Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Never will, don't want to. But it's fun to dabble!
Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Seer
"What do you see Neji?"
The teen squinted. "Umm…" He said, noncommittally. "Trees?"
"What else?" His teacher's voice was even, patient. "Umm… Well," Neji started, "I certainly don't see any pits filled with eggs and feathers secretly dug while everyone was asleep."
"This is serious Neji, what do you see?" The man paused. "Besides, we already found that yesterday."
"What? But I--" He noticed the man glaring at him. "Okay, okay. I can see the north forest. There are currently thirteen people within my visual range. Six of them appear to be ninjas, and the other seven look like civilians."
"But..?" The older ninja interjected.
"But, if my guess is right, that one," he pointed, "Is in disguise."
Neji's sensei smiled ever so slightly. "What gave it away?"
"Well, my first clue was that I recognize him - Haru-san, yeah? But, uhh, it was the chakra. It's focused in his legs more than normal. Clear sign he's no regular guy."
"Good. On both accounts.
"Now push your vision as far forward as you can."
The angle of Neji's sight shrank; going from wide and open to sharp and narrow like a needle, and with that the range skyrocketed. Straining hard to concentrate, Neji sacrificed his vision in every direction but directly ahead.
His eyes were like lasers - everywhere he turned he could see for miles.
His teacher, whose name also happened to be Neji, did the same thing with his own Byakugan, and – standing on the village wall behind his nephew - put his hands on his shoulders and carefully positioned him in the right direction. "Can you see the markers?"
The younger Neji murmured in accord. "Can you read them?" Yes, the Genin replied quietly again. "How far?" His sensei asked. "One…" Neji said, "One thousand, three hundred and… twenty metres?"
The Leaf Jounin lifted his hands from the boy's shoulders. "Good, but you can do better. Really try now."
Neji nodded almost imperceptibly, and brought both of his hands together in a concentration seal. Controlling his chakra oh-so-carefully, Neji forced his sight further and further beyond its limits. He inhaled once, sharply, and then quickly and shallowly over and again.
"Two thousand… just about."
"Better, but keep on going."
Neji moaned in complaint, but put more chakra into his eyes, which were already starting to hurt. He pushed his sight one last time, expanding it again – this time only by metres, when he realised something wasn't right. Neji ducked just in time for his uncle's hand to miss the back of his neck.
"Hey!" He exclaimed, "What was that for?"
"A ninja needs to be on guard at all times, Neji. We Hyuuga often rely on our Byakugans to warn us of danger, and that is simply a mistake. Neji!"
The thirteen year old stopped dead in his tracks, freezing in the middle of his impersonation. His hands were held up in the shape of mouths, and he had been miming along with his teacher's speech.
The older Neji glared at his student, who looked down at his feet abashedly. "Neji…" He dragged out the last syllable of their name in admonition. "This is very important Neji - especially in these dangerous times. You have a vast amount of potential, Neji, and that is the only reason why I chose to take you as my apprentice rather than fighting in this war. But if you squander that potential then both of us are just wasting time and wasting the lives of our countrymen, and that is just inexcusable."
They looked at each other for a moment, and then the whiskered boy hung his head. "Yes sensei. I'm sorry sensei."
"That's alright. Now what was I saying, mm?"
"It's important to stay on guard at all times and not to rely on the Byakugan, because you never know what's coming next. Do you know who taught me that?"
"No…" Neji murmured despondently.
"Your father."
"Oh." He smiled a little at that, feeling better.
"But!" The Jounin started. "Don't think you're getting off lightly Neji-kun. Go to Level Two."
"Aww, no! That always stings like crazy!"
"You need to practice it too. Now hurry up."
Sighing, Neji clasped his hands together again and closed his eyes. He reached deep down inside himself, searching for that hidden source of power that was buried in his blood. It was tricky, fluttering fluidly in and out of his grasp, but it was his soon enough. And with that, his eyes were open again, red and black and white this time, and with that his sight stretched out again, but further and clearer than before by miles. His face was scrunched up, wincing from the pain, but his eyes were open all the same.
The Hyuuga guided his nephew for a final time, hands on shoulders to point his sight in the right direction from atop the wall.
"How far this time?" He asked.
"Umm…" Neji paused. "Eleven thousand, but I see… Hold on, Neji-sensei… It's Aniki's team! They're back!"
"All of them? Is Ayame there? Is she alright?"
The colour drained from Neji's face, and his sensei knew immediately that something wasn't right. He concentrated his own Byakugan, and looked as far as he could. Not as far as Neji's demon-powered eyes were capable of, but Hyuuga Neji was not known as the greatest master of the Byakugan ever to live for no reason. He could see the returning team of Leaf and Sand-nins, which meant he could see that two of them were missing. And one of those two was Uzumaki Iruka.
Neji wouldn't ever admit that at first he'd been relieved. He loved his nephew Iruka, but in that moment, seeing that his daughter was safe meant much more.
Both of them hopped down, together, and ran to meet the team of shinobi.
Uzumaki Neji was thirteen years old. He'd been living in the middle of a war for two years, and unlike his friends, his family, he had seen hardly any combat. Instead his days were filled with a frantic pace of training, training and more training. It was unusual for a Genin to be taken as apprentice by an elder ninja, rather than becoming part of a three-man team, but it was not unheard of by any means. And Hyuuga Neji had always had a soft spot for his namesake, in part because of their shared name but also because they shared something else – a talent for the Hyuuga arts.
Neji had one thing that his uncle didn't, though: the demon power that his father's blood granted him. It was a power that had manifested itself differently in every child of the Uzumaki clan – in Yume, in Iruka and in Neji the power was different.
In some ways the younger Neji was bitter. He wanted to be making a difference out there. He was thirteen years old, and he had barely left his home in all that time.
Of course it was hard enough for Naruto and Hinata to send out their two eldest to fight, let alone any of their younger members of their clan. But they couldn't argue with the fact that both of them had been fighting from ages younger than Neji.
Master and student, both ran with Iruka's team, keeping pace to the operations base where the war leaders were waiting for the latest reports from the front line and everywhere else.
It was a low, round building erected in the centre of the village at the beginning of the war, but to call it a building was pushing the boundaries of believability, really – a large tent would be more along the right lines. It was designed to be mobile, and so at any time the base could be taken apart and moved wherever it was needed, whenever it was necessary.
Pushing aside the flap of the door, they walked into the base. Immediately arms crossed in front of them, blocking their path.
"Sasuke," an authoritative voice spoke, needing to say nothing else. The head of the reborn Uchiha clan turned his head slowly to face the group, his eyes glowing darkly with his bloodline. "They're clean," he responded, "But Neji has been making your son practise with his new eyes again."
"Sir," started Ebirou, bowing his head and knee to the Hokage. "Our mission was unsuccessful. Over the past week we fulfilled our initial responsibilities with little difficulty, but yesterday we encountered a special squad of Sound enemies. They were carrying a Summoning Portal, and while we eliminated every member of their team we were unable to prevent the Portal from being activated. Squad Leader Uzumaki Iruka-san remained behind to hold off the enemy forces, but ordered the rest of the squad to retreat and report back to you."
Naruto leant his neck back to look at the ceiling, keeping his thoughts locked up underneath his head of messy hair and the large red and white hat that covered it. He let out a long sigh, and then looked back down at everyone else waiting. "He'll be fine. He is Konoha's Immortal, after all." There was a wry humour in his voice, but it was only there on the surface, there to cover up.
The report continued, with more details given from every surviving member of the team. The pink-haired Hyuuga Ayame spoke to her mother, Sakura, exchanging information that no one else in the room had the expertise to understand, while other members marked out enemy positions on various maps. In the meantime Uzumaki Neji was becoming increasingly and increasingly bored and frustrated. He didn't exactly relish listening to boring sets of coordinates and statistics in a normal situation, and when he'd been told that his brother was almost certainly dead? He wanted to run out there and bring him back in person, but he knew that he was powerless. He was just one boy, and no matter his skills too weak to go against a whole army.
When he'd finally had enough, Neji got up and sidled out to the door flap. Before his hand pushed it open he heard a voice ring out over the busy hum. "Neji, hold up. I need you for something." It was his father, and for a moment Neji's heart sang. This was going to be his big moment! This was when he was going to get his first real mission!
But he had no such luck. "Neji, go fetch Yume and her team. Tell them about Iruka, and tell them – tell them it's important."
He ripped open the exit with violence, and taking a step out slammed his foot down into the dusty ground. Everyone still inside heard his shout of "BYAKUGAN!" and felt the angry roar of Kyuubi chakra burst out from his body. His vision spread throughout the whole of the Leaf village, and in moments he had found his sister.
Neji leapt over roofs and ducked through several alleys in what years of experience had taught him was the quickest route, and he did it even faster than usual. It was always a good way for him to work off steam and let him think clearly. Neji had always found that his best plans and pranks had come to him while dancing through the streets, but there was nothing in his head about pranks now. He was filled with concern for Iruka, envy for Yume and wrath for everyone else.
Swinging off a high tree branch and spinning, Neji came to a stop right in front of Nanaka Jo. The masked Chuunin wasn't all that many years older than Neji himself, but he was still allowed out on important missions, even though he was the only member of his team not to be a Jounin. Neji didn't like Jo. He didn't like the haziness that he saw whenever he tried to look at Jo with his Byakugan, a product of the brown-haired shinobi's unique clothes.
Jo raised a hand in greeting. "Hey Neji, what's up?"
"I've got to talk to my sister."
"Fine, that's okay. We'll talk some other time, alright."
Without even looking at him, Neji turned and whistled. A little distance away, in different directions, Uzumaki Yume and Yuuhi Sakumo turned, looked at the serious expression on Neji's face and then, in a blur of speed from Sakumo and a puff of smoke from Yume they were standing next to him. "What is it?" she asked, sounding concerned.
"Dad wants you for something. It's… it's probably to do with Iruka. His team came back without… without him. He stayed to fight a Summoning--"
"—A Portal?!" Yume interrupted. "What? That complete idiot!" She brushed past Neji and shouted back to her friends. "Jo, Sakumo, come on!" She looked around for a moment, then oriented on a tree nearby. "You too Konohamaru-sensei!"
The scarf-wearing Jounin hopped down and pocketed his copy of Itcha Itcha Revolution. He didn't say anything.
The four of them set out at a high pace, and for a moment Neji was left there standing in their wake. He sprinted into action behind them, struggling to keep up and gain his lost ground.
He arrived at the operations base just a few seconds after them, but a lot more tired. Oh he could keep going for a long time still – he wasn't an Uzumaki for nothing – but it just left him even more frustrated than before, feeling more and more worthless. He breathed deeply a few times before pulling open the flap and stepping back in.
The four members of his sister's team were already deep into a briefing. Neji did nothing but look down at his feet in dejected self-disgust.
Breaking his misery came Uchiha Yamino, popping up beside Neji and putting her hand on his shoulder. "Come on, cheer up kiddo."
"Don't call me that," Neji said with a bitter angriness lining his throat.
"Okay, okay. But cheer up all the same. You think I'm not upset about Iruka? Because I – I – I," she smiled thinly and rubbed her eyes, "I'm upset too. You know that, right?"
Neji felt awful, so awful he squeezed his own wrist tight until he could really feel it through everything else.
"I – you know I," Yamino didn't seem to be able to find the words, no matter how many times she rubbed her eyes to wipe away the tears before they could form. "I--"
She didn't get a chance to finish, because right then someone else burst through the door and shouted: "What happened?!!!" It was more a demand than a question.
Nara Shikamaru, chief strategist for the Leaf, got to his feet slowly and moved over to meet his daughter. "Kazeko-chan, come and sit down."
She didn't budge, standing there with her black hair down and her body wrapped in soft cloth. "What. Happened." She repeated. It was Naruto who answered.
"Iruka stayed behind to fight off a Portal all by himself."
"But he's alive, right? He's okay, right?"
Naruto's eyes clouded over with pain. "We don't know, Kazeko."
"Don't say that - he's alive! He has to be. He has to be!"
Shikamaru put his arms around her, but Kazeko pushed him away and stepped further towards the Hokage. "What happened?" she pleaded, not wanting to hear the answer again.
No one spoke, not until a dark expression crossed Kazeko's face. "I should have been there," she said. "If I'd been there it wouldn't have happened. Everything would be okay. I should have been there." She wasn't afraid to show her tears, at least at first.
She smeared her face with the white sleeves of her gown.
"You don't know that. None of us know that."
Kazeko nodded, slowly, but with her face clear again she made a declaration. "I'm going to get him back, even if it kills me." She turned, to make her way out, but turning was as far as she got. Naruto appeared in front of her, even though most of the people in the base hadn't even seen him move.
"No, you're not. You're still injured, and if you did that then all that would happen is you'd be throwing your life away… as well."
"We need to bring him back!"
Naruto stared deeply into her eyes, matching her pain with his own. "And we will.
"Konohamaru's team are going. They'll bring him back."
Yume came and punched Kazeko gently – more of a nudge than anything else – "Yeah! Don't you worry, Kaze-chan! He'll be back before you know it!" She leaned in and whispered something in the other girl's ear, something no one else could hear.
"I'm going."
The voice surprised everyone, not least its owner.
"I'm going," Neji repeated. "He's my brother."
"No," said Naruto simply. "You're staying right here Neji."
"No! My eyes are better than anyone else's! I can find him faster and better than any of you!"
"You're not going Neji, and that's final." There was no room for argument in the Rokudaime's voice, but Shikamaru put his hand on Naruto's arm all the same and spoke softly. "He's right, Naruto."
Naruto faced the other man, ignoring his son altogether. "He's too young! I won't allow it."
"We had missions just as dangerous when we were younger than him."
"That's – that's not the point. We were young and stupid and it's a miracle we survived."
Uchiha Sasuke looked down at those words, biting his bottom lip until it left a mark.
"Naruto," Shikamaru responded. "We can barely afford to send Konohamaru's team. We need to send as many people as we can spare, and Neji is wasted here. You know he is."
There was a long pause, everyone waiting for Naruto's – the Hokage's - final decision. Finally all he did was nod, and when he spoke he spoke to Konohamaru. "He's not to engage the enemy. He's a scout, and nothing more." He nodded. "You got it, Naruto-sensei."
The briefing continued from then on, but now with Neji at its heart, learning everything that the others were being told as well. He loved it, a fact that made him hate himself. He shouldn't be so excited, he knew. But he couldn't help it.
When the five of them were ready – as ready as they could be, anyway – they got up and left. It was the other Neji, the older Neji, who stopped Konohamaru with a few words. "Make sure he comes back."
"He's my nephew too, Neji. Naruto is the closest thing to an older brother I have, and I'm married to his aunt. He's my nephew – they both are."
The two Jounins nodded to each other in recognition, and that was all they needed.
Giving it a slow start, the new team ran. They ran along a road for a while, then after a few minutes ducked into a forest, where they began leaping from branch to branch, sailing through the air. Neji was pleased to find that he could keep up with them, and do it comfortably to boot.
When they were a good few miles away, when they were beginning to enter uncertain territory, that was when Neji started to feel like things were a little tough. He hadn't really noticed how they'd gradually been accelerating, not until he realised that he was really actually trying, and that it wasn't all that easy keeping up with them after all.
After a few hours of that, Konohamaru signalled back to the others. "White formation." Neji looked at the others confusedly, but they moved seamlessly into a line around him. Sakumo moved in front of Neji, and Jo to his back. Behind Jo was Yume, or one of her anyway, because suddenly there were two more. The other two were well ahead of Sakumo, keeping the six of them in cleanly moving in the shape of a Y. Only their leader wasn't part of the careful shape, instead moving in a sort of wavering arc to the head of them.
"This way Yume can keep watch in all directions with her Byakugan," Jo explained, speaking quietly into Neji's ear from behind. "Konohamaru-sensei is staying away from us so that he can protect us in case there's a problem. And the two of us are looking after you. We use this formation a lot when we're escorting clients. Well, not so much anymore, but we used to."
They ran into the first enemy only after they'd been travelling for three hours. He was a Sound-nin, and he was nearly dead as it was. Blood had seeped out from his gut and into the grass, staining the ground all around him. "Jo," Sakumo said, and the Chuunin ducked down beside the fallen shinobi, his hands whirling in a complex set of seals. Finally he touched one hand to the man's bloody leg, and he gasped in a hacking breath. "Sir," he mumbled. "I don't think I'll make it… Please, tell him…"
"What happened?" Jo asked. The dying man's eyes were unfocused, looking at something that wasn't really there. "A demon… he fought… he wouldn't die. I killed him… but he wouldn't…"
Those were the last words the Sound-nin ever spoke. There was neither time nor desire to mourn his death from any of the five Leaf-nins standing there. Instead, Yume whispered "Iruka," with a smile.
This time when they carried on their way, they knew they were close. So close that Neji knew it was time to use Level Two, for the third time that day.
He didn't find Iruka, even with that amazing increase in his vision. The enemy had run and crawled a long way, with a wound that had taken many hours to finally end him. Neji didn't find Iruka, but he found something else. He found smoke. A great tower of smoke climbing into the sky, and the enormous fire that it came from.
Neji pointed, and they changed their tack to head straight for the pyre. They were a little closer when the wind changed, and Sakumo smelled it, just as Neji saw it. "My god," he whispered. "I know that smell." He turned a little green from the scent, which got stronger with every second they got closer, and also from the memories it revived in him.
By the time they reached the source of the rising haze all of them needed to cover their mouths to block as much of the stench as they could. There was nothing like that cocktail of blood, fire, death and roasting flesh to turn ones stomach.
There were hundreds of bodies. Or at least there had been, before someone had gathered them all into a heap of torn and broken corpses and set them alight.
Even through the fire they could see that some of those bodies hadn't been dead. They could see them, blackened bones still held in reflections of screaming pain and agony.
"They're monsters," was all Neji could bring himself to say. "This is what we're fighting?"
"Hey, you don't have to tell me twice," said Jo. "All of us want to stop them, just as much as you."
Konohamaru didn't say anything, he just stood like a pillar of strength, and with some seals he brought an end to the blazing flames. With that much smoke it wasn't hard to bring down some rain. As it died down, something else was spotted from under cracks in the mess of death. The Portal itself; charred and wholly ruined.
"Look," Sakumo said, still finding it harder to breathe than the others. "It's cracked and broken in two. It was broken before they burnt it. So if he's--"
"If he's alive?!" Yume shouted, butting in. "Don't you start with that!"
"Yume, look at what happened here. He killed a lot of them - a lot – but there's no way he was the one who set that fire. He lost, eventually. And you've got to face the fact that he's either dead, in their hands, or gone, and do you think he would have run away?
"He broke the Portal, he stopped their attack. He's a hero."
Yume grabbed him by the cuff of his outfit and lifted Sakumo into the air. "You better believe he is. And we're going to get him back."
"You have to consider all the options, Yume," Sakumo said calmly.
"No, she's right," Konohamaru said, bringing their little scuffle to an end with just three words. "The odds of them actually being able to kill him out right are pretty slim, and if they beat him then they would definitely want to capture him. He's the son of the Hokage and one of the most important Jounins we have. The coalition squads are famous for their political significance, you know that.
"The Portal is broken, so they had to have taken him back the old fashioned way. We can still do this."
"But you don't know any of that," Sakumo said. "He could be rotting in that pile there and we'd never know."
"Not unless we go and find out," Jo said with what they assumed was a smile under that mask of his.
"So the five of us are going to chase after an unknown number of Sound-nins," Sakumo started, "Probably following them all the way to the Sound village, infiltrate an enemy stronghold and fight off possibly their entire army to retrieve someone whom we don't even have the slightest clue whether he's still alive in the first place?"
"That sounds about right," Yume replied, grinning widely.
"Just wanted to make sure," he said, rolling his eyes. "This is so stupid."
"It's our mission," Konohamaru said decidedly.
Neji stayed silent. This was a little more than he expected for his first real mission.
Author's Note: Another chapter down. I'm sorry for the long wait on this one, really. I had a middling case of writer's block. The actual chapter was pretty much written in the last few days, in truth.
Not really too much to say to you guys this time. Hopefully you enjoyed this chapter, but I could understand if it wasn't as good as the last one, since this was really much more of an effort to expand the story rather than to further it that much. Just wait for the next chapter, is all I can say, because I promise it will be interesting…
I hit 600 reviews with the last chapter, and then just kept on going. It's something like 640 now! That was so, so awesome. So keep on reviewing! Do it!