is relatively slow compared to the previous ones, but exceedingly important none the less. I don't write filler chapters: it's not my style, but is does make it hard to maintain a fast pace chapter to chapter. IF anyone has any advice on how to mitigate this problem please let me know ^_^

I do not own Vampire Princess Miyu or Naruto and I never will.

The Forest of the Dolls

Obscurity

"Goodbye Sakura," Takumi said getting the door for her, like a gentlemanly vision of Sasuke. She blushed and she was sure he noticed. Willing her cheeks not be pink, she turned around.

"Again thank you for allowing me to stay for so long." She laughed uneasily. Somehow two and a half hours had passed during the time she'd been in the doll shop trying on kimonos and conversing with Takumi and his father. "Oh no problem dear, come again any time you want."

Sakura's grin widened. "I will." She gave Takumi a pleasant smile before stepping out into the cold rain. She started off in the direction of the inn. She was not at all looking forward to entering her strange room, but she was cold and her shirt was quickly soaking through.

"Tag you're it!" a boy shouted leaping over a rock to avoid being tagged back. His friend seeing he'd missed turned to chase a third boy who was standing a few feet away, but the third boy darted away too quickly, so the child decided to seek retribution by tagging the one who'd tagged him. Except when he turned back toward the rock his friend was gone. He ran up to the rock, which sat at the top of a small knoll.

He sprinted to the top, leaning against the rock panting for breath. The three of them had been playing for hours and the dark sky was getting darker.

This side of the hillock he was looking down was steep and declined into the forest that surrounded the village. Halfway down the slope stood the one who'd tagged him, staring off into the trees, distracted. In other words it was time to get him. He flew down the slope, his thin soaked jacket sticking to him. He stretched out his hand.

Success! The boy grinned triumphantly, except the older of the two was distracted and staring off into the trees with a far away expression.

"Toshiro?"

"Toshiro?" He poked the older boy.

"Toshiro!" The boy blinked hard as he was shaken roughly.

"I tagged you." The smaller of the two gazed up at him, a sheen of worry glazing his grey eyes.

Toshiro rubbed his sopping hair out of his eyes. He was getting chills standing in the rain. "Toshiro you're it," the third boy said from slightly behind him.

"I saw something." Toshiro said staring into the trees. "Wanna check it out?"

"We can't go in there!" the boy who tagged him cried. "Daddy said saw a demon in those trees."

"Phht!" Toshiro snorted. "He was just saying that to scare you-"

"Those are just old wives tales anyways." The third boy said.

The boy clinging to Toshiro's arm shook his head. "Daddy said he saw sompthin last night. Daddy said it has a garden of singing trees. Daddy-"

"Singing trees?" Toshiro looked down at the shorter boy excitedly. "Want to go look for them?"

"Daddy said it's dangerous. A man never came back. Daddy said he'd 'tan my hide if I were to go looking for them.'"

"You're just being a Baby."

"Toshiro?" Momichi turned to the other boy. "Hikaru tell him not to."

"You're being a baby Momichi." Hikaru repeated his friend.

"No, I'm not a baby. I just don't want to get in trouble."

"Only babies are afraid of their Daddies," Hikaru countered.

"I'm not going in there and you can't neither, because your Daddy'll kill you."

"Fine." Toshiro shrugged. "Go home. Go home and tell Daddy. I'm not afraid of him."

Toshiro wrenched his arm away from Momichi's grip. "Come on Hikaru. The baby can find his way home." Together the two boys dashed into the trees cackling with glee: the falling rain hiding them from view. There was a faint popping noise. He wasn't sure how he heard it over the continuous rain, but he did. The hairs on his neck stood on end and he shivered.

"Toshiro come back!"

For a long while Momichi stood, staring at the forest in a strange mixture of fear, curiosity, and anger. He jumped at the sound of a loud snap. "I'm not a baby!" he shouted at the trees. His voice was drowned out by the rain. He wiped the cold water from his pale face.

Snap-The rain suddenly got ten degrees colder. He turned around gazing into the trees a hill away. Another branch snapped to his left and a small sob escaped his lips. They were going to be in so much trouble.

"Toshiro!" he shouted into the rain as he trembled. Another snap. He jumped, whimpering. "Hikaru!"

SNAP- this time followed by a peel laughter floating through the trees.

"This isn't funny anymore! You're gonna be in a lot of TROUBLE!" The threat didn't ease his fear or the cold chill that covered him in an icy blanket, but it made him feel a little better, anyhow. He could go home, but if he did- snap! Momichi jumped, small hands tightening into fists. He was going to beat his older brother when he came out of the woods. It didn't matter if he was two years older or not. This game wasn't funny anymore….

There was a soft thud followed by a clatter directly behind him.

Momichi whirled about freezing in surprise. A puppet a little smaller than himself himself, with knee-high brown boots, plaid overalls with a patch on one knee and a tear on the other, strapped over a long white sleeve shirt, under a light plaid jacket, and a night cap perched precariously on his head was sitting at the foot of the large boulder. Its bright blue eyes gazed at him over a round cork shaped nose.

Momichi smiled at himself sheepishly, his fear dissipating immediately. The puppet wasn't the least bit scary. Curious, Momichi squatted down to the puppet's level and his fingers lightly brushed the doll's hair. It was dry. Smiling, he gazed at the puppet and reached to set the hat more erect on the dampening hair, when small narrow wooden fingers closed around his slender wrist in a vice like grip. He wrenched his arm back but couldn't break free. The puppet's light blue eyes flashed and glowed.

"Don't touch the hat."

In the middle of Third Shinobi War the brave, heroic ninja fighting for the glory of his country, falls to the sopping ground gasping in pain. With the last of his strength the ninja reaches into his holster to slay his enemy with a well aimed pinecone. The roar of pounding rain was split by a scream and the two ninjas once again two young boys, raced through the trees toward the heart wrenching sound.

"Momichi!" Hikaru shouted as the he breeched the tree line and ran up the rocky slope of the hill they'd been playing tag on not long before.

"Shit," Toshiro cursed behind him. "Momichi, this isn't funny? You got ten seconds to show yourself!"

"Momichi! Where are you?" Hikaru shouted squinting through his dripping brown hair and the rain. They had several mistakes already that day, the least of which being sneaking out of their houses to play in the freezing rain, when winter's chill was weeks if not days away. He looked at Toshiro who was shouting for Momichi to leave his hiding spot and apologize for scaring them. He didn't want the cost of their mistakes to be his best friend's younger brother.

"Momichi!"

Ten seconds passed and Momichi didn't appear.

It was with trepidation that Sakura pushed open her bedroom door with a steaming bowl of soup from the bar in her hand.

The window was closed, the curtains no longer dripping, and her pillow was stained a dark green where it had been drowned by the window over the bed. The window had closed during her absence and the only reminders of the event were the wet curtains dripping onto her water stained pillow.

Heaving a sigh she set the soup down on the night stand, or she would have if the white disk that had "scorpion" written across it had not been there. She nudged it to the side setting her warm bowl down. She picked up the strange artefact again. Worrying her lip between her teeth she closed the bedroom door, mulling over her bizarre predicament. The night she'd found it was the night strange things started happening in this room. For some reason she had the feeling that this simple round white thing in her hand was significant. She glanced around the small bedroom in perplexed nervousness.

The room was eerily quiet and as she stood rubbing circles along the edges of the disc in her hands she wished something would happen, just to end the suddenly overbearing silence. Maybe the window would burst open again so the crescendo of rain could drown out the silence.

At that moment she hated the room, hated the inn, and hated her mission. How she suddenly wished to be anywhere else.

"Well?" she finally demanded. "Aren't you going to do something?"

Nothing happened. 'Figures' she thought grumpily. "And you're talking to a window." The voice in her head which had been silent for the majority of her time in the room chimed in. Sakura smiled grimly at the words. She must have sounded crazy talking to a window. She probably was crazy. So she fell silent preferring to stand and glare at the window.

"I'm going… to brush my teeth," she announced abruptly. With that she strode into the bathroom, pricking her ears for any sound discernable over the sink.

She returned to the bedroom, to find nothing. Maybe the widow had been another dream. Maybe she'd been sleepwalking… maybe she'd been hallucinating, or maybe she needed to get out this room and find a place where she could analyze the situation rationally.

Where could she go? The sun was going down soon. She'd spent an entire day at the doll shop. She still couldn't fathom how time could travel so quickly. Maybe it something to with the fact that the old owner of the shop had millions of fabulous kimonos or maybe it was because he had a fabulous looking son or it could have been a combination of the two, but she quickly pushed the second possibility from her mind. Takumi may have looked like Sasuke and have spoken like Sasuke, but he wasn't Sasuke.

Giving the window one last dirty look for good measure she slumped onto the bed and ate her steaming soup surrounded by an abnormally thick silence.

Sleep swung like a pendulum between fretful awareness and lurid dreams. When Sakura opened her eyes in the morning in dire need of using the bathroom she wasn't surprised to find larges bags under her eyes as she gazed at herself in the mirror.

She splashed water on her face, feeling a little less groggy. She patted her face dry with a small fluffy green hand towel and stepped back into the bedroom. What an awful night. What was it about this room that made it so weird? It was as if she wasn't alone. She was sure she had heard voices and footsteps last night. There were times she could vaguely recall sitting up, knife in hand looking for someone or something in her room; asking if anyone was there or threatening people she couldn't to get out. What was troubling was she couldn't remember if she'd really been awake in those moments or if those were just dreams.

'Maybe the room's haunted?' she mentally scoffed. Ghosts weren't real. She walked over to the bed and froze. She'd been wrong. Something was out of place. Something round and white with red letters brazened across it was lying on the floor where it wasn't supposed to be. She picked it up and glared at it. Everything weird started when she found this thing.

She glanced out the window. Everything was grey and wet, but the rain seemed to have finally stopped. Today would be a good day to visit the clinic and see if Sakana needed any help.

Tossing the circle onto the pillow she reached into her bag and pulled out her apron. She was walking to the door still tying it around her waist, when the faint clatter of something falling to the floor reached her ears. She looked over her shoulder to see the disc was no longer on her blankets.

Sakura's walk to the clinic was different that morning. Her hackles rose the moment she stepped into the frigid air. Instinctually her hand was poised above her holster. In paranoia she compulsively swivelled her head left to right, right to left and even turned around more than once feeling that something was about to get her. There was nothing there. The street behind her and the few alleys between the houses were vacant and deserted. The few villagers that were out were hastily making last minute preparations for winter and they hardly spared her a glance as they went about their business. Yet as her gaze passed over the houses searching for the source of her discomfort she fancied she saw curtains abruptly close, and again in peripheral vision.

Nothing ever jumped out at her and no one threatened her. Indeed it seemed she was truly paranoid, that between her shadowy dreams, nefarious window, and peculiar white disc she'd lost it, but deep down she knew such gut feelings meant something and that this could not simply be chalked up wariness and caution. Disgruntled by the atmosphere and the inability to detect what was wrong, she stepped into the clinic and like always the bells rang to announce her entry into the clinic.

A nurse rather than Sakana was sitting at the front desk. She was probably a little older than Sakura with mousy brown hair. She looked up from the stack of papers in her hands.

"Can I help you?" She asked with a solemn monotone. She was the exact opposite of Sakana who was always in high spirits and conversing with whoever happened to be in the room. "I'm looking for Sakana."

"Yes, well I'm afraid she's out at the moment."She stated in a tone that suggested it should have been fairly obvious. "There was a town meeting last night and as of yet none of them have returned."

"Do you know when they'll be back?" Sakura asked. Unnameable emotions flickered in the nurse's eyes. "It's rare for such meetings to last so long. I'm not sure what the holdup is, but I imagine she'll be back soon."

"I wanted to know if she needed any help." Sakura said feeling a lit irritated. Now what was she supposed to do: go back to the room? Maybe she'd visit the doll shop. Takumi and his father enjoyed her company. However she'd spent the entirety of the previous day with them and dolls really weren't her cup of tea. Maybe she could stop in briefly to say 'hi'.

"No, I'm afraid not, but I'll be more than happy to tell her you dropped by," she said in such a way that she in fact would be more than unhappy to do so, but none the less the nurse picked up a pen and note pad and jotted down what Sakura could only assume was reminder to tell Sakana she'd dropped in.

Narrowing her eyes ever so slightly Sakura smiled and with concealed force, pleasantly smiled and said "Thank you very much," before turning on her heel and stepping back outside into the brisk cold with its persistent chill of a different sort.

Peeved at the nurse-what the Hell had been her issue anyway?- Sakura meandered toward the doll shop. But as she got closer to her destination, the hairs began to stand on the back of her neck once more and the feeling of being watched returned and she was soon all but making a beeline for the doll shop door. She froze in her tracks as she stood on the wooden step just outside. The store was closed and no familiar chakra signatures were inside. Perhaps Takumi and his father were at the meeting as well then?

She looked at the inn, although more specifically she looked at her bedroom window. Now what? She asked herself. Behind her down one of the side streets she heard voices and turning to look she spotted Takumi and his father approaching the store.

Sakura, suppressed the urge to fidget for the air between the three of them felt tense. Which was weird. Takumi had greeted her in his usual velvety deadpan voice and his father as always smiled at her and gave her a cordial "hello," but there was something off about the interchange and it made her cautious.

"Will you be joining us for brunch?" Takumi's father asked as he unlocked the shop door and held it open for his son to pass through. "Uh, no." Sakura frowned. "I happened be to out and I just got back from the clinic and I thought I'd stop by. I had no idea you were closed."

"Ah yes. There was a meeting this morning and we were summoned to participate. Winter is upon and we're expecting a shipment of goods, but there is concern that the convoy may have been delayed by the rains we've had, especially since there's more rain to come."

Sakura nodded, her brow furrowed. If those herbs Tsunade sent her to get didn't arrive her mission would be a failure. Well in part anyways. She did have majority of what was on her list, still she hated the possibility of leaving with her mission only partially completed. She didn't want to let Tsunade down, but her village needed her and she couldn't wait around indefinitely.

"There's more rain coming?" She asked unable to keep all her mounting frustration out of her voice. "There's always rain especially during the fall and early days of winter. It's supposed to snow in the middle of the rain storms. It's a fantastic sight to see lightning aching across the sky in a flurry, not that I've had the chance to see it myself personally, but I have heard that it's a great way to start a winter."

"That sounds very cool," Sakura conceded. Together they stood in brief silence interrupted only by the soft rustling of Takumi in the workshop.

"If you're feeling peckish you're more than welcome to join us for a late breakfast. How does rice and steamed chicken dumplings sound?" The old man asked with a wrinkled smile. "Actually I ate before I left I the inn. I'm not all that hungry, but thank you for the offer."

"Oh no I insist." The old man said. "It was my wife's recipe for dumplings."

"Takumi." He called and after a moment his dark haired son appeared from a side door. "Why don't you take a break and see to our guest? Your project can wait till later." His father passed them and entered a side room.

"Our house is connected to the shop. That door connects to our kitchen," Takumi explained as he followed her gaze. Sakura blinked and stared at him. He was observant, too observant for an ordinary civilian.

"We don't have anything new made that you would interesting, but I came across a kimono the other day. It was buried in a trunk. I think Father may have forgotten it, if you want to have a look."

Sakura shrugged. "It sounds really nice, but I really don't want to-"

Takumi gave her a light frown. "Father love's the company. And there a very few people in this village my age who don't try to fight me or put moves on me." Sakura raised an eyebrow at his choice of words, but she believed him. He stayed within the confines of the doll shop with his father and that wasn't typical adolescent male behaviour, so there had to be a reason for it. "You're the only person in this village who hasn't tried anything on me," he continued.

They were walking toward the back of the shop and they stopped at the left hand door where the kimonos were stored. "So stop worrying about ruining our breakfast because you're not." Sakura offered him a small contrite smile. Takumi faced the door. "Shall we?"

He turned the handle, but it didn't budge. "Hmm, I don't recall locking it." He jiggled it again, frowning as it didn't turn. "Let me try," Sakura offered. She grasped the door handle and removed something form her apron pocket. She raised her hand holding the small object and put against the lock. Seconds later she jiggled the handle and pushed the door open, smiling at Takumi's wide eyed stare.

"Ninja," she smiled holding up her hand to show him the lock pick. After a moment he smiled faintly and shaking his head in amusement stepped through the door and flicked on the lights.

In the centre of the room was a mirror with a burgundy kimono draped over it. Takumi strode over and held it up for her to see. It was absolutely breath taking. It was her favourite colour. Embroidered across the silky surface of the fabric were golden blossoms attached to gilded branches, with their petals blowing through the burgundy air by a nonexistent breeze. It really did seem like the gold petals were being whisked away by the wind; an optical illusion caused by the shifting of the cloth as Takumi stepped toward her and held it out for her to take. Wanting to touch it and run the fabric through her fingers she quickly returned her lock pick to her apron pocket, but as she did so her fingers brushed something cool and hard: something that she hadn't felt there before.

Her heart thumped, as her fingers slowly closed around the object. An object that's shape and texture had been burned into her memory the last few days. A chill crept over her. Takumi must have noticed something was wrong because he asked if she thought the kimono was ugly enough to sicken her

"No." She slowly withdrew the white disc from her pocket and stared at the bright red kanji with wide eyes. Takumi draped the kimono back over the mirror and took the circle from her puzzled as to what had come over her. Bemused, he offered his hand out to take the round object from her. After a second she placed it in his hand with cold fingers. He gazed at her. Her eyes were still wide and her face was a startling shade of white. Her shoulders were tense and her posture rigid. One hand was balled into a tight fist as she stood staring at him.

He glanced down and a something flashed across his. The face of the man to whom this little disc belonged flashed across his mind's eye. He knew the origins of this object and what it symbolized.

"What is it?" He asked in a puzzled voice as he stared at it. Flipping over in his hands and turning about. "I don't know." Sakura answered. She seemed to be calming down. He frowned at the round a moment longer. It seemed more than just the man's memory lingered in the village if she had come across this. He gave back to her. "You don't look too good. Why don't you get some rest and I'll tell Father you were feeling unwell," which didn't appear to far from the truth.

"What does it mean?" She asked after a moment.

"What?"

"What does scorpion mean?" Sakura reiterated.

"I have no idea," Takumi answered as he found an empty hanger to drape the kimono on the rack with. "Oh." She slid it back into her pocket. It was obvious she believed he was clueless.

"I think I will go home." She said. She didn't want to leave. She didn't want to go back to the apartment, not with the disc in her pocket, but at the same time she wasn't quite ready to reveal what had taken place in the apartment. Takumi nodded, and gently led her out of the room and the shop. She smiled at him as he held the shop door open for her. His lips quirked slightly and he told her to be careful before shutting the door softly behind her.

"Takumi." He turned to see his father standing behind him his usual smile nothing more than a grim line. "What happened?" the old man asked.

"I think that accursed red-head still has some fight left in him."