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CHAPTER 16
Third POV
Hiruzen isn't sure how to word what he is about to say. All of the people in front of him are important to Sakura, he can see it in the way all of them have made almost a "U" shape around her, able to jump in and do something if they need to.
The things love can do to some people.
He takes another drag from his pipe and leans against the front of his desk.
They aren't going to like this at all.
"I have briefed you on how sensitive and important this information is, so please be wary of how you respond to this," he begins.
"Firstly, I need to address why Orochimaru is here and why it is imperative for him to stay alive Tsunade," he pauses to look at his granddaughter, making sure she understands he's serious. "This is something none of you are aware of, least of all Sakura, but… Orochimaru is her uncle."
"What do you mean by Orochimaru is her uncle?" Tsunade grits out, still looking over Sakura with her green chakra.
Hiruzen sighs and says, "Exactly what I said, Mebuki Haruno's brother is Orochimaru. I know it's out there but I have it on good authority that this is true. That being said, her lineage makes it so that Sakura and Mori are Orochimaru's niece and nephew."
Tsunade is waging an internal war with herself as she listens to her grandfather speak. On one hand, she loves the pinket as her own daughter, on the other, as she looks down at the girl in her friend's arms, she feels angry. How could she not have told her? Sakura tells her everything, so why not this?
"Tsssunade," the slimy bastard speaks up, "I know what you're thinking. However, Sssakura herssself didn't know about thisss until just a few hoursss ago."
Anger surges through Tsunade's body as she lets her medical chakra go subconsciously, so as not to hurt Sakura.
"How the hell could she not know?" Tsunade yells, whipping her head around to look at her old teammate. Her anger is met with a look of remorse and it almost trips her up.
Orochimaru meets her eyes and replies in a calm tone, "Ssshe is going through her transssition right now, but the ssseal might ssstill be there. Look at her right ssshoulder, there was a memory ssseal there."
Narrowing her eyes Tsunade looks away from him and gently takes the girl into her own arms, away from Hinata and flips her over to lie on her stomach. Taking hold of the girls red tank and moves it off of her shoulder and lets out a gasp at the sight in front of her.
"I know," Kakashi chimes in, "I saw it when we were in Wave country. It's intricate and definitely real."
Zabuza and Haku perk at this; unaware of the fact that she has this seal, let alone that she's had it since before they ran into them in Wave. Zabuza looks over to his younger charge and feels the fury rolling off of him at this new information. However, Zabuza can't fault him for that because even though he's only been around the girl for a short while, he's also worried about her.
Everyone watches as Tsunade traces the seal with her right index finger. She flinches as she starts to understand just what the seal is meant to do to its effects on the host.
"Who could brand her with such a seal? Take away her memories?" Tsunade asks openly, not angry with her old teammate anymore.
An awkward silence ensues as no one knows the answer except for Orochimaru, Mori, and Hiruzen. When no one said anything Tsunade finally looked over to her grandfather and saw the ashamed look on his face and she says accusingly, "You know who did this."
Shizune, after flipping Sakura back to her back, joins her mentor in anger, looking at Hiruzen.
"How could you possibly let someone do this to her! She's only a –"
"Tsunade!" Orochimaru shouts, startling everyone in the room.
With the attention on him Orochimaru collects himself and continues, tension filling his voice, "It isss not Hiruzen's fault that Sssakura was branded with that ssseal."
Hinata, Tsunade, Shizune, Haku, Zabuza, and Kakashi all look over to the Sanin and for the first time see that Mori also has a look of shame covering his face. It takes the adults seconds to understand that he knows too, with Hinata coming in close behind them.
"Before you attack him, Mori wasss too young at the time to do anything," he stops to lay a hand on his nephews shoulder. "Sssakura was only four yearsss old when I wasss the one who gave her the ssseal."
Hell breaks loose.
Kakashi is seething with rage. Hinata is appalled at this information. Tsunade sees red. Shizune feels her heart drop to her stomach and twist. Hiruzen simply sighs, knowing this was going to be even worse than he imagined.
Haku feels his blood boiling with the idea of his best friend, his brother, letting his uncle brand their sister with something that would take away her precious memories. No wonder she had seemed so unsure of him when they met in Wave, she couldn't remember him because of this fucking seal.
Zabuza reaches out to grab Haku and whispers to him, "Wait. You'll get your chance."
This calms him slightly, but he can't keep the killing intent from rolling off of his person.
The Third speaks up again, "Before this gets too off topic, I need to tell you about what the Blood Curse does to its hosts."
His voice seems to cut through the others in the room and they all look back to him, waiting for him to continue to speak. With the attention back to him he starts again, "As far as we know, the Blood Curse is activated once the host has spilled their first blood and taken a life. Now, usually this happens all at once, however for Sakura she had a half awakening because her first kill lacked blood. Using the chakra scalpels she was able to kill the rouge on the way to Wave and keep is bloodless, however it sparked the start of her transition."
Kakashi speaks up again, "That could explain why her seal was acting up after we ran into Zabuza and Haku."
"Not quite," Mori finally says something, speaking softly, "Haku is a person that the seal would have forced her to forget. He left when she was only three. This type of seal acts up when the memories sealed within it are roused or trying to be thought of. That burning sensation was probably in response to her memories of Haku trying to resurface themselves."
Hiruzen nods at this and adds, "There is no such record of a Haruno having a partial awakening, but with every case the only time something like this," he gestures to Sakura, "happens is when a transition is fully in effect. There were probably no outward signs of her inner turmoil either. The question remains though how she was able to fully awaken her Ketsueki Noroi."
Orochimaru clears his through and says, "While she was in Akatsuki's hands, the second half occurred and forced the transition to be complete."
No further explanation is given, even though many of the faces have a look of concern and question covering them. Oro doesn't want them all to hate Itachi Uchiha even more than they already do, and he knows they wouldn't believe his hesitation because he was the one who kidnapped her and awoke her curse, not a pleasant thing to add to his aggressions against Konoha.
The Third narrows his eyes at his old student, wanting to know more, but doesn't take the bait.
"So what does this mean?" Tsunade asks, looking down at her apprentice.
"Essentially, the hosts of the curse are just that, hosts. I'm not sure if any of you are aware, but there are these spirits, called 'inners' by many, that individuals possess. Sakura here has one, she has had one since she was born and from what I gather, hers helps her stay motivated and pushes her to be better."
Mori and Orochimaru both glance at each other, remembering meeting her inner.
"Some others have them as well, we don't keep a list of those with them but they are common enough to be known yet rare enough that if you don't know someone with one, you probably won't learn about them. Now, the reason this is important to know is that the Blood Curse awakens a type of inner only Haruno's possess; an evil one for lack of better terms."
Hiruzen pauses, waiting for someone to interrupt him as per usual. When no one says anything he continues.
"These inner spirits feed off of bloodshed, in a sense they crave it. Due to this craving the hosts are slaves to what this inner persona wants. This leads to two outcomes for said host; one is that they go crazy from trying to suppress it, and the other is even worse. The other known option is that the host can either go crazy from taking as many lives as it takes to suppress the voices, or if they cannot deal with the emotional stress they end up killing themselves. This is why all of you are being informed on this sensitive information, because it is crucial for Sakura's survival."
Giving everyone a moment to digest, Hiruzen looks over to Orochimaru and Mori and gestures for them to come forward, putting them in front of everyone. Mori looks uncomfortable but Oro just seems to be letting this slide off of his back, like it's normal to be in enemy territory and talking so candidly about his nieces decent into madness.
The Third nods to him and Oro takes over the explanation from there, "Once I was made aware of my brother-in-law's gift that he would bestow on my future nieces and nephews, I made it a point to start my research into this curse business."
Everyone stops for a moment until Zabuza says, "So is anyone going to mention that he sounds normal now, or…?"
Oro rolls his eyes and says, "It's a bad habit from when Sakura was small, she loved the extra s's because she loves snakes, so I kept it. I figured this shits pretty serious so maybe I should speak clearly."
"Can we get on with it?" Haku says, impatience hot in his tone.
"As I was saying, I made it a point to start doing research into this curse. Of course, the only Haruno ninja in the family for decades is Sakura's father, Kizashi, so he was my subject." Oro pauses, looking at everyone in the room, "I won't lie, the pain he has been through is immense. There were a lot of failures in the beginning and Kizashi was willing to keep trying in order to make himself safe for his future children and my sister. It took five years before I was able to come up with something that worked."
Oro looks to his nephew and Mori sensing what his uncle wants, takes his shit off and turns around.
"As you can see here, I have developed a counter seal which can suppress this inner our lovely Haruno's receive once they transition."
Kakashi, Tsunade, and Haku are quick to walk over to Mori and look at his back. On it sits a grapefruit sized seal, smack in the middle, easily covered by a shirt.
Tsunade gasps and gently touches it, tracing the outline with her right index finger and speaks up, "This is the-"
"Nine Element Sealing Jutsu," Kakashi breathes, surprise coloring his tone. His visible eye is wide, taking in the entirety of the seal and picking up on the fact that unlike the normal one, there seems to be a difference.
"Exactly," Oro states, "however, as you might realize I had to change something about it. All of the outside kanji are for Spirit instead of the usual elements."
The three of them study the seal a little closer and notice that he's right, they are all spirit kanji.
"Why do all of them need to be Spirit? Is it because of what grandfather said?" Tsunade asks, the question echoing in her eyes as she looks at the other Sanin.
Oro nods his head and says, "This inner spirit that they awaken is not one to be messed with, they are very strong and very persuasive with their hosts. Because of this, I was able to modify the seal and make it so it affects only the inner persona."
Mori, feeling awkward about being looked at for so long turns around and puts his shirt back on. Kakashi and Tsunade move back to where they were prior, but Haku doesn't. He looks over his brother and feels the need to punch him, to yell at him, but being so close he can feel the remorse rolling off of him, the sadness, as he looks at their little sister cradled in her best friend's arms. Before he can convince himself not to, Haku grabs Mori and hugs him close. Mori's surprise causes him to stiffen, but after only a moment more he hugs Haku back even tighter.
"We'll talk later," Mori whispers to Haku, squeezing him close for a moment before letting him go.
Haku walks back over to the couch and sits next to Zabuza once again. All eyes go back to Oro and Mori, waiting for more information.
"How do we help?" Shizune speaks up for the first time.
Giving her a sympathetic smile Oro says, "Sadly, the only way to help her is to give her this seal. Anything after that is going to be an internal battle of control with her new spirit. However, unlike her brother and father, she has another inner already. I'm not sure if it will affect her any differently, but I can tell you that having someone share a mind is already cramped, let alone two someone's in a mind space. There are a few ways for you to be aware of in case the seal doesn't keep the spirit at bay, and while it's not very often it can happen."
Oro again looks to Mori, but this time it's a silent question, asking him if he wants to tell them the next part of if he should. Mori nods his head in Oro's direction so he continues, "The signs that this inner spirit has taken over are sort of miniscule but important to notice in case she loses control. What I have discovered with Mori and Kizashi is that their eyes will go all white, no pupil or color at all. The other noticeable factor is that their voices change, both of the boy's voices will go to a higher pitch, but not like banshee level, just something more feminine. And the only other thing to tip you off is the start of ruthless killing. This cannot be stopped unless you can get her pinned and throw the normal Nine Elemental Seal on top of the modified one; it will calm down her system and force her inner to retract back behind its walls. Be warned, once the demon is sent free it will propel Sakura to kill everything and anything around her. It might sound like a great military weapon but the possibility of her taking out a friendly is just as high as taking out an enemy."
The atmosphere drops a few degrees with the seriousness of what is happening to Sakura really set in for everyone. Silence meets everyone's ears as they try to process this new information.
Kakashi breaks it with a broken whisper, "I never thought this was the extent of what would happen."
Surprise flickers across everyone besides the Third Hokage at this, unaware that he knew something they didn't. Hinata is the only one who hasn't said anything, but every time someone talks it forces her to feel angry that they were keeping something from her.
"Why," Hinata whispers, overshadowed by the yelling of Tsunade and the attempted replies of the Copy Ninja.
Her blood begins to simmer as she looks at her best friend passed out on the floor, cradled in her arms. She's angry at her family for letting this happen, angry at herself for never knowing about it, angry at Mori for lying about his death, angry at Orochimaru for never trying to help his niece, and angry at the Hokage for lying to her best friend.
Tears well up in her eyes as her anger comes to a boil and she screams in frustration, "Why would you do this to her? She didn't deserve to be lied to by the people who she loves the most!" She moves Sakura gently to the floor before her anger propels her to her feet as she looks at everyone in the room and continues to yell, "Sakura doesn't deserve to be lied to! This is her fucking life and you have decided to lie to her in one way or another and I'm tired of watching my best friend fall apart."
She turns to Mori, narrowing her eyes as she points at him, "YOU! You lied about your death and broke her for years."
Next is Orochimaru, "YOU! You're the bastard that took away Mori. And yet you had him with you the whole time and you never once tried to reach out and explain her lineage to her. She loves you and she didn't even know your name for most of her life!"
And finally, the Third Hokage, "And you Hokage-sama, excuse my language, but you decided to keep her in the dark about all of this. How could you treat her as your own and keep such a big fucking thing from her?"
….
A/N
Hello lovelies! I hope you enjoyed this chapter ~
HAPPY 6 YEARS TO THIS STORYYYYYYY – I published this on on 7/3/2014 and have rewritten it TWICE, but I think I finally like where this is going and what I have in store the next few updates ;) So thank you to any OG readers who have been putting up with me T.T I hope it's worth it!
I was waiting to get some more votes on what to do before I wrote this, but the ultimate vote was to explain her Kekkei Genkai As you can probably see I did leave some things out and there is a reason for that, which will come into play later on ~
Thank you to my reviewers ( ) sacl and (Wattpad) Debagguette and Isicool17 for helping me decide which route to go!
~~Also~~ I'm very curious if any of you have an idea of where you think this is going or want to take a stab at what might happen in the future chapters? I love reading the reviews you all leave 3 Let me know if you like what you're seeing develop or if you see a need for improvement.
****Till next time lovelies ~