The putrid scent of blood filled the air and suffocating his lungs. The silence hung heavily like a red flashing warning sign. His fists were clenched so tightly that he feels his fingernails denting the edges of his knuckle. He can feel his heart pulsate violently behind his ears. His feet remained glued on the ground. He wants to scream and cry and curse, but his voice is caught up in his throat. The bile from his stomach rises and he projectiles a bitter vomit.
There was so much blood everywhere that the ground where he treads was painted scarlet.
A lanky ponytailed figure stood in front of him. He meets his red-pupiled eyes and he's surprised to see a spinning wheel instead of the usual three tomoes.
"Nii-san?"
"Sasuke, stand back."
"What's going on, nii-san? Is this a genjutsu? What's going on?" Sasuke shivers as he scans the perimeter. His fear stumbles down like a tsunami. He summons his will to lift a foot that's seemingly cemented on the bloodied ground. He takes a step and stumbles like a newborn calf. His hands landed on his own pool of vomit.
"Mother and father?" He dares to ask a difficult question. Itachi's lips are pressed into a fine line.
Sasuke dugs his toes firmly and sprints. He runs to the main building, dodging the corpses strewn on the red-marred lawn.
Upon reaching their house, he punches through the shoji doors. He should not have done that, because the next scene that unfolded was more than his guts could take. The gruesome scene of his beloved mother, sprawled across the parlour with hollow eye sockets was an image that will be forever ingrained in many nightmares to come.
Sasuke should've stood back when Itachi warned him.
Sasuke was the splitting image of his mother. She was a beautiful woman with dark ebony hair cascading down her shoulders. She had a slender face adorned with the kindest eyes. When she gets amused at his silly childish antics, her eyes would crinkle with her smile. She always smelled of lavender or of some kind of sweet-smelling herb from afternoons spent at the Uchiha apothecary
If only Sasuke listened to Itachi, the last memory he'd have of his mother would be of her sweet smile as she handed him his bento and kissed his forehead goodbye. But now the dreadful image of her hollow eye socket and bloodied face is stitched at the back of his eyelids that every time he closes his eyes, it's all he could see in the dark.
"Wake up!"
The scent of lavender now pervades his olfactory senses. It's a nostalgic and feminine scent that reminds him of his mother before her corpse haunted him in his dreams. The bloody image of his mother dissolves and in its place, he sees her kind face etched with consternation. It was the same kind of expression she wore when Itachi announced his invitation to join the ANBU.
Sasuke blinks to confirm the mirage. But instead of seeing a pair of dark irises similar to his own, he meets a set of wide and pale eyes framed by thick curly lashes. Sasuke sees a vision of a woman with long dark tresses, a pale but blurry face that he can't seem to make out. Isn't this the same silhouette that he saw in Neji's memory? He squints at the image to get a clearer picture.
When his consciousness seeps in, he realizes that the face hovering above his is not of his mother or the mysterious woman. Instead, it was the face of his scrawny.
"Get off me," He shoves the petite lad from his space. The pale-eyed recruit falls and lands on his butt.
The ruckus rouses the other members of their team. Shino's bugs swarm from under his sleeves and form a cloud defensively above their camp while Kiba frantically assumes a four-legged position that mimics Akamaru's.
"What the?" Kiba squints at the captain. "Everything alright?"
"Go back to sleep." Sasuke admonishes, mildly impressed at the vigilance of his team but at the current situation, he's greatly annoyed by it. The Dog-boy shrugs his shoulders without protests and lets out a loud and slow yawn. He tucks himself back into Akamaru's warmth. Shino hesitates for a bit, allowing his Kikai bugs to roam the surroundings before resigning back to his stiff sleeping position.
Sasuke sighs as he smooths his ruffled gear. He cocks his head towards Hitachi and lifts an eyebrow. "I said sleep. Or do you want me to cast a Genjustsu on you?"
"I-I'm s'posed to be on guard duty," The Hyuga stutters. "You assigned me to keep watch, remember?"
Oh yeah, he definitely did. It wasn't even because there was a need for someone to watch over them when he's cast a genjutsu around their camp to conceal their whereabouts. He instructed the Hyuga to keep watch just to torture him a bit.
The Hyuga watches him with owlish eyes.
"What?" He spats.
"You asked for your mother." Hitachi says tearing his eyes away from him.
Sasuke waves a hand. "Go to sleep, Hyuga. See? You're so groggy that you've been imagining things."
"I—"
"What?" Sasuke says in a low growl.
"I checked on you with my Byakugan," The Hyuga admits, bringing his large eyes back to him. "I was worried. Your chakra was flaring up. It looked like you were distressed."
The only change in Sasuke's expressionless face is a lifted brow, which at least seems harmless compared to a frown. "I said go to sleep."
Hitachi deflates and retreats to her previous post. He curls into his own space like a cocoon with his back towards Sasuke. For a few minutes, he stays still, so Sasuke assumes that he heeded his instruction. The curled Hyuga begin shuffling in his posts, fiddling with his hands.
"Hyuga!"
"Yes, captain!"
Hitachi spins around to face Sasuke. He lets out a shriek when he discovered that his captain is already standing in front of him.
"Tsk, so you were injured." Sasuke notes as his eyes fell on Hitachi's arm.
"It's nothing," Hitachi tries to brush it away.
"Stop lying. I can see the blood seeping from the bandages. Who the hell fixed you up? The dressing's messily done."
"Tenten did a very good job even if she wasn't a trained medic." Hitachi says defensively. "I probably reopened my wound by moving recklessly."
"You do move recklessly." Sasuke agreed condescendingly. "They say that Hyugas move with grace, but you're so clumsy and unpolished. If it weren't for the color of your eyes, I would not have known you to be a Hyuga."
"I-I'm sorry." Hitachi expresses solemnly. Sasuke knew he crossed the line with his comments when he noticed the flash of hurt in Hitachi's grey eyes. Indeed, Hitachi is different from all the other Hyugas he came across with. While the other members of their clan had dull grey, almost soulless eyes, Hitachi's eyes were very expressive, almost with a tint of purple.
Sasuke tugs the sleeve of Hitachi's arm. "Let me fix this up." He gestures to the wound.
"You don't have to, Captain!"
"Shut up. I'm not doing this as a favour to you."
Hitachi holds in his breath as Sasuke wounds his wound expertly.
"Thank you," the Hyuga mumbles his thanks shyly, but his owlish eyes look back at Sasuke with awe. His owlish pale eyes have tiny sparkle. Sasuke finds it disconcerting. Hitachi should have just a pair of white ghoulish eyes just like all the other Hyugas. They're supposed to be a stern, indiscernible sea of blankness and yet, this Byakugan wielder has a pair of expressive ones. They're creepy, yet bizarrely interesting.
His train of thought is interrupted by a sudden sharp spike of his subordinate's chakra.
"What is it, Kiba?" He turns his head to the Inuzaka, who's jolted awake.
Kiba looks flustered and confused and he turns to Akamaru for some sort of encouragement. He inhales sharply and cringes.
"I-I smell something weird." He says in a controlled panicked voice. "I smell something… something metallic. Like blood, but I can't confirm it."
Like they have some sort of telepathic powers, Shino moves from his sleeping position and pushes his glasses up. "Where from?"
"It's from the direction of the inn which is about a few kilometers from here."
Sasuke shifts his gaze towards Hitachi. "How far can your Byakugan see?"
"I can see up to 10 kilometers."
"Can you confirm what Kiba smelled?"
"Ah yes!" Hitachi jerks to an upright position. For a brief moment, his soft eyes turned as sharp and as fierce as an eagle's.
The rest of Sasuke's team watch as veins protrude on Hitachi's face and later recede into a horrified look. Haphazardly, he springs towards the nearest bush and thrusts his head forward. The Hyuga's back tenses as he vomits behind the bush. Kiba's face scrunches as he pinches his sensitive nose.
Sasuke sighs impatiently as he folds his arms across his chest. "Hyuga, what did you see?"
Hitachi's knees buckled. His breath is ragged from confusion and panic. Taking in large gulps of air, he smooths his face before facing his captain.
"Murder." He chokes out.
Sasuke's features are calm as he takes in the news, but his Sharingan activates.
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The onsen still glows in warm orange from afar. Everything looked the same as they had left it, but when they opened the entrance door, no enthusiastic 'welcome' greeted them.
When Hinata peeked behind the counter, she let out a shrill cry.
"Damn it, you scream like a girl," huffed the ANBU Captain in annoyance. He hopped in one fluid motion and landed before the corpse of the young innkeeper.
Hinata feels her gut squeeze as she remembers the young lady's kind gesture from before. When Hinata requested food from them, she enthusiastically packed them more food than what Hinata expected. From the way she blushed at Sasuke, it was obvious, she was smitten but she was kind nonetheless.
Now, she is leaned against the wall lifeless and almost grey as her crush scrutinize her rigid body.
"Rigor Mortis hasn't set in yet which means that the murder occurred just very recently." Shino states as-a-matter-of-factly as he kneels beside Sasuke to inspect the body.
"The culprit…" Kiba says sharply. "He couldn't be that far. I can't smell anything strange though, except the smell of blood that is. Akamaru, can you pick out something?"
Akamaru barks in response but judging from Kiba's look of disappointment, Akamaru couldn't pick up something as well.
"You have the strongest sense of smell. Is it possible that the perpetrators can mask their scent very well?" Shino asks.
"That's possible but it takes a very special skill to do it. Not many shinobis are conscientious enough to mask their own smell."
"Not many shinobis, but ANBUs are…" Sasuke says darkly. "The ANBU operates covertly, masking once smell is a basic skill."
Kiba stares at Sasuke aghast. "But Captain… are you insinuating that…"
Sasuke's red eyes shone ominously in the dark. "The gash on her back is done very neatly, very skilfully… like it was done by a trained assassin. This straight wound is inflicted by a blunt blade… a kenjutsu expert I would say."
Kiba gasps exasperatedly. "Are you saying that there's a snake within the ranks?"
Before Sasuke could answer, a small swarm of kikai buzzes around Shino. The hooded shinobi listens attentively as his bugs communicate with him.
"There are other victims in one of the guest rooms."
The ANBU team follows Shino as he leads them deeper into the onsen.
Hinata feels the bile rising up in her throat as she witnesses the most troubling and most haunting scene unfold.
Splayed across the tatami room are three male figures dressed down in their white robes.
"Shit," Sasuke curses quietly.
"Fuck. Fuck…" Kiba cusses frantically as launches a fist on one of the thin shoji doors.
Hinata is still squeamish but she forces herself to look. The eyes of the corpses were hollowed out as if they had been gouged out from their sockets. Hinata's knees buckle once more. As she takes a step back, she falls behind the fourth body of a corpse. Facing away from her, this corpse was spread on the floor on his belly. His robes had come undone, exposing his tattooed shoulder.
"They're ANBU?" It slowly registered.
Hinata sees Sasuke's Sharingan spinning. His face is completely calm but his eyes are red as his fury.