(I don't own Naruto or Avatar TLA)
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Chapter 14: "Questioning"
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The wind was quiet but cool in the mid-afternoon, leaves swam through the air and alit on the painted wooden homes and cement walkways.
A large green building painted to look as though it were made of bamboo stood accross from a fenced in school.
The gigantic green wooden gated wall lined the village into a fortress. No movement obscured the scene but little blurs that marked the shift changes of the Konoho Ninja Guard.
Aang watched Konoho from above, his perspective perched upon the top of the mountain overlooking the village allowing him to see Konoho fully for the first time. There were so many things about the Village that were completely alien to the young monk, but at the same time he couldn't shake a feeling of familiarity that had haunted him since he'd awoke in the forest the day before.
An orange blur moved in his direction, silhouetted momentarily by the sun as it streaked across the afternoon sky.
Aang stood as Naruto landed with hardly a sound before him. "Aang-Kun! The council has finished, they want to talk to you!"
"Is it good news?" asked Aang hesitantly, already picking the best escape rout through Konoho should it not be.
"Yes! Couldn't you tell by how excited I am?!" Naruto belted.
"Ummmm... yeah..." Aang followed Naruto over the tops of buildings, keeping up fairly easy but still amazed by the agility of the Ninja.
They landed on the balcony of a large room in the same building as Tsunade's office. Naruto led Aang inside revealing three long tables stacked with papers behind which sat some mature looking people with official badges on their outfits. There were also several little teams of Ninja dotted around the spaceous room.
Naruto brought Aang over to a table beside which sat Kakashi, Sakura and the girl with the oddly tophlike grey eyes, Hinata.
"The council has agreed to pursue the subject of the scroll, so they're sending my team..." said Kakashi after greeting Aang. "Along with hinata, and, she has agreed to let you come too."
"Sending you where?" Aang puzzled.
"To the village of the Myst, it is one of the clearest places mentioned on the scroll, our contacts in Anbu say they have some information relating to an ice-woman, though it is a little unclear, this is a fact finding mission." Kakashi explained.
"Well, I guess I'll come too then, I'm as much in the dark about all this as you are." Aang decided. "Is the Village of the Myst in the north or south pole?" Aang asked.
"No...." Kakashi gave Aang a questioning look. "We are to leave immediately, we should be able to make it by noon tomorrow. Narruto and Sakura go ahead and pack some gear for Aang, and maybe, a change of clothes?"
Aang looked down at his monks robes, "I don't want to change, I'm proud of my people."
Kakashi nodded, "Understandably, but you are going to stand out looking like that, and since we already know Sasuke is after you, it might do for you not to draw attention to yourself."
Aang sighed.
Sakura turned to the monk "Aang-Kun, the Konoho Ninja work best in stealth and secret. It will be safer for all of us if you aren't to obviously foreign."
"It's ok Aang-Kun!" Naruto rang in "We will make sure you don't lose your people's clothes! But this way you can come with us and everyone will think you're just from Konoho, otherwise we might have to hide you and blending in is better than hiding out!"
Aang raised an eyebrow. "Alright."
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The sun was beginning to decline rapidly as the four Ninja and the one monk dressed like a ninja (with a tight green wrap covering his head and a head-band baring the symbol of Konoho) walked through the main gates of Konoho and lept up into the trees, moving away to the east.
They traveled on through the dusk and dead of night, Aang keeping pace with the Ninja by bending a current of Air around him in a path through the trees, finally they stopped and set up camp on a hill under a small clearing.
They made no fire though the night was cold, upholding their code of stealth against the elements. One by one they drifted off to sleep, leaving Kakashi on the first watch in a tree high above them.
Aang thought about his friends and his home, reminding himself of the faces and voices of his loved ones as he allowed sleep to overtake him for what felt like a few moments before he awoke to a feeling of unrightness, and the thought that was something very wrong with the forest.
The monk turned as he opened his eyes to see a feint pink dust falling from above, acting on instinct he spun on his back swinging his legs in a circle that created a funnel of air, pushing the dust into a cloud high above the camp sight.
Aang looked around getting his bearings and gasped at the limp form of Kakashi lying at the bottom of a tree. The others will fast asleep in there bags.
"Naruto! Sakura! Wake up!"
No sooner had the words left his lips than a vine shot out from the trees behind him, wrapped itself around his arm and began pulling him off into the forest.
But his warning did some good, Naruto openned bleary eyes too late as vines spun around his sleeping form and began to tighten pulling him in the same direction as Aang, but Hinata and Sakura were already on their feet.
"Naruto!" shouted Sakura as she cut a vine pulling at her wrist with a kunai in her spare hand.
Hinata put her hands together and called "Byakugan!" as she spun around looking into the forest.
"There she called!" and a tangle of vines sped from the place she pointed.
Sakura was cutting away at another group of vines around her waist which quickly spread to her legs and tripped her, knocking the Kunai out of her free hand before spreading up her body and covering her mouth.
Hinata ran toward the struggling forms of Naruto Aang and Sakura, now bound up to the nose looking like humongously deformed writhing worms.
A tangle of vines sped from the trees in all directions as she came closer, but Hinata struck out with lightning speed at each of them, extending Chakra from the tips of her fingers which shone in the air like thin beams of light before slicing through the vines.
She couldn't make any progress, she saw her teem-mates pulled into the forest, and though she cut through every tendril as they advanced from every angle around her, they simply regrew and kept coming, she could not move forward, but she could hold her ground.
"Naruto! Sakura!" Yelled the dark haired Genin as she spun like a top, cutting through the onslaught of flora like it were paper.
But no sound came, finally she began to tire, she could not keep this up forever, and though her Byakugan eyes could clearly see the three figures standing over her bound teammates in the forest she could do not but barely stave off the assault.
Half an hour passed and hinata began to sweat, striking left, right up, down, her forms gracefull and exact as she cut through vine after vine, finally she countered a tendril coming from behind too slowly and it got hold of her wrist, she cut it off but another grabbed her leg, slowly, struggling she lost ground until she too was covered in a strong binding of vines that encased her whole body up to her noes.
Hinata fell to the ground exhausted and only when she stopped struggling did the figures in the forest move forward, dragging her bound companions behind them.
A handsome young man in a plain white open kimono with dark hair and a long katana strapped to his back emerged first, followed by a woman with deep purple hair streaked with tints of blood-red in a formal kimono patterned with green roses. Last a tall man emerged, he was muscular and thin, his long dark hair flowing down to the base of his spine, his plain dark blue kimono over a black wrap that covered most of his body.
Hinata did not recognize the woman, but he recognized the two men, the younger was a former member of the Konoho Genin whom she had trained along-side in her early school days, Sasuke. The older man she had seen only once when he led an attack on her village four years before, the raid had ended in the murder of the Hokage before Tsunade, as well as the deaths of many respected Ninja of the Hidden Leaf, she had read his file, his name was Orochimaru, and he was very, very dangerous.
"So this Is the Monk you spoke of Sasuke?" Orichimaru was saying to the younger man, completely ignoring Hinata.
Sasuke nodded and kicked Aang, rolling him to the ground in front of Orichimaru. Aang let out a muffled moan from the blow.
"Very well then, let us see what is so special about this monk, shall we?" Orichimaru said, starting toward the bound figure.
"Ahem." Sasuke caughed, jerking his head toward the purple haired woman and the other bundles of Ninja.
"Ah, yes of course, first things first." Orichimaru checked himself." Dokusuru if you please?"
The two men stepped back and the woman pulled out a thin needle, pricking her right thumb. She bent down and placed her hand on the ground yelling "Kakeru-Doku No-Jutsu!"
A spiral of symbols wrote themselves out around the womans hand as the earth began to shake. Long thorn covered branches shot up from the earth in a circle around Sakura, Kakashi and Naruto, forming into a large domed cage of interweaving and entangling vines and branches that resembled an enormous, hollow, rose-bush. As soon as it was formed the vines surrounding the three caged Ninja retracted back into the forest.
Naruto immediately lept at the cage striking at it hard and faling back with a bleeding hand, leaving not a single mark on the thorny cage.
Kakashi was still asleep but Sakura was awake and yelled at Sasuke while Naruto kept trying to break free.
"What is wrong with you Sasuke! Why are you attacking us again!? We're your friends!" she bellowed as Naruto tried a shadow-clone version of the same technique to similar effect, however this time the shadow-clone who attacked disappeared in a puff of smoke and a light from inside the cloud flowed into the domed plant which responded by growing it's branches inward slightly.
Sakura noticed this and noticed Naruto and two shadow-clones standing around striking towards a sphere of energy in the original Naruto's palm.
"Naruto no!" Sakura yelled and pulled on of the shadowclones away causing the sphere to dissipate.
"What did you do that for Sakura?!" Naruto demanded.
Sakura looked at the woman with the purple hair who was sitting on a stump 10 feet away and smiling at them, then she turned to Naruto and whispered "The plant absorbs Chakra, and when it does it grows in, if you hit it with a Rasengan the thorns might skewer us."
Naruto puzzled this for a moment. "What about weapons? We could try exploding kunai?"
And they did, to no effect other than getting hit by the shock-wave of their blasts.
Meanwhile Orichimaru and Sasuke who were COMPLETELY ignoring the caged ninja and their capture, had pulled Hinata and Aang away into the forest and strung them up so their bundled forms hung on tree-branches.
"Now, lets see about this Monk." hissed Orishimaru, "The Hisahi girl will only be with them for one reason. Isn't that right young one?" Orishimaru slid one finger down the side of Hinata's face, caressing it gently as he spoke. Hinata jerked her head away in revulsion and would have spat at the former Sanin had she not been gagged.
Sasuke nodded and swung his sword in a lightning-fast elegant movement which cut the vines around the girls mouth at which Hinata spat at his face and he deftly blocked the spittle with flat of his katana.
"The See'er scrolls, isn't that right?" asked Orishimaru. Hinnata looked shocked.
"Yes I know of them..." continued the older dark haired Ninja, "... I was privy to many of their prophecies when I was a Sanin of Konoho nearly sixty years ago. If I know the current Hokage of the Hidden Leaf, and I think I do, she will have sent you with the boy because of something cryptic hidden in the ancient lore of your family, isn't that right?"
Hinata said nothing.
"Oh come now, surely a genin of Konoho has been briefed on my... talents, you know you will tell me eventually, it's simply a matter of how much pain you will endure before-hand." Orichimaru soothed.
Hinata held up her head proudly, her mouth clamped tightly shut as she glared at the man.
"Very well." smiled Orichimaru, clearly preferring this turn of events, he pulled back his head and opened his mouth far too wide for a human, his canine teeth sharpened and grew into long points. The man leered a fanged smile for a moment before striking forward faster than Hinata could see, he bit deep into the girls neck and she screamed loud with pain and shock.
Orichimaru waited a moment and the coiled back, his movements so serpentine that for a moment he resembled a large cobra much more than a man.
Aang's eyes widened with fear as he watched the exchange. He looked at Hinata who's eyes had glazed over, her head lolling to one side unnaturally, two puncture wounds stood out on her neck and a slight trail of blood trickled down in two streams toward her chest.
"Now, Hinata, please tell me about your mission. I'd like to know where was your team being sent." Orichimaru asked politely.
Hinata pulled her head up to face Orichimaru with some effort, she stared him in the eyes, and she held her mouth tightly shut in defiance. Orichimaru just smiled. A few moments later a sound came from the young Genins throat, it escalated until she could no longer hold it in, sweat dripped from her brow as she finally opened her mouth and gave a long blood-curdling scream. She shrieked for a whole minute as the pain seemed to be building and eventually her cries formed the words... "THE VILLAGE OFFF THEE MYYYST!!"
Finally the pain seemed to subside and Hinata's head drooped as she panted for breath, tears streaming down her face she let out another cry as if to get rid of the rest of the pain in her body.
"There... now that wasn't so hard was it?" Asked Orichimaru, "Do you see how much easier things will be for you if you participate?"
Hinata sobbed. "I will d-die... before I betray my family again." she panted between strained breaths.
"Very possibly if you're chose to be that stubborn." Orichimaru replied matter-of-factly, he turned to Sasuke, "This may take a little while, you may start on the boy."
Aangs eyes widened with fear imagining the younger man growing fengs and biting him, but Sasuke merely turned to Aang looking deep into his eyes. As Aang stared back at Sasuke the dark haired mans eyes changed, turning red as three spiraling forms appeared within them... Aang couldn't seem to tare his gaze away and the next moment he was hanging on a beam of wood, his body pinned to it with long blades that stuck through him. Blood flowed down from his body and he too cried out in shock and agony as the figure of Sasuke materialized before him.
"Who are you." asked Sasuke in a menacingly quiet voice.
"My name is Aang!" Aang yelled "Why are you doing this!?"
"How did you defeat the silthfell?" asked Sasuke, ignoring the question.
"The what?" Aang cried. "AAAOW!"
"You defeated an undefeatable technique, I saw you, I want to know how you did it? What was the glow?" Sasuke pressed.
"I... I don't know... I just sort of did it!" tears streamed down Aangs face.
The blades dug in further and grew a couple of inches in width as Susuke stepped forward.
"You're lying, you said 'we are not from the void' who we're you talking about? How did you destroy the silthfell?"
"Please... stop! I just did it, it happens it was a reflex, I don't know how I did it I swear!" Aang pleaded.
Sasuke pondered this a moment. "Maybe you don't know, but something inside you does, you know subconsciously, and I'm going to rip through every layer of your mind until I find the answer."
Sasuke lifted his hand, spreading his fingers, the spikes shot out what looked like roots that traveled under Aangs skin and elicited an incoherent shriek from the boy.
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"She's just starring at us." Said Naruto looking at the purple haired woman who sat still on the stump, her eyes fixed on the cage with a hungry look.
"I know." said Sakura. "Anything with chakra in it feeds the cage and makes it grow. Everything else just bounces off like it can't even touch it, and if we try anything physical..." Sakura held a glowing hand to her arm which had a deep cut in it "... the thorns reach out and strike us before we can even get close."
"Right." said Naruto, wanting to help but unable to think of anything. "I just wish she would stop staring at us."
Sakura scowled, thinking intently, then looked at her arm to check the progress of her healing technique. As she pulled her hand away, still glowing with green chakra, her eyes widened and she looked up at the brambled cage, then at the woman then at Naruto.
"I have a plan. But I'll need your help Naruto." she said in almost a whisper.
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"And what does the scroll say about the monk?" asked Orichimaru in the same emotionless mono-tone.
Hinata was struggling and screaming at the top of her lungs but none of the people around her seemed to notice, in fact, Sasuke and the bound Aang didn't seem to notice much of anything, they were staring into eachothers eyes, unblinking, incoherently as though comotose, and yet Sasuke was standing with perfect balance.
Slowly ever so slowly Hinata recited the first line of the poem on the scroll. The etched accross her face as much from the effect of Orichimaru's unnatural bite as from the knowledge that she was betraying her family, her clan, and her village. Each time she answered a question, she prayed the pain would kill her.
"I see the land in forest..."
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"I want to know!... " yelled Sasuke reaching forward and ripping the skin off of Aangs face "... how you did it! Where does your power come from!?"
The flesh ripped away only to reveal another, younger face of Aang, about five years old. This one trembled in horror as it watched Sasuke reach forward to pull at his skin again. The torture was unbearable, Aang had long since stopped yelling or screaming and was now in so much shock that he could barely make a sound.
Fingers clawed at the edges of his eyes, forehead, and chin, clawing, taring, desperately searching beneath his skin, bulling away another piece of him.
"IT's not here! WHERE IS IT!? WHERE ARE YOU HIDING IT!?" Sasuke looked deranged, his voice full of desperation.
Another layer removed, then another. An infant form of Aang looked up with ageless innocent eyes.
"WHERE!?" Sasuke stuck his fingers into the eyes of the child, blood splattered his own face, he heard a baby crying somewhere and then... someone tapped him on the shoulder.
The dark haired young man with the red eyes turned, his hands drenched in blood, his vision fixing on the form of an elderly man in black, red and gold robes, who's long silvery hair was pulled up by a small golden crown into an elegant bun in the back.
"You seek power you cannot wield Sasuke Uchiha. You do not understand power." said the man.
Then next to him a statuesque woman appeared in green robes, she was so tall she dwarfed the older man who looked to be at least six feet himself. "You have given yourself to another, you will not defeat your enemy until you will be your own master." the woman stated bluntly.
Again a figure appeared to her right, this one in a blue fur coat, his face obscured by a hood, "Do not allow your hatred to rule you Sasuke, it will only lead you down a path of your own destruction."
Once more a being faded in beside the last, a woman with grey eyes and black hair shaved halfway up her scalp to reveal a blue arrow tattoo ending above her eyes.
The last figure simply looked at Sasuke, tilted her head and raised an eyebrow.
Then more figures appeared, they faded into a spiraling line which encircled Sasuke and Aang in the center and radiated outward into seeming infinity. There we're thousands of them, some wearing similar clothing, all watching Sasuke darkly.
Sasuke instinctively tried to control them, this was his world, his illusion, but his efforts were fruitless. The thousands of eyes continued to stare at him, unblinking.
Then, without warning, the earth beside him rose in a pillar so quickly it hit him like a ram-rod from the side flinging him high into the air. Sasuke tried to pull himself out of the sharingan illusion but nothing seemed to be working and he was finding it difficult to concentrate as now he watched the blue hooded figure softly raise his arms. Two tentacles of water rushed up at him, binding him in place and pulling him down, slamming him into the hard, fake, ground.
Sasuke drew his sword, tried to raise himself from the earth but found himself staring face to face with an inferno in the shape of a dragon, the silver haired man at it's very core.
Sasuke instinctively began performing a jutsu but the dragon's tongue lashed his hands and feet before turning into a single jet of hot white fire and hitting him dead on in the face.
Sasuke gasped in shock and fell to his knees. Before he could get his bearings he was rising, or the earth was falling he couldn't tell. A howling wind filled his ears and he saw cracks appear in the red sky of his illusion high above as though it were some sort of large stone dome.
Sasuke tried to look around, he was suspended in mid air at the center of a violent twister, he was spinning very fast and he could just make out the shape of the woman with the grey eyes dancing on the wind at the apex of the vacuum above him. He couldn't breathe. He held his throat, he spun and spun changing directions in a fraction of a second as dichotomous winds hit him from either side, he vomited but still he could not breathe though he wasn't blacking out, all he could think of was the need for oxygen in his lungs.
Finally the winds dissipated, he was falling, falling fast toward hard red earth, but at least he was breathing. He slammed into the ground with such a force that he thought every bone in his body might break.
He saw a trickle of blood beneath him... he told himself over and over again that this was just an illusion, his illusion... but somehow that was little comfort.
Eventually he tried again to right himself, and he flinched instinctively as he saw the mass of people, the four who had appeared first stood out of the spiral before him like judges.
"Wh...Who are you." Sasuke tried to ask.
"Has it not yet become clear to you?" The woman with the blue tattoo finally spoke.
"I... you are going to kill me." Sasuke said with morbid resign.
"No." spoke the tall woman in green.
"We will spare your life, though the violation you have committed here is not one we take lightly. We will spare your life..." said the tall silver haired man in red gold and black "... but only because he wants us to."
Sasuke turned to look where the man was pointing. Behind Sasuke, standing in flowing robes of pale orange and yellow, stood Aang. His face, once more the proper age for his body, he was staring at Sasuke with the strangest look in his ageless grey eyes.
Aang stood there for a while, looking at Sasuke intently before finally moving forward. The monk knelt down to eye level with the dark haired ninja. Sasuke didn't move a muscle, he just looked back in something between defiance and confusion.
"Sasuke Uchiha... " Aang began "... you're life like mine was destroyed by a great evil. Your family, like mine, murdered in cold blood. Your people, like mine, on the brink of extinction."
Sasuke steeled his jaw, glaring at the monk.
"We, the both of us, have had to make hard choices, have had to stand at a crossroads, have been forced to become greater. But you have hardened yourself Sasuke. You are trying to kill a part of you that cannot die no matter how much you want it to."
"Just kill me already." Sasuke snapped.
Aang looked to the other figures and exchanged a nod.
"You want to know how I defeated the Silthfell, Sasuke?" Aang asked.
Sasuke studied the monk for a while before finally nodding.
"All you had to do was ask. But I can't tell you, I have to show you. And you may not like what you see." Aang looked at Sasuke, unblinking.
"Show me. Show me or kill me." Sasuke demanded.
Aang nodded, looking resigned.
"The true mind, Sasuke, can weather all lies and illusions without being lost..."
As Aang spoke his eyes began to glow, as did the eyes of the sea of individuals around them. Sasuke pulled back hesitently.
"... the true Heart can touch the poison of hatred, and not be harmed..."
Now Aang was stepping closer to Sasuke, his hand outstretched toward the other mans heart. Sasuke didn't pull away, but he didn't keep his eyes off of Aang.
"... from beginningless time, darkness thrives in the void Sasuke Uchiha, but always yields to purifying light."