It was near 3 o clock when Arisa knocked on the door of Kakashi Hatake's ruin of a house. She had never actually been there before, but from what Cynthia had told her, it was a pigsty. From how it looked outside, Arisa half expected flying pigs to come out of the large chimney which sat atop it.
Kakashi answered the door.
"Arisa! What brings you here? House visits are rare…By the way, where did you disappear to after lunch? Your friends were worried about you…" Kakashi stepped aside, letting her enter his house. That was far easier than it had been to get Gaara's cooperation. They walked into what should have been his living room, but it was in a pitiful state. She didn't feel the least bit inclined to sit down on any of the seats in the room.
"I was in Suna."
She looked at Kakashi, who seemed to be slightly worried by her statement. "Why? I'd have thought that after everything that happened last night, you wouldn't be so eager to go rushing back there?"
"I spoke to Gaara."
Kakashi's brow furrowed. "Spoke to him about what?"
"Last night."
Kakashi raised an eyebrow, a teasing smile appearing on his face. "I was unaware that you were sexually involved with the Suna boy. Is it a sudden fling? You spent one or two nights together already?"
"I'm not talking about anything of the sort. I mean what happened at the festival." Arisa said, exasperatedly.
"And why would you think that he would know anything? I thought you'd ask your cousin for information." Kakashi said, as though he had no idea what she was about to say.
Arisa paused. Was she about to make a mistake? Maybe Kakashi had no role or knowledge of what had happened. What if she was about to do something which may as well lose his trust in her and her sanity?
"What happened last night?" She asked him.
"Last night? I thought we were all aware, it was a terrorist attack." Kakashi said, looking at her as though she had asked something incredibly stupid.
Arisa took a deep breath and said, "I'm not talking about a terrorist attack. I'm talking about the demons."
"Aaand, I have no idea what you're talkin' about." Kakashi said, looking at her skeptically.
"Don't play dumb. You know something." Arisa said. Though she wasn't entirely sure about this statement, it was one of the only conclusions she could draw on her way back to Konoha.
"Umm…No I don't. And why would you visit Gaara for something like this? Don't tell me he thinks you're a mental patient now."
"Kakashi, be serious." Arisa said impatiently.
"Unless 'demons' are some secret code name for a terrorist organization, then I have no idea what you're trying to say."
Arisa sighed in frustration.
"Where were you last night during the explosion?"
"Umm… I got lost." He said, scratching the back of his neck. "I was trying to find Cynthia when I ran into a tree! I ran into a tree and got knocked out."
"You're smarter than that. What really happened?" Arisa asked.
"Umm, well…umm, Okay! Fine! I went to eat ramen! You got me!"
"That makes no sense. Where on earth would you get ramen from?"
"Umm…Umm…Konoha?"
"You're a better liar than that." Arisa said. It was her turn to be skeptical.
Kakashi looked down defeated.
"What were you doing?" she asked.
Kakashi remained silent.
"Kakashi!" Arisa said, exasperatedly.
More silence.
Arisa stayed quiet for a while. Finally, she got up and said, "Take off your muffler."
Her voice was a low whisper.
"Okay…" He removed his muffler. Below that lay a medical mask, as he always wore.
"Take off the mask." Arisa said her voice steely.
"Umm…why?" he asked, his hand once again scratching the back of his neck nervously.
Arisa took a step towards him. "Just take it off. And the eye patch too." She brought a hand up to the corner of the mask as though to take it off herself.
"Wait a minute- what?-you can't do that!" he said, as she pulled the mask and eye patch off his face.
He stood before her with nothing left to cover his face. For the first time in history, a human being had actually seen the whole of Kakashi Hatake's face.
Arisa stepped back in confusion.
In front of her, was the perfectly normal face of Kakashi Hatake, a thin scar over his eye, and his usually smiling face set in an ominous frown.
And then, he started laughing.
Gentle at first, but hysterically uncontrollable with every passing second.
"Arisa..." he said between laughs, "..I think...you've actually...gone completely insane!"
His laughter changed. More manic. Colder. Harsher. Crueler.
"Did you honestly think..." he stopped laughing and stood straight, his eyes closed, his voice even as he moved closer to her, "That a demon of my level, couldn't conceal himself?" His voice had a malevolent edge to it, as his eyes opened, facing her with blood red glowing irises surrounded with pitch black sclera.
Arisa stood there in shock. Not trying to step back, not screaming in fear either. She stood calmly, but her horror was evident in the way her voice shook as she spoke.
Before her stood a man whose face was half skeletal. There was no skin covering it. Jagged scorch marks and cracks ran up the skull. A skeletal jaw, skeletal eye socket, and those eyes. Bloodthirsty vortexes of red an black. She knew those eyes. It was death itself, and Arisa knew it well. If she thought she had looked death in the eye before, now it stood in front of her.
"Y-you're one of them. You-you're a d-demon."
"Hn, took you long enough to figure out."
Arisa's eyes widened at the change of his tone, none of the friendliness with which he always addressed her. His voice was cold and mocking.
"B-but we've known you for so long, and you-"
"You know nothing about me. Nor does your cousin. Nor does that fool Itachi. You wanted to know the truth?" He said sarcastically. " Yes! There were demons last night. Every last one of them there, had a single objective: To kill you! Be scared for your life, Arisa," He wore a crooked demonic grin, which looked downright terrifying on his half-skeletal face. Although what he said was anything but funny, he was smiling as though it was the best possible news anyone could deliver.
"K-kill me?"
"They want you dead. And we carry out their bidding."
"W-we?"
"Even Gaara. Even me."
Arisa looked at him in semi-disbelief. She wanted desperately not to believe him. But how could she not? The proof was in front of her. There he was- a demon.
"Not a single one of them wants to help you. You are all alone."
Arisa was quiet for a while, trying to figure out the exact implications of what he was saying. But she was too shocked and frightened. Her mind refused to function.
"Then why haven't you killed me yet?" Arisa's voice was no longer trembling. She was once again impassive: calm and composed.
"You can call it my little game. I wanted to see how much you could grow. Before I crush you."
Looking at the slightly maniacal look in his eyes, she stepped back.
"So…all alone with no help, you might as well give up. Run away with your tail between your legs. What will you do now?"
Arisa looked at him, her resolve hardening, "You aren't going to hurt me. Not yet. And I will find a way around them. Even if it's me against everything else, I will not run away, nor will I back down."
She turned her back on him and walked towards the door. She left his house, slamming the door shut.
It was quarter to four, and Arisa was on the school grounds. Since it was a Friday, the school had no ongoing after school activities, so the school building looked as lonely as her grandfather's mansion did.
Why was she there? She had used the majority of her morning self study period to check all known books and references from the school library, to tell her something about the past she had seen in her nightmare two nights ago. The school library mainframe was directly connected to Konoha's public library, but still she found nothing about any sort of palace like the one she saw in her dream. It wasn't much of a lead for her to be following, but she knew for a fact that she couldn't entirely rule out the possibility that the item the demons had asked her about was directly related to what she had seen in her nightmare.
After some extensive searching, even using Cynthia's credentials to look into national records, she found that there were only two books which might even lightly touch the subject which she was looking for. Both of them were restricted texts in the national archive. Only high ranking government officials could access those.
Although what had just went down in Kakashi's house had shaken her to the core, she had meant what she said before. She would find out why she was being chased by demons.
Walking around the humanities annex, she saw a man with short black hair sitting on a bench outside. On his lap sat a small brown Abyssinian cat, which he was stroking tiredly. The man was as old as her grandfather would have been, had he still been alive. This was the man whom she had come to the school to see. His name: Danzo Shimura. Who also happened to be her headmaster.
She had heard from Sakura and Tenten that he knew a lot about the history of Konoha. In fact, the reason why he ran the school was due to his interest in the ruins it was built on. If that was true, then maybe he could help her with what she needed to know.
"Mr. Shimura?"
He looked up, as did the cat, and saw her standing in front of him.
"Is there something which I can help you with ? You are Hiruzen's granddaughter, am I not correct?"
"Indeed I am. Arisa."
"Ah yes, Arisa. What brings you to an old man like me?"
"I have something to ask you."
"Something related to... ?"
"It's about Konoha."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Konoha in the past."
Danzo was quiet for some time. He then said, with a heavy sigh, "That would be your history teacher's area of expertise, don't you believe?"
"No. You are the only person who might know about what I'm going to ask."
He looked at her skeptically.
"And what sort of information might this be, which is so atypical that even your history teacher does not know about it?"
"Information which is stored in the restricted sections of the national archive. Information so little touched upon that there are only two books which may contain records with respect to what I want to know."
He grinned slightly, "Hn,"
"I'm talking about a palace that used to stand in Konoha."
"Dear child, it seems that you're confusing truth with legend. There never was a palace in Konoha."
Arisa hesitated- was she wrong? Perhaps she had come to the wrong conclusion? But it was still worth a shot to push it farther.
"I'm talking about the palace resided in by a certain 'Lord Jiraya'."
" There is no such 'lord'." he said, his face set in an aloof sort of amusement.
Arisa almost groaned in frustration. Why was everyone being so unhelpful? Twice she had persistently tried to get people to tell her the truth, twice they had insisted on hiding the greater part of what they knew. And now she had to deal with a senile old man who seemed to have a stick shoved too far up his rear.
"I'm not talking about any silly teacher in our school. I'm talking about the senile old hag I saw in my nightmare." Whenever Arisa was genuinely frustrated or angry, her voice tended to drop to a frosty undertone. A cold whisper, which infested her voice as she spoke now, for she was immensely aggravated. She even let slip facts about her nightmare which she had not at all intended to tell the old man sitting before her.
The cat, which was sitting on his lap until then, got up and jumped onto Arisa. Scrambling up the black cardigan which Arisa was wearing, it crawled onto her shoulder and sat at the joint of her neck and shoulder. It was small enough to sit there and mew contentedly.
Danzo's expression was one of alarm. He stood up and took a step towards Arisa, saying, "You've had nightmares since moving to that house?"
Arisa, startled by his sudden change in behavior, took a step back, saying, "What if I have? How does it concern you?"
"Come with me." He turned around and started walking out of the school grounds.
"What?" Arisa said to his retreating back.
Turning around, he looked at her and said, "It's not safe to talk about this in public. They could be watching."
Arisa was completely thrown off guard by the man's antics, but he was the only one who seemed willing to give her some solid answers. So, she shrugged and ran to catch up with him-for someone as old as her grandfather, he sure did set a brisk pace.
Arisa was led inside an ominous looking old mansion near the school - no doubt the headmaster's house.
He led her to the topmost floor leading her into what looked like his study. She noticed a picture which was on his desk. It looked old, and it showed a group of young adults- about twenty years old. One of the men Arisa recognized was her grandfather, who had his arm around the shoulder of another man with shoulder-length black hair.
"What's this?" Arisa asked, looking at the picture.
" An old picture of lost friends. " he said, a faraway look in his eyes.
"Why is my grandfather there? Who else is in that picture?"
"That picture was taken in the last summer we old friends all spent together. You recognize your grandfather. I am standing next to him."
Arisa looked at him in surprise. "You knew my grandfather?"
"Yes. We were close friends."
"And the rest of the people?"
" A few friends of ours. Homura Mitokado and Koharu Utatane." he said.
"Oh." she said.
" What happened to them?" she asked after a short pause, her curiosity getting the better of her.
Danzo looked down at the picture and said, " Dead. The next spring."
" How ?" Arisa asked.
"They died from the same thing that will try to kill you and your friends." Danzo said, looking up at her, a forewarning look on his face.
"What?"
He put the picture back on his desk.
"In the fourteenth century BC, there was a lot of mystery surrounding the exact history of this country. The line between truth and legend is, to many people, obscure. I have dedicated years to this research. I know what happened." he said.
"Fourteenth century BC? That's way too old." she said, thinking back to the formal attire she recalled from her nightmare.
"Or so you think." he said, speaking deliberately slowly "Konoha was chosen as a capital of a new era. A place to connect many worlds together. A place where all the races converge on our land. It was graced by an otherworldly being, who went by the name of Jiraya. His palace lay where Konoha now stands. he possessed fifteen curses."
"Wait a minute- otherworldly beings? Curses? You're making no sense."
He looked at her impatiently. "You are the one who asked me for answers. Listen to what I have to say, or leave."
Despite her confusion, she nodded.
"Jiraya was not human. he was far more powerful than any other race. He commanded them all- fifteen races for fifteen curses. He stayed in Konoha for two hundred years. When he left, he passed ownership of the curses to fifteen humans."
"Races include demons?" she asked.
"Yes." he said, "Unfortunately so."
"His decision to give the curses to humans was not approved of by all of the races. But the curses cannot be forcefully possessed. The curse chooses its host. Every time a host was born, the curse would somehow fit itself into the possession of the host. Those races which did not agree with humans possessing the race keys had but a single goal- to kill the host and take possession of the curse.
If the person in possession of the curse is killed, then the person who kills him becomes the next host. But Jiraya had foreseen this, and he left behind a binding oath which ensured that no other races could harm the hosts. The races found a way around that. Inevitably though, throughout history, whenever a host had been born, they would be short lived and soon killed by any of the races.
Ironically, the other races never found possession of the curses. Before they could kill a host, a new host would already present itself, and the curse would shift its ownership to the new host. And if not, Jiraya's last insurance was to leave behind a guardian- one who could not directly save the host, but could take the curse and watch over it until a new host is born.
Apparently, your grandfather and I were two such hosts. As were some of our friends. We each commanded a curse, although none of us ever know what the 'curse' object was. In the end, your grandfather and I were the only ones to survive the bloody onslaught of death that followed. Everyone we once knew died.
I have a theory as to how the two of us survived. Around the same time that our classmates were dying around us, your grandmother became pregnant with her first child. That child was your mother."
"She- she started a new generation of hosts, didn't she?" Arisa said, connecting the dots in her head, "A new generation of hosts which meant that your lives were no longer in danger. This is why my parent's- they- thirteen years ago- The Uchiha massacre, the attack on Konoha, the plane crash - it's all connected isn't it? They all died because of this! My parents died because of the demons! And- and- that's why this is happening, isn't it! We're the next generation of hosts!" Her head was whirring; so much made sense, but so much more was still unclear. Half of her was laughing at everything and dismissing it as nonsense.
"Yes. Your whole life, you have been plagued by demons. Don't trust anybody. Not your friends, not your cousin, not even me. And not even yourself. Without you, there is no way to save them. You open the circle. A bloody circle riddled with pain. The Circle of Death."
