Chapter 9
"I'll do it," she says calmly, as if she was commenting on the weather instead of the outcome of her life. Her hands are perfectly still, a product of years of practise, and a mild smile is on her face instead of the snarl of fury that Ichiro feels would prefer, that he feels is deserved.
"I volunteer as tribute."
One week ago, the Elders had agreed to meet with the Hono Elders while they worked out the conditions. The only problem was that Ichiro hadn't been present, but the terms and conditions seemed to be acceptable to the Elders, who had agreed to them without consulting the Clan Head.
Ichiro hadn't been the one to agree to them. He hadn't even known what they were. Perhaps it was his fault, however. He could have delayed the mission but he didn't. He could have attended but he hadn't. He had thought the Elders were capable, but he thought wrong.
The Elders didn't understand what was right and wrong for Ichiro, what was acceptable and not. All they knew was power and gaining power, how to ensure their enemies were trapped in a corner, because they didn't understand what they were agreeing to, what they were going to sacrifice or what it meant to Ichiro.
The only problem was that Naoko would have to leave with the conditions that had been agreed to, because being the Clan Head's sister and a girl, it was realised that she would be the most beneficial to the Hono clan.
While she was important to the Clan Head, ensuring the pact, she was a girl, and in a few years she would be able to bear children. Her genetics were strong, giving way to strong children in the future.
The Hono had realised that and exploited it, on the terms that two clan members would be exchanged to the other clan. While each of the clans chose one of the two that would be exchanged, while the other one would be decided by the other clan.
The Shimura had decided that the Hono Clan Head's middle son, a boy about thirteen years of age, would be best for his combat power and his blind obedience.
The Clan Elders had decided that sending Keisuke, a strong shinobi among the Shimura, would be enough to keep Ichiro happy. Keisuke would keep Ichiro's sister safe and so it was a win-win situation, or so they thought.
After all, Naoko was… unimportant in the scheme of things, a mere pawn. She wasn't particularly strong, nor particularly good at anything compared to her brothers, so it was okay in their eyes. It was a fair trade.
"What? No, don't do it, Nao-chan!" Isamu cries. "I'm your big brother! I should be the one protecting you, not the other way around!"
It was either him or her, and she knew that the clan needed Isamu much more than they needed her. They all knew it. They just didn't want to accept it.
"It's okay," she says. "I'll do it."
Ichiro knows that Isamu would be the only other option that the Hono would accept, apart from Naoko, but he also knows that even if Isamu is perfectly willing, nobody else is. Isamu is precious, he is the one with charisma that keeps things going in the clan, the one that knows everybody on a personal level and… well, Naoko isn't.
"...If you're sure," Ichiro says, ignoring the betrayed look that Isamu is sending in his direction. He knows that, as the Clan Head, this is a choice that he must make.
"I'm sure," she replies.
"Madara," she greets politely, slightly nervous that Hashirama isn't there. The relationship between them isn't like the relationship between Hashirama and her, and not nearly as close as the relationship between Hashirama and Madara. "It's been a while, again." She chuckles and he rolls his eyes and sits down next to her.
It had been nearly three weeks after Ichiro had agreed to her plan. Most of the details were sorted out, and the Hono had surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) agreed. The only problems were… well… Madara and Hashirama.
"You disappear for seven months, and then you disappear for five months at a time, and both times you appear looking like you haven't slept in days," he states. "What's wrong with you this time?"
She looks surprised. She can read between the lines. Are you okay? he is trying to ask. Her lips twist into one of her usual fake smiles, though he doesn't buy it, and she wonders if he has ever bought it. She knows what he is trying to ask.
"I'm fine," she replies. "Why wouldn't I -"
"Why wouldn't you be?" She blinks, surprised at the outburst. He is angry. It is clearly displayed on his face, but it is a calm anger, an anger that terrifies her. "You're a girl. Why are you… Why are you like this? You're not supposed to fight or go through this, and you're not supposed to hide it when we ask you what's wrong. Stop it."
He slowly composes himself and sits back down. "You've been on the war. You've killed. You have suffered through attacks that should have you dead. Why wouldn't you tell us?"
He was worried. She got that. She just didn't get why he was suddenly bringing it up now, and why now of all days. Besides, he wasn't the mother hen of the three - that was Hashirama.
How did he even notice? She stares back at his coal, black eyes and smirks. Of course. He awakened his Sharingan. But how did he awaken his Sharingan? She freezes for a second. It is barely noticeable as her hands slightly stiffen up and her breath slightly hitches, but both of them notice, and Naoko curses herself for it.
There's a reason that she was never sent to spy on the Uchiha, and that was, firstly, because she wasn't quite at that skill level yet, and secondly, that the Uchiha noticed everything.
She looks at the back of her hand and there are faint scars lining the once soft and untarnished skin. The newest addition was a spiderweb of lines that she got when she was electrocuted by a weaker lightning style jutsu. Perhaps she should get gloves or wrap bandages around her hands and arms, like her brothers, to cover them up.
She pulls up the collar of her shirt to try and cover the larger scars, something that she was slightly sensitive about. Girls didn't get scars. Girls weren't supposed to fight. Girls shouldn't be trained to kill and not bat an eyelash as they drained the life of an opponent.
In her old world she had cared about looking pretty, which was why she used to obsess about her hair and clothes and didn't mind learning to be a housewife, because she enjoyed dressing up like that.
She didn't care that much now as a shinobi. There was simply no time for such trivial matters anymore. She wasn't exactly vain, but she didn't like looking bad, and having so many injuries like that only reminded her of the unblemished skin that she used to have.
"I didn't think you'd notice. I didn't think it'd matter," she says softly. "After all, you and Hashirama have worse injuries compared to mine and neither of you bring it up. I didn't think it mattered because I was a girl."
Madara looked surprised and slightly guilty at her words. She smiled again, attempting to make it look as genuine as possible.
She sighed. She had wanted today to start off better. She had wanted the day to be perfect, with the beautiful weather and the flowers blooming, even though she had to wake up extra early so that she wouldn't be late for her mission with the Hono, because today was… special. She smiled.
There wasn't going to be another day like today for a while.
"Hey!" She turned around and smiled, seeing Hashirama running up to them. Her eyes widened slightly, seeing him, and she could see him faltering in his step. He gritted his teeth slightly, and in his eyes there was the unmistakable burning of anger and hatred.
She wanted to make things quick. Today, she was going to confess everything, and despite whatever Hashirama might currently think about her, she wasn't going to let that stop her. "Today is a good day, right?" she asked in an attempt to act casually, grimacing at the verbal tick that she recognised as Isamu's.
"I suppose, yeah. Why?" Madara asked with a raised eyebrow.
She sighed slightly and lay her pouch in front of her and the other two. It had been a huge inconvenience to come up with what to give them, but she had managed to do so.
"I'm just going to say this quickly," she said, clearing her throat. She was nervous, the slightest tremor in her hands, and she couldn't get rid of the thickness in her voice or the slight fluttering in her stomach.
"I know that I've literally been gone for seven months, and then five months, and this is the first time in ages that you've managed to see me and I haven't looked like the walking dead. But I might be gone for a long time afterwards. A long time."
The pact was almost confirmed. It was in both clans' best interests and the Hono were not stupid, although they sometimes allowed their emotions to get in their way. All they needed to do was the actual exchange before the deal was done.
And being the idiot that she was, Naoko had volunteered as a spur of the moment sort of decision ("I volunteer as tribute!"). It would be either her or Isamu, and her older brother didn't deserve this. She could still handle her own if necessary, and he was the one that the clan needed, that Ichiro needed, not her.
"I'm not going to be seeing you, unless you somehow also go… where I'll be going." The pact never ended. She would be stuck there forever. She would never see them again.
"What… What do you mean?" Hashirama asked grimly. "You're not going to die, are you?" She looked up, surprised. Then again, with the way that she had phrased it, it was probably the most logical conclusion. Not the right one though.
"No, no. I'll be alive. I just won't see you again," she said, "Ever. And even if we do," she told them, her tone suddenly dropping, "I'll likely be killed as your opponent." She couldn't keep the disappointed tone out of her voice, even with the false cheer. Hashirama blinked in surprise, gritting his teeth.
"I got you gifts!" she cheered, trailing off slightly at the end. "I… It was unplanned. I had no time to get anything special, but…" She handed two jars to them both - one with paralysis powder and the other containing poison powder. They were in little glass jars that she had made herself, just like the ones they used in Chemistry a long, long time ago.
"Naoko…" Madara said, examining the dark indigo powder carefully. She had chosen these gifts painstakingly carefully. She had made them herself, and had created four batches trying to make it perfect. It was a gift that nobody else could give.
She smiled sadly and cleared her throat again. "Use only a small sprinkle - four milliliters - of it for typical usage and eight for a lethal dosage. It doesn't affect clothing, but it does affect skin and will stain. It's the same with the paralysis. It will wear off in two hours if you inject a mixture of four milliliters of the powder with double the amount of water."
"...Thanks, Nao-chan," she heard Hashirama say quietly, gripping the delicate, glass jars in his hand tightly.
She was unsure of what else to say and she wanted to stall for time. She knew that she had no time left, but she wanted to spend every last moment she could with them. They were her friends - her only friends.
"I like your necklace, Hashirama. I think your eyes are pretty, Madara," she said slowly. Realistically, there was no way to say them out loud, but she hoped they would get the message. "Goodbye."
Half an hour by the river had come and gone, and it was now time to leave. She was going to live with the Hono now. She would never see Hashirama or Madara again. She could only imagine the loneliness she would feel without any friends, because she had betrayed Pip and had left everyone else.
She smiled, though it was still fake, because she really wanted to cry, even if she hadn't cried in God knows how long. She stood up and without a second glance, left.
There was nothing more to say.
Kenta was the third son and the fifth and last child of Miho and Ryouta Hono, the Clan Head, a (terrifying) short, stocky man with dark brown hair and amber eyes, with three scars on his face. His two brothers took after him, while Kenta and his sisters took after his mother, a ginger-haired, brown eyed, delicate woman.
The Hono clan was relatively small but strong. They could rival clans such as the Sarutobi in terms of their strength and there had been a recent population boom, which would have made just less than four hundred members altogether, before the… incident.
It was well known that Hono meant 'flame' or 'blaze,' and the clan was known for their powerful flames and adaptability with fire, even though Kenta was terrified of it.
It was something from his old world - when he had been burnt by a lit match as a child in school. He wanted to laugh at it, really. It was ridiculous - a boy with a phobia of fire was born into a clan most well-known for its fire style jutsu.
Most of the people in his clan had an affinity for fire, and though it was not unusual for people to have lightning or earth, Kenta, who should have had the purest Hono blood being the son of the Clan Head, had an affinity towards water, both a blessing and a curse.
It is a blessing when he sees the flames of the Hono that burn their own compound, because he is one of the few that can help to put out the flames - the cherished and celebrated flames of the Hono which can only be a curse. Their compound - his home - is blackened and people are screaming and dying left and right.
His elder sister died in the attack, as did his mother and best friend, along with his best friend's brother and cousin and father and little sister.
"Retreat! Retreat!" someone is yelling.
He has burns all over his body, and he is blinded by anger as he stabs a Shimura shinobi with his kunai again and again and again and all he can think is - this was for Kiyo. This was for Yosuke. This is for the clan.
He has burns all over his body. He cannot breathe, but he snarls and flings himself at another Shimura, and hesitates for a secondat the resemblance between the shinobi and Alice, even though they are completely different.
The boy - a twelve year old, a twelve year old with an arm wrapped in bandages and a wooden leg that is burning - is knocked out of the way before Kenta can kill him, but the Shimura are retreating.
Nobody follows. Both sides have suffered huge losses. The entire compound is blackened and half of the Hono forces have been taken out.
"We will get revenge!" someone shouts.
And it is then that he realises that he is crying - there are tears blurring his vision. He is mourning for the people that never existed, crying because of the pain that he shouldn't be feeling at his sister's (a fake) and his best friend's (he doesn't exist) deaths.
It is this that pain that makes his father come up with the decision to get revenge on them, to ambush their compound instead.
They would feel the pain. They all would.
He isn't sent on the mission that twenty-five others are sent on, but he smirks when he hears that the Clan Head of the Shimura clan is now deceased. He wants this to carry on, for them to keep on feeling the pain that he has felt, but he knows that it is wrong.
(Pip would disagree. Alice would disagree.)
After several months, he realises that this cannot go on, even when his father plans for more ambushes, because the clan members are diminished to only a third of what they were before, and there is a distinct imbalance with two men to every woman.
He tells his elder brother - his eldest brother Kouta, his father's favourite. He was seventeen but had a soft spot for children, especially Kenta. It didn't take much to manipulate him into stopping him and making him listen to reason instead of letting his emotions blind him.
Still, there was one mission underway that could not be stopped beforehand, and Kenta is sent on that mission. It is the one where he sees Naoko, and he knows that he cannot let the feud between the Shimura and the Hono continue.
"Fire Style: Dragon Flame Release Song Technique!"
Kenta remembers seeing the girl with her brother, or someone close to her. It had been his plan to split them up. He needed to see her, to talk to her, to know if she was real or not.
He knew that it was Alice when he first laid eyes on her. They had similar appearances, apart from the scars and muscle that Alice never had. They had the same hazelnut brown eyes and hair as black as night, though Alice never had such a bad scowl and deep wrinkles on her forehead.
One of the fireballs managed to hit her, skimming her arm. It took all his self-control to stop from asking if she was alright, but he knew she would be. She - a girl - had survived for ten years already in a world like this. She could go through more than that, he tried to convince himself. She was strong. She could hold her own.
"I'll deal with this one," he said quickly. He waited for the other two to leave, because this was his chance - his only chance - and he wasn't about to blow it.
He smiled. "It's been a while." He could barely stop the giddiness, the excitement, from bubbling up. She was - she really was Alice! After all this time, after all this searching, it had finally, finally amounted to something.
It would have been much harder had she never been a shinobi or kunoichi, but she was. She was stubborn and she always said that she would be Before. It ensured her safety and she could defend herself, and she would do it, even if she was a girl - because Alice was stubborn and manipulative and sarcastic, and -!
"I-I have never even met you before. You're simply embarrassing yourself by spewing out random nonsense, so stop it," she spat. "It's embarrassing just looking at you, boy."
He smiled and let out a laugh - a guffaw, a jolly, kind thing - because she was joking. She had to be joking. She couldn't - she couldn't not remember him. He was her Naruto buddy, her friend, and he - he had literally died for her! "You were always the sarcastic one, weren't you? It's nice to see you haven't changed, after all this time."
He waited for her to laugh and tell him that she remembered him after all this time after giving him a heart attack, as she was always prone to doing. He waited for her to grin and laugh at him, but she didn't. Her expression twisted into something sour.
"Wait… You really don't… remember me?" he asked disappointedly, his eyebrows furrowing.
"Not one bit," she returned, and formed a seal. He backed up in order to dodge, but she turned on her heals and ran, and he realised that the seal was false and had succeeded in distracting him.
"Retreat!" she called. "Retreat! Meet at Point C!" He watched as the other Shimura started running as well, the other Hono hot on their tails. Kenta couldn't follow her. After all this time, he had found her, and after all this time, she had forgotten.
She had forgotten him.
He remembers being in the ambulance. He doesn't remember what comes before that apart from the worry and fear that shot through him, and then he ran around and tried to call for help but nobody was there, nobody helped, and then he remembers the car that wouldn't stop, couldn't stop -!
He was in the ambulance with her.
He had died two days after her, which probably would have meant that he was two days younger than Naoko. He was born a week and a half late, an event that was unheard of in his old world but not so uncommon in his new one, and Naoko was born three weeks prematurely, so he was, in fact, a month younger. His birthday was February 21st and hers was January 18th, not that he had known in the beginning.
A week later, there came a bird. It wasn't a very peculiar bird, because it was brown and speckled with dots like most of the other ones around there, but it had a note tied on its leg and there was a team of shinobi making sure it landed safely.
"A bit extreme, ne?" Kouta had asked him. "All this, just for a bird."
"I guess," he had replied, though he couldn't hide the smile. "Depends what's in it." But he already knew that. Perhaps Alice really had remembered, or had wanted this, as she always said she would Before.
"If I was in the Naruto world I'd try and make sure people weren't such dickheads like usual," she said, and he snorted. "What? I would!"
It seemed like the Shimura had beaten him to it.
This is a bit of a plot twist, I know. I'm not really satisfied with the alliance bit and I understand if it seems a bit rushed, but I hope you enjoyed the chapter. I don't really know how I feel about Pip as a character, however, and I was wondering whether you'd like to see more of him.
Thanks to everyone who has been favouriting/following/reviewing/lurking/read this far and given this story a chance.