mou: Tsunade cared and that was why she gave Mao a warning. Mao cared too. She was even worried when she saw Miki's blood. She even took the girl into her apartment and look after her wounds. She cares for her students especially Miki in her own sadistic way. Although Miki is 10 years old, she is already a genin and with her excelling in the field of medicine, it won't be long before she'll be sent to missions more dangerous than the ones her team had. For that, Tsunade had to teach her.
sorakitty: mind if you give me your e-mail add?
As usual, thank you for your reviews for the previous chapter and enjoy this one. It's not much.
Chapter 56: Dangerous boys
Sasuke's lips quirked in a ghostly smile as Makoto looked at his cup of coffee longingly for the nth time for the past ten minutes.
Starting today and for the next three days, the annual inter-hidden village school sports festival would be held at Snow country and all senior students of every village academy were invited to watch and cheer for their schools. Being seniors, Makoto, Kazushi and Shigure had spent the night at the Uchiha mansion so they, including Kisho, could go to the south gates which were the rendezvous of the participants and seniors alike.
"Naruto, why don't you give Makoto..." at this the child's face brightened with hope. "... another glass of juice?" the Uchiha leader said. He took note how the boy's face suddenly disappointed.
Kazushi kicked his friend's shin before leaning towards him to say, "you're too young to drink coffee even Uchiha-san thinks too."
"Who's participating in the festival again?" Naruto asked as the children started eating.
"Just Kazushige and Makoto," Shigure answered.
"What about you guys?" Sasuke inquired, abandoning the morning newspaper to join the conversation.
"I don't like sports," the boy replied.
"Boring," Kisho answered. Being better than anyone else, Kisho find no interest or pleasure in competition. He didn't like seeing others struggling while he do things easily and quickly. What was the point of winning when he'd be fighting against someone who couldn't even give a challenge?
Naruto sighed. Their son's lack of interest on everything but the things he did with his close friends alarmed both him and Sasuke. They were worried that he would become someone who would drift through life. And yet they couldn't find anything that interest. But at least, Kisho was enjoying with his friends and for now that was enough.
"You better hurry up," Sasuke told them. "You only have fifteen minutes left before departure time."
"Is there anything you need from Snow Country?" Kisho asked.
"None that I can think of," his chichiue said while his otousan shook his head.
"You guys take care of each other okay? And always listen to your teachers," Naruto told them.
"Yeah yeah," they all chorused lightly.
"I'm serious here."
"We're too!" They replied seriously except that a second later they were giggling.
Naruto just sighed. Was he like this too when he was still young?
-SasuNaru is love-
Most of the Konoha students let out appreciative noises as grounds untouched by snow and embraced by spring came into view. They had been walking on snow for what seemed like forever so they were relieved when they finally saw green instead of white.
"It seemed like two seasons arrive in one place at the same time," Makoto commented appreciatively. Being someone whose passion lies in drawing and painting, he looked deeper into the picturesque scene than the rest of the group.
"I heard that although it is the country's winter season, the queen had excluded some places for the sports festival," Kisho told them.
"So we're playing away from snow?" Kazushi said with relief. "I don't want to freeze while playing soccer."
"Some games will be held in snow-covered areas for endurance or something but soccer isn't included of course," Shigure added while wondering why snow-sculpturing wasn't a sport.
"Boys!" a teacher's voice rang out. "Get those feet moving."
Makoto stayed few seconds longer to commit the scene to his memory before he ran after his friends who were few steps ahead of him.
-SasuNaru is love-
Yuuzuki and his team were gathered in a discreet and cramp room of some abandoned warehouse for their weekly meeting. For two months, Yuuzuki and his team didn't do anything to gather information because for that period, they let people especially their employers adjust to their presence. They were working at establishment considered as top information banks. While Tomo worked as a bartender at a bar frequented by the rich, Kazue worked at a nightclub popular among the poor. Taiyo and Yuuzuki worked at two famous whorehouses as hall staff and errand boy respectively.
Yuuzuki looked pleased after hearing his team's report. "Then immersion phase is a success," he concluded.
"That goes without saying," Kazue said. Although their team wasn't the best in doing recon missions, they still excel in that area enough to be recognized.
"Then let Phase two begin."
"Finally," Tomo commented. He was always the most impatient person when doing mission such as this for the sole reason that he couldn't go wild. But despite his impatience, he still performed well.
"Don't forget the usual precautions and stuffs," their captain told them as a dismissal.
Wordlessly and silently they became shadows as they left the place and parted ways. They wouldn't meet each other until the next two weeks when they would be exchanging information as well as handing their written report to their leader. And every month they would mine their gathered information for data before sending everything to the hokage.
-SasuNaru is love-
Makoto, Shigure, Kazushi and Kisho had used the excuse of going to the toilet to sneak out from the gymnasium where the opening ceremony was being held. In their opinion, wandering around was better than standing in line and listening to short speeches.
"Hey check this snow flake out," Kisho called out to his friends. "It has a different structure than the other one."
The three boys gathered around and 'ahh'ed at it.
"Let's look for more snow flakes and see how many designs are there," Kazushi suggested.
"No way," the amethyst-eyed boy burst out. "I prefer this." He kicked lumps of snow towards the others who let out a chorus of indignant protest. Makoto just giggled.
"This means war you coffee-" Kisho never finished his sentence as a snowball smacked right into his face. Letting out a war cry, he started throwing snowballs at the same time dodging those that were coming towards him.
Kazushi screamed as his blonde friend slipped a handful of snow into his back. The latter choked in mid-laughter when Shigure shoved some snow into his mouth.
"That was low," he said after spitting and yet his eyes were moving in silent merriment.
And they continued their little war. Kazushi leaned back letting the ice ball passed by him. Accidentally, it hit a passerby. Makoto's throw had been strong that the object left a red mark on the man's forehead. Worse, the man's head had snapped backwards during impact.
"Hey mister!" they called out. "Are you okay?" Kazushi continued to ask on behalf of his friend.
"I'm sorry," Makoto added sincerely.
Since apology was already made, they were about to start playing again when they realize that an angry Ino was with them. "So this is where the toilet is, eh?" she asked, bolts of lightning flashing in her eyes.
The boys sobered and put on their innocent looks.
"We got lost," Makoto explained. He trained his uncanny purple eyes... eyes that seemed to suck Ino with its beauty and lucidity to everywhere and nowhere.
"Lame," Ino said bringing her fist on the boy's head none-too-gently. She knew their sense of direction was above average because she saw their results of such test.
"It's really the truth," Kazushi insisted. "The place is like a maze and before we knew it we ended up here."
A platinum blond eyebrow arched, "playing snow?"
Kisho toed the ground, "so this is snow, huh? We thought we are in this huge freezer."
The teacher gaped at the blonde boy who was looking at her with his no-nonsense and honest face. She would have been convinced if she didn't know better.
She tapped her cheek, "few pathways here needs snow shoveling and-"
They hadn't shoveled snow even once in there life but they had shoveled soil and their experience with the latter told them that the former would be as tiring as the latter.
"C'mon teach..." Shigure said. "A beauty shouldn't be cruel."
Ino couldn't help but laugh. "Flattery will get you to nowhere."
"Telling the truth doesn't count as one."
The teacher sighed. "Let's return to the gym."
-SasuNaru is love-
Although Kazushi was tired from his game, he couldn't rest yet. As punishment for sneaking earlier away, he and his friends were asked to write a reaction paper about the first day of the sports festival.
"Why did you sneak away, anyway?" his team captain asked in a patronizing tone.
"Why didn't you?" the doll-looking boy countered. He didn't like the tone the other boy was using. What he did with his close friends wasn't a crime or an offense.
"You're doing what my reason is."
Kazushi snorted, "then you're missing a lot of fun." He walked away never bothering to wait for his captain's reply.
-SasuNaru is love-
The next afternoon found the four boys having another snowball fight in an empty lakeside. This time, their fight was more organized. It was two against two. Kazushi and Kisho against Makoto and Shigure.
The three boys tensed when they felt Shigure's invisible barrier encased them suddenly just in time to protect them from the objects that were moving towards them so fast. The shield rippled and bounced like jelly as the objects- snowballs bigger than theirs collided with it. Judging from the sound the balls made as they hit the ground and the way they embed themselves into the snow, the Konoha students knew it was harder than a rock. They shivered at the thought of what would happen if it had hit them. They knew their fun was going to be interrupted when they saw seven men looking at them menacingly. One of them was the man they had accidentally hit. Even though none of them had worn hitaeate, the boys knew they were ninjas.
"We're about to teach you a lesson," one of them announced haughtily as they advanced towards.
The Konoha inhabitants looked at each other and instantly arrived in a decision. They nodded and made a quick dash. But the men had blocked their way in a split of second. They were cornered and the only thing they could do; the only acceptable thing for them to do was to fight.
"What the fuck?" cried out the man whom the boys labeled as Mister A. The man looked down at his body which was moving on its own. He glanced at the boy he was supposed to attack and found his target staring at him apathetically, looking every bit like a doll.
Kazushi was no longer smiling nor looking friendly. His face was devoid of any emotions. "You're my puppet now," he stated solemnly as he started moving his arms to guide Mister A to attack his comrade closest to him.
It was during times like this when he was using his technique that he missed his deceased beloved older sister – Meiko so much. Having a mother who was an expert seamstress had amplified her love for dolls. Her room was full of these fragile things and she loved dressing them up with the clothes she made. She also loved playing with them, creating different stories and scenes which always amused Kazushi who grew up listening and watching her looking after her dolls. When she had died in an accident, Kazushi had continued her collection and made her room into what his family called 'doll house'. But that wasn't the only thing he did. In remembrance for his sister, he had created a technique that allowed him to control his enemies like dolls. To do that, he had trained himself to produce thin-as-a-thread but very strong chakra. He called it as 'ito-chakra'. This kind of chakra would hit the nerve patches to make his target's body numb before winding around their limbs. In order to know which nerves to hit, he had spent almost a year studying the human body and experimenting with animals and then finally with himself.
"Watch where you're going!" Mister C shouted to Mister A who almost stabbed him with a kunai.
"I'm not at fault. He's controlling me," the other man retorted while trying to break free. The boy just snorted at the man's futile struggle. His technique grew stronger as he got older and so far nobody had defeated it and he was sure that this man wasn't going to be the one who'd be able to do it.
And while Kazushi manipulated his movements he mentally started narrating the fight as if it was a story.
Because Mister A was upset at Mister C for taking away his girlfriend he decided to attack him furiously. Mister C managed to dodge to save his heart but the kunai had cut his arm in the process. Droplets of blood stained the innocence-covered ground.
"Where's your weapon, boy?" Mister B asked Shigure. "Oh! I forgot you're still students," he said laughing. He chortled as something zip passed his cheek. He winced as he felt pain from the cut on his cheek.
"What are you saying, mister?" Shigure asked. "My weapons are here." He then proceeded to show his left fist with strips of paper in between his fingers. Before his opponent could comment, he threw another strip, snipping few strands of the man's hair as he intentionally missed his face.
The ability to make things sharp was his family's bloodline limit. Contrary to the belief of people outside his clan, they didn't change the objects' molecular structure. What they did was to coat the object's molecules with their unique chakra and the amount of the chakra applied decides the objects' sharpness, strength and stiffness depended on the amount of chakra applied. It was because of their bloodline limit that made them the ideal candidate for assassination.
Mister B snorted. The technique wasn't a big deal. As long as he could dodge and counter, he'd be fine. His hands quickly made hand seals. Instantly an ice barrier appeared in front of him.
"Don't be cocky," Shigure snapped as his paper strips easily pierced through the ice. He watched as the man clumsily dodged them. He proceeded to swing his left arm as he turned around to counter Mister D's attack.
The older man's jaw dropped and his eyes bulged as his short sword was broken into two. What the hell is this boy? was the question that flashed through his mind. He never had the experience of fighting someone who could make weapons out of things much less someone who could turn his arm sharper than a sword.
Shigure took the man's moment of surprise to plunge his three fingers into both of his opponent's thighs deep enough to render him incapable of fighting for that day.
This was his bloodline limit's ultimate form. And he was the only one in his generation who had it. Because of that, he was the perfect assassin and even though he belonged to the branch family, he was appointed as the next leader. Being born into a clan having such bloodline and having the title of the perfect assassin, he knew what his future would be - dripping with blood; littered with corpses and stinking with the stench of death. That was why before he'd plunge into the crimson sea, he wanted to create happy memories to give him buoyancy. To protect his friends meant saving himself from drowning in blood in the near future.
Mister G looked almost in trance when Makoto's eyes started to glow as it turned to a deeper shade of amethyst. It was so dark that it was as if all the purple in the world came from his eyes.
Beautiful, was what he thought before pain exploded in his chest. It was a pain he never felt before. It was a sharp and throbbing pain that came from within. He fell to the ground clutching his chest. "Is this a bloodline limit?" he managed to gasp.
Makoto snorted. What he had was no bloodline limit but the price of his mother's deed when she was still a priestess.
His mother was twenty years old when she was asked by the people in her village to drive away the evil spirit who was occupying the only village well. The spirit was fierce and stubborn but his mother managed to drove it away at the price of being cursed. She had dismissed it but the next day she found out that her jade eyes had turned amethyst and anybody who came even three meters near her felt intense pain in different parts of their body. Unable to bear seeing other priestesses suffering, she left and isolated herself. Her isolation ended when an onmyouji came to her area to try to get rid of the curse. But no matter what he did, he failed. In the end, he helped her in controlling the curse. A year later, they had married and decided to live in Konoha. The former priestess gave birth to twins and they were relieved when their sons' eyes weren't purple. They thought it was over until Makoto turned five.
Makoto found himself isolated in his room littered with talismans and his father was the only one who had access to him because his father was the only one who can teach him how to stop the curse from taking effect. But his case was slightly different from his mother's because the curse was now connected with his chakra. Almost a year later, he was finally out from his room. One day in his moment of fury, he killed a stray dog that had almost attacked his twin brother. As a result, his mother taught him anger management through meditation while his father had put a limiter on him. It had been his choice to become a ninja and his parents approved it if it meant him having better chakra control.
Whenever he used the curse, his eyes turned into a deeper shade of purple and anybody who was within his paroxysmal zone which has a radius of four meters in minimum suffered in pain. The closer the person was to him, the stronger the pain was.
Noticing his comrade's pain, Mister F leapt away but Makoto extended his zone. Within a second the man screamed and clutched his head.
Loving how they writhe and cry in pain, Makoto applied more chakra and he would have killed them if it weren't for the limiter singeing his skin.
Mister E tumbled to the ground when Kisho landed a direct hit. He coughed blood, tainting the snow. He never thought that a boy as young as his opponent could be very good in taijutsu. The boy's defense was so good that he couldn't deliver a hit. He glanced at his comrades and was shocked at what he saw.
Two of them were fighting each other and the doll-like boy had a maniacal glint in his eyes as his lips moved in a silent murmur. Another was down due to thigh injury while the other was pathetically fighting a boy who looked like he was only toying with. The remaining two were on the ground pale, sweating and screaming. Scared and desperate, he made hand seals which Kisho recognized as a technique that would open the ground and swallow who he wanted to. The blonde, in a blink of an eye appeared in front of the man and gripped one of his wrists stopping him.
With his hair covering his eyes, Kisho said in a strained voice, "I'll kill you." He then looked at the man who immediately paled at the slight transformation the boy underwent. Kisho's eyes were now red and
cat-like and a tomoe had appeared. His canines had grown longer and sharper and there were now three whiskers on each pale cheek. For a second, the older ninja saw a fiendish fox rather than a boy.
The ground shuddered, the frozen surface of the lake shattered and even the snow on the ground melted at the sudden release of Kisho's red chakra.
Mister E fell on his knees, fear totally gripping him. A groan slipped past his trembling lips as he felt his bone almost being crushed not by Kisho's strength but by the chakra the boy used to hold him.
"Please," he managed to croak. He felt the red chakra crawling on him making his skin heavier. If it continues, his chakra system would be overloaded which would lead to his death.
"Then tell your friends to stop attacking mine," Kisho said.
If the man wasn't in pain he would have laughed at the statement's falsity. Couldn't the boy see that his friends were overpowering them?
"WE GIVE UP!" Mister E shouted at the top of his lungs and the others managed to echo it. The boys stopped their assault and looked at them warily as the men crawled and limped away from them.
The three boys looked at the ground which was once covered by snow then at Kisho. He must have realized his error because he immediately started backing away.
"You overdid it," Kazushi said and they ended up chasing after the blonde boy, their earlier battle completely slipping away from their consciousness.
-SasuNaru is love-
"You can't sleep?" Makoto asked as he heard Kisho shifting on his bed for the nth time already.
"I'm not the only one," the boy replied as he changed his position once more to look at his friend who was sitting on his bed while wiping his body with a cold cloth. "Does it still ache even now?" he continued, looking at the glowing text that made no sense to him on his friend's body. All he knew was that the text that ran from Makoto's waist up to his neck was the limiter his father had placed on him. And it only became visible and glow in eerie crimson when Makoto was close to killing.
The amethyst-eyed boy shook his head. "Not really. Its power is getting weaker" But it was understandable because the limiter could only last at the maximum of two years before his father would give him another one. And because he kept on growing stronger, each limiter applied to him was stronger than the previous one. But the limiter didn't prohibit him from killing. It only prevented him as much as possible from committing such act.
"But it's still painful," Kisho argued.
"Only those first few seconds when it is activated but it is not something that I couldn't bear." Then he looked over his shoulder to regard his friend, "Why are you so scared to sleep tonight?"
The other boy shrugged his shoulders, "I'm not."
"Your breathing and tossing in your bed say otherwise." This time his voice was no longer playful but painfully frank and serious.
"..."
"We aren't going to die even in your nightmares, Kisho," he assured. He sighed when his friend just looked at him. He let his chakra reached towards the other bed then said, "you're going to sleep." The only good thing that he got from the curse was the power of suggestion.
"I'm not asking you to do this," Kisho said as he felt his eyes getting heavy.
Makoto smiled, "You never did but we don't want to see you cranky the next day. You're a pain inthe ass when you're." Then he closed his eyes as he started projecting images of meadow he drew in his mind to his blonde friend. Green meadows, crystal clear skies and blue seas had a special place in Kisho's heart and such scenery always lulled him to relaxation and sleep.
Within a minute, the boy was deeply asleep.
-SasuNaru is love-
The next morning as the Konoha students walked towards the cafeteria in a single line, Kazushi had accidentally bumped into someone who dropped few coins at the sudden impact.
"Kazushi, you should watch where you're going," Makoto said as they started picking up the coins.
"I'm sorry mister," Kazushi said while bowing. He didn't want to cause another battle.
"Brat, do you know-" the man shut up the moment an apologetic Kazushi looked at him.
The other three boys were now extending their hands with his coins while looking at him expectantly.
They recognized the man as one of their opponents the other day.
Before one of the boys could react, the man had already started running away. He continued running never bothering to look back even when he was being called.
Kisho sighed. What was the man's problem anyway? Why was he acting as if he had seen the devil himself?
Behind him Shigure said, "Let's surrender this to the Lost and Found office."
The others nodded.
And the moment they stepped inside the cafeteria, the three of them had to stop Makoto from floating towards the coffee maker.
TBC
Onmyouji is a person who practices onmyoudo which is Japanese esoteric cosmologu - mixture of natural science and occultism. (Taken from Wikipedia)
About the boys, well each of them are different but they are coping up well and they are having fun. They are carefree just like any boys of their age but despite that, there is power that lies beneath that attitude and that's what makes them dangerous.
