Masked Koi: Chapter 9. "Hatake Koi"
"Stupid human…"
Nishiki turned around, seeing a dim glow in the darkness. She frowned. (I don't think it was here before…) Her eyes widened as she took in the sight of bars, large and crumbling and metallic and shining and huge. Blue flames helped illuminate the room, or wherever 'here' was. Nishiki squinted, her eyes trying to make sense of where the voice had come from and understand the blue flames. (Just what is this?)
After a few moments, the flames manifested themselves into a shape of an animal, a cat. A huge, blue, fiery cat with mismatched yellow and green eyes. Its fangs shone a brilliant white. Nishiki shrieked and fell backwards, her black eyes wide.
"Wha…"
"So it is true that if great trauma occurs, humans tend to not remember. I see you do not remember when I was forced into the body of a young girl, or for you, when someone forced a massive amount of ominous and corrosive chakra into you," the cat said, its voice echoing. Nishiki couldn't help but be in awe.
"What're you talking about? Who are you?" Nishiki asked, moving into a respectful seating position—her legs tucked parallel underneath her body and her arms straight and her hands on her knees.
The cat seemed at a loss for words for a moment. "You…you didn't say 'what'."
"Huh?" Nishiki asked, thrown off. "What are you going on about? Who are you?"
The cat seemed to purr. To Nishiki, it was loud and low enough to make her chest vibrate and hurt. She winced a little, but said nothing in protest.
"I am Matatabi, the two-tailed cat. To most of you humans, I am the Nibi," the cat said, its voice regal and reserved and majestic. Matatabi frowned a little, knowing that horror would spread soon on the woman's face, horrified that she held something so evil and dangerous and so on and so forth.
Instead, a stupid grin plastered itself on the woman's face. She walked right through the bars and hugged a toe, throwing herself on it. She rubbed her face affectionately and oddly on the cat, grinning idiotically, like if a three-year-old had just received a huge fluffy teddy bear. Instead, it was a huge flaming cat.
"Human…what are you doing? What's wrong with you?" the cat slowly tried to take away its paw, feeling borderline violated by the silver-haired woman. Yet, Matatabi felt somewhat…happy. The cat smiled. It had been a long, long time since she'd felt that. It was refreshing and nearly brought her to tears, thinking about the previous time she'd been happy: when the Rikudou Sennin had given her a name and loved her the same and equally as her other tailed siblings.
"I love cats! And you're like, the ultimate cat! You're a legend!" the woman exclaimed. Her eyes shone with a scary amount of enthusiasm. "Literally!"
"You…are not like your kind," Matatabi managed to say.
"Anyway, what were you saying about trauma and not remembering? Where am I anyway?" Nishiki asked.
"You are in your subconscious. I summoned you here to see if you remembered me, out of curiosity and boredom," Matatabi muttered. "I was sealed into the body of a young girl, after the previous host had been killed. This host was not unkind and less strange than you are, but nonetheless respectable. When she died, I was taken and sealed into a scroll and then after some time, sealed into the body of a young girl. This girl turned out to be you, her body surging with adrenaline. I think this may have saved your life, preventing my chakra from burning your chakra coils too badly. Do you remember?"
A loud sound, like the sound of kunai scratching sizzling hot metal, an unbearably loud and grating and teeth gnashing and unholy sound, almost as unholy as the cat before her, crashed through the echoing hallways of her subconscious. The echoing property of the subconscious made the sound just that more unbearable.
"Matatabi, is that you?" Nishiki asked slowly, her head turned around and her eyes peering into the darkness.
Matatabi only answered with a ferocious cry with vicious green and yellow eyes and a wave of killer intent a thousand times more powerful than any shinobi could ever attain and her demonic chakra condensed into a sharp blue nail and went straight through Nishiki's heart. Nishiki flew back and skipped over the large amount of water that was apparent in the darkness like a stone. She sat up, pain somehow being much more manageable (but not void) in her subconscious, and looked at the cat, who was shrouded in darkness. Even the cat's blue flames that were so bright were gone. Nishiki felt her stomach begin to burn and then the pain spread throughout the rest of her body down to the tips of her toes and fingers and up to the last hair cell on her scalp.
Matatabi had all but disappeared in a murderous way down to the last ember. Suddenly, the water that Nishiki found up to her knees when she stood shakily with a wince began to fill the entire room and the dim light that came from the seemingly endless ceiling went out like a light bulb being shattered. The water went up to her neck and then over her head. Swimming up seemed as easy as swimming through molasses and she floated down into an abyss. Air escaped her lungs as she tried to breathe and a fire started in them. She was drowning and it was painful. Without air but with the automatic need to suck in air, her body resorted to sucking in anything. She sucked in only water and her lungs filled up with it and before the darkness overtook her, the pain of asphyxiation reached its limit and ripped apart her lungs.
"Stop!" Seiseki cried out. "She doesn't know anything! You'll kill her!"
On the cold table covered in water was his sister, her unconscious body convulsing without her after having a hose shoved into her mouth covered with a cloth and water pumped into her body. She hadn't even made a sound ever since he'd sedated her, ever since Shinsai had injected her, and ever since those red-haired solemn emaciated seal masters messed with the black markings on her stomach Seiseki had forgotten in the haze of being stabbedso long ago.
Next to Seiseki was Kakashi. Both brothers were hung from the ceiling by chains and their hands stretched down towards the ground by chains. Seals held back their chakra. Kakashi was just waking up from the sedative Seiseki had stabbed into his body and Seiseki could just feel the confusion that radiated like the sun coming off of him.
Shinsai pulled the cloth and hose away from her mouth and she began to sputter after a few moments, agonizing for Seiseki. She coughed and coughed and so much water came out of her and then air could finally fill her lungs and she began to strain against the restraints that held her to the cold table made of metal and covered in death but so spotless and clean.
Shinsai grinned over the body of his niece, stripped down to a bra and shorts and twirled a kunai on his finger rapidly. He noticed the youngest Hatake was coming to and cast him a faux-humane look. "Kakashi, I'm glad you woke up. You just missed the best part of the show. To make things easier, I'll explain: this is Koi-chan and thanks to me and a few other people, she did not die eight years ago. She knows some information relevant to our clan and we'd like very much for her to disclose such information. If she doesn't, well, we have enough close at hand to make her talk. You don't happen to know anything, do you? It has come to my attention that you and your sister were quite close as children."
"Seiseki, what the hell is this!? Get me out of this genjutsu!" Kakashi glared at his brother, believing that he was trapped in some kind of sick genjutsu that Seiseki had cast and that the pain shooting up his lower body and head and that the smell of blood and pain wasn't real.
On the table, Koi remained eerily silent with her eyes closed and a blank expression written on her face. Seiseki was dropped, his chains from above being given slack. Just as quickly, his hands were bound to his ankles and to the wall. Seiseki gritted his teeth, not wanting to answer his brother's question. "This isn't a genjutsu."
Kakashi seemed not to be taken aback. "Liar! Koi died!"
"Koi-chan, according to Aiko, you know some information on our clan. If you don't tell me, I'll simply continue until you drown from the inside out. Or, I can drown Kakashi," Shinsai said.
Koi didn't open her eyes. "I'm not acknowledging this as real. You can try to kill me as much as you like, but it's not real. This is just a nightmare! You don't exist!"
Shinsai rolled his eyes. "As you wish."
He placed the water-saturated cloth over her nose and mouth and the hose between her lips over the cloth. He turned on the water and it coursed through the hose to her mouth to her lungs. They began to fill up with water and the pain on a much larger magnitude than that of her mindscape burned her body. Her body began to convulse again, but this time she was awake and was ripped into the world where reality reigns over all, where dreams cannot exist and nightmares.
Finally, he stopped. He pulled away the water-soaked cloth and she sputtered once more, more water coming out of her body. Shinsai continued over and over and over again until the reality of her situation sunk in. Underneath the semi-circle metal restraints over her wrists, her hands shook. "This…"
Once more, Shinsai tortured his niece. She coughed up more water, just not nearly enough to ensure she'd survive. Tears rolled down her face and she began to cry out.
"Shisui!" She cried out his name, the man who had been kind to her as a boy despite sharp jokes they shot back at one another and the not blunted kunai and punches they threw at one another during training and whose lips had brushed hers so long ago. "Shisui!"
Once more, Shinsai drowned her. Seiseki thrashed against his binds, roaring out in protest. "Stop!"
As Shinsai pulled away the cloth from her mouth and watched her sputter, the eldest Hatake began to scream out. "If you kill her, I'll kill you and everyone here and burn any remnant away from this earth! Whatever information she has is petty at best! She can't do anything espionage related even if her life depended on it! What makes you think a weak woman like her could even stand up on any level to your damned clan?!"
Shinsai dropped the hose and cloth on the ground and kicked Seiseki's abdomen as hard as he could. The air rushed out of Seiseki's lungs and he could barely wheeze. Shinsai's mouth pursed in such a way Seiseki thought he saw his life reflecting and playing in his uncle's unearthly green eyes and he could only feel each kick crash down on him and each day gnashed between his teeth that allowed strangled screams that weren't human to pass through disappear.
Shinsai grinned suddenly, a madman! and a needle filled with a red liquid, as red as the blood that ran down Seiseki's lips and chin, and slammed it into the man's neck. The chains that held the man were cast away and the man was dragged out into the open and for all to see, he was thrown onto the grass that was contained within the faint blue barrier, a dome, that the emaciated seal masters were forced to put up. Seiseki's body rejected the red liquid at first, making him cry out and claw at his skin until he bled and shake uncontrollably. Koi was dragged up as well, shaky on her feet and barely able to stand and her vision filled with disbelief and anger. Underneath a tree, the youngest Hatake was bound to watch the show the entire Tsugi clan had gathered around for. Shinsai weaved signs and Seiseki's body suddenly stopped moving and he stood upright, his pupils huge and his hands grasping kunai.
Koi was flung onto the grass a hundred feet away from him, close to the blue barrier. Another three hundred feet away in the shadows of blackened trees was Shisui, whose name she didn't even remember crying out. She vomited up pure water and her vision began to become too clear. Her eyes felt hot but that was nothing compared to the heavy feeling of reality sinking in fully along with the sights and sounds and screams of a nightmare coming true. She stood up, feeling light as a feather. Yonder, children were being whipped and kicked and punched and stabbed and sliced. Seiseki fell into a sprint towards her and every instinct told her to run. She did. She ran towards the children who wore the crest of the clan she would've married into if times were more peaceful and the Tsugi did not exist with a price on her head.
"Retreat!" Shinsai bellowed to his fellow Tsugi. "Pigs! Seal!"
Once more, the emaciated arms crashed down on the ground and another blue barrier went up, trapping the three Hatake and few shaking, wide-eyed, beaten children. So many of them lay on the ground, murdered because of the name they carried and the blood that flowed through their veins and the value they held for the rest of the clan that took a heavy beating in Konoha. Uchiha.
Koi noticed the seal going up a moment too late. Her fists beat against the seal and her eyes, shaking, peered into a man's violet ones, so similar to the grey of her late sensei. "Please…"
"I'm sorry," the man muttered. His violet eyes were downcast. "There's something you should know: Seiseki is the one who brought you here and he is the real mastermind behind those children's murders and…the one who killed my sister, Uzumaki Kushina, was him. Please, kill him."
Her black eyes, desperate and in pain and drowning, suddenly turned into a desert. They burned up into black obsidian rocks and a fire was growing inside her, a white-hot fire, more scalding than the bakoneko's fire inside her. Images of her beloved Uzumaki sensei flashed behind the fiery, dry eyes of Konoha's most feared taijutsu master. Dry tears ran down her cheeks and the air surrounding her dropped ten degrees.
"Uzumaki-san, are you sure it was him?" Koi heard herself ask, barely audible because of the crashing reality inside her head. I was under the impression my brother was a depressed and dangerous man, but I had never considered him a murderer of the woman who taught me everything I know. I had never considered him to want to kill me so badly that he'd kidnap me and endanger my kid brother, my village, and everyone I love. Just…just who was Hatake Seiseki?
"Yes, Koi-san," the man said, his throat and tongue and stomach heavy and thick with pain and hatred. He closed his eyes tightly and nodded to ensure his answer was understood.
Well understood.
Koi turned around. "Thank you." The two black pits of watery fire settled on the silver-haired green-eyed man of several inches taller than she and full of false childhood memories and his veins coursing with adrenaline and red. Seiseki fell into a sprint towards the last few children standing. He managed to sink his kunai into one of the children easily, eliciting a bloodcurdling scream. The loss of innocence and life and fear and a true insult.
Hatake Kakashi watched his sister bristle with anger shortly after conversing with an Uzumaki man. She was no longer the sister he admired and whose shadow he'd escaped and worried about and believed to be dead for what felt like his entire life. She'd turned into a different person, unrecognizable and purely terrifying to the man. Her eyes burned with a deep hatred, something Kakashi believed to be buried deep within her for so long. It festered, multiplied, and gnawed away at what could still be left, still be considered as Hatake Koi, like a cancer. It was the size of three hearts inside one heart, making the fourth heart grow smaller and smaller and less and less able to pump blood into Hatake Koi. The three metastatic hearts pumped blood into Nishiki, into the woman that stood with too much water in her body and would die soon if she didn't receive medical treatment and who wanted only Hatake Seiseki's blood to spill.
Bitter tears ran down Kakashi's face and regrets compounded: I wish I wasn't so weak. I wish I wouldn't stop losing my siblings. I wish there was an easy way to keep them from killing each other. I wish…
From afar Namikaze Naruto watched through Kushina's eyes at his sensei, whose body blurred and then dripped with blood after moving to protect two children, wounded badly. The man with silver hair sunk his kunai into her back and with a flash of remorse and disgust at himself, sunk another one in. She pushed herself up with her arms and her whole body was thrust at him, spinning quickly with hands and feet aiming for his neck and chest, to sink into his ribcage, into his heart, and rip out whatever kindness could be left and squeeze it between grief-stricken fingers with rage and tears drip down on them. He stepped back widely and the only casualty was his face. He flew suddenly; she got behind him and kicked him upwards. Spiraling upwards. Then, water, a great wave, pushed away the woman who was about to be upon him and blocked her effectively. She wielded fire and several fireballs, small and compact and searing hot, made their way to the older Hatake.
Seiseki began to weave seals. Koi pumped her own chakra into her limbs and readied herself to bash her older brother's head in. The water and fire made contact and steam expanded around them, thick and blinding. Koi managed to find his body in the steam and grabbed a kunai from his back and her own back. Armed and dangerous, she allowed lightning to cover her entire body and then flow to her hands and condense to be so loud that her location might as well be on a map.
Koi blew out wind to disperse the steam and then her arms latched onto her brother's surprised body and then angled his head towards the ground. Gravity and chakra combined did their part to crash his head into the ground. She back flipped neatly onto the ground a few feet away and surveyed her work.
Koi, of course as any ninja should, idly examined her surroundings, seeing if anything around her could be used to fully stop the blood from flowing inside Seiseki's body to be flowing outside and splattered on the ground in some kind of twisted art. A bitter smile graced her lips and her hand formed a familiar seal.
Kai.
She saw her brother kneeling on the ground, panting. She raced forward, her back beginning to finally pain her. Her chakra condensed around her hands, wind-natured chakra, and turned a faint white, almost opaque. Her fists crashed into his and he dodged, as she knew he would. The chakra disappeared from her hands and she fell into a Jounin level taijutsu speed. Seiseki could barely keep up, using the standard Konoha form as most of Konoha's shinobi did. Her movements, graceful like fat dogs and sharp like the bills of ducks. Her arms and legs seemed to synchronize in speed and Seiseki's vision went black the moment he slipped for a millisecond and her whole body went crashing into his head. A concussion was sealed into his fate and he flew back and skipped like a rock several feet.
Namikaze Naruto saw only a glimmer of the power of his sensei's taijutsu. Should Seiseki have more skill in taijutsu, perhaps he could keep up and perhaps he could expose the boy to see more of his sensei's power and feared talent. Perhaps Naruto could see more and have more of a basis to train on and memories burned into his brain, and know more before it all was gone forever.
Blood loss hit the woman. She collapsed and her vision was filled with dancing and laughing black spots. They were a different black from the blackness of her heart when Seiseki's existence shone onto her mind. Hatred and a shiny darkness was all that was there for the eldest Hatake sibling. She weakly cried out and her eyes saw a head of red hair in the distance. Her heart broke in her hands.
Naruto had a pit in his stomach. Maybe it was his heart in his throat?
"Boy, do not fear," a low voice, said; it scratched Naruto's ears. Naruto's head whipped around and saw a huge cat with silky black fur and golden eyes. Fear gripped his voice and body, immobilizing him.
"Don't eat me!" Naruto cried out finally. The cat seemed to laugh, or purr lowly.
"You are not tasty. I would not eat my summoner's pupil. However, that should not be your concern," the cat said, its voice dead serious. "Your sensei intends to die here because she believes that killing Seiseki will fix everything," the cat flicked its tail uncomfortably. "Do not fear, boy. She is brave. But stupid," the cat muttered annoyed. With the death of Seiseki and Koi, the Tsugi are bound to go into hiding for some time to regroup and gain another pawn. Koi…you intend to buy time for your comrades and Naruto. Did you know the Tsugi would rise again? Is that why you started to train Naruto, because you knew your mother's clan would rise again and strike at you?
"What?! You have to help her!" Naruto cried out. "I don't know how to take down this barrier!"
The cat narrowed its eyes. "I follow my summoner's orders to the letter. She had debated such an outcome after drinking herself sick to me a year ago, fighting her brother and such, and if such a thing as this came to fruition I would not intervene. Besides, I would only get in the way since I am neither fast nor small."
"She'll die without anyone helping! How can you allow that? She's your summoner, isn't she? If you have to save someone, the rules aren't applicable; you have to break as many rules as you can!" Naruto exclaimed.
"I am under contract," the cat said sharply, its fangs glinting. Naruto closed his mouth and held back another outburst. "I am here to keep you from dying. This is of my own volition and as such, I will do everything within my power to keep your heart beating. I will not help you save her; she is in a position where if anyone intervenes, she will be killed faster and the chances of bringing Seiseki down with her are severely lowered and the chances of the intervener being killed are high. I cannot allow you to die."
"You shouldn't care about me! You should care about her, a person who is in danger of being killed! Are you stupid?!" Naruto cried out, close to angry tears.
The cat closed its eyes, too irritated to look at the boy. "You are as stupid as your sensei. You will not die. But do not fight me when I whisk you away from this place."
The cat then disappeared into the shadows. Naruto bit his lip. He had hardly any impact on anyone, so why would anyone care if he died? Not even his father paid any attention to him. Only Nishiki did, and here she was, about to die. Didn't the cat understand that? Didn't the cat understand that she meant more to him than the entire world? Didn't the cat see that Naruto loved her like the mother he never had?! She was everything! If she died…if she died…Naruto bit his lip harder. Don't even think about it! You're going to save her!
With that in mind, the boy began to unleash ninjutsu and taijutsu against the barrier in hopes that the barrier would break.
Shisui's hands were bloody from beating the barrier and his eyes were red from crying out of frustration. "Koi! You're not going to die!"
Ko knelt next to him, quietly. The barrier was perhaps an S-Rank fuuinjutsu seal, something that Kushina had probably known how to break but would never divulge to her students. He wondered if Koi knew, but it didn't matter. His heart was breaking and he knew that hers would stop beating soon. There was no way they could break into the barrier. His byakugan watched her chakra points slowly grow dimmer and dimmer and he could only wonder what kind of people she'd pissed off earlier in her life to be surrounded by a hostile clan that enslaved another clan and trapped in a death match with so many eyes watching with bloodlust. He knew she was a rogue in terms of traditional, sweet kunoichi (who coincidently either died earlier or lived terribly long and boring lives), but he didn't think she'd get herself involved with these people. They were powerful enough to bring down Konoha, he realized. A curse escaped his lips.
He must've muttered his thoughts because Shisui answered. "Koi told me once that her mother came from this clan called 'Tsugi'. I had asked because I'd never seem such green eyes anywhere in Konoha. I never thought about it, even when I heard about them again when conversing with Fugaku-sama about clan security. It seems the Tsugi really had it out for my clan…going as far as killing the children."
Shisui went back to trying to take down the barrier, this time resorting to fire. Ko scooted a few feet away to prevent himself from being burned, his hands already having bled enough from trying to take down the barrier with Hyuuga Juuken. He had spent all his chakra on doing such a thing, but it seemed Shisui had a slightly larger reserve.
Koi struggled to push herself up and watched with horror as Seiseki brought another kunai out and began to walk towards Kakashi. Koi tried to crawl forward, but shooting pain from stab wounds to protect the Uchiha children prevented her from going very far.
Ten steps…
Koi cried out loudly, tears running freely down her face and her anger almost taking on a tangible shape. Matatabi's chakra refused to help her and heal her wounds and she hated the cat for denying her. She thought that her and the bijuu were on agreeable terms, but it seemed not.
Nine steps…
Koi gritted her teeth and brought her knee under her chest and pushed up with her elbows. Barely up from the ground, she glared and failed to gain the attention of her brother.
Eight steps…
If he would look at her, then maybe he'd try to kill her again, and then Kakashi wouldn't die. He couldn't fight back, and Koi wanted it to stay that way. He'd only get killed if he intervened. This isn't the lame fight her and Seiseki had had so long ago that he'd stopped when he came home.
Seven steps…
She noticed Ko and Shisui, the latter beating against the barrier. She bitterly smiled and pushed herself up to her hands and pulled her other knee under her chest. She knew he was looking straight at her with his sharingan and tears running down his face and she was happy; she was loved. She silently said, "I love you." She knew he could read her lips, but instead of giving up on his bloody hands, he only became more agitated and infuriated and beat harder.
Six steps…
Shinsai grinned as his beautiful pawn was finally ending the Hatake. Once Kakashi was dead, Seiseki would use Koi's shock and weakness to his advantage and then kill her and then Shinsai could kill Seiseki. Clan cleansing was a beautiful thing! First was enslaving the Uzumaki, a remarkably weak yet useful clan, and then it was the Hatake and then the entire world!
Five steps…
The large cat with its silky black fur sighed. It did want to save Koi, but she had ordered the cat to not intervene. Even though alcohol was involved, it did little to Koi's morals and feelings towards keeping those she cared about alive. After all, in her drunken state she'd known how dangerous she was, was, and that's why she kept away from Kakashi and Sakumo.
Four steps…
The cat was supposed to report to Koi the night her mask had broken to report the sightings of Seiseki and his apparent allegiance to the Tsugi. Then, the cat would report that the Tsugi were going to use Seiseki but Koi had been unconscious and Seiseki was on the move, making it very hard to relay such important information to Koi. The cat knew all about Seiseki and his most current whereabouts, but things hadn't turned out well at all. The cat watched its summoner slowly die on the grass and then vomit mostly water and wondered what had gone wrong. If Koi hadn't been hospitalized, all of this could be avoided and things would be peaceful. And the stupid son of Uzumaki Kushina wouldn't be trying to save a woman about to die for his sake.
Three steps…
The cat knew mostly everything about the Tsugi. It had to; Koi had instructed surveillance on Shinsai the moment she'd started training Kushina's brat. The cat, however, did not foresee the Tsugi rising again and did not foresee the Tsugi wanting the death of Koi this badly.
Two steps…
Naruto's hands, like Shisui's and Ko's, were covered in blood and dripped with the thick substance. Sweat poured down his face in beads and he panted with one eye closed. He didn't dare think about stopping, but tears began to roll down his face as he began to panic. What if he didn't break the barrier in time? Would Nishiki-sensei die? What would he do then? The boy began to shake, his hands shook, and sobs racked his body and he began to scream and hit the barrier even harder. His progress at weakening the barrier was visible, but it would simply go back to the way it was earlier. As if what he'd done, manipulate his oceans of chakra with as much control as he could muster, was meaningless. As if what he knew was meaningless. A joke! As if Nishiki-sensei's teachings, Nishiki herself, were meaningless! NO! Naruto roared and beat the barrier with his bare fists, getting desperate.
"Break! Break! Break!" Naruto screamed out. The cat closed its golden eyes. Kushina-sama, what would you have done?
Koi managed to push herself to a standing position, a great feat, but taking a step made her fearful. She looked at Seiseki and saw he was close, too close, so close, terribly close, to Kakashi.
"Don't touch him!" Koi cried out and began to run towards her brothers on jelly legs, her head unspeakably feverish all of a sudden and the world in various shades of red. She closed her eyes and tears were squeezed out and then a clone of Seiseki's that had been hiding took the light away from her eyes.
A scream flew out of her throat and she collapsed, grasping her eye sockets, void of eyes, of eyeballs. Shisui, Ko, Kakashi, and Naruto stopped breathing and blinking and their hearts stopped beating as they saw the clone stick his fingers into her eyes and rip them out and apart and cast them on the ground like some sort of trash.
One step…
"This is the end!" Shinsai grinned wickedly and clasped his hands together. Seiseki brought down the kunai towards Kakashi's chest, to his heart, and go through him. To feel his bones and then break them and then have a huge gaping hole to look through like a telescope and grin through and see his accomplishment! The gory glory was so tantalizing! Seiseki grinned.
Yes, he made contact! Through a Hatake's body, pale skin, a chest and a ribcage with bones protecting the heart and lungs and stomach and other organs and filled with blood vessels and chakra points and coils. It was a refreshing feeling, like he was young again and it was war and he was killing and Konoha would be safe! He felt electricity-laden hands grasp his arm and a sob reach his ears. Only…the sob sounded like him…
What?
"Nishiki-sensei!" Naruto cried out. Pure fear and disbelief overtook the boy and the barrier before him cracked like glass as reddish chains made of pure chakra, glowing and bright and ominous and amazing, went through it and just barely grasped Seiseki. The man dodged, bringing his hand out of the body of his sibling, and he watched as the chains began to retract to the source.
A terrifying scream came in the shape of a six-year-old boy who had witnessed something he could not forget, no matter how much blood and truth of shinobi ways was shoved down his throat as he choked and tears up. He would never forget. Kushina's eyes were scarred and there was nothing anyone could do.
The haze Seiseki didn't know he was in lifted like a gust of wind on a foggy bay. He blinked and looked at his hand, not seeing skin but seeing blood. It was covered in blood. So much blood. He frowned. Whose was it? His? No, he wasn't in enough pain to be bleeding this much. Shinsai released his hands from he kai position. The genjutsu had worked perfectly.
Kakashi gasped and his visible eye widened and the white noise that surrounded him was so loud. Another scream was heard and he realized after a long, long time, that it was he.
The son of Namikaze Minato fell unconscious after that, the reddish chains disappearing. The silky black cat with golden eyes picked up the boy like a kitten and disappeared to Konoha, where the boy would presumably be safer.
Meanwhile, the barrier that Naruto had cracked was shattering like dominoes. It was a magnificent sight for the Uzumaki who were enslaved; as small victory against the Tsugi. Perhaps Shisui and Ko could kill some Tsugi and then a revolt could be held and everything would be all right and they could go home and live out the rest of their days in seclusion.
Only, it didn't work out that way. A retreat order sounded and everyone disappeared, grabbing the emaciated prisoners and engulfing them in puffs of smoke and appearing elsewhere. It was a nice thought, though.
To Uchiha Shisui, the world had turned into hell. He raced into the barrier that had suddenly broken and reached the Tsugi that had failed to disappear fast enough and began to strangle them and dismember them and put them into genjutsu that they'd wish they'd died before being trapped in. Foam appeared around their mouths and the amount of psychological damage was too high for anyone to be able to fathom. Meanwhile, Seiseki was grasping his hair on his head as his mind was breaking and his heart was being swallowed by the urge to plunge the kunai into his chest and end himself right then and there because Koi was right there and she was dead! Dead! Dead! Dead!
Seiseki found himself being strangled by a man he knew so well, after the Hyuuga freed him. He remembered the man's first steps as a toddler and couldn't count the amount of times he'd vomited on everything. He remembered his first word: 'nii-chan'. It was a proud moment, to say the least.
The man before him was a stranger, a stranger whose feelings and emotions and beliefs were running too high for him to be able to make any sort of threat. It was just as well; Seiseki was frightened of himself way too much to even fathom his fear, although he assumed it was palpable, of Hatake Kakashi, Konoha's famed Copy Ninja.
There was hatred in those black eyes, so much of it. Seiseki understood on a gross level…somewhat. He hadn't quite grasped his actions and reprecussions of such actions and whatnot fully. When it sunk in, Seiseki internally groaned as he began to lose consciousness, he wished he'd been caught in Shisui's genjutsu and end his life as his mind was shattered.
Shinsai watched as the Uchiha man collapsed into himself and then fainted. The Hyuuga man knelt by him and tried to call his former teammate to the world of consciousness. Kakashi was too busy trying to kill Seiseki with his hands that shook more than the strongest earthquake and with his hatred-filled eyes that were glistening with tears.
Her lips shook and her throat didn't work. Shinsai knelt by the woman and leaned down. "You will die alone, Hatake trash. I thank you for the power you possess, well, the power I paid for you to hold. Kumogakure is eternally helpful to my clan and its goals."
She gritted her teeth for the last time and then the breath left her body for the last time as Shinsai brought out a scroll and sealed away the last of Matatabi's chakra. After expelling a good portion of it, there wasn't much to sustain the weak, almost nonexistent beating of her heart.
There, Hatake Koi truly died alone with no one who cared for her. Shinsai patted her shoulder appreciatively and struck a match. He doused her body with flammable liquid in a canister on his side and dropped the match on her and watched as the flames licked the liquid and then her skin. The Tsugi leader disappeared promptly with Seiseki.
The cats that had followed the boy with red hair rushed to their summoner's aid and after tamping out the flames whisked away the woman's empty body. Underneath her, the grass burned and left behind a pile of ash. It was then that Shisui had awoken and someone informed him that Shinsai had burned her body and the man silently brought out a glass jar and filled it with the ashes he believed to be his lover's. Truth be told, some of her hair had burned and some of the ashes were hers. He was not entirely mistaken. Right as he closed the jar, a single tear dropped into it and the ashes hugged the liquid and ate it up and it was contained in the jar forever.
Hyuuga Ko, Hatake Kakashi, and Uchiha Shisui walked away from the area, deciding that the ANBU that would no doubt come soon could deal with the dead Uchiha children bodies. Even as an Uchiha, Shisui could not bring himself to care enough. Koi was dead. His world was dead. His black eyes only saw monochrome and his legs continued forward for a reason he didn't bother himself with. Koi was dead. She was dead and his future he'd imagined with her in it, with her stomach swelled with the next generation of Uchiha and then children surrounding them and the two of them growing old with wrinkles and grey hair and love.
But there was no more love. There was nothing to love. Shisui wondered why his heart beat still. There was no longer any reason to beat.
In Konoha
It did not rain. It did not rain during the funeral two weeks after Shisui's life had come crashing down. It was cold though. The grieving stood in the frigid cold solemnly. Everyone pitied the boy with red hair who stood in front of a photo of a woman whose name was lost to history. Yet, it had only been a decade since her name had become synonymous with 'monster' and the kind of person parents warned their children not to be around because she would, supposedly, explode you in your sleep and whatnot.
The woman was somewhat attractive but there was an air of animosity that no one could or wanted to explain around her. The crowds of mourners eventually dispersed. All there was left was Shisui, Naruto, Kakashi, and Sakumo. Naruto noticed the old man with too many wrinkles for his age and observed his reaction to Kakashi telling him something.
The Namikaze boy narrowed his eyes and turned away from the old man who was beside himself in sobs. The man called Sakima or something was so overwhelmed that he dropped to his knees and cried out and became the epitome of pathetic. Pathetic because he had no way of expressing his feelings for his daughter whose true funeral was today with tears. Tears were fleeting. They dried up, after all. Pathetic because he cried with temporary tears and had no resolve to do much of anything after that. He cried for just for the sake of crying and having everyone know he was sad and grieving and then would somehow move on and look to the future and find happiness. Naruto tuned him out. It was too disgusting to watch; it was sappy and meaningless.
Namikaze Naruto did not cry. He had cried earlier already, but at least something had come out of it. Something that wasn't disgustingly sappy and horrifyingly useless: a resolve. His resolve was one that he stood alone to achieve. He would rip apart any obstacle in his way, kick down or even kill anyone in his way because he could never forget.
He could never forget the excruciating pain. He could never forget the images burned into his mind. He could never forget that day. The day his world ended when he saw a man's hand and kunai go through the body of a woman who could not see, of a woman protecting another man who was equally useless as his father. The day he lost everything, his everything. The day the only person who truly acknowledged him as a bright pupil. Naruto closed his eyes. The day the woman I wanted to consider a maternal figure died. No, was murdered. Naruto cast one look at the photo, a look that Kakashi paid no mind to, before walking briskly away. Naruto clenched his fists and a grimace made its way onto his face.
A man named Seiseki murdered her. A man who fled. Kushina's eyes turned cold that cold day. "A man who will pay in tenfold the amount of blood and pain he spilled. Just you watch, Nishiki-sensei. I will avenge you."
Lightning and thunder crashed down on Konoha. Namikaze Naruto laid alone, no longer fearful of anything. Nishiki, his protector, was gone and he could not be afraid. "I have to be strong. Much stronger. I have to be so strong that no one can stand in my way of killing Seiseki. I promise you, Nishiki-sensei."
Kushina's eyes, scarred and cold and icy, let out a single tear in the glimmer of the flash of a lightning bolt. It had started.
