A bit short this time.
"Maybe not when you're out there," Kaine said back to Akemi, giving her a stern hmph and refusing to take her cryptic declaration as an answer. "But you're not out there—you're in here, with me." He took a deep breath and a long pause. "...And when I'm in here, I feel something for them. I feel like I want them back—I wish for them to be alive, even though I know they're gone, and it makes me so angry..." He flexed his hands into fists, fingers writhing out of control.
Akemi stared for a moment, looking perplexed. That was an unusual admission from the arrogant jerk she knew and loved. He looked sad and vulnerable, and it didn't make sense to her. He had barely known those two; in essence, he had even been the one to abandon them to their fates. She put on a bratty smirk. "But aren't you always angry, Hamasaki?" she asked, her head canted gently to the side, letting her dusty blonde hair fall over her shoulder.
Kaine rolled his eyes, instantly regretting his admission, but realizing that it was too late to swallow it back down. He nodded, acknowledging his hot temper, but then he clarified it. "It's different now, though. This time, it isn't something I can fix by hitting it in the face. It hurts when I remember their faces." He was looking down to his lap, half-covered by a dark brown sheet that had a texture like burlap.
Akemi pursed her lips, her breath slowing down as she studied Kaine. He seemed so bizarrely out of place, to her. He looked like he had come back to find a home that was never his to begin with. "We're going to avenge them, Hamasaki. We need to do it." Akemi stated it firmly; it wasn't an invitation, but an already-present obligation. As she spoke, Kaine inflated his chest a bit. His arms tensed, and he felt some of Akemi's resolve creeping into him. She continued. "They would have killed Rika, too, if I had let them. Me, you, Minoru...all of us will die if they get their way. The Land of Fire is blind to the evil of the Leaf, and it's our job as the Truth Village to bring their sins to the light. It's what we were made for, remember?" Akemi scooted her chair closer to Kaine's bedside, dragging the sanded legs of her seat across the rough, untreated bark of the floor. It made a grating, grinding sound, but she didn't mind and neither did Kaine.
"That ninja, Mamban...the one you faced. He said that Minoru used to go by a different name, right?" Kaine had absorbed all the things Akemi said, and he looked to a fixed point on his wall where a nail poked out. He would need to hammer it down later on. "He didn't happen say what that name used to be, did he?"
Akemi's expression smoldered; she was getting a bad vibe from Kaine. "You don't actually think he was telling the truth, do you?"
"I don't know what to think anymore, Akemi...I left two weeks ago to check my messages, and I came back to a half-starved village and two dead recruits." Kaine abruptly smacked his palm to his forehead, then dug his fingers deep into the messy oil of his hair, giving it a frustrated tug. The day had been a trying one. "That man named Kakashi Hatake is a lot of things, but...I don't think he's our enemy—and if he is, he's not the same as Mamban."
"They're both part of the Leaf; what makes them different?" Akemi leaned down, her elbows on her knees and her arms crossed in her lap.
"Mamban would have killed you if you hadn't managed to escape from him—like how he killed Mako and Fiona." Kaine flexed his jaw open, making his cheeks look hollow as he remembered a swift kick to the chin. "On the other hand, Kakashi could have killed me a dozen times—no, even more than that. I fought him with the intention of killing him, but he shrugged me off and let me go anyway..."
Akemi's eyes went a little wider. She was quick to rationalize. "Maybe he felt bad about fighting an injured opponent?"
Kaine smirked, letting off a huff of laughter. "I wasn't injured, then. I'm in top shape, but I still couldn't lay a damned finger on him."
"He's got the Sharingan, though. You can't blame yourself for being outdone by an eye like that," Akemi said, trying to reassure her broken comrade.
Kaine laughed openly, tucking his hands behind his head and laying flat on his thin mattress. He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, looking hysterical as he declared his own incompetence. "He didn't even have it open, Akemi. The man's a complete monster; he's in an entirely different league from the rest of us...And he's even known as friend-killer Kakashi, on top of that." Kaine's laughter subsided, and his face turned to stone as he looked to Akemi. "So why didn't he just kill me?"
"He's that strong...?" Akemi mused, bringing two fingers up to rub the side of her cheek in contemplation. "If he really did let you go, are you sure he didn't follow you?"
Kaine paused, his breathing ceasing for a long second. "Yes, and no...He didn't follow me, but I did lead him here without realizing it."
Akemi clenched her fist, but rather than knock the man's lights out, she pounded it against her kneecap. "Damn it, Hamasaki...How could you not realize it?"
"How much do you know about Wood Release, Akemi?" Kaine quizzed, smirking in remembrance of Tenzo. He could count himself among the lucky few who had seen the treasured kekkei genkai in person, and despite all of the negativity that came from the experience, it was still something he felt middling pride in.
"Not much—isn't that Hashirama Senju's legendary style?" Akemi asked. "Why's that important?"
"Kakashi's friend, Tenzo...He's got that gift. I saw it with my own eyes; he bound me up in wooden shackles that were impossible to break. Somehow, probably through the food they were giving me, he implanted me with...seeds." Kaine rolled his tongue in his mouth, then spit on the floor, as if to get rid of a returning aftertaste. "Minoru spotted them inside me and got rid of them, but...not until I was already here. Kakashi, though...he didn't need to track me down and confront me. I was already tagged when he told me all of the things he did...I think he really means well." Kaine took another breath to steady himself. It was time for the confession. "But, even before I brought Kakashi and Tenzo here, something else happened to jeopardize us."
"Something else? What kind of something else, Hamasaki?" Akemi had been listening closely, and her expression was too difficult to read. She didn't seem angry, or upset, but she didn't seem pleased either. Her tone was flat and curious.
"A genjutsu. Minoru told me that it had been placed on me during my last visit to the Leaf, but I never noticed it." Kaine winced by instinct, expecting an explosion of fury from the woman only inches from his bed, but it never came. Akemi leaned back in her chair and ran her hands from her knees to the tops of her thighs, collecting herself. The silence urged Kaine to keep talking. "So, they've known we're here for a few months, already. They manipulated me into sending some kind of report. I don't know what it said, but these assassins are here because of it."
Akemi exhaled, closing her eyes and keeping her mouth shut tight. After she took two more long, deliberate breaths, she spoke in a calm whisper. "You're lucky to be alive," she acknowledged. "If it had been Mamban who found you, I doubt you would have made it back at all. He didn't seem to care about life...I know you didn't see all those people dying back there, but...He chose to kill the civilians instead of coming for me. I've never seen anything so callous."
"Maybe we're both lucky, then," Kaine said in a whisper that matched hers.
"Don't count on it," Akemi said back with a half-sincere grin. "I never got captured. You're the idiot who had to rely on the mercy of somebody else."
Kaine chuckled, turning his head to look at his ceiling. "Yeah, maybe you're right. Really, I'm a pretty lucky guy when I'm not dooming everybody around me to enslavement and death."
Akemi thumped Kaine on the forehead with a flick of her middle finger. "We're not dead yet, Hamasaki. You and me, we can take all comers, right?"
"Right," Kaine answered. He didn't retaliate against the high-speed poke to his forehead. If he had tried, she probably would have just made some quip about him losing his headband. He wasn't going to walk into that one. "I told Minoru I was going to kill the invaders, but also that I wasn't going to help him attack—or steal from—any other villages. I'm telling you the same thing, so you aren't surprised when I decline the inevitable order."
Akemi recoiled slowly, as if she was trying to back herself away from the cub of a mother bear. Her brows furrowed and the bottom of her lip undulated slightly. She came to rest with her back pressed tensely to the chair. "When I ran away from the fight, carrying Rika, I only had one thought in my head: 'If Hamasaki were here, that snake-headed bastard would've been ripped apart.' I blamed the Leaf for it—I thought that you would have come with us and helped us out, no matter what, and it was them who kept you from doing it. What happened to you out there? Why am I suddenly so wrong?"
Kaine sighed, exasperated. "It's tough to explain. Have you ever thought that maybe we have the wrong idea of things, Akemi? That maybe we aren't supposed to be Minoru's soldiers for our whole lives?"
"We're not just his soldiers, Hamasaki. We're his villagers, and he thinks of us as family." Akemi tried to correct Kaine's misguided notion.
"What's the difference? Mako and Fiona weren't soldiers, either—not even close. They're dead all the same on orders from Minoru. Earlier, he told me something..." Kaine debated with himself in lingering silence, still on the same breath. Akemi didn't seem to know about their leader's real intentions. Kaine decided that he should tell her the truth: "I think he expected them to die...like he actually wanted them to. He told me that he sent them on the mission to give our people something to rally behind...some kind of martyr. He tossed you out with Rika, Mako, and Fiona to test the enemy's strength, and give our people the motivation of revenge when things went wrong."
"Why would he want that, though? He always used to tell me that revenge was poisonous..." Akemi thought back to the old days, again. There was a time before the village existed, and she had been there for it. She was once a little girl with nothing left, aside from a mangled teddy bear and a ragged poncho wrapped around her shoulders, and then Minoru gave her a purpose.
"I think it is poisonous, but sometimes it's also necessary...Like in Mamban's case. We're going to kill him, just the two of us—and it will be revenge, pure and simple...But that's not what Minoru is advocating; not exactly. He wants us to be vengeful toward the entire Leaf Village, along with all its past and future people." Kaine worked it out vocally, talking to himself as much as he was to Akemi.
"The Leaf did something terrible to him, though," Akemi reminded.
"What was it, Akemi? Where did his grudge come from?" Kaine replied. Akemi had known Minoru for a while longer than he had. Perhaps she knew something that he didn't. "I hear him speak in broad strokes about their evils, of the unnamed sins they've committed...but never specifics. Kakashi asked me something, Akemi—'Who do you think Minoru is?' I told him what I always thought was true...That Minoru's the truth, my friend, and my leader."
"That's who he is to all of us. Do you really doubt him after all this time?" Akemi was apprehensive. She didn't like where the discussion was going.
"I...I do, Akemi. I doubt Minoru very much." Kaine's words carried enormous weight, and he had to struggle to push them out. "You were there when he first created this village, right?"
"Yeah, he and I were the only two people with Truth headbands for a while..." Akemi tipped her thumb toward her forehead.
"Until I came along?" Kaine winked, self-satisfied.
"Well, you know...there were others. In the early days, nobody lasted very long...which reminds me, Hamasaki." Akemi held up her pointer finger, interrupting the conversation. "We need to add their names."
Kaine slanted his brow. "You haven't done it yet?"
"I was waiting for you; they were supposed to be yours," she answered simply.
"Then we should get it over with. They've waited long enough." Kaine groaned as he stood up from his bed and picked up a shirt to pull over his head. Akemi stood beside him, and they both left his house without a word, closing the door behind them. They followed a long and winding path through the woods; they passed the training field and descended a sloped hill beyond it to reach a rocky grove.
They looked over the grove in silence, and Akemi crouched down. "So that they'll always be remembered," Akemi said as she formed seals and touched the ground lightly. The soil churned as two rocks were pulled up from their resting place beneath the surface, and she plucked them both from the earth to position them upright on the grass.
"Always remembered," Kaine said with confirmation. He knelt down and extended a pointer finger, giving his digit a simple charge of lightning. Using the crackling heat, he carved letters into each of the rocks. One was given the name Mako Kita, and the other was labeled Fiona Uno. Akemi leaned down beside Kaine to take hold of Mako's rock, nudging it along the ground until the two stones were touching. The two were inseparable during life, so she found it fitting to ensure they stayed in contact forever.
Akemi hummed, standing up to admire their handiwork. Kaine stood beside her, and perched his hands on his waist. As the reality set in, Akemi took a slow breath that turned shaky, and then it became sniffling. Kaine was suddenly embrace from the side, and Akemi's smooth arms wrapped around his waist and chest; she pressed herself tightly against him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. She spoke quietly, respecting the sanctity of where they stood. "Promise you won't leave me again, Hamasaki," she said as a solitary tear dripped down her cheek.
Kaine tensed up when the warmth of his 'sister' molded around him, but he relaxed shortly after. His arm came up to drape around her shoulders, tucking her beneath his strength and pulling her close. His hand brushed through a few loose strands of her hair. "If I go anywhere, I'm taking you with me," he said, assuring her. "I won't leave you to this fate." He looked at her for a moment, and then he took in the sight of Mako and Fiona's fresh gravestones. He cast his gaze higher, and further back. There were more stones in the small grove, each with the name of an individual who would never reach the truth that Minoru promised.
The headstones numbered over three hundred.
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