Chapter Nine: The Attack
With three weeks to go before the hatching, another kind of excitement was buzzing through the candidates. It was midsummer, and it was Egg Gift week.
This year it was Konoha's turn to receive candidates from other Weyrs as part of a longstanding cross-territory tradition. It was mostly ceremonial, harking back to ancient times when fledgling Weyrs in newly settled territories needed candidates from older Weyrs still nurturing their own populations. Each one would send a few, a gift for the eggs.
Nowadays, well-established populations allowed riders, candidates and staff to be shifted without strain. Grand Line's recent founding hadn't made a dent. The exchanges were now just signs of good faith between distant allies in the same fight.
The Egg Gift visitors this year were new faces, and that was no surprise, but the candidates were from all the familiar Weyrs. Taki. Ame. Kusa.
But this year, there was also… Suna.
Master Hayate had given them another protocol lecture, and posted a list of the visitors. Suna had stood out to Naruto on the list, and the candidates from there stood out when they'd arrived, as well.
The three Suna candidates made little attempt to mingle with the rest. The two older ones, blond, serious Temari, and arrogant, face-painted Kankurou, stuck stubbornly by the youngest one, a red-haired, slender boy with dark rings around his eyes.
The older two seemed… slightly hostile, behind a veil of tolerable manners. They spoke with arrogant airs, and played the organized sports with focused competitiveness. Unpleasant, yes, but relatively normal… however, the little one definitely wasn't.
The red-haired boy, Gaara, carried a huge gourd with him wherever he went, slung at his back. He rarely spoke. The oddest part, though, was the way both of his two apparent bodyguards seemed… afraid of him.
Then, on the second day of the week-long event, Naruto found Kankuro pinning Konohamaru, Naruto's favourite weyrbrat, against the wall outside the second bathing room.
"Hey!" Naruto didn't bother with more than that as a warning, and threw himself bodily at the Suna candidate. He found himself rolled smoothly onto his back with disturbing ease, and wrestled hard to get back on top. "What the fuck, man? He's just a brat, what's your problem?"
Kankuro shoved him off and stood up, straightening his tunic and hood. He glowered at them both. "He was following me," was all he said, and went into the bathing room without another word, and shut the door behind him.
Naruto got up and turned to Konohamaru. "I'm fine," he shrugged Naruto's concern off. "I really don't like them, though. They're fucking freaky."
"Language," Naruto replied absently, bonking Konohamaru on the head and staring at the closed door. He was glad the Suna freaks were in a guest room, and not housed in empty dorm beds like some of the other visiting candidates. "Leave him alone, will you? All of them."
It didn't take much longer for the rest of the candidates to leave them alone, too.
But there were games scheduled each day for the whole week, and dislike spread among all the candidates as the Suna three kept… winning, efficiently, ruthlessly, and with nothing anyone could interpret as actual enjoyment.
Everyone was soon giving them the cold shoulder, and they right back. Naruto was relieved when the last day arrived.
The farewell event was an outside meal. The sky was obligingly clear, and long tables were hauled out to the bowl and set with a fine buffet of Konoha's territory's fare. It went as well as could be expected, considering the obvious distace everyone was keeping between themselves and the Suna candidates.
Naruto dragged his eyes off the trio, who had had a strange air of anticipation all day. Maybe they wanted to leave. Naruto could understand that—he wanted them to leave too. He looked at Sakura instead, who sat across from him, and grinned, dredging up a pun he knew would make her groan and roll her eyes. "Hey, hey. Sakura, did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now." She did just as he'd predicted, and he chortled. Then he heard a muffled chuckle from next to him, and guffawed.
Neji, trying to salvage his dignity, tried to pretend he hadn't laughed at all, but Naruto grinned with delight. "Neji—old healers never die. They just lose their patients."
Having expected another pun, Neji didn't let himself laugh aloud, but his mouth quirked into a nearly proper smile for a moment, and Naruto gave him a joyful nudge. Making Neji smile made everything better, and Naruto did his best to do it again as they ate.
The high didn't last for long. Perhaps half an hour into the meal, the rise and fall of candidate conversation was silenced when the watchdragon roared loud enough to shake the bowl, the sound clear to all those who knew dragons as one of fury.
The ensuing dead silence seemed to encompass the entire bowl. Every dragon on the rim and on the ledges was poised, every human still and waiting, and then the sky was booming and screaming with the sound of angry dragons as the fighting wings of Konoha threw themselves airborne only an instant before the sky above them was filled with strangers.
Then it was chaos.
Riders appeared on their ledges and running from the baths and the dining hall, dragons swooped low, vanished and appeared willy-nilly as some riders mounted and shot upward, others stood earthbound and shouting at their partners who wouldn't come down to carry their riders into danger.
The candidates shouted and pointed. Naruto leaped up onto the bench, shielding his eyes and squinting up, trying to see—but no, it couldn't be—he shook his head and looked again at the maelstrom of dragons overhead. There a brown was snapping at a blue, there two greens were chasing a junior queen, there two blues were locked in a strange parody of a mating, falling, until they parted with ichor dripping from each one's claws.
One tenor bugle cut through the candidates' confusion, Umith's familiar voice jerking Naruto's attention back to earth. Half the group was standing on benches as he was, others clinging to one another. Sakura and Ino were holding hands, Kiba and Shino flanked Hinata, Chouji was standing up next to a still-seated, transfixed Shikamaru.
Umith landed riderless. Iruka was here, had been seated among the Candidates. Geth and Shirath were on her tailtip, and Hayate and Genma mounted up.
"Get into the hatching ground!" Iruka shouted, "The hatching ground!" He repeated his words, but they were drowned out by the rapidly rising volume of the candidates' agitation. Geth and Hayate took off. Shirath and Genma remained flying protective circles overhead, but Umith stayed hovering low, still waiting for her rider to finish his work.
The candidates weren't cooperating, Naruto one of many who kept stopping to look upward, and she got impatient. MOVE! came a voice like a mental blow, and every candidate flinched as Umith was driven to speaking to them herself. And move they did, at last shifting in a hurried disorganized mass that hitched and stumbled as people kept stopping to look up. Umith was unrelenting, hovering just overhead and actually snapping at anyone who lagged too far behind.
They all stopped, though, when golden Katsuyuth shot from the mouth of the hatching cavern and launched her great bulk almost vertically upward, eyes red and jaws gaping, to join the others, her fury heightened by the threat to her eggs. Tsunade had to be just as furious, wherever she was, but Katsuyuth didn't look like she'd be coming back down, even for her rider.
Then Iruka towed and pushed and chivvied and despite the exertion, his face was leached of colour when he finally got everyone under the roof of the hatching cavern. Then Umith landed, and he mounted, and they were gone.
Naruto fell onto a bleacher in the first row, staring around him at the group, though his gaze kept being drawn outside and up to the narrow, still-visible strip of sky. His chest pounded with the horrifying amazement of what was happening. The candidates around him were in a tight group, a knot of tense and uncertain fear. Naruto tightened his hands around the edge of the bleacher bench, resisting the urge to hug himself. For a moment the high cavern ceiling seemed far too low and a wash of terror unrelated to the hostile dragons made him shudder and he jerked against his own grip on the bench. Weight settled next to him and Neji was there, and beyond him Lee.
Before it got any worse, a distraction derailed his fear and sent wary territoriality spinning off instead.
Gaara had left the huddle, walking slowly and purposefully along the length of the dividing wall that separated the stands from the sands.
"Hey, come back!" Naruto snapped, "We're supposed to stay here!"
There was no reaction to his words, and Gaara reached the edge of the wall and moved onto the sands, heading for the eggs that rested on the other end of the sands, unguarded by their mother.
"Hey! Hey!!" Multiple voices took up the warning then.
Lee leaped up from his seat, vaulted over the it and ran to Gaara, grabbing his arm. "We're not allowed here yet, fellow candidate, but you only need to be patient and—oof!" Lee's earnest, diplomatic babble was cut off as Gaara twisted his arm and then deftly tripped Lee, all without breaking stride.
Naruto had one leg over the wall when Lee glanced back and waved him down, frowning at Gaara determinedly. Naruto cursed and shook his head and then did a double take when he realized Neji was at the wall next to him. Neji's pale eyes twitched towards him, his face grim with worry, and they both looked back at the faceoff.
The Suna boy made it only a few more steps before Lee bounded in front of him, standing resolutely between Gaara and the eggs.
"We need to go sit with the others, as our kind Master Iruka instructed," he said, hands out in a placating gesture, his polite words falling utterly flat in the face of Gaara's approach.
"Move," Gaara said, voice devoid of anger, or even annoyance, but chilled with pure threat. Naruto frowned then, grip tightening on the wall. Gaara was short and thin, and didn't look particularly strong. Lee was skinny too, but tough and agile ("Just like great Master Gai!") and stubborn as a mule. Whatever Gaara was up to, Lee could probably take him, but…
Staring blankly at Lee for a few moments when he didn't budge, Gaara seemed to realize Lee wasn't moving. He stepped back once, twice, kept moving back, and Naruto nodded, relieved.
Lee started to grin, and then Gaara spoke again, reaching back to pluck the cork from his gourd. "Move."
Fire lizards slithered from the gourd, one, three, five, then too many to count as more appeared from between, swirling like sand in water, like they were one motion, small wings beating in perfect synch, eyes bright red, tiny jaws gaping. They appeared until a cloud of claws and teeth hung around Gaara. The crowd of candidates variously gasped and cried out. Lee took a step back, staring, more shocked than anything else, and then they came for him.
Arms folded, gaze still flat, Gaara stayed impassive while the swarm shot forward and coalesced on Lee, who first batted at them, then staggered back, and then they were clinging to one arm and one leg, moving like crawling maggots.
Gaara extended one arm, and closed his fist.
Lee fell back and let out a yell that sharpened to a scream as the fire lizards' motion changed, and they started to bite.
Shouts of horror came from the stands behind Naruto, but he couldn't find the voice for his own. "Lee!" Tenten screamed, and then it turned to chaos.
Naruto went over the wall with Neji right beside him. From the corner of his eye he saw Kiba fling Akamaru into the air. The fire lizard vanished. Naruto was shoved aside as Neji thudded to the ground under Kankuro. Naruto snarled and launched himself forward, and was rolled over just as easily as last time, but only for a second. A blur of grey jacket and Shino had an arm around Kankuro's neck. Naruto scrambled out from under him and loked over his shoulder.
Kankurou turned and flipped Shino over his head, landing him with a heavy thud on the warm sand. Kiba ran at him and Kankurou shoved him back,
Tenten was leaning against the wall, starting to rise again, Temari in front of her. Shikamaru leaped over the wall and dropped in a roll, coming up to fling sand at her face, but she raised her arm in time, and shook the rest from her hair with grim determination.
In that quick glance back it looked to Naruto like the two older Suna candidates were trying to stop anyone from getting very far past the wall.
Some fire lizards broke from the main swarm to harry everyone else, and candidates ducked and yelled and fled the piercing, ripping claws and teeth. The swarming flitters were a much more effective barrier than the Kankurou and Temari.
Naruto looked for the one causing all the havoc.
Gaara was walking slowly forwards, arms loose at his sides. He looked almost asleep, and what that meant, Naruto couldn't imagine. There was nothing about this boy that was normal.
He ran at Gaara, was met by a sudden wall of needle-sharp claws. He threw his arms up in front of his face and shoved through, feeling claws tear into his forearms, shoulders, legs. Squinted only enough to see shapes, he finally lunged for the largest one.
Gaara folded under his tackle like an empty set of clothing, tumbling down easily, and Naruto stared down into astonished green eyes.
"What are you doing??" he shouted. Gaara just looked at him, surprise fading into disinterest.
"We are to take the eggs," Gaara said, his voice an audible shrug as he offered information he clearly thought was no longer particularly valuable.
"How can you want to do this?" Naruto shouted at him, hunching under the sudden piercing of a multitude of points on his back, suddenly glad to have a focus for his fear and fury at the attacking dragons overhead. "How can you hurt people like THAT? Call them off!" he bellowed, thumping Gaara's head against the sand.
"Why?" Gaara replied, voice disturbingly even. "People are there to hurt." And Naruto was suddenly conscious of the dots of blood staining his shirt, the little needle-darts of pain from every tiny wound. "It's life," Gaara said, "hurting others. Everything else is false," He blinked his black-bordered eyes. "They made me, they keep me, but they don't want me. False. But pain is always true."
Those black rings were tattoos, Naruto realized for the first time. Just like his. Someone had done this to Gaara. And Gaara's was voice calm and even, tone empty of caring or concern or… anything. Naruto's fury redoubled, the horror of the situation compounded by a terrible and disturbing feeling of kinship with this person who had just sent a swarm of insane fire lizards tearing into Lee.
"Made you...?" Naruto couldn't rub the burn of the tattoos on his face right now, with both fists in Gaara's tunic. "No!! They don't fucking matter! You don't let them use you," he shouted, "you're a person!"
Gaara's eyes drifted shut and Naruto felt the ripping pain of a multitude of claws in his back, and this time they didn't shake free. Through the new shock of pain, he realized that Gaara wasn't fully controlling the fire lizards. They moved on their own, too, an entity of aggression, and shoved Gaara's influence—and awareness, it looked like—totally aside.
At a loss, he bashed his forehead into Gaara's, and once again was faced with a startled look. "Don't let them control you!" Naruto snarled.
Then help came. A dragon's roar shook Naruto to the bones, and everyone turned to look towards the entrance of the hatching ground. A bronze had landed, Maith, with Gai astride him. With a single gliding jump, the dragon thudded to the ground behind Lee and the swarming fire lizards blew back from the crowd of candidates as though they'd been struck by an invisible fist, driven back by Maith's anger.
"WHAT'S GOING ON HERE??" Gai bellowed. Silence fell, the only sounds coming from outside and far above them, the screaming noise of Konoha dragons fighting..
From where Naruto sat on top of Gaara, Lee's arm and leg looked mangled, shredded cloth soaked with blood, but he had sat up, somehow, eyes glazed. "Get back to the stands, please," he said, voice vague.
Neji was slumped beside him, looking caught between holding him up and trying to push him to lie down again. Blood streaked Neji's tunic as it did Naruto's as he bled from a multitude of scratches. His hair had come undone and his hands were smeared with Lee's blood.
Naruto got up and dragged Gaara to his feet by the front of his tunic. Gaara still looked stunned from the headbutt, blinking in a wide-eyed stare at Naruto.
"Lee?" Gai's horrified question echoed through the silent cavern, and he leaped from Maith's neck and ran towards Lee.
"What…" Gaara said, "Why is he doing that?"
"He loves him. He wants to help him," Naruto said, incredulous. Gaara's blatant, vaguely perplexed stare was almost obscene in its detached interest, after having seen him attack Lee not minutes earlier.
"Love," Gaara repeated, and his expression became almost animated, flickering through confusion, disbelief, anger, then decision.
And the fire lizards descended like a blow, Naruto ducked and let go of his captive, stumbling back and away.
He looked over his shoulder on instinct and saw Tenten and Kiba and the rest falling back likewise from Temari and Kankuro as two separate swarms of fire lizards surrounded them both. The swarms contracted.
"We're done," Gaara said, and the three Suna candidates vanished.
There was a moment of dead silence. Naruto could hardly believe he had truly seen that. He blinked, and blinked again, and tried to make himself believe that three people had really just gone betweenvia fire lizard.
"Lee!" he had finally passed out, and Gai lifted him gently, shockingly uncharacteristic darkness in his face. Neji got to his feet on his own, Naruto was relieved to see, and he looked towards the rest of the candidates, spotting no one with anything worse than scratches and cuts and torn clothing.
Maith growled and shifted, wings rustling, and Gai looked grim.
"Stay here," he said, no trace of his usual demeanour visible. He mounted up, carrying Lee, and Maith took off in a fast, low beeline for the infirmary.
Naruto looked at Neji and for a second Neji's worry for his friend and fear about the dragons fighting above the Weyr showed clearly through his reserve. "He'll be fine," Naruto choked, because it was Lee, and how could anything happen to him?
Lee would be fine. He had to be.
Everyone stood, milling gradually back to bleachers.
"Oto Weyr," said Shikamaru, and Naruto swivelled to stare at him as he looked upward, eyes half-lidded, staring as though he could see the sky through the roof of the cavern. "They came for the eggs."
"Gaara's from Suna," was all Naruto could think to reply. Oto. A rumor, a frightening tale, an impossible place where dragons trained not against Thread, but against other dragons. The latest tale was that they needed eggs, and were going to raid the true Weyrs. The dragons had eyes that were always red, and fighting scars, and everyone knew someone who knew someone who'd seen one.
"And Suna is a fine and reliable ally, isn't it?" Shikamaru tilted his head to look at Naruto and raised his eyebrows.
"Can't be Oto," Naruto said, but there was no conviction in him. Oto. Where Sasuke had wanted to go, where that man he'd wanted to find was rumoured to lead the red-eyed dragons.
Couldn't be. Sasuke couldn't be like this. No. Naruto put that out of his mind.
Naruto looked at where Lee had been mauled. Blood made the sand dark. And now it seemed clear what Gaara had been supposed to do.
The attack must not have gone quite to plan. If they hadn't all been gathered in here when the attack started. Gaara could have come here with Temari and Kankurou and been free to take the eggs, unopposed, while Katsuyuth fought above, with Maith and Umith and all the rest.
What was obvious in hindsight—guards for the eggs—couldn't even have been conceived of beforehand. This attack had been unthinkable until now.
But it had failed. Here the eggs still were. Gaara was gone.
Except… the attacking dragons were still above, the sounds of fighting clear and terrible.
"They were just a distraction," Chouji said, uncertain, echoing Naruto's own hope, "they failed, they'll leave."
"No," Shikamaru said, and everyone turned at the sound of his voice, following his gaze across the trampled sand and out the mouth of the cavern.
A lithe, scarred bronze was low in the bowl only a few dragonlengths from the hatching cavern. Attempting a much more obvious snatch, below the aerial melee. He spun in a quick turn that most bronzes couldn't achieve and arrowed straight for the hatching ground.
It may have lacked stealth, but the sight was no less horrifying for that. Naruto had seen dragons hunt. They killed herdbeasts by snapping their thick necks, ate by messy disemboweling of their prey, tearing flesh, crunching bones with much enjoyment.
And now a dragon was coming for them.
They all stared, the enormity of fearing a dragon's approach beyond anyone's ability to truly grasp.
The sheer wrongness of it all made Naruto feel sick and angry, bile rising at the back of his throat. Dragons were not… they didn't…
He heard an affirmative squeak from Akamaru as Kiba sent him upward again.
The sound of running, as some candidates fled, making for the doors at the back of the cavern that would let them into halls too small for a dragon to enter.
The remaining candidates had started to move backward, step by step, towards the eggs.
It wouldn't matter, Naruto knew. There was no defense. He stumbled back over a warm, smooth shell, and put a hand gently on it, a knot in his throat starting to choke him at his sheer uselessness, at the idea that this warm egg and all its mates, tended so diligently by Katsuyuth, visited on many occasions by the candidates, should be taken, twisted into the red-eyed monsters attacking the Weyr.
And he could do nothing but die, or run.
He wasn't going to run.
A sweaty hand slipped into his, and he couldn't look away from the oncoming bronze, but the pink in his peripheral vision told him who it was, and he squeezed. She squeezed back, grip tightening to the point of pain.
Long black hair on his other side. And Naruto didn't care, now, what it meant, how it looked. He grabbed for Neji's hand and felt it grip back. Their fingers interlaced, and they watched the oncoming threat.
The one who came to their aid wasn't Umith, it wasn't Maith, it wasn't even great gold Katsuyuth.
The graying bronze shape of the retired Weyrleader's dragon appeared riderless, square in the intruder's path, roaring. Enmath, Sarutobi's bronze.
The hostile bronze didn't so much as shift a wingtip. He flew straight on to ram into the elderly defender. Enmath didn't bother to dodge. Bellowing, eyes blazing red with fury, he met the silent oncoming dragon. He folded upon impact, but closed his old jaws on the attacker's throat and dug blunt claws into his flanks. The younger bronze made no sound, only swatted and raked at the clinging nuisance, hovering awkwardly. His rider appeared unruffled, seated tall and relaxed. Enmath's low, muffled roars could be heard across the bowl, the agony audible in the deep, groaning sound, but he held fast. They lost altitude, and finally the locked-together dragons thudded to the ground bare meters from the hatching ground's entrance
New roars from above. Dragons were diving from the aerial melee, and Naruto could hear the recognizable deep roar of the gold whose eggs were threatened.
The attacker shook free from Enmath's grip in short order. The old bronze bellowed and struggled after him, wings torn and sagging, ichor and worse dripping from long gashes, close to disemboweled by sharp talons, but still moving.
A person, a small figure from this distance, was racing on foot towards the old bronze. The retired weyrleader.
Then Raidou's lean brown Namiath shot straight over the intruder's head and swerved to land between him and the sands with jaws wide and feet planted, the limber brown smaller than the bronzes, and dwarfed by the cavern's entrance.
Namiath snarled, but didn't attack, still hesitant. Killing rage was almost unheard of in normal dragons, only known to happen if two gold dragons rose to mate at once. But the bronze was as unnatural as Gaara's fire lizards, eyes solid red, but moving like no dragon Naruto knew. The bronze's motions held no indication of independence, no anger despite his eyes, or even any thought. He moved like a string puppet. His hide was marked with scars of combat, but they were altogether different from the long, tangled lines of threadscore. They were claw marks and ragged knitted tears, scars from battle with dragons, the kind that Konoha dragons would bear after today.
One familiar green pair shot straight over the attacking bronze's head. Geth and Hayate. But Geth's wingsails were ragged, and her flight slowing, uneven, and when she turned to swoop again, a red-eyed blue dropped onto her back, and with one quick motion, tore her rider from her back, jaws closing on his neck and chest, and tossed him aside. His body fell to the ground.
Geth screamed, and vanished. Hayate's crumpled form didn't move, and Naruto knew the green would never come out of between again.
Enmath roared, rose on all fours at last. He lunged and caught the attacker's haunches.
The rider of the scarred bronze leaped from the trapped dragon's neck and was swung aboard the blue.
The blue called a long, piercing note, and vanished.
The light fading from his eyes, Enmath rode the thrashing and heaving of the abandoned bronze as he tried to rise from the ground, the unnatural motion gone from his scarred body, visceral terror animating him now. He seemed to have no ability to follow his comrades, despite having come betweento get here, and that meant, chillingly, he really had been abandoned with no directions for him to leave.
The old weyrleader reached his dragon at last, and as he threw himself over Enmath's neck, Naruto felt a gently touch in his mind. Gasps from others in the huddled group matched his own as the mellow old dragon spoke for himself and his rider: Goodbye.
Naruto yelled wordless denial as similar shouts and wails rose behind him, but he ran only a few steps forward in the sand before Enmath vanished, taking himself, his rider, and the crazed, screaming bronze between to die.
The blue's call must have been a signal for retreat; all over the bowl, dragons were landing, freed from combat. Katsuyuth, dripping ichor from a multitude of wounds, shoved past Namiath, her motions panicked enough to spray sand all over the flinching candidates as she hurried to her eggs, snapping at any candidate who still stood near them, huddling over them when she saw they were untouched.
Naruto staggered back with the rest, shrinking from Katsuyuth's rage, and they all stood on the sands as the piercing keen of the Weyr's dragons filled the air, echoed by Akamaru's tinny wail, their grief for Enmath, and Geth and their riders, and Naruto had no idea how many more might have been killed today.
That night, Naruto's nightmare was only one among those of many others, and when Neji shook him awake and he clung as if to a lifeline, shuddering under the grip of hands that held too tight not to be taking comfort in return, no one looked twice.