What's up, guys? Jorden the Jynx here after a very long time of being gone!
I just wrote this particular fic for fun. Not trying to be political, not trying to make a statement. I was just kind of inspired because of everything going on in the world today.
Note: This fanfic is definitely NOT canon. There are characters in this that are from previous fanfictions I have written as well.
Anyway, I do hope you enjoy it! Please leave me a review!
The field was deserted, except for the two of them.
Well, soon enough there would be three.
His silver eyes glanced at the setting sun on the horizon, before returning his gaze to the young woman on her knees before him. Her hands were glowing with chakra, hovering above the corpse that a few hours ago had been almost completely decomposed. He smirked at the fact that her fingers were trembling, not from exhaustion but from fear.
Her abilities were truly phenomenal, turning a corpse to a living, soulless shell with even a heartbeat. One wouldn't even be able to tell that he'd been dead for years; the only evidence was the gray in his skin tone, but that would be gone once the soul had re-entered the body.
"Why are you doing this to him?" she asked quietly. Her voice was soft, but not quite timid. Her accent gave away the fact that she was a foreigner, from the northern country where samurai ruled rather than ninja. She wore armor on her shoulders and upper arms, black as the night, and matching kneepads and shin guards. Underneath her black breastplate she wore a simple fishnet shirt that went down to her waist, revealing a toned belly and down lower, she wore violet shorts that almost reached her knees. Beneath plates of armor on either hip, the weapon pouches were now emptied of any smaller weapons or medicines she'd been carrying. This maniac of a man now had those as well.
"You've seen what it's like out there." He ran a hand through his bright ginger hair. "Now that I've learned to combine the Reanimation Jutsu with my own Soul-Pulling Jutsu, I will be able to control him while he's fully alive. The perfect puppet."
Most of her chakra was depleted now. She hadn't ever regenerated a body so decomposed before; this was something only her mother had been capable of, but the body itself would remain lifeless without chakra, without a soul. When she'd begun, the man had been nothing but a skeleton… long black tresses lay in the grave he'd been dug from, so she made sure that when regenerating him she made his hair grow long and healthy. She made his eyelashes long as well, thinking that maybe they'd been long like his hair had been. The young woman had made sure that this body was in perfect physical health, with good muscle strength. If he had been a ninja, it would be necessary for him to have strength, right?
Not to mention, she may not be able to get the attaché case from the red-haired man behind her if he was flawed.
"But what's the point?" Her fingers withdrew, and the faint glow from her hands dissipated as she placed them on her lap. She wore a mask over her nose and mouth, short pale-blonde locks blocking him from her blue-eyed glare. She instead focused on the man she'd just poured her chakra into, whose flesh and innards she'd woven back together with the unique gift of her family. His heart beat strongly, but without a soul he couldn't even so much as open his new eyes that she'd given him.
"To protect me." The man laughed. "With an Uchiha under my control, I'll be able to pave my way to power amongst all this chaos."
"How do you even know it will work?" she asked, turning to glare at him coldly. "You'd have to put his spirit into his body, and he's been dead for so long—"
"Don't you get it, princess?" he sneered. "I sacrificed a fair share of the infected to the gods to procure this soul."
A strange-looking dreamcatcher dangled from a thread woven into his fingers in his right hand, the black feathers of a raven braided into the circular design. He moved his body into a stance, squaring his shoulders, and began making handsigns that were unique to the ninja of this continent. She'd read about the Shinobi and their ninjutsu in the past, but she still wasn't completely sure how they worked. None of her abilities required them. "Be ready," he commanded. "After all, this is the only way you'll make it out of here alive."
Chakra seeped from him, and he spread his fingers out and extended his arms out towards the body lying down in the overgrown grass. The sweat on his tanned skin gleamed in the setting sunlight, the sky above them an array of reds and yellows. On his belt he held the swords he'd stolen from her, and at his feet an attaché case filled with the limited but only solution to this continent's problems.
"By the power of the God of Death," his voice sounded, his tone now ominous. The young woman's hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Whatever kind of jutsu he was using, it was obvious that it was unnatural. Almost occult. "Itachi Uchiha, I command your soul to now enter this corpse, and rise!"
It was almost as if black flames licked at the corpse's skin, color slowly returning to his birthmarked face. The woman couldn't help but think that at one time he might have been handsome. But when he awoke, he'd need more than a bath—the rags he'd been buried in were covered in various filths, his sandals barely held together as well.
"Do it."
She mustered up courage; she had never done this to a person unless she'd been saving them from a recent death, before the soul had a chance to move on. She concentrated her chakra, quickly removing her mask and moving to hover over the man's face.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, and then opened his mouth with two of her fingers pressing against his chin. Her face was dangerously close, and she breathed a breath into his mouth, the air infused with her chakra, and soon it would surely meet this stranger's lungs and breathe life into him once more.
Moments of silence passed, her heart racing. She quickly moved her mask back over her nose and mouth, keeping her head above his to observe if he was going to open his eyes. If all went well, she would give this stranger the vaccine and then she could be on her way to the village she'd been assigned to: Konohagakure.
This little delay had, of course, been unexpected. The young woman had been ambushed by this man while she was resting in a tree miles away from where they currently were. When he found where she was from, and her clan name, he'd told her that she'd be useful to him in his goal. This strange man, in the struggle, had managed to take away her katana and had it to her throat before she could react. Unfortunately for the young woman, she had been ordered not to stir any trouble and to do whatever she needed to make it to the Leaf Village peacefully; she decided to comply with him in the end. She'd put off healing her wounds to make sure she had enough chakra to fulfill this preposterous desire to repair a corpse of someone who had been dead for many years.
The whole way to this desecrated burial site, the man ranted about the dangers this country was in, and wanting to take over and reign above the monstrosities taking place. She couldn't wrap her head around the fact that someone would have such a mindset… to create more chaos. And when she'd asked why he'd do such a thing, his only response was "Don't you understand? This is a war."
"It worked."
Her thoughts were interrupted, and she blinked. The man's eyes were slowly opening.
His stare made her shudder. Why were his eyes crimson, like blood? Surely she hadn't made such a mistake… she should have been able to use the very little bone marrow left inside the body to recreate his entire body perfectly…
The stranger, now freshly brought back from the dead, blinked once or twice, and then sprang up. She'd barely moved back fast enough.
"Are you alright?" she breathed, looking him over, her guard down. She was amazed that he'd actually woken, that the soul had actually been compatible with his body. After being dead for so long, there was no way the soul should have returned successfully. Her expression could easily be read as astonished. Her back was now to the stranger that had put her in this situation to begin with. "Listen, you need a shot; I'll give it to you as soon as I—"
Suddenly his black brows knitted together with precise fury, and his mouth opened and his deep voice, hoarse from disuse, spoke one word:
"Move."
She almost hadn't seen his movements, as he'd grabbed her shoulder and shoved her to the ground. She whipped her head around to see that he was now standing, one hand raised above his head, catching the ginger-haired man's wrist… he was holding her sword above his head, ready to strike.
Had he really been about to cut her down with her sword?
"What do you think you're doing?" the raven-haired stranger breathed, his expression unreadable from her viewpoint. "Taking someone down behind their back?"
"Stand down, puppet Uchiha," the man hissed through gritted teeth. "Or do you want your first order to be to kill her yourself?"
"I will do no such thing to a perfect stranger." His grip on the man's wrist tightened. "But a coward like you—I have no issue with."
Suddenly with his free hand, the newly animated corpse took the shorter sword from the man's belt, and struck it through his chest in one swift movement.
She gasped, struggling with panic as she scrambled to her feet, the injury inflicted on her shoulder earlier screaming. Wounded, and without time or chakra to heal, she would be able to do nothing when this man turned on her as well.
The woman quickly moved her body into a flawed fighting stance, her breath hitched as the man turned toward her, the limp body of the maniac ninja falling into the grass and pouring blood into the dirt. His crimson gaze met her blue, and her heart began to pound out of her chest.
Wasn't he supposed to be under the maniac's control? What had gone wrong? Not that she thought it had been a good idea from the start, but still. In a typical reanimation, the person brought back to life should have been completely under the user's control.
He staggered towards her, his expression growing stoic, and she visibly tensed.
Another step. "Don't come any closer!" she exclaimed. Hopefully he hadn't noticed that she was hurt. She was worried that she would have trouble defending herself in such a state: unarmed and with no chakra, barely able to lift her arm to her chest.
If only there were something besides open space all around; she'd be able to lose him and use her medical ninjutsu to heal her shoulder once some of her chakra replenished…
Then again, the way that nameless maniac had talked about this man… exactly what was he?
"You're injured." His voice had lost all of its venom. "Let me see."
It was then that she'd noticed his eyes weren't red anymore, but onyx… had it been a trick of the setting sun, just an act of her imagination?
She took a step back. "You should be more worried about yourself," she told him. "You just came back from the dead, quite literally. And you've been gone for a while, or so it seems."
"Why am I alive?"
"Because he wanted it." Her eyes flitted towards the dead ninja for only a moment. "He took something valuable that a village needs, and wanted help restoring your physical body before he'd return it to me."
"Is that right." It wasn't really a question. He paused for a moment, and then looked at the field around them. "Regardless, do you suppose you could give me an update on what is going on?"
Beneath her steel mask, she bit her lip. "His camp is set up nearby. I'll tell you along the way."
She relaxed her stance and walked briskly past him, and he turned to follow. She paused at the ginger's corpse, kneeling to retrieve her rations pack, swords and other belongings from his belt. She tightly clutched the handle of the attaché case on the ground before standing straight and walking southward.
"This vaccine has to make it to Konoha, wherever that is," she said with a sigh. "I'll give you one when we reach the camp, but you need to keep a mask on until your system adjusts."
"A vaccine?"
Just how long had he been dead?
She didn't hesitate. "A virus is destroying your continent, and has been for almost two years." She looked up to the ever-darkening sky. "This place is in utter chaos. I'm so sorry that you were dragged from the afterlife to deal with this… but I'm afraid I can't send you back."
"What? You mean kill me?" he asked, his voice hinting at amusement.
She didn't look back at him as she kept walking. "I'm a healer first and a samurai second; it is against our code to take the life of another unless you try to kill us first."
"I have nothing to gain by killing you."
Great, did that mean he'd kill her if it meant he gained a meal, once his appetite returned? She'd definitely have to feed him once they made it back to the camp… she wasn't sure what type of person he was at all…
Why couldn't she have just made it to Konoha without causing such a mess?
"So you're telling me that this virus is causing the economy to collapse, and even civilians are turning against one another."
"And crime syndicates are more active than ever, even in the 'peaceful' village known as Konohagakure."
"And in your country, a vaccine for it has been developed and it is your job to deliver it to Konoha?"
The girl looked down at her now-emptied water canteen. "I was the medic assigned to Konoha, yes." Suddenly her head snapped up to look at the man, whose ebony gaze was fixed on the campfire between them.
"I need to give you the vaccine, while I'm thinking about it." She turned her body to face the attaché case that was beside her. His cold gaze honed in on her as she pulled from the case a pre-filled syringe that held a clear liquid.
"Why would you give it to me?" he asked. "Don't the people of Konoha need it?"
The woman shrugged as she dug out an alcohol swab. "Consider it thanks for saving me back there."
"How were you even able to bring me back?"
Her blue eyes met his gaze for the first time since they'd arrived at the camp. "I'll explain everything later," she said plainly. "Any other questions?"
"Tell me more about this virus, and how things got to this point."
She sighed as she walked around the fire to kneel beside him, rolling up his dirty sleeve. "You're very straightforward."
"And you're very vague. I don't like it."
She tore the alcohol swab open and began cleaning the area she'd soon stick. "The onset of symptoms is rapid, and the mortality rate is very high," she explained. "It's spread like anything else: germs. What's worse, is that it's airborne. Eventually everyone was supposed to stay in their homes, but people, as they often do, panicked instead of complied."
"Panicked?"
"They all began buying out supplies until there was little to none left." She used the plunger to gently squeeze out a few droplets from the long needlepoint. "People were afraid. Soon the mobs began to smuggle in medicine for the symptoms and food and such, and were willing to sell it at a high rate—big stick."
The man didn't even flinch when she promptly pierced his flesh. She slowly pushed the vaccine into his muscle as she continued. "Naturally, all of the things they got were stolen from surrounding areas. There's a high body count, and it isn't just from the virus. As supplies got lower and lower, people began breaking into anywhere they could."
She began to bandage the area, carefully placing the syringe onto the ground so that she wouldn't accidentally step on it when she stood once more. "What are the symptoms of this virus?" he asked her.
She stood, grabbing the syringe and capping it as she did so. "The short of it is that it starts in the lungs, causing trouble breathing. Eventually you end up choking on your blood. But before you get to that point, other organ systems are affected and will eventually diminish in functionality, but not enough to kill you." She made her way over to her previous spot. "Eventually, you end up in a coma because you can't breathe on your own. And then you die. It all happens very fast, so no one has able to treat it with medical ninjutsu."
"But you treat it with medicine?"
Her eyes found the fire. She found its warmth comforting, given the circumstances. "We were sent live cultures three months into the outbreak. My people take viruses… very seriously."
"You still haven't told me where you're from."
"I'll explain it in the morning. We need to get some rest. I need to make it to Konoha tomorrow, but I'm afraid that man got me a bit turned around on the way here."
She thought she heard the stranger before her chuckle, but his facial expression was the same when she looked back up at him. "I can show you the way," he offered.
"Do you know where it is?"
"Yes, it's actually where I'm from. You didn't find a headband with my body?"
One of her blonde brows raised. "A headband? No, I'm afraid that there wasn't. Just the clothes that you were wearing."
"Well, that doesn't do me any good. I guess I'll have to raid that psychopath's things for weapons before we go."
She hugged her knees to her chest. They sat in silence for awhile, the noises of the great outdoors echoing throughout the night. Beyond their shadows the darkness was an inky black, and that blackness was blotted with many stars up above.
"I'm Akahana, by the way," she said quietly. She moved to lie down in the cool grass. "I don't think anything is around, if you want to try to rest. I'm sure that this is a lot to process."
"I've processed much worse," he replied, and moved to do the same. "I'm fine with looking at the stars for now, and I'll mull it over while you get some sleep."
"Do you mind if I ask you something?"
He turned his head toward her. She still wore her mask and armor, and her blue eyes looked so dark in the night. He couldn't readily read her expression, but she seemed uneasy. Her voice was too quiet when she asked, "What was the afterlife like?"
Then she was suddenly turning her head towards him, a flush staining her porcelain cheeks. Her brows furrowed. "I only ask because I've never brought someone back that has been dead as long as you have," she added. "I found the entire thing most deplorable, to be honest. Once a soul has moved on it's only right to leave it resting."
"I don't mind answering you." He looked back up at the night sky. Where was the moon tonight, anyway? "It was dark."
Minutes stretched on as the two lay in silence, the fire growing smaller and smaller. She almost felt at ease, knowing this man could easily turn on her.
She couldn't stop thinking about those red eyes she'd seen… maybe she'd ask him about that tomorrow.
"Also, just so you know," she heard his voice echo quietly, "my name is Itachi.
"Itachi Uchiha."