The Truth Comes Out
NOTE: Miyo's telling Naruto and Neji has her hesitating a little and them interrupting a lot, so this will mostly be told third-person following the little five-year-old.
Miyo sat in the middle of her living room, playing with her stuffed animals. Koga walked in, the motion causing her to look up.
"I've got another mission, sis; I might be gone a few days. Be good, okay?"
With an accepting nod, she went back to her toys. Then she picked up her toy cat and channeled some chakra into it, making it wave goodbye to her big brother. He walked out the door with a laugh.
She spent nearly the whole of the first day practicing her sewing. She was already pretty good, half of her stuffed animals she'd mended herself, but she wanted to try her hand at making stuffed animals of her own.
The next day, there was talk all around the village. Koga's squad had been ambushed on their way to the Village Hidden in the Grass! Their bodies had been found by a follow-up team, who'd evidently had difficulty ID-ing the exact ninja. One body was missing, and they couldn't figure out which one it was.
Miyo spent the entire rest of the day wandering in shock. She just couldn't quite grasp that her brother was dead.
That night, something roused her from sleep. She couldn't have said what, whether it was a sound or a feeling. Quietly, she padded towards the main room to see what the disturbance was.
At first, she saw nothing. Then a human-shaped shadow moved, turning around to reveal a white face glowing softly in the moonlight and inhuman yellow eyes.
"Ah, there you are!" the terror spoke in a smooth voice. "So you're Miyo Diatra."
Miyo was too scared to move, but she felt like she should say something. "Y-yes, and this is my house, so who are you?"
He came closer and knelt in front of her. That didn't make her feel any better, as now it was a much clearer look at his face than she could ever want. Dark marks were around his eyes, and she knew enough about color to guess that the marks were purple. Even scared, she was taking notes of details. "Forgive my manners. I am Orochimaru."
The next thing Miyo knew, he'd taken hold of her chin and was just studying her face. "Your dear brother has told me a great deal about you, and about how you could grow to become a strong ninja." A smile slowly spread over his face, but it did nothing to reassure her. "I look forward to seeing you as a genin."
Then he opened his mouth. His tongue snaked out impossibly long and stroked across her left cheek!
Miyo
Naruto yelled in outrage right about here, and Neji looked like he wanted to kill something.
I pointed at Neji's face. "That's what Gaara said when I told him. Anyway, that was when I screamed, he let go of my chin and I ran back to my room to hide under the covers. I'm guessing he left while I was running, because he didn't follow me. I didn't sleep a wink that night, and the next morning when I looked in the mirror I noticed that there was a shiny spot on the side of my face where he'd licked me. No amount of washing would make it go away."
Naruto started bobbing back and forth, looking at my left side. "It's gone now, though, right?"
"Yeah, but only because Gaara finally scoured it away with his sand. It was always there and you just had enough of your own problems that you didn't notice."
Neji was the next to ask a question. "So when did Naruto enter the picture?"
"Well…the night after that, I had awful nightmares about Orochimaru. And the same thing just kept happening, night after night, causing me to wake up screaming. I even tried making a doll copy of him, tying it up and hiding it away in a drawer, sort of symbolically trying to capture my nightmares. Not only didn't it work…but I'd get up the next morning to find that Little Orochimaru had somehow shed his bindings and had just about gotten the drawer open."
"Wait a minute," Neji stopped me. "That doll moved on its own?"
"Some of my dolls do. It's an energy thing – if a ninja has just the right sort of energy, my doll copy will move on its own." Little Naruto, come on over here.
Little Naruto ran over. He came to a full stop in the midst of the three of us and looked around at all of us.
Both boys looked shocked.
"The Jinjuriki energy is of the right sort to make the dolls come to life. Little Naruto moves on his own, and so does Little Gaara."
"So when did you finally decide to…"
"I'm getting there. It was actually while I was looking for a box with a lock and key so that I could lock Little Orochimaru up more securely. I saw Naruto there and noticed how everyone was avoiding him. So…"
"Um…Naruto?"
Naruto turned to look at the purple-haired girl who'd just addressed him.
"Um…can I move in with you? My house is too big for me to live in all alone."
"Is there a catch?"
Miyo shook her head. "I'm just getting lonely."
After a minute of silence… "Okay."
Miyo
"I was mostly thinking that not even Little Orochimaru would want to mess with Naruto, if everyone else avoided him. But then my first night at Naruto's house in the same room was the first good night of sleep I'd had since Orochimaru visited me. I don't claim to be a genius at age five, but it doesn't take a genius to get that Naruto's energy was keeping the nightmares at bay. I had to store Little Orochimaru's box in a different room, though, to keep the thumping from disturbing us." I looked over at the box, which was resting on a nearby table.
That was their cue to look at it. Neji used his Byakugan. "It's not moving around right now…but its, um, hands are set together above its chest."
"I thought as much. He's probably trying to will Little Sasuke into going for the key."
"Wait," Naruto cut me off. "Your Sasuke doll moves? I thought you said only certain energy patterns can get the dolls to move!"
"Orochimaru's energy wavelength is insidious. It's altering Sasuke's wavelength to closer match his own. And that's making Little Sasuke move around." I pointed at my Teacher Shelf. "Didn't you wonder why I'd tied Little Sasuke up?"
"Oh."
"Miyo," Neji looked worried, "where is the key?"
I lifted up a thin chain around my neck, showing the small key. "I've kept it with me. I didn't want to risk some moving toy going rogue on me. Their little hands might be good to carry a key, but they just point-blank aren't strong enough to break even a necklace chain without waking me up."
Neji held out his hand. It took me a second to get what he wanted. I unfastened the chain and placed the key, chain and all, into his hand.
"If I'm holding onto this, there's even less chance that your rogue ninja doll will escape his prison."
I smiled. "Thanks, Neji."
Naruto spoke slowly. "So the reason you've never gone for the chunin exams…"
I finished his sentence, "…is because I'm terrified that Orochimaru will come back for me upon my passing. I know there's a chance I'd fail the exam, but it's not a chance I want to take. That fear is also what kept me from becoming a genin for so long."
Naruto hugged me. So did Little Naruto, gripping my wrist. Neji didn't move right away, but when he did, it was to set his hand on top of mine.
That sent a tingle through me. It also left me wondering again, though I kept my mouth shut this time, what it was that Neji had been about to say to me so long ago.
A/N: I know, near the beginning of Running Scared, I said she made the doll and got the box when she was ten. I didn't like how long that took, and I'm just too lazy to go back and change that chapter.
