Song: Zero
By: Varsity Fanclub
"I have several candidates to offer him, Ushi, and it is within my power to request the mission and ninja. I expect you to be part of it."
"But to include him… excuse my interruption, but would it not raise suspicions to send an untrained juvenile, Danzo-sama?"
"Do not use such a condescending tone with me, boy. And no, not if Hiruzen is convinced that a child is needed as bait…"
"Are they not all bait, Danzo-sama?"
"Yes, but Hiruzen does not know that, and I intend it to stay that way."
"I shall confer and give my lord the details of the mission, though there's no rush. After all, we have months."
"Good. Dismissed."
I grimaced slightly.
Here I was, alone, back at the Mischievous Maidens, standing before the gate.
I stared upon my home, lips curving downwards.
I should have expected this. Rumour of the massacre probably spread, leaving the home open to raiding.
Or worse, the intervention of the land owner.
I was not greeted with a house, lights off and dusty from disuse, waiting to be re-inhabited. No…
Through the windows, between the edges of the curtains, light shone through. The brothel, it'd been… sold.
I stood there for several moments, simply watching. My mind was carefully blank.
One thing I did notice, however, was the lack of customers entering and leaving. The gate was closed and locked, the entrance shut.
The brothel was still closed, meaning the new business hadn't yet been set up and/or the building was still being refurnished.
I should have left. I couldn't just waltz in there and demand my home back.
But no, first I had to investigate, to put my mind at rest. To know that whoever was living here now would use the place well.
So I moved around the side, down that small, quiet alley and skilfully climbed the rusty fence, behind which lay the garden of the brothel.
Dropping silently to the ground, I made my way towards the back window.
The curtains were drawn, and the window closed.
In fact, it was eerily quiet inside, considering the lights were on. Maybe everyone was asleep?
Unlikely, after all it wasn't very late.
Suddenly the click of a door alerted me to someone coming outside. That single crack allowed the sound of quiet voices to reach my ears.
Ad^&sg*%yh!
I knew I should have heard them nearing the door because the place was damn creaky and you can hear every sound coming from inside, which meant the people must have had silencing seals in there!
Which meant…
Ninja!
All this passed through my head in barely a split second, and as the door creaked open wider I dashed, light-footed, for the gap around the side between the building and the fence.
I kept my breathing even, encased in shadows. There was no hitch in the conversation between the two people entering the backyard, so I hadn't been seen.
"-erfect for a future entry-point to Shadows." The voice was deep and no doubt a man's voice.
My blood ran cold.
Shadows was the code name for Root.
"Yea, and I've already personally selected a few female agents to work here. This place was old and run-down before, with few visitors, however if we popularise it, it could potentially make a good information-gathering hub if we open it to the ninja populace…" This time it was a woman's voice.
Slowly, painstakingly slowly, I craned my neck to look around the side.
The two figures were facing the garden, and a glance to the side would reveal my position. I would have to be quick.
I withheld a gasp.
In the dim lighting of the moon, I could make out the unmistakable silhouettes of Anko and Ibiki.
Anko Mitarashi.
Ibiki Morino.
I quickly withdrew so I was no longer peering around the side, attempting to keep my breathing even.
They'll notice me for sure!
Anko, with a yawn said; "It makes you wonder how many of these shady entry points that old creep has which the hokage doesn't even know about. I mean, Danzo has had us checking out quite a few recently."
"Anko, you know as well as I that the hokage would have no part in these if possible, turning a blind eye instead. The more he knows, the more he puts his reputation in danger. We can't let him know, not unless we're certain Danzo is planning something... And you know the hokage trusts Danzo…"
There was a momentary lull.
"Well anyway, that old bastard will get what's coming to him one day, whether he's planning something or not. For the good of Konoha my arse. The hokage might trust him, but I don't."
Then; "I'm going for dango, why don't you come?"
There was another pause, which for some reason had me holding my breath.
Finally;
"…yes. Let's."
And just like that, they disappeared.
I sagged with relief, nerves fried.
Phew… That was too close…
But what the two had been talking about had me simmering.
Danzo thought he had the right to just take my home for himself? After killing everyone!
Oh, but he just did, a dark voice sneered in my head.
My hands clenched so tightly my nails drew blood from my palms.
He'll get what's coming for him, that's for sure. And I'll be right there when it happens.
But for now, I had valuable information about one of Danzo's future information hubs and entry points.
But I would think on it later.
First, I had to get the hell out of there and find a new home. But before that I'd call a meeting.
They were all there, despite the late hour (except Yurei, but I wouldn't think about him).
Takeshi, Junko, Emi, Eri, Kiyoshi, Akemi. All of them, getting annoyed at each other trying to figure out who had whistled the signal. It was escalating quite quickly.
I hadn't shown myself, not yet. My heart was beating so fast it hurt. I knew I had to make my dramatic appearance at some point, before Eri started throwing punches, but…
Everything…
I gulped. I could do this. I would do this.
And just like that, I stepped into the courtyard before hesitation could catch me.
My shoe made a crunching sound as I accidentally stepped on shattered glass. A beer bottle from the bar on the other side of the wall, no doubt.
The sound drew the attention of the six figures, the courtyard going immediately silent as everyone turned to stare. There I was, several metres away from my Gang. My Gang who didn't know…
Six faces, six different expressions. Confusion, surprise, blankness, suspicion, fear, sorrow.
Kiyoshi spoke first.
"Sasayaki's soul has come to guide us… Or to say goodbye one last time…" he murmured, his voice soft and pained.
I blinked.
"A ghost… SHE'S A G-GHOST!" Takeshi screamed, and fell to his knees. "SHE'S COME TA HAUNT US FER OUR FAILINGS! F'R NOT SAVIN' THEM!"
I blanched.
It was absolutely ridiculous, and yet I was too shocked to laugh.
Because those were real tears pouring down Takeshi's cheeks.
"Wait!" I yelled, and ran forwards.
It did not have the desired effect. There was a unanimous scream from all of them and they scattered to different sides of the yard.
So much for an amazing dramatic entrance. This was turning out badly!
"I'm not a ghost! I'm not!"
"Yes you are!" Emi yelled.
"You have white hair, meaning you have left the realm of the living!" Eri added.
For the love of- Who made that up?
"No I washed it-"
"You expect us to believe you?" Junko said from the other side of the yard.
It was Akemi who finally saw reason. He began to walk towards me, slowly, carefully, his eyes fixed on my face. I held that gaze, my breath caught in my throat.
(Akemi always had such wise eyes, despite his age. His eyes were a rayless shade of orange, like the darkest sunrise. Depthless.)
"No! You'll invoke the wrath of Sasayaki's lost soul!" Kiyoshi shouted after him.
So much for 'guiding them' or 'saying goodbye'.
Akemi didn't even pause, and when he was only a step before me, he reached a hand towards my face.
I stayed still as his hand made contact, touching my cheek. I remained motionless even as his hand moved across my jaw.
Junko stepped forwards, sensing what Akemi could not verbalise. "Welcome back, Sasayaki."
Takeshi's face split with the widest smile, and a scream of joy soon followed.
I told no truths. The story Root had given me was simple; according to the red-light district's knowledge, a random murderer had come and slaughtered my brothel.
I had escaped, because I had only arrived back from my 'trip' (searching for Naruto's orphanage, that is) and had seen the freshly-killed bodies.
I told them I went into hiding, for fear of being killed myself because I didn't know the murderer had been caught.
I told them I was ok.
"Why don't you come live with the Sisters? I'm sure I could get you a permanent place!" Takeshi said excitedly.
"No," I said immediately. The Sisters had always been the Maidens greatest competition (and sadly, the Sisters normally always had more clients. After all, their facilities were much cleaner, bigger and nicer.)
Plus, I knew it would hurt too much to integrate into a place so much like my old home, and yet not be right…
"You can always stay with me…" Kiyoshi offered. "I'm sure I can fit both of you in."
It was that or the streets. I chose that, of course.
"I also made friends with the blond-haired boy everyone talks about," I tacked on as casually as possible.
Jaws dropped. Emi and Eri looked equally horrified.
"The one that's said to have killed babies and shot lasers with his eyes?" Emi hissed. "What were you thinking!"
I rolled my eyes.
"Grow up, Emi! People from outside the district say the same about us, you know it!"
There was a surprised pause, and I let the thought sink in.
"He's the same age as me and Takeshi, and he is just like us. Maybe I'll introduce you guys if you aren't worried."
Akemi snapped his fingers, and all heads turned his way. In the dim lighting of the moon and the stray light from the bar over the wall, I could make out his hand movements.
"I want to meet him," Akemi signed.
Junko always did have too much of a soft spot for Akemi, not that I was complaining.
"Right! We'll let the kid meet us if he wants, end of discussion."
Just like that, it was decided.
Mission accomplished, I allowed myself a smile.
But before I could go and bunk down at Kiyoshi's, maybe with Takeshi too, I had a lot of catching up to do, and midnight was fast approaching.
"So… what'd I miss?"
As I glanced at the bright, whiskered-boy besides me, I wondered if he often walked around the village alone, trying to ignore the glares, and wondering what he could do when no one wanted to play with him. After all, considering how even the Gang had reacted when I had mentioned him…
He's like me, I realised, startled. He's been wronged by the people in this village too, and is all alone. Well, not quite. We have each other, and Naruto has Iruka and the ramen stand and the hokage, and I have my Gang.
I paused, digesting this fact, wondering how the Hokage could stand to let these innocent children suffer.
At least he visited Naruto, unlike all of us Root orphans who weren't worthy of his attention and care.
I quickly dismissed the dark thought, running after Naruto who was now a few steps ahead.
The Gang all had the best intentions at heart, especially for other kids like them- like us, but even they hesitated at the idea of meeting Naruto.
And if they had a problem with that, I'm not sure how I'm going to bring up the fact I'm going to be a ninja. No street kids trust ninja, and since the academy starts in a couple of days and both Naruto and I will be attending…
I shuddered, grimly deciding that I should probably introduce Naruto to the Gang before we begin the academy. Then at least the Gang will have less prejudice against him to start off with.
"Hey Sasayaki-chan, we should do some pranks together!" Naruto exclaimed in excitement, swinging around to face me.
"Ok, but not today. We're going to climb the hokage monument together," I replied.
I wondered what Danzo would think when he got reports of me creating havoc with Naruto? The thought made me giggle.
Naruto sent me curious look but then dismissed my weird giggling for excitement.
On the way to the monument, Naruto saw a stall selling ANBU masks and wigs and pointed excitedly.
"Hey let's go look at those!" he grinned and dragged me behind him. For some reason, the stall seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it.
The stall-keeper sent us a wary glance, his eyes resting on me in surprise, but then he went back to ignoring us.
"Look at this one, Sasayaki-chan, I think it's meant to be a cat!" It was a simple mask, with three black lines on each side that thickened in width as they reached the edge of the mask. Naruto reached for the mask, and that's when things started going down-hill.
"Don't touch them, you cretin!" the stall-keeper snarled and violently shoved Naruto outside, where he fell down backwards.
"Hey!" I shrieked.
But I hesitated, wondering if I should bring the village's wrath upon me simply for helping Naruto.
Would it affect my mission? Did it even matter if the village hated me, considering my only 'purpose' (yours truly, Danzo) was to remain Naruto's friend?
Mind made up, I was about to give the man a piece of my mind, but it seemed I hesitated too long. He brutally threw the ANBU mask at Naruto, hitting his forehead, and his head snapped back at the force.
"Keep it, you demon!"
The commotion had caused a crowd, and the civilians glared at Naruto. The look of sheer hurt on Naruto's face as he noticed the glares, and when he turned that look of sadness towards me was what snapped me into action.
I was not proud to say I kicked a civilian in that place, but no regrets, right? The stall-tender deserved it.
He screamed in surprise and pain (to be fair, I would have punched him in the face but I wasn't tall enough, so improvisations had to be made), falling to his knees and clutching, uh, down there.
There were gasps and angry shouts all around, and we made a break for it, and I picked the porcelain mask up on the way out so we didn't go to all that trouble for nothing.
"Never come back!" the stall-tender screamed as we pushed through the crowd, escaping elbowing arms and hands trying to catch our clothes.
Naruto, who was running slightly ahead, looked horrified, but I couldn't help it. Never let it be said that nervous reactions can't be strange. I laughed, a loud, slightly hysterical laugh at the situation we had just caused.
We broke through the dense crowd, and on our way to freedom, and suddenly Naruto was laughing with me, a carefree, bright sound that had us both cracking up even harder as realisation settled in. We continued running towards the Hokage Mountain, adrenaline pumping through our veins.
When we finally got to the top, we fell onto the first hokage's head, giggling and panting.
"I can't believe… you kicked… him there." Naruto managed between gasps.
"Yea, his… face was so… funny." I replied and we snickered at the memory.
We took a few moments to slow our breathing as we stared out over the village.
Naruto's face sobered quickly as he pondered something.
"I'm sorry, you shouldn't have had to deal with that…" he muttered sadly, his eyes turning dark.
"Naruto, I don't care. You shouldn't have to deal with that on your own." I told him gravely.
It was surreal, how I was saying this to him and yet I barely knew him. Then again, Naruto had that effect on people.
Plus, I knew more about him than he knew about himself.
Wow, that sounded arrogant, but there was no denying the truth in it.
He sent me one of his 1000 watt smiles, the darkness all but disappeared.
"And look, I got the mask!" I said, holding it out to him. He stared down at it in awe.
"All of that for this…" he murmured, and then his eyes flicked up to meet mine.
His hand reaches out and he pushed it back towards me, smiling.
"You keep it, you're the one who put on a kick-ass performance."
For a 5/6 year old, that is an immensely selfless thing to do, and I thought about protesting but when I looked into his eyes, I saw a fierce determination, and a silent apology for what had happened. It didn't belong on such a young face.
I took the mask, accepting an apology he shouldn't have had to give, and beamed at him.
I put it on, touched by his gesture, and turned to stare out at the village through the eyeholes.
"Sasayaki of the Kuro Neko. It looks so cool!" Naruto decided.
"We'll have to get you one too." Suddenly a thought occurred to me and a devilish grin spread across my features. "We could totally do pranks together with masks and wigs and no one would know who we are!" Although, until we could do a henge, our heights would probably give us away.
"Yea! We could become famous pranksters, but the real prank would be that no one would know who we are." Naruto stared off dreamily into the darkening sky.
And so, with this in mind we began planning our upheaval of the peace of Konoha, starting with planning how to steal wigs and a mask for Naruto without anyone noticing (hopefully people would forget that we had taken the cat mask from that stall-keeper, as it would give away who we are, but I guess it didn't really matter. As long as Naruto had fun, no point in being a kill-joy.)
It was when we turned to actual pranks we could do that I realised Naruto was something of a trap genius. It was truly a surprise, to hear first-hand the inner workings of his plans, not just seeing the result on a screen.
I wasn't sure if it was normal for five or six-year olds to understand that, in order for people to not get suspicious of Naruto as one of the new masked pranksters, he had to continue doing pranks without the disguise as usual. Then, he would slowly reduce the amount of pranks he did as normal until he finally stopped until people would think he was over his prankster stage, therefore removing suspicion of him being one of the masked pranksters.
It was also stunning to realise he had mapped escape routes all over the village, and his escapes from ANBU weren't simply luck or them holding back. That's what definitely marked him as a prodigy.
The birds of the morning twittered and trilled, and Naruto and I were about to commit prankery.
Prankery with Purpose, but prankery none-the-less.
It was also considered theft, but I didn't need to acknowledge that side of it.
The shop we were situated above, in the air vent of the roof of said clothing store. The store wasn't open yet, but it would be opening soon, so we needed to hurry.
"Ok, slowly now…" I instructed as Naruto lifted the shutters to grant us access to the room.
It was a pretty long drop to the ground, so we'd have to be careful. And we both had backpacks on, so that might throw us off balance.
"I'll go first," Naruto whispered, and internally I sighed with relief.
"Be careful," I uttered. He flashed me a quick grin before lowering himself through the hole, until he was hanging in mid-air, then he let go.
He dropped with a quiet thud, seemingly unharmed by the three-metre drop.
Naruto gestured to me, and I threw my bag down to him.
Then I gulped.
My turn.
I followed his example, hanging on to the side of the opening and lowering myself.
I took a breath, resisting the urge to look down.
Then I let go.
The air rushed past me and then-
Crash.
I yelped as my shoulder throbbed from where I had landed in a clumsy roll, and my feet had slammed into a nearby rack.
"Sasayaki-chan! Are you ok?" Naruto asked in a hushed voice, dropping beside me with concern.
"Yea… I'm… ok…" I gasped out.
I gingerly got to my feet and I didn't hurt too badly so we continued our mission.
The store was dark, considering it was completely shut, but we could still see around in the dim light.
It was lucky that proper security hadn't been invented yet, and civilian shops rarely had security seals on them, as we've discovered.
We set to work, first gathering the wares we wanted (because Naruto needed better clothes, and I only had the drab, standard Root clothes which basically consisted of grey pants and a grey shirt).
So we had a shopping spree in the silence of the empty room, efficiently taking what we needed and then getting along with the good stuff.
Though something important to note was that I managed to steer Naruto away from the ugly orange clothes. Instead, he ended up with blue shorts and a black t-shirt, so I was happy with that.
I, on the other hand, went for cargo pants and a white singlet. Because cargo pants are good for storing things in, and the singlet would keep me cool in the hot weather of the fire country.
Yea, and you'll also burn.
Shut up. Singlets are cool! Get it? Cool and cool?
No. No no no.
Anyway, the shopkeeper and patrons would certainly get a shock when they tripped on the trip wire in the entrance, or have paint poured over their head when they accidentally walked into a thin string, or when they see that half the shop has been painted blinding yellow with the writing 'we lighten even the darkest of hearts' in blazing red.
Apparently, Naruto had something against the shopkeeper. Not that I was surprised.
It was almost half an hour later that we were finished, our backpacks considerably lighter from having used our supplies, but also stuffed with stolen clothes.
(Or maybe not so stolen, because this shopkeeper has probably been ripping Naruto off his whole life. We were just making up for that.)
Unfortunately, leaving back through the air-ducts really wasn't an option, so of course we had to take another route.
Smashing the windows was most certainly necessary. And I did not feel the slightest sense of satisfaction when all the alarms in the vicinity went off. Not at all, haha.
Oh who am I kidding, that was great!
We tried to keep our laughter to a minimum as we fled. It was lucky it was so early; barely anyone was out, and those that noticed us couldn't actually see our faces, because we were wearing hoods, masks reminiscent of Kakashi's and even fat black glasses hiding our eyes.
(Turns out, Naruto wasn't always as outrageously noticeable as people would believe. Once I'd turned him to the dark side, convincing his patriotic heart that theft is ok, he'd revealed quite the stash of clothes that he used for particularly difficult pranks when he really didn't want to get caught.)
But, with our, ahem, shopping, we were now very much ready to take on tomorrow.
After all, tomorrow marked the beginning of the academy.
Song: Zero
By: Varsity Fanclub