Disclaimer: I own… (Tackled by rabid lawyers) GAHH!! I NO OWN I NO OWN I NO OWN!! STOP PULLING MY HAIR!!
And…uh…Cean's sanity…really is very fragile…
A.R.T!!
naruto geek: Yay! Thanks! Yes, I'm back, after going on a long journey… Was this update quick enough for you?
AirheadedKittyLuver: Ha ha. Yeah, the fight scenes always take me forever to write. But it wouldn't truly be a Naruto fanfic without them, right? But I'm glad you like them. When Lee said Cean had a handicap, he meant her now broken hand.
Dreams that do come true can be as unsettling as those that don't—Brett Butler
As the others filed out of Tsunade's office, the woman surreptitiously reached into a drawer in her desk for a sake bottle. Shizune never actually thought to look inside the desk for the sake stash, since Tsunade had a tendency to throw her desks out the window. Not to mention it was a rather obvious hiding place.
Looking up again, she realized that one person hadn't left with the others. "Shikamaru?" she asked, blinking. "What are you still doing here?"
The Nara man fidgeted a little where he was standing. "I think I already know of a couple of wishes the demon might be interested in granting."
Tsunade's eyebrows shot up to her hairline. Setting her sake bottle down, she gestured for her strategist to continue.
He fidgeted some more, obviously unhappy with what he was about to say. Finally, he cleared his throat. "I know of four possible people." He stopped, hesitating. "Sakura, Ino, Hinata, and…" he flinched before saying the last, "…Takako."
The Hokage's heart plummeted into her stomach. "Please give your reasoning," she told him, trying very hard to remain aloof. It was difficult.
"Sakura has recently stopped expressing her desire to have her old teammate return to Konoha. Hinata has always felt inferior to the other members of her clan," Shikamaru was able to grit out as unfeelingly as he could. "And Ino has…well…ever since those events five years ago, Ino has felt as if she were in the shadows of her friends. She felt she wasn't as strong as Sakura, and that she wasn't as kind as Hinata, among other things."
"And they all left the village," Tsunade whispered, feeling guilty for not being able to tell the young man that the three women were actually on a mission. However, in a dark corner of her mind, she knew that what Shikamaru had said made sense. Did she give them merely an excuse? Were they under the grip of a demon? It was something that was easy to hide from others, as she knew very well herself.
Returning her attention to Shikamaru, she asked, "And the last person. Who was it, again?"
"Takako."
This wasn't any better than the earlier three. "The daughter of Asuma and Kurenai." She closed her eyes. "Why?"
"Her mother and I have heard many, many times her cries of, 'I want to live with Mommy and Daddy together!' It's…actually rather…heart wrenching to hear." A pained expression filled Shikamaru's face while he talked.
Tsunade thought she understood. Asuma's death still affected the lives of his former team greatly. Not to mention Kurenai's life as well. Her daughter was almost five years old, and had never gotten a chance to meet her father. The child must be lonely, even though the former Team 10 had done their best to be as involved in the little girl's life as possible. They never even talked about Asuma. Pretended that he never existed in the first place. Takako even had her mother's surname.
But children weren't as easy to fool as yourself. Especially not this one—she had two remarkable parents, after all. She was sharp. She knew that other children had something she didn't. She wanted what was missing, and wanted it bad enough for Shikamaru to think that a demon would be interested.
"Why would the demon be interested in any of these four?" Tsunade had to ask coldly, in order to get her strategist to pay attention and not return to a depressed state. The fact that he hadn't said his trademark, 'How troublesome,' or, 'What a drag,' was proof that the man was deeply affected by the topic.
Replying in the same manner as Tsunade, he forced himself to be professional, for the sake of—well, he wasn't sure if it was for himself or for someone else. "Sakura was your apprentice and knows many of your secrets. Any favor gleaned from her would be very useful for anything that demon of yours is planning. Hinata knows intimate details of the Hyuuga clan, and has the Byakugan. She would be useful in all sorts of ways, as well."
Tsunade calmly noted that he saved the two people most dear to his heart for last. She'd noticed him visibly steeling himself.
Shikamaru gulped before continuing, "The Yamanaka family knows many things about plants, especially the less than savory uses for them. Ino's Mind Transfer jutsu would be integral to discovering the weakness of an enemy in order to blackmail them later.
"Last, but not least, Takako may be young, but she holds incredible potential. She could be one of the greatest kunoichi of her generation. In addition, her age also makes her an easy subject to manipulate."
The blonde woman looked out her window for a moment, thinking hard. "Is there anything further you wish to add?"
"No, ma'am."
"Very well. I will think over what you have said. You may now return to the rest of your assignment."
Even though she wasn't looking at him, she knew that Shikamaru had bowed. "Yes, Tsunade-sama."
"Wait," she called, just as he was about to walk out the door. She heard his footsteps stop. Carefully phrasing her next words, she still didn't look at him. "Keep in mind that while this assignment is of the utmost importance, I do not actually care where you perform your brainstorming." Knowing that he would understand, she merely waited until she heard the door click shut, and then returned to nursing her new sake bottle.
Only this time, she had even more nasty things to think about.
As it turned out, Tsunade wasn't the only one having dark thoughts. Cean was in the grip of quite a few, herself. They were entirely different from the Hokage's, but they were no less nasty.
Cean's assigned duties with Akatsuki were vague at best. Clean up the messes. Perform any duty that another member was unable (or unwilling) to do.
Thus, she was called in to help with one of Zetsu's interrogations once. Normally it was Itachi and Zetsu working together—Zetsu to physically break down a person's body and Itachi to break their mind. However, Itachi had gotten so ill he couldn't move from his room that one day. So, the job fell to Cean to break the current prisoner's mind. As a high-ranking official from Iwagakure, he knew some rather important scroll locations.
Everyone, including Cean, had expected the interrogation to go south. Even if the man's body was broken, he probably wouldn't give out reliable information. If his mind was broken too thoroughly, he wouldn't make any sense.
He broke after just a few whispered words in his ears. That was all it took to make him spill his every secret.
That was when Cean started being brought in for more interrogations. She had a talent for saying the exact thing to make a person's mind and willpower crumble. Further experimentation afterward revealed the ability to 'rebuild' the person, to 'fix' what was broken and make it stronger than before. Turn the person into an ally.
Anything in excess will kill a human. Including—no, especially—the truth.
And this particular Konoha ninja she was sparring with was not skilled enough at controlling his emotions to fool Cean's eyes. The fake smile was good, but Cean had helped to raise Datenshi, the master at hiding behind smiles. She could see beyond it easily.
The weather was beginning to take a turn for the worse, as was Cean's mood and the dark things buried deep down were rising to the surface like worms during a rainstorm. They whispered wonderful, intoxicating words that were hard to ignore.
Break the child.
So tempting.
Break them all.
Oh so tempting.
The smiles…they taunt us…destroy them. No, ERASE THEM.
It wouldn't take much.
Just a little…push.
Just a little push.
Cean quickly realized that she was about to snap. In order to stop it, she had to end this quickly. Suddenly twisting, she fell onto her left, unbroken hand. Lifting the rest of her body up, she used the momentum to swing her leg in an arc, catching Lee's abdomen while he was off the ground and unable to dodge effectively. She moved so fast that no one saw her leg until after Lee was lying on his back.
Now that she was calming down, she was free to think about what had triggered this episode of insanity. The weather definitely had something to do with it, as storms made her mood just as thundery. She didn't hate storms, but she didn't like them either.
That couldn't have been the only thing, she reasoned. She had better control over herself than that. She found her answer in what the darkness had told her. Smiles. Lee's fake one, and the ones the spectators wore.
Rationally, it didn't make sense, but sometimes people react to things before they know what their thoughts truly are. You can't analyze instincts or whims very well when they're your own.
She carefully righted herself again. Cean knew that in order to maintain order she was going to have to put a stopper on any thoughts that could get her thrown into an interrogation cell. No breaking people allowed.
Well, she might have broken a couple of Lee's lower ribs. There had been pressure against her foot, but it had given way just like the breaking of a twig might. Funny…she hadn't planned to kick that high…
The young man stared up at Cean with a strange look on his face. When she offered her hand to him, he hesitated a moment before he grasped it. Pulling himself up, he continued to give her an odd look.
Finally, she asked, "Is something the matter?"
"You…" here he seemed to struggle a bit.
Had he seen her change? Could he have seen how the dark things affected her? Cean usually didn't worry, but this made her a tad bit uneasy. She didn't like people trying to figure her out.
"You didn't move that fast earlier, Yamashi-san," Lee remarked. "How were you able to do that?"
'Nice try,' she thought. 'You're feigning disinterest in my mood swing. You can't sidetrack me so easily. And I was able to move faster because I released more coldness from my body, relieving the pressure on it which enabled me to move faster.'
She blinked as her thoughts wandered. "It's a trick I've learned over the years, and it's due to a certain condition I have." She gave him a smirk, and crinkled her eyes in slight mirth. "And it isn't something you can copy," she chuckled.
Lee looked crestfallen. He really had wanted to learn how to speed up like that. Then his look turned to one of pain as his ribs reminded him that they needed medical attention. Which reminded him of something else. "Doesn't your hand hurt?"
Cean gave him a blank stare for a moment. Her eyes lit up as soon as she realized what he was talking about. "Yeah, it's broken, remember? Of course it hurts." It did hurt—she just didn't really care. A benefit of living for so long was that you understood that pain was usually fleeting, so she never saw any point in worrying over a little hurt.
Besides, far worse had been done to her before. A broken hand was nothing compared to a fractured skull. Now those were unpleasant. Especially if it happened to be your own fault. (She still blamed the shelf. It was the stupid thing's fault for being in the way of her head.)
"Uh…Kasumi?" There was no answer. "Kasumi?" Still no answer. "KASUMI!"
"What do you want?!"
Datenshi backed away from her sister's baneful glare, smiling nervously. "We might want to finish up soon as there seems to be a sandstorm on the way. I, personally, do not want to be stuck down here if it covers up the entrance like the last one did."
Kasumi moved her gaze back to the thing Datenshi had found earlier.
Peering at it as well, Datenshi's smile never slipped from its permanent place. "What is it, exactly?"
"A door."
They both stared in silence for a little while.
"I don't like it, Kasumi."
"Yeah. I'm getting a bad feeling about it as well."
There was another pause. "We're going to have to open it, huh?"
"No, you're going to open it. You found it, so take responsibility." Kasumi glanced at her twin. "Besides, the fragment we're looking for isn't anywhere else in here." She returned her gaze to the door. "I wonder why this is the only place that's different…"
"Maybe because this was dedicated to the Demon of Silence?"
"Maybe."
"Well, I'm going in…" With that, Datenshi reached carefully into the indentation in the door, and curled her fingers around the lip. She paused, and turned towards Kasumi. "On three?"
"Sure. One…"
"Two…"
"Three!" they shouted together, and Datenshi yanked as hard as she could.
They squeezed their eyes shut instinctively, and waited.
Nothing happened.
Opening their eyes, they sighed heavily at what they saw.
It had only moved a little. But, listening closely, they could hear something beyond the door. It was like a…scratching noise, but it was very faint.
Kasumi and Datenshi realized that they were definitely not alone in the old ruins.
The scratching sound came again.
Looking at each other with identical expressions of misgiving, they both remarked at the same time, "That can't be good."
And a premature twilight was fast approaching with the storm.
And here I leave you till next time. 2,000 words! Be happy!
The more reviews I get, the more motivated I'll be to write up the next chapter! Bye!