Chapter 10 – Last Lesson

The Leaf could no longer satisfy the serpent master's ambitions and his constant craving for power. The Third failed to let him take his post as the next Hokage, and thus he was seeing less and less Konoha had left to offer him. For the last few months especially, he was so ready to leave Konoha at any given minute that he was practically holding no reservations of his ill-willed actions.

Finally, he had done it. Orochimaru left sanity behind and completed his last mission as a shinobi of Konohagakure with malevolence. He gave his younger student her last lesson while he was at it, so the two of them journeyed to the battlefield together.

After the Third Shinobi World War, conflicts did not stop between Konohagakure and Sunagakure. Both villages continued sending their troops to guard the borders and often there were collisions between the two forces. Orochimaru led a team of jōnin to defend the Land of Fire from the Sand's intrusion. Due to Yuna's status as the Hokage's daughter and her lack of experience, she was told to get out of the way and observe it all from a harmless distance. Orochimaru had the vicious gut to bring the blunette along, but he figured it would be a bad idea if she died in a battle that the Hokage couldn't even recall sending his own daughter to. Yuna watched from afar, above the shallow valley, where the blood spat took place.

That was the battlefield. Yuna witnessed how her teacher proficiently cut off enemies' throats; blood was gushing in mid-air, blooming like glorious flowers; screams were begging for mercy, resounding in the vastness, then slowly fading into nothing. Within the fearful twilight, through the once-flourishing lands that had been bombed to barren, in the middle of brimful wrecked trees that were barely holding on to their trunks, there was a boy.

He was in the middle of the battlefield, where black smoke bound around all corpses and weapons were lying on the ground motionlessly. He stood still in shock. He lost himself in bloodshed. When heavy masses of cumulus clouds had the waxing crescent moon fully sheltered, his garnet eyes were the only things shinning in absolute darkness. Once the smoke started to clear, he took a big breath. Clink. Suddenly, there was a ringing of metal clashing. He panicked. Simultaneously, his adrenaline kicked in and his instinct took over his actions.

"Katon: Hosenka no Jutsu!"

A volley of small fireballs escaped from the boy's mouth. Fleetingly, the darkness was lightened up by his fire release. Beneath his glowing eyes, there were traces of dried moisture around his tear ducts. He swiftly picked up a kunai nearby and alertly examined his surroundings for a split-second. When the flames were extinguishing, the raven bangs framing his face blended back into the darkness as he ran for his life. For a brief moment, he distracted his well-trained prey and made a successful attempt at his escape.

Yuna did not know who he was, nor did she know why a young boy like him was there in the first place. She almost forgot, but she remembered him - she saw him once in this battlefield before, from a fragment of that strange dream which happened almost five months prior. However, she did not care and she did not know the reason behind how her dream had become cruel reality. Her heart clenched at her desire to save the boy, but she knew she would most likely make it worse than be of any help; she could only pray for his safety. She understood what it was like to be in that situation, because she was once in his shoes.

For the first time in her life, Yuna felt so useless and vulnerable in her abilities.

The battle came and went hastily. Things momentarily cooled down between the two countries. The Leaf's shinobi made a camp and settled down. The wounded were treated immediately while the dead bodies left in the battlefield were collected by those who were in shape and healthy. Yuna found herself a not-so-noticeable corner under a tree, then made a fire and a meal with the fishes she caught.

Orochimaru eyed the little girl sharply, like a needle piercing through skin. "See how brittle human life is? Remember that, and remember that well."

Yuna looked away from his threatening gaze and diverted her attention by concentrating on cooking. She sniffed the air. Gradually, the comforting aroma of grilled fish was spreading, but she did not have the appetite to eat. As she knew, just several hundred metres away, there was Manda merrily cleaning the bleeding earth using his stomach, eating up the fallen enemies and the surviving captives. Yuna held the skewer on her hand and stared at it. She was horrified. Unexpectedly, the fish in her hand was snatched. By the time she registered this, Orochimaru was already munching down on the stolen goods in his blood-stained hands and clothes.

Yuna swallowed hard. "How can you eat?" The thought of eating after such a horrid battle disgusted her. She could already feel her stomach twisting, and she ran to the underbrush to empty its contents.

Orochimaru frowned, studying the girl squatting under the trees as she practically coughed her lungs out. Although he was a sadist and had put the girl through brutal training, admittedly, he had grown to have some sympathy for her. This time, he knew he'd gone overboard and she was probably traumatised for life. But he also knew that this was the best and most effective way to let one grow up.

Only those who have been to the battlefield truly understood the meaning of life.

"Take some water." Orochimaru handed a bottle to the girl. Yuna felt better after getting it all out: hunger struck afterwards. Subsequently, she went to grill more fish. Orochimaru sat opposite the girl. He was expecting fear and despair to appear on the girl's face, but his hope was in vain. He only could find some sort of all-knowing calmness in her dark green eyes.

Orochimaru took a bite of the fourth fish he was having, and commented to test the girl's reaction. "There's another child about your age in the campus. His name's Itachi, the son of the leader of Uchiha Clan. It seems Fugaku wants his son to understand the truth of living first-hand through experiencing a battle."

"I see. The Uchiha's leader had the same aim as you, then," Yuna spoke. She was surprised to know there was another person as ill-minded as Orochimaru-sensei.

"Hohoho, I wasn't expecting you to understand my intention in this practice, but I am glad you do. I must say, Itachi-kun is an exceptionally talented child. At his young age, he excels in many fields," Orochimaru remarked longingly. Yuna was slightly envious of the boy and felt disappointed with her teacher. He never gave extreme compliments to anyone. To think that she had worked hard enough to earn her strength and respect from him... Clearly, that was not enough.

"What's so special about him?" Yuna challenged.

Orochimaru conveyed his adoration for the boy. "What will happen if you have kunai thrown at you from all 360 degrees?" he questioned.

"I will get hurt because I won't be able to dodge them all," Yuna truthfully answered.

"But that boy can. I saw him going through such impossible training. I was shocked to find someone to be able to do that, never mind a child. Even I cannot possibly manage that bare-handed. And when the boy activates his Sharingan, he will be even more perfect…. His body is indeed very desirable…" Orochimaru whispered, chuckling evilly to himself.

Yuna understood.

Little did Orochimaru know, Yuna saw a boy with gleaming red eyes on the battlefield; little did Yuna know, those were the precious eyes her sensei was going after.

"When he was brought to the battlefield, however, he cried. He is a child, after all; but then, I was surprised that you didn't cry."

"I…. I cannot cry anymore…" Yuna admitted, though it was more of an inability to cry in the presence of others. She must be strong; at least, she must look like she was strong.

"Life's too short, especially for us shinobi. The death of my parents, as well as Tsunade's brother and her lover, taught me how fragile life is. Not only will I make myself become stronger, but I will also live longer. Living with no aim is quite boring. With that said, if you have a longer life, you will find the more interesting aspects in due time." Orochimaru stroked Yuna's hair with his stone-cold hand and brought up a tyrannical smile.

"You are a special child too, I must say. You have notable talents, but that's not what impresses me. I am astonished by how grown-up your way of thinking is. I have seen many premature children, but none like you. You seem to have grasped the fundamentals of life – your eyes look as if they can see through life and death. That doll-like face is very misleading. You are mentally much older than your appearance says." He let out a brief chuckle. "What a freak!"

"It's not like I want to grow up so fast!" Yuna shouted it and was fuming at him. How dare was her own teacher call her a freak? She gnashed her teeth lightly, taking a furious bite of the newly-grilled fish.

Orochimaru was entertained by Yuna's sudden change of mood. "Hmm, Yuna, I just can't place a finger on you. You're a strange child." He laughed to himself.

Late at night, with the sound of firewood cracking, Yuna rested in her sleeping bag. It had been a tough day both physically and mentally. She could still hear screams and explosions echoing in her head. Frowning, she shut her eyes and covered her ears tightly, burrowing down into the safety of the sleeping bag. In her hallucinating state of exhaustion, Yuna could vaguely make out her teacher's low murmurings next to her.

"I know I am right, but I want someone else's existence to prove me right as well. Live on, Yuna, until the day I destroy Konoha and turn it into thin dust…."

Those were the last words she heard from her teacher right as she was half-asleep. She thought then that it was just another nightmare.

The next day when Yuna woke up, she found herself in her bedroom at home. Her body felt numb and broken. She realised she must have been carried home in the early morning, although she had been woken up by the overwhelming anger of her father. Her heart was tingling to get up as well, seeing Kushina weeping in distress by the bed and Minato pacing around in anxiety with documents in his hands.

"Where have you been?" Minato demanded of Yuna in an authoritative tone. "Do you have any idea how worried your mother and I have been for the last two days?" The papers in his hand crinkled as he tightened his grip on them.

"Sensei gave me instructions to do survival training in the Forest of Death. Papa, Mama, I'm sorry to have worried you."

Whatever Minato and Kushina asked, Yuna was always honest with them. This time round, she chose to hide the truth. She did not want to worry them any more. Minato took a moment to observe and think. The girl consciously avoided eye contact. He saw through the lies and he suspected something serious must have happened. However, he did not press on. Instead, he softened up and pulled the girl into a hug.

"It was my fault that I let you become Orochimaru-san's student. I'm so sorry to have put you through this."

Yuna opened her mouth, but nothing came out. It was she who had wanted to become stronger, it was she who had wanted Orochimaru to be her teacher, it was she who had gotten herself into that situation. It had been a while that Yuna had been trying to deceive herself into having faith in her sensei. She hated herself for lying to her parents; she did not want to admit to them, either. Until Yuna heard those very words out of Orochimaru's mouth, she did not want to believe what her sensei had become – or rather, to finally acknowledge the ugly truth. Yuna was too fatigued to keep up with her dilemma. She knew if she did not inform the authorities, she would only do injustice to the innocent sacrifices. When she finally confessed, she was sobbing in her parents' heart-warming embrace.

"Sensei is going to betray us."

From what the Third had been telling him for the last two months, Minato expected the defect to come sooner or later. With those words coming from his daughter's mouth, it reminded him of her sketches that he put away from anyone's reach. Staring worriedly, he took another look on the bed, where their little girl was lying beside her mother. She hid her tears and wept silently into Kushina's dress; Kushina stroked the girl's back gently and soothingly. Just then, Minato remembered something too important to be left out.

He went straight to the study to check on something that he had been pondering for a while now.

Minato fetched for the sketch book he had camouflaged perfectly against a wall of reference materials on his bookshelf. When Yuna had showed him what she saw in that confusing nightmare, drawing down what she remembered, the first thing that came into his mind was to hide it all. For once, he didn't know if her talents in sketching was a gift or a curse. She might have been tingling in her words when she tried to explain her dream; her vivid sketches were doing a brilliant job of telling the stories. Minato wasn't sure how Yuna dreamed of those seemingly irrational events and what the significance was behind it. The fact was that if any other person apart from Kushina or he saw the sketches, it could have caused some malicious gossips. A few sketches in particular were strongly implying on the Snake Sannin's betrayal; there were others that showed he, at the time being only a candidate of becoming the Fourth Hokage, was the Fourth Hokage with Kushina putting the hat on him on their wedding day during the ceremony. To prevent the spread of unwanted rumours, Yuna had promised her papa that she would keep it between them only. He explained to her that it was probably because she knew her adoptive parents were getting married and he had an ambition to become the Hokage, and so it happened in her dream.

"Have you ever met this person before, Yuna-chan?" Minato pointed at one of the sketches Yuna drew, a teen shinobi who was lying unconscious nearby the entrance of West Gate's laboratory occupied by Orochimaru. The boy was pierced through the left shoulder, only a few inches away from the heart, bleeding and staining the ground. The melting sleet was stained with his blood.

Minato waited for an answer, looking at his daughter with much concern. Minato waited. His eyebrows twitched upward as he flicked through the sketches with one hand, tapping lightly on the table with his other. Page by page, he carefully examined them all and determined where those places were. He was unusually impatient and he knew that. He put the book down after a second run, unable to fully understand what he was dealing with.

"No." Yuna shook her head timidly and returned the same troubling gaze she was getting, tensing up in fear of her delusional mind. Minato noticed this, and brought out a reassuring smile, appearing to have dismissed his unhelpful thoughts. He then turned to the sketch where Jiraiya and Tsunade were facing the other Sannin, battling in the forest that surrounded Konoha.

It wasn't that Minato didn't believe her for saying she had not met some of those people before, he just didn't know what to say. Minato took a third look on that one particular sketch again: he recognised that face right away, though he remained in shock while still trying to hide it. Shisui looked very much like his older brother, Minato's long-deceased best friend; he was told even his attitude was matching, too.

He didn't know what to make of all that but to hide the drawings for now.

"Don't worry about it." Minato let out a sigh through his curved lips. "It'll all make sense someday." He ran out of sensible explanations, but he was starting to get really suspicious about her true identity. "Can Papa keep the drawings for now? I'll get you a new sketch book." Not that his daughter was a threat at all, it would just mean she was a target the Water would give the world to finish off under the current Water Daimyo's regime. Minato pondered back to his ancestor's stories that had been passed down to every generation in the Namikaze household. But, if they were all true... then it made perfect sense.

When it happened, Yuna was too young to remember clearly about her birth family. Both Minato and Kushina thought they should let Yuna come to them rather than forcing it out of her. If she wanted to tell them, she would. At that moment in time, they still needed more proof before Minato could be sure.

Yuna told them the truth about going to the border with the allocated jōnin team he had sent three days ago. She briefly mentioned that she saw a boy being left alone in the battlefield from a safe distance and how he had managed to escape, as if she had seen it happening before. Minato confirmed with her again if she had met the boy before in real life; she had not. Minato knew Yuna sometimes forgot what she had dreamed about, being a child having difficulty to tell what was a dream and what was reality, although she was getting better to be in a position to make them lucid. She was grasping her way in the illusionary world and had found a way to wake herself up once realising how she was consumed in a nightmare.

According to a jōnin report he received that morning, it would appear Fugaku, the head of Uchiha clan, had brought his young son along to the mission, forcing the child to shed off the last bit of innocence about the cruelty of the world. If the boy was already a shinobi, Minato would have used his authority as the Hokage to ban it from happening. He never wished Yuna had turned out the way she did. However, he was in no place to teach someone else's son, especially concerning the heir to one of the most prestige clans in the Land of Fire, both in terms of its military influence and financially. Knowing the Uchiha and their brutal method in training their young, some of them had become some of the finest killing machines Konoha had ever produced, like the gory name his best friend made in his death. After all these years, it would seem they would not change their way. If his baby girl's dream had once again come true, Minato was not at all surprised that the boy she saw the day before was the one she drew five months prior and had probably forgotten. Minato could only assume, since Yuna didn't mention it.

Taking a final glance at the sketch where Shisui was fatally wounded, Minato decided that he would not take his chance. He didn't make it for Toshi, he could at least make it for Shisui. He shut the sketch book, frustrated at himself, and put it into his drawer on the desk quickly. As he snapped his fingers, and his personal platoon assembled before him.

"Search for Mitarashi Anko." The timing could all be wrong, but it never hurt to be prepared. "Make sure she is safe." Or maybe, many things had happened already. Timing in a dream was never in correlation to timing in real life.

"Hai, Hokage-sama." The trio disappeared as soon as they answered.

The blond man put on the honri that hung by the standing hanger at the side of the room, and prepared to head to the Hokage mansion to notify his predecessor.

"Inu," before Minato, the silver-haired ANBU appeared, "trace Jiraiya-sensei and Tsunade-sama. Get them on the case - be prepared by the south-west of the Great Forest. Sandaime-sama may have his hesitation, but we absolutely cannot afford to let him get away." If anyone else was strong enough to take on a Sannin, it had to be another Sannin.

"What about Root, Hokage-sama?" Kakashi had no idea what exactly gave his teacher clues about where they should lay their traps, although he trusted his judgements. Danzō would do anything to save his most valuable researcher. There was no doubt about that. It was because of that, it had been immensely difficult to gather evidence against the Sannin's crimes.

"I'm on it." At that, the young ANBU went away.

If Minato didn't have the drawings, all they could do was to wait and rely on Shisui's news, being their only light to the matter. If it turned out to be what the drawing indicated, then they would not get any news. It was to the point that there was a verbal testament came directly from his student, Namikaze Yuna, the Fourth's daughter; at least they could now openly search with an official warrant.

Looking out the window, Minato saw that heavy sleet was building and gathering as ice. Winter is here. Just as he was about to use the Hiraishin to head out, a cat-masked ANBU caught him and arrived in time.

"Yondaime-sama, just as you've predicted earlier this morning, Uchiha Shisui was found gravely injured by the West Gate's laboratory." He kneeled down as he faced the young Hokage. "We've sent him to the hospital through to the emergency department."

Minato turned his head to face the captain and thanked him with a faint nod. His eyes focused at the irises, but they did not seem to be surprised in the slightest.

Those dreams were not of his child's wild imagination. Far from it, in fact. Minato was absolutely certain now - they were foreseeing dreams all along.

Info for readers:-

Orochimaru's defect

It is said in the anime that Orochimaru left Konoha after the Kyūbi attack. I'm changing it, which means the backstory of Tenzō (Yamato) in the Kakashi ANBU specials never existed in this series. Yamato was a test-tube baby.

Inu (犬)

It is "dog" in Japanese. Kakashi was a dog-masked ANBU. I shall remind you again that I'm ignoring the anime fillers about Kakashi's time in ANBU.

Yuna and her dreams

The dreams come and go. Sometimes, she re-dreams a foreseeing dream; by that time, it has become reality. There have been researches showing that people don't remember happy dreams, as happy dreams often finish or resolve, but the nightmares or the discontinued dreams are usually the ones that people wake up from in fear or other negative emotions evoked by the images. This ability is directly linked to her ancestry.

According to estimates by dream researcher J. Allan Hobson, as much as 95% of all dreams are quickly forgotten shortly after waking. Why are our dreams so difficult to remember? The changes in the brain that occur during sleep do not support the information processing and storage needed for memory formation to take place. Brain scans of sleeping individuals have shown that the frontal lobes, the area that plays a key role in memory formation, are inactive during REM sleep, the stage in which dreaming occurs.

A lucid dream is one in which you are aware that you are dreaming even though you are still asleep. During this type of dream, you can often "direct" or control the content of the dream. In Yuna's case, she knows she's dreaming and is only able to wake herself up and escape, unable to change the content of the dreams, since they are foreseeing dreams.