Disclaimer: I do not own NARUTO.

WILL OF STONE

THE SECOND TRIAL: "Untouchable, Part One"


"Fuck!" Kankuro was shouting. "Where are they?"

"I've no idea!" Temari shouted back. "How do we put out these damned flames?"

"I've no idea either!"

They'd raced toward Kashima Village from the Cathedral of Hands as fast they could. The Mizuho fire only grew in size as they approached, feeding off the rain that fell from the sky. Demon fire danced on the stormy wind, turning the wooden buildings into a smoking, burning pyre.

Team Dayu was nowhere to be found. Could the waterfall-nins have already left? Sakura was wary of an ambush… yet they could hardly let the entire village burn down through inaction.

Not to mention the people in it.

A boy was wailing from somewhere within the fire. Sakura leapt into the flames, using a chakra projection field to keep the fire away from her body. If I don't find him he'll die. "Temari!" she shouted.

Temari understood. "Wind Release: Storm Shield!"

Gales of wind swirled from the sand-nin's War Fan. The wind cleared away much of the water on the streets—and with it the Mizuho fire that burned on the water itself. A temporary path was made. Sakura raced forward, leaping over several charred corpses, until she came to the boy.

He'd hid under an overhanging ledge, a place the rain had not yet touched.

A little boy, in a butcher's apron.

"Are you all right? Where's your family?"

"They…" The boy wiped the tears from his face. "I don't got none. But my master… we ain't want no trouble. Just let the ninja pass through, my sensei said, don't bother them none. But those three ninja freaks from Waterfall ain't care. Three monsters. One of 'em, with blue eyes and red hair. He—he burned everything…"

"I know."

The Sand Siblings joined them. "Now what?" asked Kankuro.

"Now we try to save Kashima Village," said Temari.

Temari made a hand seal, and a miniature tornado appeared above her head. Vortex, her new jutsu. The vortex of spinning air traveled along the burning buildings, sucking away the Mizuho fire into itself and then funneling it away into the empty streets. Kankuro aided his sister, using the iron frill of his puppet Sanshouo like a suction cup. Sakura used chakra fields to contain the flames.

It was not nearly enough.

The Mizuho fire spread with every droplet of rain that fell from the sky. Their combined efforts barely put a dent in the raging conflagration. Nor could they actually put the fire out. At this rate, Kashima Village will be ashes before the dawn comes.

The fire froze.

Where the flames had been, suddenly there was only ice. Frozen fingers of Mizuho; the blazing, dancing water transformed into cold, motionless ice. In seconds all of Kashima Village was covered in it, like some of kind of elaborate artistic sculpture. When Sakura reached out gingerly to touch the frozen flame in front of her face, the ice broke off in her fingers. The Enshogan?

Then a mirror of ice appeared, and a scrawny bald girl stepped through it.

The girl grinned, folding her scrawny arms under a chest flat as a boy. Shaved of hair, her head was scrawny as well, and white as an egg. But her eyes were startlingly blue, as fierce and large as a cat's. A wild tomcat, stuffed into the uniform of a ninja. But a ninja she surely was. Her grandmother was Nobunaga Kikuko the Spinster, and her grandfather was the patriarch of the Touin clan, and the infamous bloodline called Hyoton. Ice Release.

Sakura knew her.

"Yukari," she said.

The mist-nin Touin Yukari stuck out her tongue. "Hey. The Mizuho giving you a bit of trouble?"

"Well, it helps to have a bloodline power that can control water," protested Kankuro.

"Jealous? Don't be stupid, my entire clan was massacred for it. Grown men sticking swords into little girls, all 'cuz they were afraid we could make iced tea faster than anybody else. Something psychological there." Yukari glared sweetly. "Where's Team Dayu?"

"They left before we got here."

"Bunch of cowardly camel cunts."

Sakura explained how they'd seen Kashima Village burning in the night, and how they'd rushed to help. How she'd found the butcher's boy alone in the street.

The rest of Yukari's team showed up as they talked. The two new mist-nins could not have been more different in appearance. Unchiku Onome was a fiery, full-blooded beauty, voluptuous to the point of absurdity, with sultry red hair and a face full of even redder freckles. Tsunaga Kuina was a shy maiden by contrast, all awkward elbows, tall and gangly as a half-starving crane. Yet they were lesbians both, like Yukari, like their sensei. Outsiders in Kiri, bound together by a shared difference.

Team Kikuko.

Temari approached the butcher's boy. "What's your name?"

"Eien." Without the Mizuho fire, the night was very dark. Yet Sakura could see the tears on Eien's cheeks even so. "Don't got no other. Thank you, for saving the village." The boy had a square face, a pug nose, and short woolly hair. He reminded faintly Sakura of Inari.

The thought made her remember the mission to the Wave Country, and Team Kakashi, and Zabuza and Haku. It made her remember the wave-nin Unchiku Nonou, and all the blood seeping slowly out of her body in a dark cave. Onira Kawai killed her. Kawai and his teammates had almost killed Eien, too. Had almost killed everyone in Kashima Village, if Yukari had not put out the Mizuho fire in time.

"Eien." Temari's voice was gentle. "Please lead us to your village elder."

The rain slowly died as they walked through the streets of Kashima Village. It was still deserted; evidently the villagers was still too afraid to come outside. A soft rain was falling now, light as dew on Sakura's skin. The ice from Yukari's jutsu began to melt, dripping cold wet tears down the walls of the wooden buildings. At least a quarter of them had collapsed in the fire. Shabby cramped things, little more than shacks. When Sakura looked into the ruins of one hut, there was nothing between its walls but burned clothing, the melted remains of a metal bowl, and two charred corpses. Like a hovel where an animal might live, not a human house. Colored rings haloed the scant few windows where lanterns still burned. The night was half gone, Sakura guessed. Dawn would be upon them in a few hours.

Eien stopped in the center of the village, the village green. A town hall had been built into the side of the mountain here, made of stone unlike all the other buildings. Its walls and roof was badly burned, but it had not fallen down. The door was barred from inside.

A woman's voice came from within. "Please, we don't want no trouble." The woman peeked through a small rectangular window set in the door, hiding the lower half of her face. Her skin was oddly leathery, her nose almost like a snout, her eyes black and huge. Where have I seen that face before? "Ninja-sama, please. We'll give what you want. The First Lock, please, it's yours. Just leave us be."

"You're Bakura Kurotsuchi," said Temari, surprised.

"I'm Suchi. Yes." The woman's eyes were downcast, frightened. "Please, ninja-sama, we ain't done nothing to you." Then she spotted the butcher's boy. "Eien! Eien, come in here. You shouldn't be with them."

"They saved me," Eien told her. "They was the ones that put out the fire."

"Oh?" Suchi's face broke into a wide smile; her mouth was full of sharp teeth. "Oh, thank you, ninja-samas. The fire… I thought… well, please! Please, come in. You must meet Montonobu-sama."

Montonobu-sama was the village elder of Kashima Village. He stood in the foyer of the stone hall, an old bearded man in farmer's clothes who leaned on a stick just to stay upright. There was a nasty bruise on his face, swelling to cover half his head, and his nose looked as though it had been broken more than once. Yet the elder Urashima Montonobu was not meek as the woman Bakura Suchi had been. There was a weight to the way he regarded them, a sense of firmness and certainty.

"You helped us?"

"We saved your village, old man," said Kankuro.

Temari gave her brother a frown. "Shinobi are taught to protect the innocent… though few follow their vows faithfully. These waterfall-nins who set Kashima Village on fire, Team Dayu. What happened? Was there a fight?"

"No." Montonobu shook his head. "They were sadists. So young, yet so drunk on their own power. The youngest one, Misain Sebi, he said that he wanted to punish us… that he was going to burn down our home and everyone in it. We had no means to fight back." There was a haunted look in the old man's eyes, but something unyielding as well. "I deeply thank you for your assistance."

Sakura looked around at the hall. The stone walls were blackened, dusted with soot from recent flames. The Mizuho fire started inside here. "Elder. Is there anything else we can do?"

"Yes, there is."

He led them deeper into the hall. The next room beyond the foyer was a large one, circular and filled with burned benches, some kind of combined auditorium and Kiyome temple. The ruined benches had been pushed up against the walls; a smell of acrid smoke filled the air. On the floor were laid out several corpses, covered in white sheets, and dozens of injured patients on makeshift beds. Other villagers milled about the patients, tending to their wounds.

"Suchi! Montonobu-sama!" said one patient. The man looked very much like Suchi, with his spindly frame, long bat-like ears, and leathery skin… except for the burns running down his bare chest. He glanced at Sakura and her friends worriedly. "The ninjas—"

"—are here to help," said Suchi.

"I'm a medic-nin," said Sakura, bending down at the man's side.

His burns weren't too bad, considering the destructive power of Mizuho on human flesh. Mostly second-degree burns, a third-degree burn around his upper arm, where the skin had gone completely stiff and yellow. The man would live with only a few scars once Sakura repaired the damage using her Mystical Palm jutsu. The mist-nin Tsunaga Kuina of Team Kikuko also went to work, healing patients with less serious wounds, bandaging their burns.

While Sakura and Kuina healed the injured villagers, the others chatted with Montonobu and Suchi. Sakura heard snatches of their conversation.

"Your brother?" Temari asked Suchi, referring to the wounded bat-faced man. "Bakura Kurobachi?"

"Yes, ninja-sama. Bachi and I are twins."

"I've heard of your story. My father fought against Bakura Shibito at the Battle of Kannabi Bridge. One of the finest and bravest shinobi he'd ever known, my father said… Iwa lost the battle, yes, but not because of Shibito. The Third Tsuchikage, Sougon Onoki, did not send in the necessary forces to repel the attack. Afterwards there was much outrage in Iwa, and a need to blame someone for the defeat. The generals could not directly criticize Onoki himself. So they scapegoated Shibito, the commanding officer, instead. They sentenced Shibito to exile, stripping him of all rank and title, and branding him an 'untouchable' outcast. Except the only thing was… Shibito was already dead. He'd been killed by Minato the Yellow Flash in the battle. There was nobody for the generals to punish."

"Except for Shibito's children," said Montonobu, sadly.

"Yes. Bakura Shibito had three children. Two twins, a boy and a girl, only seven years old at the time. And a newborn son, born just before Shibito died at Kannabi Bridge. It's said that the Iwa High Council wanted to exile all three of the children. But the twins pleaded for the Council to spare their little brother. Sougon Onoki took pity on them, seeing as everything was his fault in the first place, and promised he'd let the baby stay in Iwa, and raise him up in his own household, in Sougon Castle itself. But the twins themselves were outcast. So they went to Kashima Village… and so they have stayed there ever since."

Suchi did not reply for a long moment. "Ninja-sama. How do you know this story?"

"Orajuchi told me."

Orajuchi? thought Sakura. She remembered the stone-nin boy vividly. They'd fought each other during the First Trial, around the Pillar of Heaven, and afterward, when the earthquake had changed all, they'd fought together to escape back to the surface. Orajuchi is their younger brother? The physical resemblance was obvious, to be sure. Each had Koumori—the bloodline of the Bakura clan that gave them bat-like features. Yet their respective social positions could not have been less alike.

Orajuchi is a ninja, Sosano's best friend, and his siblings are untouchable. In the social hierarchy of the Earth Country, that was the difference between a king and a whore.

"Orajuchi is a kind lad," said Montonobu. "He visits Kashima Village when he's allowed… sends his brother and sister anything he earns from his missions. We need all the help we get."

Sakura could see that. Kashima Village was essentially a prison for untouchables. During the days of the Birthright Empire and the Age of Blood, untouchables were an outcast caste, lower even than slaves in the social order. Untouchables performed spiritually unclean tasks such as digging graves and butchering meat. After caste discrimination was prohibited in Kiyome doctrine by the Sage of Six Paths, most untouchables were gradually integrated into the general population. However, some untouchable traditions survived in the Earth Country. Usually disgraced soldiers or criminals, untouchables were segregated in their own villages and prohibited from direct contact with normal members of Earth society, including harsh restrictions on self-government, trade, and travel.

Kashima Village was one such example. Despite its closeness to Iwa, it was totally isolated from everything else. Prohibited from having its own police force, the untouchable villagers also had no right to appeal to Iwa for protection, no right to justice. Anyone could walk into the village and burn it down, and the stone-nins would not lift a finger to stop him. Even to be granted permission to visit Kashima Village as an outsider was exceedingly difficult. Orajuchi had probably only visited his brother and sister a few times in his life, under supervision, and he had certainly never been allowed to touch them.

I can touch them, because I don't believe in discrimination against the innocent.

Sakura moved around the room, healing the burns of the wounded villagers. Some of them were old men and women. Some were adults in their prime of their life. Some were children, young as Eien.

Then she came to the girl.

The girl was painfully thin, her skin hanging in loose folds around her body. Her eyes fluttered, and she shivered uncontrollably, though the stone hall was still stifling hot. Her breath came out as a hissing wheeze. She looked barely older than Kyoki, Sakura's own sister; perhaps ten or eleven, on the cusp of adolescence. The girl was not burned, Sakura saw. Something else was wrong with her, deeply wrong.

When Sakura tried to use Mystical Palm, she knew what it was.

The wasting sickness.

Tuberculosis.

"Can you help her?"

It was the village elder, Urashima Montonobu. He squatted down, leaning over his walking stick, and gave the girl a gentle kiss on her forehead.

Sakura shook her head. "She has tuberculosis. This is beyond my power to heal, but there's medicine to manage the symptoms. From the empire of Ru Daunu, from across the sea. Send to Iwa, they'll have a supply—"

"We have no money." Montonobu suddenly seemed very old. "We used the last of it just to buy food. Kashima Village has been starving since our last harvest was stolen by a gang of robbers, who knew we could not defend ourselves. Iwa did nothing to help. Instead they charged us double for even the basic food staples, draining our coffers just to buy a sack of rice." He looked down at the sick girl. "This is my granddaughter, Kocho. She became infected last year. At first, we thought it was only a cough… but when the cough did not go away, I knew. I have lived a long time, ninja-sama. Perhaps too long. And I have seen the wasting sickness take away those I love, I have seen how it destroys the human body. Have you, ninja-sama? Have you seen how terrible it can be?"

Yes, thought Sakura. Oh, yes.

Haruno Arashi the Demonslayer had been one of Konoha's greatest shinobi, a hero of the Third Ninja War at the height of his strength. Yet tuberculosis had struck her father down all the same. We had friends generous with money, thought Sakura, we had the best doctors. But in the end it had made no difference. The bacteria that caused the wasting disease had burrowed itself into her father's lungs, ravaging them until he coughed up blood with every breath, until he'd lost so much weight that his big frame was nothing more than skin and bones. Even the expensive new medicines developed in Ru Daunu could do little more than arrest her father's decline. Tuberculosis was incurable.

"I'm sorry."

The girl Urashima Kocho coughed. "Grandfather," she whispered. A bloody spittle came dribbling out of her mouth, out of her ravaged lungs. "Grandfather, don't be sad. Don't worry about me. I want to see you smile."

"Hush, Kocho." Yet the old man smiled nonetheless; a strained grin which did quite reach his eyes, despite his best efforts. "Hush, this ninja-sama here will help us, she'll make you all better. You'll see, I promise. Rest now."

Sakura pulled Montonobu aside. "Elder, I don't think—"

"The First Lock."

"What?"

"That's what you're here for, isn't it? The Lock is right here, I'll take you to it. Please follow me."

Montonobu led Team Tsunade and Team Kikuko further into the hall, then down a flight of stairs. The cellar. A soft white glow was coming from the middle of the dark room.

The Lock.

It was identical in form to the Lock they'd found in the First Trial. A tall slab of rectangular white metal, smooth and pulsing with energy. There was a single keyhole etched in its center.

Kankuro took out his chuunin exam key and tried to put it in the keyhole. A puzzled frown passed over his painted face. "Hey. There's something over the keyhole, I can't stick the key in. Some kind of seal, or something."

Touin Yukari laughed. "You didn't really think it'd be that easy, did you?"

No, thought Sakura. Director Doi had warned them at the Overlook. Each of the three Locks involved a test of some kind. The Second Trial is designed to test the virtue of Duty… but what is duty? And when there is a conflict between duties, how does one choose?

"I know how to open the Lock."

It was Urashima Montonobu.

"There's a specific command you have to say aloud," he continued. "Say it, and the seal will fade away. But you will never be able to break the seal without knowing the command."

"Well, what is it?" demanded Kankuro.

"I'll tell you… for a price."

There was a silence as the two genin teams took that in.

Temari said, "You want us to pay you?"

"Yes, ninja-sama. One million ryo. From each person."

One million ryo? Sakura almost laughed aloud, but Montonobu was deadly serious. One million ryo was more than Sakura's mother made in twenty years… it was as much as a shinobi made from completing an S-ranked mission. Sakura had never seen that much money in her life, and if she had, she would hardly give it away to Urashima Montonobu for nothing.

"This is extortion," said the mist-nin Unchiku Onome, her freckled face growing redder by the second.

"Yes. It may be a lot of money for you, I know. But Kashima Village has thousands of men, women, and children, and we are desperately in need of it. Without this money, we will starve before the autumn harvest comes. As the elder of the village, I have a responsibility to my people."

"Well, I don't have one million ryo," complained Kankuro. "This is crazy. You can't blackmail us, old man." He brandished a kunai. "You don't have any power over us."

"Brother, put that away," said Temari softly.

"Why? That's what everyone else did, isn't it? Half of the genin teams must have passed through Kashima Village by now… I don't see it overflowing with millions of golden coins. I bet this guy told his same sob story a hundred times. I bet he tried to blackmail everybody. But it didn't work." He waved his kunai in Montonobu's face. "That's why Team Dayu set the village on fire, isn't it? Because you wouldn't tell them how to open the Lock?"

"Yes, ninja-sama." The old man touched a hand to the bruise on his face. "Some of the ninjas threatened to kill me. Some threatened to destroy the village. Some threatened to rape and torture my granddaughter. In the end, I gave in."

Temari's mouth was a tight line. "It must have been easy to them. They must have thought the First Lock was a joke."

A woman ran down the steps into the cellar. Bakura Suchi. "Montonobu-sama!" Her huge black eyes were full of tears. "Montonobu-sama, don't, please. Just give the ninjas what they want. After what happened last time—"

The old man did not waver. "This is our only chance, Suchi. Didn't you hear Director Doi-sama? By next week all these genin will be gone. We have leverage now, we have to use it! Where will our food come from? Where will our medicine?"

"Protect the innocent," whispered Sakura.

Director Doi had set up this whole situation. Putting the First Lock in an untouchable village. Giving a secret password to the village elder, knowing the village elder would try to sell his information to any passing genin. Knowing, too, that the genin only had to pay the bribe if they wanted to. The genin could easily use their physical power to bully the elder instead, forcing him to divulge the password at the threat of his own life. A joke of a test, just like Temari said.

Except it wasn't.

Protect the innocent. Sakura had sworn a vow to do that on the day she had become a ninja. But she had sworn other vows as well. Defend the village. Obey your superiors. Be loyal to your comrades. Complete the mission. There were too many vows. Vows which came into conflict with each other.

And she had choose.

They all had to choose.

Without warning Kankuro rushed forward, and held the edge of his kunai against Montonobu's wrinkled neck. "Okay, old man. You like threats? I'll threaten you." He pushed harder until a thin line of blood trickled out. Bakura Suchi screamed. "What's the goddamn command?"

"No. You won't kill me."

"Really?"

Montonobu's eyes were wide with tension, sweat beading on his brow. But his voice was surprisingly calm. "You put out the fire. You healed our wounded, without asking for anything in return. You're a good person, and you won't kill an innocent man in cold blood."

Kankuro hesitated, then threw his kunai away in disgust. It came skittering to a stop at the foot of the First Lock. "I'm not giving you a million ryo, you—you untouchable!" he cried, whirling around. Then he stalked up the stairs out of the cellar.

Five of them were left with Montonobu now.

"We'll pay you," said Sakura. "We want to help. But the sum you ask for is too much."

The elder shook his head. "Too low, I think, for a powerful ninja village such as Konoha."

"You… won't negotiate?"

"Don't think he will." Yukari laughed. "This scheming bastard's seen right through us. He knows we're softies, and he's going to bleed us dry for every last coin."

"It is my duty," said Urashima Montonobu sadly. "I am very sorry, but I do what I must for Kashima Village. One million ryo from each of you, in hard gold. One million, or you'll fail this chuunin exam without opening a single Lock."


Next: THE SECOND TRIAL: "Untouchable, Part Two"