Chapter Six: All is Revealed...?

"We are not trapped by our thoughts. What we generally do, however, is create thoughts that trap us."
― Joshua David Stone

. . .

Two hooded figures crouched on the edge of the battlefield, watching the fight unfold before them with great seriousness.

The larger of the two figures, the one to the right, turned to his smaller counterpart. "Chinatsu is awfully small, isn't she? Are you sure you want to do this, Akane-sama?"

The second figure nodded slowly, her violet eyes narrowed with concentration. "Of course. She's anxious to prove herself. Who am I deny her that chance? I will allow her to fight and see how she does. Then, we will judge her capabilities as a ninja...

"If she lives that long, that is."

The first figure swallowed, pale brows knit with worry. "But, Akane-sama-!"

Akane raised her arm, pale skin standing out sharply in the shadows around them. "Silence, Ryouta. You will not interfere with my daughter. I am the only one that has a say in her future."

Ryouta forced himself to look away from Akane's harsh face. "Yes... sister."


My mouth opened wide as I barely managed to gasp, "I- what?!"

The girl winked at me, sticking out her tongue, "You'll find out soon enough, gaki."

She disappeared into thin air like a dispelled summon, leaving me completely and utterly alone on this barren-

Shoreline?!

The genjutsu had been dispelled, revealing the familiar craggy shoreline of what appeared to be the south-west edge of the island. From where I stood, I could see the Harry Tree, a local landmark from the Founder's Era. Rumor has it that a family of cannibals had once taken refuge beneath it, and had lured their victims to their imminent demise from within it... but they hadn't been seen for years. Rumor has it, that if you stand beneath the Harry Tree in the dead of night, you will be able to see headless bodies swinging from it's branches. The founders of Kirigakure had kept it far outside the village boundaries for that very reason- it was likely possessed by the vengeful dead. As far as I knew, the Harry Tree was roughly twenty kilometes from the village. When I had departed from home, I had been in what was almost the center of Kirigakure. It was amazing- and a little disturbing- to find out that I had managed to get so far from home without knowing it.

And near such a morbid site...

"You figured that out pretty quick, little girl," A familiar, ambiguous voice murmured from behind me.

No, it couldn't be...

I willed myself not to jump in surprise, preferring to pretend I had been aware of their presence the entire time. I slow turned around to face the owner of said voice and almost choked.

That wasn't who I had been expecting.

"About time you came out of your hiding place. You must be a pretty pathetic excuse for a ninja if I could sense you this entire time." I breathed, lying through my teeth.

"Ano- Chinatsu-san, please don't say such mean things about me!" My uncle whimpered, pale arms flailing as crocodile tears formed in the corners of his eyes.

I sighed, burying my face in the palms of my hands. My uncle was a complete and utter simpering fool. He was the true heir to the head of the Hozuki clan, but was too soft-hearted and silly to be anything other than a low-ranking member. My mother could hardly tolerate him, and they had been raised together, forever competing for the position of clan head.

Then again, my mother could hardly tolerate anyone.

Not even me...

As if she she had heard my thoughts, my mother's chakra signature suddenly appeared nearby, a tell-tale sign of chakra cloaking. My original assumption had been correct then- my mother had been the one to speak, not my uncle.

"Speak of the devil," I muttered.

"What were you saying about me, gaki?!" My mother hissed, cold fingers wrapped around my neck.

I glared at her, completely ignoring her question. Until she explained what was going on, I wasn't going to give her anything. My business was mine and mine alone. If she wanted me to come clean, she'd have to do the same herself.

My mother released my neck, eyes narrowed dangerously. She reared back and slapped my cheek as hard as she could. I did not flinch. My mother had always been this way, preferring physical means of punishment for disrespect rather than verbal ones. I had expected this from her.

It didn't hurt, anyway.

Well, it did. A little. But I was never going to tell her that. When you fought against my mother, no matter the medium- physical, mental, or verbal- it always turned into a battle of wills. My mother did not loose because she never relented, and neither would I.

"Fancy seeing you here," I murmured flatly, "Care to explain, Mother?"

Her eyes flashed, but she did not move. My mother's body was very stiff and rigid, as if she was bracing herself for a reaction of some kind. As odd as this was, I thought nothing of it. My mother did not show fear. Instead, she showed caution.

"Ano, Akane-sama-" Uncle began, high voice cutting through my thoughts like a well-aimed kunai.

My mother raised her hand, effectively silencing him with a single gesture. Her hands snaked around my shoulders, well-manicured fingertips digging into the delicate flesh of my collarbones. "Quiet, Ryouta. This is my daughter, not yours. Go back to your fat child and coddle her, but don't try to do the same with mine."

I stared at her. While my mother and I were very much one and the same in our opinions on Suijin, my uncle's daughter, I couldn't believe she had pointedly claimed me as her own. She seemed to prefer to pretend that I didn't exist rather than treat me like her own flesh and blood.

What a bizarre day it has been...

Uncle's mouth dropped open and I sighed, not wanting to have to deal with a sniveling thirty-year-old man. My mother had an innate talent for disappearing when the waterworks started...

Suijin's father was certainly an odd man. He was so soft and frail, yet he never seemed to have been defeated in battle. My Uncle seemed to honestly care for his daughter in ways unfamiliar to me. He loved to stuff her with food and let her skip out on training, as long as she was happy. Suijin was free to do as she pleased, while I wasn't allowed outside of the Hozuki compound without supervision...

I am so totally screwed.

Not only had I left the compound without supervision, I had managed to get twenty kilometers away from the village itself before anyone had stopped me. I had never been this far away before. And now, there was a dead Kaguya in my bedroom, who's blood had definitely stained my carpet. Not only was I in trouble- I was dead.

I had never understood why my parents were against allowing me outside of the compound. I knew it wasn't one of those "clan things" because it only seemed to effect me. I could do whatever I wanted inside our property line, but the moment I stepped outside it everyone was on edge. My father, who was the most easy-going out of anyone in my family, would instantly stiffen and rush after me, but leave my cousins where they stood. It was completely illogical and had never once been explained.

As per usual, nothing was making any sense.

"You didn't answer my question, Mother," I drawled.

My mother scowled at me, facial features contorting into that of a blood thirsty demon for a fraction of a second. Her fingersnails dug deeper into the flesh of my skin, but I didn't feel a thing. Chakra depletion was beginning to take a heavy toll on me, and I could feel myself slipping deeper into a state of dehydration as the seconds ticked by. The longer I was forced to stand, the more weakened I would grow.

Not good... At this rate, I'll be out of it before we reach the compound.

"Move your sorry ass, Chinatsu." She barked, pushing me forward with the bottom of her sandal-clad foot.

Typical. Won't tell me a damn thing.

My snarky thoughts were abruptly cut off as my body titled forward, vision blurring. I collapsed on the ground, gasping for air as my heart pounded erratically.
Water! I need water!

Everything went black.


I jerked upwards, gasping for breath. My stomach churned and I felt almost sticky with perspiration. It was almost as if I had just awoken from a nightmare.

But I hadn't.

This was real.

My mother stood over me, lanky figure blocking out any source of light behind her. Her eyes were dark, her pupils dilated enough to cover almost her entire iris. Her icy breath fanned out across my face with each exhalation, moving my bangs ever so slightly.

"You're grounded," She said, finally, "And... no plums for a week."

What?! That's it? Is she joking or...?

"Are you sure?" I rasped, throat dangerously dry.

She wrinkled her nose, somehow managing to make an ordinarily cute expression look snide when she used it. I mirrored her expression, widening my eyes and scrunching up my nose until I looked just like her. It was almost horrifying how much we looked alike, even in the dark like this. My father had always said that I took after my mother. In some ways, I supposed I had. We both had the same violet eyes and windburned cheeks, but my skin was darker than my mother's bone-white, almost pallid complexion. Her hair was a shock of bright white whereas mine was more of a muted, fading blue. My mother looked more like a ghost than a human being, with blood-red lips and long, white eyelashes, a sneer almost always etched onto her face. She was terrifying and gruesome, and I hated her.

She was nothing like me, and I was nothing like her. We weren't the same and we never would be. I hated being compared to her, and being called "Little Akane" as if I didn't have a name already. I would never be my mother, no matter how badly everyone else wanted me to be...

Not even if she wanted me to.

"Of course I'm sure. I'm always right. You know that." My mother drawled, sickly sweet voice jolting me out of my thoughts.

I jerked away from her, slumping back onto the unfamiliar cot. This wasn't my room, I was sure of it. I wasn't even sure this was my house, now that I thought about it. The ceiling was slated with smooth, wooden planks whereas my bedroom had stucco-patterned whitewash.

"Ungrateful gaki," Mother spat, fingernails digging into my wrist as she spoke.

Suddenly, it dawned on me. We must be in her room. Not the room she shared with my father, but her personal room, the one she had occupied as "princess" of the clan before marriage. This was my mother's personal suite, occupied exclusively by her. No one, not even the maid, was allowed inside. This room was effectively my mother's inner sanctum, and she wanted no one but herself inside it.

Clearly, she was going to kill me. Why else would she have brought me here? Not out of love, that's for sure. My mother didn't love anyone- not even my father as far as I knew.

"Stop looking at me like that, Chinatsu!" She barked.

Something about the way she said that enraged me. What right did she have to speak me like this?!

"Like what? Like you've looked at me my entire life? With disgust?!" I shouted, attempting to push her away.

She didn't move a single centimeter. Instead, she froze in place, staring at me with her wide, dark eyes.

"Chinatsu... is that what you really think?" She whispered, fingernails threatening to tear through the delicate flesh around my wrists if I let her push any harder.

I struggled to push her hands off of me before simply liquifying my limbs and slipping away from her sickly pale form. I wasn't going to answer her, not until she answered me. It was none of her business, anyway.

I intended to run out of the room or maybe leak through the floorboard, but my body felt like it was on fire when I tried to move. Even in my liquidized form, I was weak and runny like day-old eggs.

"What did you do?!" I rasped, slumping against the floorboards like a stringless puppet.

My mother's shadow loomed over me, but she didn't move in the slightest. She just stood there, watching me with the sickest, most gruesome smirk I had ever seen on a human being etched on her doll-like face. She didn't even blink.

I shivered, feeling as if a thousand spiders were crawling beneath my skin, but could hardly move from where I laid on the floor. She'd kill me now, I was sure of it. I could see it in her eyes- fragments of insanity were finally coming together.

"Listen, you ungrateful piece of shit," Mother growled, "I'll say this only once: You passed."

"Passed what? I never took any tests!"

She was referring to the girl and the fire, that much I knew, but it couldn't have been a test. A genjutsu, definitely, but not a test. Putting me through a trivial, insignificant test using such a high level genjutsu was an honest waste. My mother didn't like to waste things- except people, that is- and I honestly doubted she would even bother wasting anything on me. My entire life had been structured simply, planned by her from the sidelines and executed flawlessly. I had been given the resources to live- food, water, clothing and the like- but no extras. My mother didn't believe in trivial, pointless items like toys or fancy clothes. She had always given me what I needed and almost never what I wanted in order to make certain that nothing would ever be wasted. I had books about ninja wars and weaponry but none of the delicate dolls girls my age seemed to adore. My entertainment was not truly meant to be entertainment. It was meant for its single, utilitarian purpose- to make me stronger. This way, my mother's efforts would be repaid in full.

It was the process of Equivalent Exchange.

"Tch, don't play dumb with me. I know you're smarter than this. If you weren't, you wouldn't have figured it out by now," My mother drawled, finally coming into the light.

I sighed with relief as she came into better view. She was much less disturbing this way, when I could see her face and laugh inwardly at the fact that if you squinted, it looked like she had no eyebrows. At this angle, my mother looked almost normal, like the sort of mother that made bentos and sewed dresses and didn't call their daughters "little shit" more often than their own names.

But then she smiled, I remembered she wasn't.

"You passed," She repeated, picking at her jagged teeth with the edge of a well manicured fingernail.

"You've said that already," I hissed, struggling to push myself up off the floor.

My mother's cool hands wrapped around my ankle and she dragged me backwards across the floorboards, friction burning my back.

"Shut up for a minute and let me fuckin' talk," She growled.

I did.

My mother dug in her pockets for a moment, pulling out a package of cigarettes. She extracted one from the package before spitting out just enough fire to light the end. Smoke filled the room seconds later and I gagged, covering my nose with the collar of my nightdress.

Disgusting!

"I'll explain, then." She said, finally. "Your father was very against you becoming a ninja from a young age. It was because of your small, weak body that he kept you out of the Academy this year. You've been sickly most of your life, Chinatsu, yet you are so set on becoming a shinobi that you couldn't care less about what will happen to you if you try. The Mizukage saw this and devised a simple plan to test your worth."

She paused for a moment, taking a huge breath of smoke before continuing. "I agreed automatically, and we decided to test you. As you likely deduced, there is, in fact, a war going on amongst us Kiri nin, but you didn't go out into it. You were trapped in a genjutsu before you even awoke, thanks to one of the Akiyama Clan's finest men. Suijin and Sumiko were diversions, but they were real. Sumiko knew ahead of time, but Suijin didn't."

I fumed, fists clenched tightly as I struggled to keep my composure. My own father thought I wasn't ninja material!? That in itself was far more insulting than this 'test' or the genjutsu. I could live with deceit, but being thought of as weak was a sin beyond compare. I despised weakness.

"You did alright, I guess. You didn't do much of anything except piss your opponent off, but you didn't die so I guess it's alright. You thought fast enough to save your skin, which is alright. You did better than I thought you would, but I would have let you die if you hadn't figured it out by then. Unfortunately, you did."

My right eyebrow twitched, but I didn't react beyond that. Truthfully, I didn't know how to. As ridiculous as this entire process sounded, I had no way of proving my mother wrong and was forced to simply take her word for it. The very idea of believing in her at all made my stomach churn with worry. My mother was not one to be taken lightly or underestimated, that was for sure.

She turned to open a window, spitting the remnants of the half-chewed cigarette outside before slamming it shut again. She wiped her mouth on the edge of her shirt sleeve and grinned at me, jagged teeth and all.

"You start Academy tomorrow, Little Shit. Don't be late."


Gaki- brat.

Ano- um (implies low self-esteem and nervousness)

Note: Kirigakure is on an island, so Chinatsu thinks of it as such. When she says "the island" she just means Kiri or the Land of Water itself.

Mark: Yes, it is a bloodline :) The Lava Release is simply a very difficult to control bloodline, and that's why she reacted that way to it. All of the jutsus in canon are either A or B ranked, and since she assumed the girl was her age, it surprised her a lot more than it would have if an adult had used it. The Lava Release is known for being exceptionally difficult to wield because of how powerful it is. As for how the Hydrification Technique can be used, I believe it could work in a similar manner to Zetsu's underground travel if the wielder is experienced enough at breaking down their body. Chinatsu isn't at that age yet, but she might figure it out eventually if she keeps at it. Great points from you, as always!

Thank you all for the great comments! I was really glad some of you liked my fight scene, and I hope I can improve on them so that they will be better soon. So, so sorry for the lateness! I was sick and had writers block at the same time, joy.

-MSM-