He didn't want to wake up. If he didn't wake up, he could drift in the dark painless realms of unconsciousness in eternal bliss. But reality is a real bitch and makes you face the facts sooner or later. He had to face the facts sooner, especially the throbbing sensation below his wrists and on his left shoulder-blade. Well, first thing first, he tried to open his mouth and speak. He steeled himself, took a big breath, and, "Fmmmmmck." He winced inwardly. Such a pathetic sound was hardly worthy of the heir to the Torakiba clan!
"Torakiba-san? Are you all right?" he recognized that voice. For some reason, he pictured it with candy-floss-pink hair and eyes greener than Asuka's. "Torakiba-san?" the owner of the voice gently touched his neck, searching for a pulse. He cracked a bloodshot eye and was met by a pretty girl bending over him. A purple bruise spread over her cheek and her long pink hair was tickling his face.
"Uchi…ha?" he rasped. It felt like a scorpion had made a nest of something nasty in his mouth. Suzume pulled out of his vision. Another girl peered down into his face, waving just the barest flicker of flame back and forth to check his eyes.
"Hmm. Slightly concussed. You've got a hard skull, Torakiba-san." Her voice was slightly raspy, as if she had suffered some sort of throat injury recently. Her eyes were a clear blue like the sky, her hair as white as the summer clouds above his home village. He noticed that, just vaguely, she smelled like some sort of flowery incense. Plum, maybe.
"Your hands are pretty much busted, though," the blue-eyed girl went on. "You must've really hurt the men that went to get you. Only one came back and he was covered in blood with you over one shoulder."
"Where are we?" he croaked. He tried to sit up and someone behind him helped him. He looked over his shoulder into the face of a boy, the same age as the strange girl with the same snow-white complexion. His hair and eyes were dark.
"Somewhere on the outskirts of Wind Country, I think." The boy's voice was soft, gentle. "But we're not familiar with the country. The stars are different from the ones over Water Country."
Katsuro looked at his hands. There was hardly a single patch of unblemished skin on them. They were black and blue and red. He also tasted tried blood in his mouth that was not his. He remembered waking up suddenly to a hand over his mouth and clawing his captor. He'd killed him and turned upon his partner but a sharp pain on his shoulder had made the world go black.
It was night. Either still the same night, or the next one. "How long have we been here?" he asked, gingerly trying to flex his fingers but finding every other one broken.
"I don't know…" Suzume said, biting her lip. Katsuro noticed a few other forms around them, boys and girls aging from ten to seventeen. Some of the faces he had seen in the chuunin exams, including-
"Uzumaki!" the smaller boy glared into the darkness, flicking through hand-signs. He ignored him. If they had gone so far as to kidnap the sons of two Kages, it was very bad news. He'd remembered something of the sort happening seven years ago.
"Do you have blood-limits?" he asked the two pale ninjas he recognized as the two Kirigakure genin that had disappeared during the first exam. They exchanged smiles before the boy countered, "Do we breathe?"
"Nii-chan, that's hardly fair," the blonde admonished, before saying, "Yes, we do have blood-limits."
"So it's like-"
"How it was seven years ago." Megumi finished unexpectedly, still staring into the dark. He gave up the hand-signs in disgust. Glittering eyes from the other captives shone from all around them, trained on the newest of their number. "Kids having a kekkei genkai are kidnapped in the night. They didn't succeed the first time."
"But… why me? My little cousin Izumi has the blood-limit. She's not as strong as I am so wouldn't she be a better target?"
"But she hasn't been weakened by a hellish test, has she?" Suzume said shrewdly. Only just then did Katsuro notice the manacles on her wrists and on the wrists of all the others. "Someone waited for us all to take the test. How could they resist us, weaker than kittens and just sleeping away? They couldn't take us when we were younger. They made a mistake back then, not knowing whether or not we all had our bloodline."
"But now it is certain and we are quite useless. They've placed chakra seals on us, stopping our powers and blocking most types of jutsu." The dark-haired boy piped up. His Kirigakure headband was scratched and dull and his lip was swollen as if he had put up a fight before being captured. "You may have noticed that you cannot activate your kekkei genkai, and if you somehow manage to, you only get a tiny bit, like with Kotone-chan." He indicated the white-haired girl who nodded her head serenely. "So they need the blood of the kekkei genkai to achieve whatever purpose they have."
"Maybe they kidnapped us because we're from powerful families?" Megumi piped up. Kotone shook her head.
"Then they wouldn't have bothered with me. The daughter of a now-dead jounin who never had two gold coins to rub together? The economy is picking up again in Kirigakure, but not that much. The old families were long ago taken care of. Like the Kaguya clan."
"But if they need blood-limits, some died out." Katsuro butted in. he'd been hearing stories about them for years. "Like you said, the Kaguya clan-"
"They'll just dig up their bones!" a girl almost as fair as Kotone butted in. Her headband depicted rocks and she had the hardened look that came from living in the mountains for a long time. "They want the bloodlines. It shouldn't matter if the owners are alive or dead. Lot's've died-out over the years. You don't think that would stop them from getting' what they want, do ya?"
"Charming thought, to be sure." Katsuro replied sarcastically, reaching instinctively for his chakra and finding… nothing. Shit.He thought. I can't heal fast without my blood-limit. I have no night-sight, no improved hearing, no better reflexes… no nothing.
"Haven't you tried escaping?" Suzume asked the Kirigakure boy.
"Of course we have!" he said. "Do you think we haven't? Any jutsu you manage to perform gets ricocheted right back at you with equal force because of the seal. If I did anything with my ice, I'd get bad frostbite or worse."
"I'd scorch all of my skin off!" Kotone said brightly.
"So… what would happen if I tried to use my Sharingan?" Suzume wanted to know. The Kirigakure genin exchanged looks.
"You'd probably go blind," the boy said frankly.
"Reallyblind." Kotone added.
"Well whaddya know? It's the new brats that always make trouble." A man leered down at them, his mouth was missing some teeth and he looked like he had been smashed under a big rock and then reformed. He wore all black and a headband depicting nothing but a jagged slash across the metal piece.
"You…" Megumi growled. "BASTARD!" he launched himself at the man but he fell awkwardly, gagging and choking and clutching his throat.
"Megumi!" Suzume cried. She looked up, eyes wild and furious. "What did youdo?"
"Nothing," the man said nonchalantly, examining his grubby fingernails. "Just know that that is the least of your troubles if you even so much as think of escaping or harming me or my colleagues. We'll take good care of ya, don't worry. You're needed alive."
Other shinobi in black melted from the shadows. Cowed children got up, obviously knowing what was to come. "All right all you little brats, on your feet!" roared the scarred man. "We're moving out and if I hear so much as a peep out of any of you, you're going to wish your mama had drowned you in the river when you were born."
"Torakiba-san, get up!" Kotone whispered, grabbing one of Katsuro's arms and dragging him upright. "We can plot later! Right now we just need to follow their orders. It's better this way."
"I'm not going like an offering to a sacrificial alter!" Katsuro snarled, jerking his arm out of the Kirigakure girl's grip.
"Look what happened to Uzumaki-san." The dark-haired boy and Suzume were supporting Megumi, who was still hacking and struggling to catch his breath. "It is best to be complacent for the moment."
"Who are you, anyway?" Katsuro asked, amazed. The two older genin spoke as if they had decades of experience under their belts.
The boy and girl, polar-opposites in hair- and eye-coloring, exchanged unreadable looks.
"I'm… Kotone. Kotone Kiyoizumi." The girl said at last, bowing slightly and wincing as her manacles were jerked by one of the enemy shinobi.
"And I'm Haku." The boy replied, giving the one who had jerked his friend a dark look. "We'll be your guides."
Author's note: HA!!! Hahahahha. Weren't expecting that, now, were ya? –wink- I couldn't leave those two alone. I love them too much. Yeah. I don't think the others will realize who Haku and Kotone are. If YOU don't know who Kotone is, I suggest you toddle on over to my other fanfic, "White Plum". It explains who Kotone is and her relationship to Haku and Zabuza and Kirigakure in general. It's a rather short fic, so it should only take maybe not even ten minutes to read. I'll explain more later on. The reason Kotone and Haku are all manacled right now and not whooping ass is that in this story, ghosts and spirits have limited power and must operate as mortals when they try to interfere with mortal lives. Until next time, sweeties.