Chapter 25: His Father's Son

"I must say, I am impressed," Aki said with a malicious grin spread across her face. "I didn't think your brother would be the only one to come after me. I had hoped for the Orange Ninja." She did not sound displeased that it had been her brother not her father who had come after her.
"Dad had a mission," she lied, she did not have much else. "He left the village the night you attacked, he wouldn't know anything about this!"
Aki smiled and crossed the room she had set up as her hideout for this phase of her plan, she stopped right in front of Tsubaki, her transformation making her look like a child a thing of the past, the tall lithe woman rested her hand on her hip and leaned forward so her eyes were level with Tsubaki, who was tied to a chair. "Now, now," she cooed gently patting Tsubaki's cheek, "it's not polite to lie." She said the last through gritted teeth striking Tsubaki across the face.
"You don't know if I'm lying or not," Tsubaki shouted back, straining against her bonds again. "You got out of that apartment so fast, you don't even know if Sasuke died!" The woman laughed, a cold bone-chilling laugh.
"I am a master of the art of killing, child. I have studied the human body for years, I know what I'm doing. I stabbed that idiot right in the kidneys and tore through three vital organs, there was no way he survived; and if I stayed there too long," she grabbed Tsubaki's chin, pulling her head forward, "someone would have seen me leaving with you, my beauty." She pushed Tsubaki back roughly standing up straight.
"So what are you going to do now?"
The woman pursed her lips and dropped her eyes into a point looking at Tsubaki, her silvery-blonde hair falling to cover half her face. Reaching a decision she smiled, the same smile she had given when she was assuming that she was a nice, loving person. "Well, your brother will have to be taken care of, I don't know of many people looking for boys," she mused crossing her arms, "I suppose I could keep him myself, but keeping little boys is quite expensive." She shook her head, dismissing the thought, "but after that I'll complete my assignment and kill your father, then me and you, deary, will disappear from this country for good."
The woman left after that, left to go prepare for her fight against Isamu, leaving Tsubaki alone. "Not if I have anything to say about it," she muttered as the echoing footsteps faded, and the final thud of the door closing reverberated across the room. Tsubaki strained against the ropes holding her in place, they looked like regular ropes, but Tsubaki was having a lot more trouble getting out of them than she did regular ropes, which was something she was very good at.
She thought back to the night this happened, when she had gone over to give Sasuke the Maneki Neko, she had been surprised this woman had chosen to attack when Tsubaki was there, it would have been very sloppy to leave a witness behind or innocent victims. After she attacked Sasuke, stabbing him in the back, she had released her jutsu revealing that this was no innocent little six-year-old. She had easily over powered Tsubaki, and had no doubt cast several genjutsu to ensure that no one would recall anything while she made her escape, with a hostage.
They had moved quickly through the night. Occasionally the woman would stop and run her kunai through a tree so that when a team was sent out, they could find her. The woman had wanted someone to follow her, she wanted the Orange Ninja to come save his daughter and avenge his fallen friend.
When they had made it to this temple, the woman had revealed her plans to Tsubaki, including her plans for the girl. She would not just let Tsubaki walk away from this; Tsubaki knew that she knew too much. But there were ways of dealing with witnesses, and it did not always end up with the witness dead. This woman was still debating a few options, but whatever it was it included her being controlled with some strange device the disrupted chakra flow and sold as a slave—Tsubaki did not want to think of what that included—or being forced into the same business as the woman with a curse mark…unless she found a way to escape this place.
This was one of the rare times the woman left her alone; she was always watching her with her cold eyes to make sure she did not escape. She must have specially treated the ropes too, since using her jutsu was having no effect on them. But there had to be some way of getting out of this, nothing was impenetrable just like nothing was completely fool proof. She just had to find that one weakness.
Tsubaki strained against the ropes, they seemed to be giving as she moved around, but the moment she stopped they constricted, tighter than they had been before, "Great," she grunted breathlessly. She would have to do this quickly.

He could feel someone watching him, could see the pair of cold hardened eyes keeping a close watch on every move he made, counting his heart beats, listening to his breathing. It should have been unnerving, he knew that, but at the moment he was to determined to be unnerved, to angry to be distracted. He had a mission, so let them watch him. Soon he would beat that intruder into the ground and save his sister.
"I know you're here," he shouted dropping his pack into a corner, "I know you're watching me, so just come out and let's get this over with!"
The sound of someone laughing filled the hall, high-pitched and cold. Isamu took a deep breath to calm himself and waited, even though the laughter sent his nerves on edge. The laughter was soon accompanied by footsteps, like heels clicking on the tiled floors of the temple hall. He took another deep breath. This was what he came for.
"My, my, aren't you a brave little boy?" a woman said from somewhere deep inside the hall's shadows, "coming all the way out here on your own to save you sister. I wish my little brother was so nice to me." Again the hall was filled with the cold laughter; Isamu clenched his fist waiting for the woman to show herself. "It's such a nice gesture, too bad it will be in vain."
The speaker appeared, exiting the shadows to Isamu's left, a small smile on half of her sickly pale face. He turned to face her fully, she looked nothing like Aki, and this was a woman, not a child. He should have expected it, no child could have done what had to have happened in order for such an elaborate plan to work, yes he should have expected it, but now he knew better.
"Let Tsubaki go."
"My, my, so direct. You certainly are a brave little boy," she said, her smile widening, "but you have no manners."
The woman rushed forward, and before Isamu knew what had happened, she had him. Her arms wrapped under his arms and up behind his head, and she pushed him down to his knees, laughing. Isamu pulled forward, he could not get caught this way. "Now quit squirming," she said all pretenses of sweetness gone. "You can't get away from me." She pulled her arms in tighter, adding pressure to Isamu's shoulders. "I'm not going to kill you, yet."
"Then what are you going to do?" he spat.
"I have uses for you and your sister, boy," she pushed him farther down. "There is very little chance I could kill the Orange Ninja now that he is aware something is happening. I need you," she moved up closer to him. He could feel her breath on his neck, he could smell her; Isamu tensed trying to pull away once again. The woman laughed. "Now stop, before you make me do something you'll regret. I need you to be a good little puppet Isamu," she cooed, the sweetness returning to her voice, "I need you to go kill your father for me."
"And why would I do that?"
"Well if you don't, you'll never see your sister again." The woman vanished, dropping Isamu to the cool tiles.
He lay there, feeling a sense of total loss, the same he had felt when Hibiki and his gang and nearly killed him. It was a sense of powerlessness that left a sour taste in his mouth, he was not a super awesome shinobi like his father, he was nothing; just a loser, lying abandoned on the temple floor.
He felt tears welling in his eyes, tears of anger, self-pity…shame.
He felt them as they ran down his face and puddle on the ground, hot against the cool touch of the floor. He had failed, failed himself, his father, and worst of all, he had failed Tsubaki. His hand clenched, forming a fist, driving his nails into the soft skin of his palm and cutting into them, he had failed everything he had tried to do.
He was not an awesome shinobi; he was just a little boy, a little boy that had been taught an impossible difficult lesson the hardest way possible. Now he had more on his plate than he could ever hope to handle. He could not defeat his father, no one could beat Naruto. Now Isamu could not even go back to the village, not after this embarrassment.
So he lay there, on the warming tiles of the temple floor and cried; cried like the little boy he felt like on the inside.

He heard footsteps echoing around him, growing louder and louder, people were entering the temple, coming for him. He did not move, how could he? He had failed.
"Isamu!" Kiku's cry echoed through the hall, ringing in his ears. He did not deserve her worry.
They dropped down around him, worried faces looking down on him making sure he was all right. They should not do that, he thought, he was not deserving of that. Kiku dropped down on top of him, her arms circling his neck and chest.
"You idiot!" she screamed pulling him up off the ground into a tight embrace. "What were you thinking?!"
He did not deserve their worry. He had disobeyed orders, gone ahead when he knew he should not have, and he had lost. He did not deserve their attention because he was a loser. He grabbed hold of Kiku's shoulder, buried his face into her neck, and cried; cried because he could not do the one thing in his whole life that mattered, because he had failed to save Tsubaki.

"Isamu!" she wrapped her arms tightly around him, held him close crying. Normally he would have pulled away when she did something like this in public, but not this time; let her rejoice that she still had one child, she would never get the other back. He looked around in a daze, half covered in his mother's shirt. There were a lot of people there, his friends, Tsubaki's friends, his parent's friends, the Hokage, Kakashi-Sensei and what was left of his team. Had they gathered here in hopes of celebration?
"Sakura, let him go, he needs to breathe," he heard his father's voice, felt his father's hands pull his mother's arms away from him. He felt the weight of his guilt double on his shoulders when his father's hands clapped down there. The guilt doubled again seeing their smiling faces, they did not know; Haru-Sensei did not tell anyone about what had happened after they reached the temple—that was staying between the four of them—but he still knew. Isamu would always remember how worthless he'd been when it mattered. He had not been able to do anything to save Tsubaki.

Sasuke couldn't help but notice there was something wrong with Isamu. His face was pale, lifeless, his shoulders sagged, he drug his feet, and he looked close to tears every time someone looked into his tired eyes. No he could not help but notice the drastic change in the boy, a change that no one else seemed to be taking note of.
Should he go talk to Isamu? Would anything he has to say make any difference? He did not even know what was causing this depressing mood; no, that was not true. This mood was in direct relation to Tsubaki and that mission. But that still did not help Sasuke in determining what was wrong. He did not know what had happened on the mission, no one did; the team refused to talk to anyone about it except the Hokage.
Maybe it would be best just to talk with Naruto about what he was seeing. Naruto would know what to do, how to handle it; he was the boy's father after all. But there was the possibility that Naruto was already handling it; then he could just be adding stress the situation.
"Naruto," he said uncertainly one day as they sat in Ichiraku.
"Yeah Sasuke," Naruto sounded tired, and it had started after Isamu had come back, without his sister.
"Do you know what's wrong with Isamu?"
"Nothing," Naruto responded sharply, fixing a rare look of anger toward Sasuke. He held the look for a few seconds before he sighed dropping his shoulders. "Sorry Sasuke."
Sasuke offered him a brief smile, "it's all right, Naruto."
"No, it's not all right. I don't know what's going on with Isamu; for the first time in his life Isamu won't talk to me. He won't talk to me, he won't talk to Sakura. He hardly even talks. And Hideaki and Kiku are the same, and Haru won't talk to anyone about the mission except Granny Tsunade, and she's not telling anyone either." Naruto slumped down over the table, his chin hitting with a soft thud. "I don't know what's wrong with him, and I don't know how to handle it."
"It'll get better, Naruto," Sasuke offered, "it's always darkest before dawn."

"Sometimes I wish that boy wasn't so much like his father." Sakura complained to Ino after watching Isamu sulk around the house for a whole day. He was more like his father than a lot of people realized, most assumed Isamu's red hair came from her, but it had come from Naruto's family, his facial expressions were identical to Naruto's, his overall attitude was, if anything brighter and happier than Naruto's, and his depressions where even more morose, most likely because he was not use to the constant failures like Naruto had been.
"If he was more like you, you'd wish he was more like Naruto," Ino replied off-handedly, offering Sakura a smile. "And if he's so much like Naruto, just give it a few days, and he'll be back to his usual bright and cheerful self."
"It's been a few days, and he still won't talk to either of us," Sakura sighed propping her head on her hand.
"There were times when Naruto didn't talk to us, there were a lot of times he didn't even do anything. Just leave him alone for a few more days, by then he'll have found his spark again."
She was right, there had been times when Naruto had shut himself off from the world, and there had been times he was just quiet and reserved while he thought things out. He still did that, so it would only be natural for Isamu to copy his father's habits, but that did not mean she had to like it. It was one thing for Naruto to close up like that, but she could not just watch Isamu doing it too, it was hurting her to see him act that way. If only she knew what was wrong with him, then she could help him.
But he was not talking to anyone. None of the members of Haru's team were. Sakura had never come across a situation where her kids would not come and talk to her, especially Isamu; he always came to talk with her, just like Tsubaki always went to talk to Naruto.
In that moment Sakura felt a twinge of guilt; she had not talked to Naruto about how he was feeling. He was very close to Tsubaki, he spoiled her, and they did nearly everything together. He would be a raging ball of emotions since this happened and all she had done was worry about Isamu…
"Ino, I have to go," she said in a slight daze getting up.
"Don't worry Sakura, those two will be back to their bright selves in no time." Ino smiled, like she had read Sakura's thoughts about Naruto. Sakura nodded to Ino and started away, she had to find Naruto.

He sat on the swing outside of the academy, the wind pushing him gently back and forward as he looked idly up at the sky watching the clouds roll by. It had been two days since they arrived back at the village, in which time he had done this, sat on this swing, avoiding his mother who had, in his opinion, gone slightly crazy; his father who had developed a mood much like his own; Haru-sensei, Kiku, and Hideaki, none of which had tried to make him talk about what had happened inside the temple, he just did not want to talk to them. So far his parents had been the only people trying to get him to talk, even the Hokage had given him space asking for information only from Haru, and only getting extremely vague answers since Haru did not know all the details about what had happened in the temple.
A team had been sent out to the temple to recover Tsubaki, they were due in this afternoon; he did not expect them to return with his sister. Aki would most likely moved on since she had let him leave.
He sighed leaning his head against the rope of the swing.
"If you had blonde hair, you'd look just like your dad." Isamu took a deep breath tightening his grip on the ropes.
If he was like his father he would have come back with Tsubaki, he thought almost angrily.
"I doubt that," he managed to say very quietly. He did not look like his father, his father was awesome, he had an air of awesome that radiated from him; Naruto stood tall, he never moped about thinking about how useless he was. His father would never act that way.
"Oh no, you would. I can't begin to count the times I saw him sitting just like that," there was an amused laughter in the voice. Isamu looked up to see Kakashi-Sensei leaning against the tree, his arms folded in front of him, a touch of laughter in his eye. "Even that look, if you had blonde hair, Isamu, you would be a miniature Naruto."
Isamu turned away from the jonin and pushed himself off the swing. He knew what Kakashi-Sensei would want; he would ask questions, trying to figure out what happened. Just like all the others who had been bothering him over the last two days. He looked up and saw that Kakashi had moved to block his path, so Isamu turned to go a different direction; again Kakashi moved to cut him off.
"Do you mind? I want to go be depressed somewhere else now," he said sadistically trying once again to sidestep the jonin.
"Yeah, just like Naruto." Kakashi responded blocking Ismau's path.
"No, I'm not. Now quit saying that and let me past."
"You obviously don't know much about your father if you think you didn't get this mood from him." Isamu scoffed, trying once again to get around Kakashi. "He did this too, when he failed." Isamu looked up shocked at the jonin.
Naruto, his father, fail? That really did not seem possible.
"But it never stopped him, he kept going, got stronger, smarter; he did what needed to be done."
"I think this is a bit more serious than not being able to bring his friend home."
"There's more to his story than that, just like there's more to yours." Isamu's shock grew, did Kakashi know something no one else did? "I'm not saying you have to tell me, or anyone, but walking around like that," Kakashi paused and shrugged, "it won't help anyone." Kakashi turned to leave, he took a step then turned to look at Isamu again.
"You really are just like Naruto," he said briefly, waved and left. Although he could not see it, Isamu knew Kakashi was smiling as he walked away.