Summary
The unnatural, eerie ruins of Uzushio are not what our travelers expect. It just might be too much for one blond . . .
Up in the distance, mountains lead into plains, the plains lead to two lonely figures, one tall and ashen, the other blond. Glittering lines of water snake across the landscape, pouring out into the light clear waters of the sea. Pillars, trees, and buildings – both wood and stone – in loose disordered clusters dot the puzzle pieces cut by the yellow-orange shimmer of the Uzushio no kawa's tributaries as they bathed in the setting sun.
The city the pair are heading to is both ancient, and well defended – by nature in two directions, and by seals in the other two. Seals that have long since fallen into disuse. Azure eyes take in the towering orange-stone monoliths and the geometric patterns etched into them at varying depths. Those engravings were his legacy – fuinjutsu – one he knew so little about.
But that was not the only thing on his mind right now. The bigger question was why?
"Log . . . any idea why Uzushio?"
The ashen elder just keeps walking.
The blond mentally scoffs before turning his attention elsewhere. So this could have been home huh? Past the engraved pillars they were walking by, no wild flowing manes of grass. No twisting, worn, elder trees whose roots split the very earth. No rain-salted, half-decomposed wood from past remnants of humanity. No curtains and rugs of flowers and thorns. Mother nature had moved back, and the grass had grown, but it was still eerily quiet like the grass was just a courtesy.
They close in on the first dot, a house with a barn attached, a large silo to the side. The house is untouched, and so is the silo and surprisingly the barn too. Yet it all felt so hollow. Wrong. More disturbing than if it were rubble from the massacre. They keep pace past it.
The entire back half of the construction is gone, just not there, a perfectly clean cross-section. Dust release? For a split second, the blond's eyes become distant, his lips round slightly, and his throat constricts. Just for a second. There's a lot of that in his life of late. On the run, hidden, forced to stay away from the people he loves and cares for, this ancient embrace of ruins feels like a safe abode. The fact that it does makes the blond sadder than it should have.
"Keep your eyes open," Log glances at Boruto just to make sure he's listening, "Neko has sold information and captives in equal measure."
"Mh hmm. Yessir."
"Boruto . . ." Log sounds a little exasperated, but that might just be imagined.
Desperate not to lose his body, mind, and soul to Momoshiki, he had run away in search of answers. It was both the smartest and dumbest thing he had ever done. When he left, he was a potential threat living off his father's good graces. When he ran, he had lost those good graces. Now he had an international kill order on his head backed by the five great nations and nothing to prove his identity beyond his word.
Weariness and paranoia were part of his life now.
The lone sounds of sandals on mud give way to that of sandals on cobblestone. The lone barn gives way to a disordered series of wooden buildings in various states of disuse, not one of them rotting or overgrown, just like the bodies littering the ground. They don't smell, they aren't decayed. Crimson elixir is still pooled around their bodies, and flesh is still left torn open.
Log scrunches his nose. The carnage from the genocide almost sixty-five years ago is as fresh as it was yesterday. His pace has slowed down considerably as he tracks even the slightest of sounds. There aren't many animals around, they had come across one red fox, three snakes, and two hawks in the last hour of walking. The ruins should have been dead quiet, but instead, there are distorted whispers, the patter of feet, ruffling cloth, and whistling winds. They could just be the ruins, but he wasn't willing to find out.
The blond's eyes are singularly fixed on a few crimson locks splayed out behind a rock. Uzushio-Akai . . . That's where we meet. That's pretty clever though, naming regions after the bordering waterways.
A sharp inhalation.
How?
Boruto promptly blanches. His lunch comes back straight up. The acid mixed in burns his throat and then the bile follows. The contents of this meager lunch are now at his feet, mixed in with those beautiful locks. He dry heaves. Log notices, and just looks on. Boruto's face rolls into something between pity, disgust, and please-let-me-get-out-of-here.
How can one do something like this?
He had reached the owner of those breath-taking crimson locks, a tan woman, the right side of her ribs ripped open, the torn-off breast awkwardly angled such that her nipple points to her face. The inside of her chest cavity is visible.
How the hell does something like that even happen?
It is too much. Boruto runs past the body and onto the violently swaying bridge across whatever tributary was ahead of him. It is a simple construction, a rope bridge anchored by thin tall support rods. It is an odd choice of construction. The exaggerated sway from people's tendency to walk in step results in exaggerated sway on a rope bridge, like this one. In another time, these bridges probably would have been stabilized with seals.
"I need a minute." Boruto sits down in seiza. He takes a deep breath. He shuts his eyes. He exhales. He pays attention to the tension in his feet. He tries to get them to release. He imagines an interlocking steel weave parting. The tension remains. He tries harder. He tries to feel the shift in his muscle tension. Is the muscle tension imagined? Is it fake? It doesn't really matter. All that matters is that it gets him to devote his entire being to a single point of attention. He shifts to visualizing a sheet of clenched muscle relaxing. He feels the shift in his feet. The entirety of the front and below his ankle but not his heel. He tries the same again. No progress. He tries again. He has unconsciously started to sync his unclenching attempts to his breadth. The rest of the world has faded away. His heels unclench. He moves on toward his claves. He gets his left calf in the first go, and the right calf takes a few more attempts. His thighs. His pecs. His arms. His wrists and palms. His neck. His face. And how the second hardest part . . . His torso. He tries to get his lower rib muscles and stomach to relax. They don't. He tries again. The front right side does. He tries again, now completely in sync with his breathing. The entire front does. Finally, the hard part. His back. He tries a few times.
He quits.
His eyes open. The world seems alive with more gritty detail. He hears the air around him. The sounds seem more numerous and varied, clearer and distinct. He distinctly feels the movement as he gets back up, not exaggerated, not detached. He just experiences it and drinks it all in, his entire mind in place. The mental exercise has served its purpose.
With his mind centered completely on the present, he is now ready to face the horrors without dry heaving. Experiencing instead of thinking and analyzing. Ignorance is bliss.
He folds all his fingers inward except for his index and middle fingers. He then crosses both hands in a familiar 'plus' – "Kage bunshin no justsu," he whispers. From four busts of smoke, four clones run off in different directions.
Log sends a concerned glance towards the bond.
"Hmmm . . ." is the blond non-committal reply.
They continue walking, up past the nearest column of engraved stone, over the two bodies, around that one kid and his dog. All accompanied by whispers and whistling, distorted laughter, and phantom footsteps.
A rush of memories, the blond focuses on it.
A lake. Some sort of leaf nearby, something is scrawled on it? A woman standing on water. You call yourself Neko and wear a cat- mask huh? She had seen the clone and beckoned at it toward a broken door before it dispersed. Time to leave.
"Log, we're looking for a woman in a cat mask, correct?"
"Possibly."
"Found her, let's go."
"And what makes you think she's not just an Anbu operative?" Log trusts Boruto, but it didn't mean he wouldn't ask questions.
The blond does not grace that with an answer. They walk apace. If it was an Anbu agent, they were completely and utterly screwed. He was completely and utterly screwed.
Kudo, comment, and share!
- Feel free to write derivative works based on this fic. All I ask is that you mention that this fic was your inspiration and link back to it somewhere.
- Considering IRL commitments, you can expect an update every two weeks. You might get an update earlier or later but those will be super rare.
- I plan to complete this. If I'm going on hiatus, I'll let you know beforehand.
- I do not own any of the characters from either the Naruto/Boruto franchise (Kishimoto, Ikemoto). That should be pretty obvious, this is fanfiction after all.