Chapter 29

Naruto was cursing under his breath.

"Come onnnnn, open up!" he complained loudly, fist rapping on the green door to Charlie's apartment. He was beginning to think she wasn't home.

But then again, she wasn't anywhere.

He hadn't been able to find her at any of their usual spots. He checked all of the training grounds. He would've asked Kakashi-sensei, except the bastard had run off with Sasuke and left him to train by himself. (Well, technically he'd left him a tutor, but that Ebisu or whatever guy was too uppity for his own good and had been promptly abandoned.)

He'd done almost everything but ask the Hokage himself.

She was just... in the wind. He wanted her to congratulate him on getting recommended for the Chuunin Exams. He wanted her to congratulate him on making it to the final portion. Maybe she would've made him something in celebration, or taken him to Ichiraku's.

The blond sighed, lowering his hand and making his way towards the staircase dejectedly. He had some weird feeling in his gut that something was wrong. Or at least... off. He'd never gone so long without seeing her.

Too lost in thought to think about where his feet led him, he was quite surprised to have ended up in front of the bathhouses. It wasn't a place that he had any interest in partaking; for one, it was for old people, and for two, it was for women.

He shook his head, preparing to continue on his way, when-

"Ehuehueheee~"

Naruto frowned and backed up a few steps. 'Er... I don't think that's how old men are supposed to enjoy the bathhouse... especially on the wrong side...' "Oi, pervert, aren't you supposed to be inside the bath?" he asked loudly, just to blow the man's cover.

The white-haired man went blue in the face from fear as multiple female voices rose up beyond the fence he was looking through. Slowly, silently, he stood, shoving something into his vest before beating a hasty retreat. As Naruto stood stock still, bemused, a mob of angry females in just towels stormed out of the onsen, hot on the guy's tail.

Smirking to himself, Naruto followed. 'Nothing else to do right now, eh?'

Wind blew brisk and impatient through the trees. She stood motionless, just another branch of the tall tree she resided in. Just another shadow on the floor. She'd be worried about her scent, but she smelled just like the world around her- like dirt, like the rain.

"You always smell like lilies to me," Minato piped up helpfully.

Charlie pinched facepalmed her mask as an embarrassed flush painted her cheeks. 'Now is not the time to flirt, Minato,' she chided. 'Help me sense people. You're better at it than I am.'

The bloodbath would start soon. She occupied space close to the building, but not close enough to hear any screams or fleeing feet yet. Spider, Tiger, and Sai had departed her company only a minute or so ago.

Silence reigned. For a moment, every leaf seemed to still in the forest around her. She could sense the first death as if it had happened in front of her eyes.

A single warning shout.

"Someone's coming."

'From the outside-?' She opened her senses and cut herself off. She could feel the signature now. It was moving, but then it halted, hovering somewhere off to the left about six meters away. Her feet made soundless impact on wood as she approached, tree to tree. 'Why's he staying put?' she wondered.

"Signature's pretty strong," Minato noted cautiously.

She paused when she finally caught sight of him. He was the definition of 'ninja'- donned all in black, the man made blending into the shadows seem effortless. He had the same face-covering headgear as the Yuuhi Brotherhood, but his crest was a different color- a smoked gray rather than dark red. "Hello, little brat," he said, crossing well-defined arms over his chest.

He wasn't incredibly bulky, but he definitely put the work in.

"Kind of you to wait for me," she replied. 'Why did he wait for me?'

"I just wanted to see the Comet for my own eyes before I take off." In the blink of an eye, he was in front of her, and her tanto was to his throat. His gaze was impregnable, hands loose at his sides. "You don't seem like much. I wonder..."

"'Wonder'?" she echoed, sweat building on her brow.

"Why he regrets you so much." His dark gaze was hypnotizing in its intensity. His entire aura felt like a dark, leaden cloud. "Look at you. You couldn't even keep fully intact." The harshness of his laugh caused her to wince. "As I suspected... the Comet is nothing but a weak little girl. If it weren't disallowed, I would kill you here just for your audacity."

Charlie raised a brow. "Audacity?" And 'Comet'?

"Yes," he hissed. The wide expanse of his hand pressed harshly against her chest, and he didn't seem to notice as the sharp blade of her sword bit into his throat. "You've been given an incredible gift. My fellow Brothers could only hope to achieve the blessing wasted on you. The blessing you seem intent on returning."

Her breath came fast between her teeth. She could hear her heart in her ears. Something like panic welled up in her stomach; what he was saying, how he sounded- like he knew she wasn't meant to be here. She had been under the assumption that her being here was a freak accident for over a year, but this- this alone confirmed the odd feelings she'd been having lately. "'Blessing'? Do you know something?!" Did he have something to do with it?

"I know the truth," the man replied. He stepped back from her blade, blood blooming slowly on the dark fabric. "If you had even an ounce of gratefulness in that tiny heart of yours, you would be on you knees praying to him." 'Praying...' "You would be one of us. You would be serving him. You wouldn't be a part of our massacre."

"You're terrorists!" Charlie retorted. "You kill innocent people!" 'You and I are not the same.'

"We are believers." The deadly resolve in his voice made goosebumps raise all over. "You may cut us down here, but we will always rise again as assuredly as the moon and stars. Remember that well, little girl."

She opened her mouth to inquire further but he disappeared just like that, leaving nothing but a bad taste in her mouth. Her hand flopped uselessly to her side in his wake. She stood there longer than she should've, partly in shock and partly because for some reason, she really didn't want to go after him. She waited until his signature was far, far away before her brain finally started up again.

'Minato, I think... I think this is the lead we were looking for.' She let out a short, disbelieving laugh.

Silence on the other end for a moment before he finally said, "The person behind your abduction, the person behind your presence here..."

'Is someone hailed as a god.' The finality of it struck her. 'Fuck.'

Hoarse chuckling. "It was... nicer to believe in fate."

Her heart gave a painful squeeze.

Two stray chakra signatures caught her attention, and she moved towards it, smiling ruefully. 'Not very scientific of you.'

"What can I say? I'm a romantic." The words were lighthearted, but his voice wasn't. They both knew the meaning behind this. She had a target now. Someone she could go after, someone she could force to return her home. If she wanted to go home.

Did she want to go home?

She didn't want to think about it. She'd had plenty of time to think about it, but she avoided it like the plague. Until now. Until it was in front of her face.

A 'god', he called him. She couldn't deny that this 'god' had power. And for some reason, that frustrated her more.

She was so preoccupied thinking of what all of it meant that it didn't register in her mind what she'd be doing until she was right on top of her targets. One of them was a shorter-built sort of guy, with a quiet sort of chakra signature that sparked in fear as they locked eyes. The other seemed much more formidable, but just as hesitant.

She was not.

The fearful Brother only had time to gasp as her blade cut through his throat. The person he was running with threw a fist into her temple. Charlie cursed as she was sent back a few feet, vision sparking momentarily. It was long enough for the guy to start running from her, apparently not interested in fighting her. "If it weren't disallowed..."

Her thrown kunai met its mark, and he slumped to the ground. Flashes of hot anger washed over her and she clenched her fist. For a moment, the only sound in the world was the roaring in her ears. 'Why am I here?' More signatures began to blip on her radar. 'Who are you people?' Chakra built in her legs and she took off, withdrawing her tanto from its sheath and baring teeth.

She was as vicious as a cornered animal, only she was the one doing the cornering.

When she appeared before them, one larger body and one smaller one, the bigger one said, "The Comet-" before her leg threw him through trees.

The smaller one cursed, nimble fingers flashing through handsigns. "Fireball jutsu!" Charlie dodged, hair scorching at the ends. At least this one seemed willing to do something.

The bigger one seemed content to keep back, but threw shuriken her way from the concealment of the trees. It was annoying, but not as annoying as it had been when Sai did it- she'd have those scars for years. These, she could avoid for the most part.

"Why do people keep calling me that?" Charlie asked in a shout as she shunshined to the fire user's side to land a blow in his side. He dove to avoid her and grabbed the ankle of her planted leg, easily uprooting her.

She accepted the fall and elbowed him in the face. He choked and groaned, grabbing her by the ponytail and attempting to pry her off. Even as pain exploded in her scalp, her anger was getting the best of her- it only served to piss her off more. Clenching her jaw, her hand gripped his throat, chakra enhanced strength making it a simple matter to keep hold.

Heat and wet and pain erupted on her side, and she glanced down, groaning. His free hand had found a knife and sent it somewhere below her ribcage. Thankfully it wasn't a kunai, just a regular thin blade, but it made a scream bubble up either way.

Pain and fear made her grip tighten, and with a sick popping sound, the person's grips on his knife and her hair fell away.

"Yuuchi!" the third man cried from the perimeter, jumping down from his hiding spot with a kunai clenched in his hands. "Brother!"

Charlie rolled off the body, gripping her side and gasping in pain. Her hand glowed weakly green as she worked to close the wound before she could lose more blood. The Brother knelt by the other's side, not seeming to care that she was there. "You knew better than to harm her," he cried into the man's chest, shoulders shaking rapidly. "You stupid...stupid! This is your penance, isn't it?"

The redhead shakily got to her feet as her injury healed just enough. She'd have to get Spider to look at it; she'd never really practiced medical ninjutsu, only read about it. She could tell her patch-up job was messy at best. "Who gave you the order not to hurt me?" she grunted, reaching for her tanto even as pain lanced up her side.

The man turned, gasping as though he'd forgotten she was there. He made a sniffing sound. "God did. He said you- he said that you were special! Look what you've done!"

Hazel eyes hardened to amber. 'Special... is that supposed to be a joke?' "A name," she ground out, stomping closer. The man's hand clenched on his knife. "I want... a name."

"He has no name! D-don't come any closer, or I'll have to fight you!" Fear choked him. He sounded young. He sounded scared.

Charlie paused in her steps, a growing feeling of desolation in her chest. Everything ached, and here she was, about to kill some nameless man who didn't even want to fight her- even after she'd killed his friend. What was it right now that she felt? Angry? Upset? Desperate?

Chakra warmed the muscles of her legs and she ran forward, knocking him out with a swift punch to the jaw and watching him fall like a sack of sand at her feet.

She couldn't drag him into hiding, as she was sure it would set her wound off again, and so she just hoped he stayed down until they left. Her head shook as she took back to the trees, on the hunt again for chakra signatures of people that probably didn't even want to fight her.

The massacre lasted, in total, about an hour.

She maintained the perimeter, just like she was supposed to, until her team made their appearance at the entrance and beckoned her in. She killed four more people after the one she spared. She didn't give them the chance to speak- she felled them like trees.

Her first kills were in misplaced anger. The rest... the rest were in apathy. She kind of understood how Sai wound up the way he did. If she viewed them simply as targets instead of people, it didn't weigh on her mind.

"You're limping," Spider noted immediately upon Charlie's crossing of the threshold. The redhead paused.

"It's my side," she replied eventually, exhaustedly. Spider wordlessly wiggled her fingers at her. Pushing her torso guard to the side, she rucked up her shirt just under her chest, allowing the dark-haired medic to examine her with stern eyes.

Her mask was speckled with blood.

"Well," Spider said after about a minute, "... you really suck at medical ninjutsu, but if you didn't do what you did, you would've died. Congrats."

"Thanks," the redhead sighed.

"Sit down over there, I'll fix it. Tiger, Mole, start storing the bodies." The smaller and larger forms hovering nearby departed in an instant. Once they were gone, "Take off your shirt."

Charlie slid off the armor and her mesh shirt, sparing the bandeau. Spider whistled. "One inch lower and he might've gotten something important. How'd it happen?"

"We were grappling. My hand was around his throat," Charlie replied shortly.

"Floor's always a dangerous place to be," the woman remarked. Her hand hovered over Charlie's side, and the girl winced as she felt her chakra suddenly invade. It wasn't painful or anything, but her chakra was freezing cold.

"I figure."

"Wanna tell me why they kept calling you 'special'?" Charlie paused at the turn in conversation, glancing down to meet glittering violet eyes. She was beginning to notice a theme with the woman; how she spent time warming up the conversation before turning it to something she actually wanted to know. How she said it out of the blue, just to see an honest reaction. If she wasn't in TI for her day job, she certainly qualified.

The redhead grimaced and told a half-truth. "I kept asking them. None would tell me. They didn't want to hurt me either. Most of them just tried to run away."

"Weird." Spider turned her gaze back to her work. Her frigid fingers gently felt over the wound, and pressed gingerly. "Does that still hurt?"

"It's tender."

"That's fine. It should be pretty much healed now. Stop by the hospital when we get back so an actual doctor can check you over. I don't even think it'll leave a scar." The woman reclined on her haunches and wiped her bloody hands on her black tactical pants. "You got lucky."

Charlie wordlessly shrugged, and hopped to her feet. The two made their way towards the center of the compound, where Sai and Tiger were busily lying black scrolls over the fallen bodies of Brothers. The girl couldn't hide a wince; it was clear which executions were Sai's, and which were Tiger's. While Tiger's victims had gory wounds and faces contorted in pain, Sai's victims were purple, white, or blue, foamed at the mouth and eyes bulging from their heads. Their veins webbed at their throats and temples, black with poison.

The boy in question stood above the hulking form of what Charlie instantly recognized as the leader provided to them in the photograph. He put his hands on his trim hips and said, "Tiger, how did you kill him? He doesn't..." 'He doesn't look like your typical kill.'

While his disciples were all in varying stages of disrepair, this one had a strangely peaceful expression. One could believe he was asleep, save for the thin trail of drool from his mouth and the gray tint to his face.

"I didn't have a chance to," Tiger replied grumpily. "He took the cyanide pill the moment I got to the room."

"My guess is that he knew we would try to capture him alive," Spider voiced. "He knew he probably wouldn't win against us, and he knew he wouldn't be able to outrun us either."

"Did he say anything?" Charlie couldn't help but intrude.

"Nah. He just sat on the ground and died." Tiger sounded pissed.

The conversation tapered after that. They made their rounds of the entire compound, sealing away bodies in little black scrolls and storing them in Spider's backpack. Then, they set about cleaning the place up, removing blood and flesh from the walls and floors. "This was a school once," Spider informed them. "We want it to be a school again."

Charlie didn't know this was a part of ANBU. Even the most elite of ninja weren't excused from clean-up duty. It brought a small smile to her face as the barracks turned back into classrooms and the center of the compound turned back into a cafeteria. Blood soaked floors became sparkling hardwood again, and besides numerous dents and dings in the walls, the building was made whole again.

Tiger patrolled the outside. He was a caged cat, ready and raring for a fight after his most promising catch evaded him. He took it out on the remaining groups of Brothers returning to their command center, so fast that their screams barely registered inside the building's walls.

The redhead was fine with that. She'd done enough killing. Instead, she spent the two-day clean up reflecting. Not on the deaths, which weren't bothering her as much as she thought they might've, but on the future. She had a nasty feeling that Tanizawa Kouichi was not the 'god' the person in the forest was referring to. No, there was someone else, someone that Tanizawa answered to.

She wished she would've followed that creepy dude back in the forest. Maybe he would've led her to him. "Mission first. You know that." Minato's reminder was quiet and forbearing.

'He obviously isn't above hurting me, unless those two Iwa missing-nin were going completely rogue,' she thought, glancing down at her stump of an arm. Did that mean that when she found him, he'd fight her?

The longer she thought about it, though, the more her head hurt. "You may cut us down here, but we will rise again." A threat if she'd ever heard one. She was sure she would lose against that man in a fight, and if he was a mere believer, then whomever he was worshipping was probably no pushover either. If he existed in this world at all.

Resolve welled up deep in her core, steeling her heart as her grip tightened on her broomhandle. Her whole body ached, physically and mentally, but it wasn't enough to quell the fire. Things would be different now. Things would change. She had a direction, she had a way to find the answers that had been evading her from the moment she landed here.

'Whoever, whatever, and wherever you are- just wait. I'm going to find you, and I'm going to get whatever I come for.'

Dear Jiraiya,

You may find it odd that this scroll ended up right in front of you. You might also find it strange that it is marked with the symbol of Mount Myoboku- but hey, how else was I to get your attention?

The fact of the matter is, this scroll's being here is no accident. I knew you would be here. Not because I know your habits (which I do), but because I know the future. This is where your research gets interrupted by a certain blond boy, some way or another. Please pardon him and his antics- he inherited his mother's spirit. And when he tries to coerce you into training him for the Chuunin Exams- please let him. It's important you do. You owe it to him.

Normally I wouldn't ask favors of someone who's never met me, but it's in both of our interests that you listen to what I have to say next. Konoha is in grave danger, and I've seen how it's played out. The Hokage seems set on letting the chain of events unravel regardless of the fact that it ends in his death, but I'm not so reckless.

Or maybe I am.

Either way. I am hoping to be back in the village before this comes to pass, but if I'm not, here's what happens:

During Gaara and Sasuke's fight in the final round of the exams, feathers fall over the stadium. Sleep encompasses the crowd and Gaara loses his control on the One-Tailed Beast and rampages through the village. Many die.

What is more vital to you is that Orochimaru will sit next to the Hokage in the viewer's box. He wears the Kazekage's face, but that man is already long gone. Orochimaru's henchmen make a barrier, with none but him and the Hokage inside. He uses the Impure World Reincarnation technique to draw up Senju Hashirama and Tobirama. Our Hokage is strong, but he loses the fight after sealing Orochimaru's arms.

I'm telling you this because I want your help. I will try to be there, if I can, but I'm under the thumb of another right now. I want to be there. I don't want the Hokage to die, and if possible, I want to eliminate the threat that Orochimaru poses before it causes more destruction.

You can choose to believe me or not. At this point, I'm not sure you'll be able to ask the Hokage about me until after this is all over- he may be suspicious of me meddling again. But he does know about me. Few others do. As you may be able to understand, my foreknowledge is an S-class secret.

And if you're looking for me on that day, I have red hair.

Sincerely,

Uzumaki Charlie

P.S. Once you've read all that, please burn this scroll. I've sealed it for only people of a certain chakra level to be able to unlock, but you never know.