Naka River 2:34am
Night of the Uchiha Massacre
From the view off the edges of the canyon, the river below winds like a serpent, carving through the land in graceful sweeps as it rolls ever onward in its quest for the sea.
Somewhere far upstream, the water is being stained with blood.
The dark man standing on the edge casts his keen single-eyed gaze across the river's surface, searching for any shift in the shadows of the water. His companion crouches at the edge beside him, a spiraling construct of wood and chakra in the shape of a man. "I saw him go off the edge, little brother. From that height the water would be hard as stone. He's most assuredly dead."
"We need to be sure." The man insists, his eyes scanning for the slightest ripple out of place. "We cannot afford to be otherwise."
The spiral shaped man only nods, lending his own senses to the effort, even though the man beside him hardly needs his help. "Shiro says it's just started. The Old Man will be busy a few hours yet."
The dark man nods, but doesn't respond.
The silence stretches for long moments, a dozen minutes go by with nothing.
And then something.
The man's gaze shifts, catching on a dark shape too large to be driftwood. He makes out the mould of shoulders, of an arm, the stain of red that follows in its wake. Too much red for a heart that isn't beating.
A single powerful flex of muscles and the man launches himself from the edge, twisting midair in a graceful arc to land against the cliff's vertical face, only to push off again and launch himself to the surface of the water. He stoops down even as he lands atop the river, dipping to hook his arm around the young man drifting through the water. As soon as the boy is secure in his grasp he leaps to shore, alighting on the thin strip of gravel beach that tumbles across the river's edge. His companion is by his side instantly, though the man spares him no acknowledgement as he lays the boy on his back and takes account of his injuries.
Both eyes are empty sockets, blood-black and hollow. His left arm has been torn clean from his shoulder by something sharp and jagged, perhaps one of the cliff hugging trees that cling to the edges of the riverbanks, judging by the shards of wood buried in the wound.
"Eyes are missing. Not a good sign. Think someone got to the corpse before us?" The White Zetsu comments, taking a step around the man's side to get a better look. The dark man's eyes catch on the boy's left eye, and he shakes his head.
"No. The wounds indicate he removed at least one himself. And he isn't dead."
The Zetsu blinks, bewildered. "What do you mean 'he isn't dead'? He took a header to the equivalent of cement at two hundred meters."
"A cliff cedar broke his fall." the man states, gesturing two fingers to the boy's missing arm. "And dead men don't breathe."
True to word, the boy's chest is rising and falling in short starts and stops, almost imperceivable, which means he must have been conscious until only recently, at least enough to keep the water from his lungs. He's showing no signs of succumbing to shock from his wounds, which displays an impressive will to live for a boy that jumped off a cliff.
"Best put him out of his misery now then." The Zetsu says reluctantly.
The dark man doesn't move.
After a long moment of stillness, the Zetsu narrows his eyes in confusion. "Little Brother?"
The man is suddenly in motion, pulling a kunai out of thin air to cut the black fabric of the boy's shirt away from his mess of a shoulder. "Get me my creeper seedlings." He demands, bundling the fabric of the shirt up and tossing it in the river. "Now."
The spiral Zetsu responds to the order without hesitation or thought, unfurling his hand and pulling a sealing scroll from the hollow cavity of his arm. He unrolls it as he refurls his hand into a solid appendage again, forming a concentration sign over the seal within. A puff of smoke and a small seed appears in the center of the seal, a teardrop shaped seedling sporting half a dozen sprouts of thin vermillion vines.
The dark man pulls the wooden splinters from the boy's wound with a soft tug of jutsu, the shards following his will easily as they work their way out of tissue to get to him.
The Zetsu scoops up the tangled cluster of vines and holds his palm out to his leader obediently. He takes the mass by the seed with two fingers, and even that amount of contact makes the vines start to writhe with life, seeking to grow and twine their way around him even at this slight touch.
"Shhhh." The man whispers, calming the seedling with a comforting pulse of chakra. The vines still, but continue to grow and curl around his fingers. He presses the seedling into the bloody mess of the boy's shoulder and channels his chakra into a more focused pattern as he directs the seed to grow. Mokuton, for him, has never required a hand seal.
The sprout gets to work, ready and eager to obey, vines seeking out major nerves and arteries, stitching some closed and healing over others, quickly moving to spread like a thick layer of skin over the boy's wound, covering damage it can't heal to prevent infection.
"Are you sure this is wise, brother mine?" The white Zetsu asks, eyeing the boy with trepidation as his eyes flutter. "A blinded Uchiha is still an Uchiha. If Yami finds out…"
"He will not. Enough have died tonight. If he was strong enough to make it through all this alive, he deserves to stay that way."
The Zetsu nods in deference. "If you say so."
The dark man casts as suspicious glance at his lieutenant. "If you find fault with my decision, Guruguru, say so."
"It is not your decision I find fault with, only its implications towards your safety."
The man scoffs. "I can take care of myself."
"That was never in doubt." The Zetsu defends, but sensing his commander's irritation at being challenged on this matter, he bows to dismiss himself. "I'll go make sure Shiro isn't getting in over his head."
"You do that."
In an instant the Zetsu is gone, leaving the man alone with the prone form of the young Uchiha. The dark man sighs to himself, his mind whirring through possibility and probability, necessary precautions for an unnecessary choice, a choice he'll make regardless.
The boy's breath is coming in hitching, sobbing gasps now, and the man knows that unconsciousness for him is a relief– the pain of losing an entire limb is like no other pain. To lose a whole part of yourself that will never be yours again.
He leans forward and scoops the boy up with one arm, careful of his missing limb, tucking the boy's head into his shoulder to secure him against his side. Thunder rumbles distantly overhead, an omen of rain to come.
Fitting, for all the blood that needs washing away.
The man walks up the bank, keeping his strides smooth and steady as not to jostle the injured boy in his arms, and begins to body flicker, leaping into the trees Fire Country is so famous for, movements just as rhythmic and steady to avoid aggravating the still vulnerable injury. Just because the boy hasn't gone into shock yet doesn't mean he won't , and shock can be just as deadly as any fatal wound. Most adult ninja are strong enough of mind that such dangers are negated, but this boy, whatever rank he may be, can't be older than fifteen.
He wakes just as soft rain begins to filter through the canopy, blinking sightless eyes and gripping the fabric over the stranger's arm with surprising force as he comes to. The dark man senses the boy's brief moment of panic, a spare half second of full bodied tenseness in preparation for fight or flight. But then shinobi conditioning kicks in, response over reaction, and the boy calms noticeably, taking in his surroundings through what senses he has, noticing the distinct lack of ill intent resonating from the stranger. The man's hold is supportive, not restrictive– the boy could break free if he so chose.
"Where am I?" The boy mutters, his voice hoarse around the pain. "Why can't I see?"
"You are in the wilderness of fire country." The man responds evenly. "You cannot see because you do not have eyes."
The boy shifts around, and the stranger has to adjust his hold as not to drop him. The teenager isn't exactly small, even if he doesn't seem to have finished going through adolescence just yet. He's lanky and unwieldy, even one limb short.
The boy's breath starts to come faster as he seems to realize that his eyes aren't the only thing he's missing, and the dark man almost loses his grip on him when he lunges with his one working hand to grip the empty curve of his shoulder.
"Easy…" The man growls. "Or I will drop you. And it's a long way down."
"It's gone… what… what happened to me?"
"What do you remember?"
The boy pauses, taking deep shaking breaths against the pain and gripping the stanger's shirt hard to steady himself. At least a Tokujo then, the dark man thinks, if not a higher rank than that. It takes a great deal of fortitude to manage pain so severe.
"Falling." He decides. "I remember falling. Then pain, and then water…"
"Anything before that?"
The boy shakes his head, gripping harder. "Just grey. There might have been a voice, just before I fell… but nothing else."
The stranger nods to himself. He had expected as much; the sharingan are deeply linked to the memory centers of the brain. The kid is lucky the only thing he seems to have lost is his past.
For a long while neither of them speaks, the only sounds the pater of the rain on the leaves in the canopy and the rush of air as the dark man leaps from tree to tree. Then the boy speaks abruptly.
"You saved me." It's not a question.
"I found you." The man corrects.
"Liar." The boy shoots back.
The man snorts. "Look, twerp. The only reason you're here is because you possess, or rather possessed, a kekkei genkai that could cause trouble for me in the wrong hands."
"I heard you talking with that man on the riverbank. He wanted you to kill me. You didn't."
The dark man grits his teeth. "Don't read too much into it."
It's the boy's turn to snort. There's another pause before the boy asks; "Where are we going?"
"Lightning country."
"Why?"
"You need medical attention I can't give you, and I have things to do that don't involve babysitting"
"You're going to pass me off to someone else?"
"Yes." The man says immediately, unrepentant. "You're a target on my back as you are. Besides, the Creeper Patch on your shoulder is a temporary fix, you'll need a long period of healing, which you won't find under my watch."
The boy doesn't talk for a long while after that.
Instead he waits, and assesses what he can.
The arm that holds him fast to the man's side is an uncommonly strong one. He's not sure how he knows that when he can't so much as remember his own name, but he trusts his senses where he can't trust his memory, and they tell him without a doubt this man is stronger than most. He holds him in place as if it's easy, as if he weighs nothing at all.
The skin of he man's arm is also odd in texture, too hard to be true flesh, with strange shallow striations that curve up from his elbow towards his shoulder. It reminds him, oddly enough, of scar tissue.
A burn maybe?
But that doesn't feel quite right; the lines are too perfect and the texture too consistent– the man's voice interrupts his thoughts.
"We are crossing out of Fire Territory. Quick word of advice, keep your mouth closed. Unless of course you'd like to bite your tongue in half."
Before he can conjure a response to the man's odd statement there's a whirling sound and the entire world shifts around him, gravity pulling apart and twisting away beneath him, leaving his stomach in knots as his equilibrium tumbles off kilter and leaves him breathless. The entire process only lasts a few seconds, and when it's over the air feels different on his skin, dry and warm but for the steady wind that raises goosebumps across the damp skin of his arms.
That was Jikukan Jutsu . He thinks, more than a little dazed, and not necessarily from the jump through space-time.
The man hadn't even made so much as a handsign.
The blood loss must be getting to my head . He decides. There's no way…
But the blood loss has apparently gone to more than his head, since his body seems unable and unwilling to expend the energy needed to truly right his equilibrium again, and he finds his senses growing dim. The last thing he's aware of is the arm around him tucking tighter, and the the chest against his dipping with a put-upon sigh.
Shizune's mood is understandably dour as she steps outside her room at the inn and slides the shoji door closed behind her, leaving master Tsunade snoring on her fuuton, a now empty shochu flask still gripped stubbornly between her fingers.
200,000 Ryo.
Two. Hundred. Thousand . Ryo.
They've been here a day .
Tonton looks up at her from her place cradled in Shizune's arms and oinks forlornly.
Shizune sighs. "I know. You'd think I'd stop being surprised at this point." She puts her nin pig down in the hallways softly, careful of the sound of her hooves on the hard floor in relation to late hour. Once righted Tonton's hooves make no noise at all, even when she stomps a little and turns her head down the hallway pointedly.
"Of course." Shizune says easily. "Go find yourself some of those truffles these woods are so famous for. I need some air anyway."
Tonton scampers off and Shizune takes a moment to compose herself, taking a deep breath and running a hand through her short dark hair. She makes her way down the hall opposite the way Tonton ran off, running her hands through the hidden pockets in her sleeves. By the time she makes it out to the small garden adjacent to their room she's found what she's looking for, an innocuous looking silver case that could easily be mistaken for a pill box. She opens it as she leans against the wall, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it with a quick hand sign to light the air above her thumb ablaze.
She takes a deep drag and lets the nicotine settle her frazzled nerves and douse the frustration that's been building in her all evening.
A handful of minutes later, a rustle not far from her almost makes her jump out of her skin. Her eyes lock unerringly on the pool of shadow beneath the cherry tree in front of her, and her hands go immediately to the wired shuriken in her sleeve, the half smoked cigarette dropping to smolder at her feet.
"What do you want?" She demands. Knowing the pulse of chakra when she feels it, though it's not of a texture or consistency she's ever felt before. It's dark a fluid like a river at midnight, but there's a sort of static she can't fully interpret, like the taste of ozone on the air before a thunderstorm, like a natural disaster on a leash.
The man that materializes out of the dark is tall and lean, his face covered by the coil of a dark traveling scarf and the drape of a cowl over his head. He's holding a bundle against his side with his right arm, and the one eye she can see is a dark and burnished ebony.
"Your assistance, madam Shizune."