Author's Note: Finally. We're coming to where everything changes.
Citations: Completely Original.
Chapter's Song: "All Around Me" by Flyleaf
Chapter 25
Die On The Vine
Benjiro rushed into his home, going upstairs to look into Akina's room, seeing Akanah filing her nails. "Is Mom here?" Benjiro asked as he came in.
Akanah picked her head up. "No, you heard her, she had a mission."
"Have you seen Akina?" He furrowed his brows.
"Not since our match." Akanah tilted her head. "Why?"
"She lied to me about going off with Itachi… I want to find her."
"I'll help you…" She stood up, dropping her nail file.
"No." Benjiro sternly ordered. "You stay here just in case she shows up."
"Oh… Okay…" Akanah sat back down. "Do you think Mom would hurt her?"
"Where have you been the last four years?" Benjiro turned. "If Mom finds out that…"
"Finds out that…?" She asked, worried.
"I gotta go, Onee-san…" Benjiro turned and ran out.
"I'm… Left out. I'm… Useless." A dark shadow fell on Akanah. "I disappointed Mom, but if I won, she'd just want me to take leadership of the clan… I hate what she expects of me… So… What do I do?"
Akina was just approaching Iva, the sun now fully set and everyone gone. "Took you long enough!"
"Something's are worth waiting for… Such as death." Akina put knives in between her fingers.
Iva snarled a chuckle, keening her evil stare. "Is that a threat?"
"No… It's a warning. This all can be avoided if you just stop." Akina pleaded.
"I won't… I'm ridding myself of you and washing my hands. My little brother's only descendent."
"Your only niece…" Akina corrected.
Iva took a battle stance even though her eyes were sad, Akina waiting for her first move. Several tense seconds would pass. "Rose Style: Twine! Rose Style: Blue!" Iva shouted out when she sent winding and twisting vines after Akina.
Akina ran away up the wall, dodging blue rose petals from touching her. She turned and faced the blue vines chasing her up the wall. "Rose Style: Green!" The vines hit said green chakra shield— Iva's vines splintering and fraying.
Iva chuckled her cynical laugh once more. "You love that Uchiha prince… That's why you want unity?"
"…I hate prejudice. I heard bullies in The Academy picking on Itachi and Izumi for being from the Uchiha, that they released and controlled the Nine Tails."
"And you don't believe that? It's a valid theory."
"We shouldn't jump to irrational conclusions that only breed hate!"
"It's not irrational… You'll get burned by that Uchiha prince." Blue roses then intensified at Iva holding her hand out stiff, Akina being hit by a few blue rose petals, she stood fatigued.
"He's milllleee besss frieeend…" Akina's speech slurred from the Blue Roses taking effect.
"What's that? Please, listen to me, my daughter…" Iva raised out her hands in a motherly gesture. All Akina could see was her abusive Aunt, the one that had hit her, and played the antagonist the last few years.
Akina's patience was slipping with this woman, she tried to retain her calm nature, she couldn't yell at Iva if she wanted to, so she bit her thumb and slammed her hand to the ground! A flytrap then grew from Iva's feet, biting her leg. "Don't ever call her your daughter!" The feminine voice of the flytrap growled.
"Ah!" Iva shouted, stomping the flytrap off with her other foot. It withered back into the ground. Two flytraps then came shooting out of the ground at lighting speed, biting Iva's arms and pinning her to the wall— BAM-CRICK! Iva was shot to the wall like a cannon ball, forcing her to the now blood coated wall.
Akina jumped down off the wall to stand in the arena. "My mother is Shijimi Ruri. You don't even know how to mother your own children. So don't grace yourself with the title of motherhood or the title of the head of the clan… You're unworthy of both." Akina would sternly state in her dignified way, believing it was her victory.
"How… You neutralized the drugs effects." Iva assessed, and then laughed once more, even when blood was filling up in her mouth and lungs. "I'm unworthy? You're just a mistake! Your slut mother lost her home because she got pregnant with you… Your father didn't even want you, none of us did, and we still don't!"
Akina clutched her fist, forcing herself not to tremble when her knuckles became pale. "It's a lie!" The young girl would murmur, lowering her green gaze to the same color grass she now stood upon. Akina doing a series of hand signs, "Ninja Art: Poison Fog!" She pursed her lips and blew out a purple poisonous fog.
Iva leaned against the wall across the arena from Akina, Iva couldn't see a thing as she coughed and hacked up her blood, then breathing in the poison, she couldn't move, but she wasn't done, even though she was pinned at the wrists, she placed her fingers together to focus her chakra. "Rose Style: Petal Paper Bombs!"
Akina picked her head up, being a deer in headlights to see petals directly coming towards her out of the purple fog— "Uh-oh…" KA-BOOM!
Itachi and Shisui had splinted up in their search of the training grounds. Itachi stood on top of the gazebo's rooftop, looking over the water. "She's not here either—" KA-BOOM!
He looked in the direction of the fiery blast. "A paper bomb?" He distinguished by the sound. The boom came from the arena and made Itachi feel like an idiot for ignoring what he had realized long ago.
Her vision was blurring, but shock came to Iva's eyes when the dusty smoke cleared. "…It couldn't be?"
Akina stepped out of a huge flytrap that protected her from the bombs blast. Black Rose petals floating in the air around the flytrap, Akina's hands controlled them to stay steady, Ibara wrapped to Akina's right leg, hissing in his statements, "It's ironic, Iva-sama! Amarante wanted a Senju, and Chiyome wanted her to marry into the Uchiha… And now the current Black Rose wants an Uchiha, as well."
Iva was dumfounded— She couldn't stop her trembling. "…Black Rose? And Venus flytraps… S-she's…"
Akina looked to the bloodthirsty grin at her feet, coiling around her calf and higher to her thigh. "Kill her."
"No…" Akina shook. "She's paralyzed, I've won."
"Listen to me!" Ibara hissed. "Give me the order!"
"No!" Akina barked, sweeping her hands down to her side for black roses to disappear. Clansmen then surrounded her wearing white spandex masks covering their faces.
Iva gave a small evil chuckle, "You're done. I'm victorious."
Akina furrowed her brows. "You hit that wall a little too hard, didn't you? Call off these men. You've lost this battle."
Iva then mewed, smirking, "But I've won the war. Seize The Black Rose!"
"W-What?!" The masked leader burst, why would he seize his princess? A black rose? The two ninja that stood beside him then took hold of Akina's arms.
"Unhand me." Akina lifted her legs off the ground and swung them back down into the men's shins, for them to instantly release her. Akina placed knives in her grasp, the other seven ninja surrounding her.
"She's used two Forbidden Jutsu… Black Roses and Flytraps! Purify her!" Iva order, shooing her hand as she hacked blood.
The leader of these ninja contended, "B-but, she could lose her life in that sealing ritual."
Iva walked away into the shadows with her little remaining strength, strongly mewing, "…That's a risk we're willing to take!"
The man couldn't argue. "Yes, Iva-sama."
"I showed you mercy!" Akina yelled at Iva. Akina then snarled to the Mochizuki man behind the mask that only revealed his onyx eyes.
"…F-Forgive me, Akina-hime." He then did a hand sign. POOF.
Akina was lost in the smoke as she felt herself go in a trance. She broke from it when she realized they teleported her to another place. "Where am I?" Akina asked sternly to stand in a gloomy leaky room, filled with mainly pipes and cement walls.
"Silence!" One of the ninja ordered, the co-captain Akina presumed. To then have the man that revealed his onyx eyes explain to his princess in a hidden tremble, "Mochizuki underground. You've been here before, but maybe not this exact room."
Ibara stayed planted in the middle of the arena, watching when they took Akina away. "This is bad." He then turned his senses to Itachi's arrival into the arena— The Uchiha walking over, to look down upon the flytrap. "Uchiha Itachi…?"
"Yes…" Itachi answered, recalling Akina who had talked about flytraps.
"You do look like Izuna…"
"Where's Akina?" Itachi sternly asked.
"In danger… No time to explain." Ibara then wrapped onto Itachi's leg. Ready to tell him the way.
Itachi ran through the gates of the Mochizuki entrance, this being the place where he could find and save Akina. As they passed alleys of the clan, they passed Benjiro to him dodging Itachi's fast speed. "Whoa… Itachi, where are you going?!"
"Akina's in danger." Itachi calmly stated, keeping up his pace.
Benjiro's heart seemed to have stopped for a second, but then he also started following Itachi. "How do you know where she is?" Benjiro asked as he came to Itachi's side.
"That would be thanks to me." Ibara mewed, to have Benjiro look down upon the sound of the voice. Benjiro looking down to Ibara wrapped to Itachi's calf. "Ahhhh!" Benjiro shrieked, tripping over his own feet as he tumbled backwards in his shock.
Itachi ignored Benjiro's overreaction, also disregarding Ibara's whimper, "Always with the same reaction."
Benjiro caught back up, rubbing his head, having a swollen lump appear. "You shocked me, Ibara!" He also whimpered, as the flytrap would creep him out again by talking. But Benjiro listened to the wise flytrap, for what he said was crucial. "She's in the Mochizuki underground, they're going to seal chakra pathways."
The cousin's heart sunk once more, sadly sighing. "They know?"
Ibara seriously saddened his features. "They know."
Benjiro gritted his teeth in his utmost worry. "…I was hoping it would never happen to her."
Itachi glanced over at Akina's grieved cousin. Whatever she got herself into, it wasn't good. "Benjiro-san, go to the training ground and get Shisui. We'll need backup."
Akina stood off with the seven ninja, waiting for what they were going to do to her. Two ninja latched onto her arms, that she had knives hidden under her sleeve in her hand as she jabbed three of the razors into the man that seized her right arm— Him letting go immediately.
But to only have another man grab her arm and pin her to the wall, bending her arm violently backwards to get a small whimper from the girl. They cuffed her wrist with vines and then locked them in a shackle that was bolted to the cold cement wall.
Akina felt herself be overcome with fatigue, a headache pounding in her skull. "Those Black Roses… They used so much chakra and I didn't even attack."
Two other men started approaching her, one with a medical knife, the other with a white towel, making Akina become pissed that her own people would actually betray her.
At that moment when they came close enough, Akina swung her legs out— SMACK! Hitting hard right across both the men's bodies, to send them flying across the room. "Five down, four to— Gah—" Akina exclaimed. "AH-ow… uh!" Akina screamed in pain, the man that told her to be quiet earlier, snuck over somehow and jabbed the medical knife right into her leg. "Damn it. Huff-Huff…"
Akina's strength was fading, just listening to the man that stabbed her. "Stop it! We're here to do a job."
"Huff… You're going to 'purify' me." Akina recalled.
The man that showed his eyes stepped over with the white towel. "It means to close off your chakra pathways."
"And how are you going to do that?"
"…By opening your arm, pulling out a section of your pathways with my chakra, clamping and cutting off the pathway. Now let us begin." The other man held up the medical knife. "Five cuts, princess. Calves, arms, and chest."
Itachi had entered the Mochizuki underground— Benjiro and Shisui catching up to run beside him.
"It smells like this place connects to the sewer system." Shisui commented. The three boys suddenly stopped, a fork in the road of two tunnels before them.
"Which way now?" Itachi asked as he looked down to his leg that Ibara was still wrapped to.
"I don't know… She's running out of chakra…" POOF! Ibara then disappeared.
"Crap!" Shisui exclaimed. And Benjiro ran down the path to the left.
"What if she's the other way?" Itachi argued.
"We have to hurry!" Benjiro yelled running away.
"Ben!" Shisui gritted his teeth and gestured Itachi to the right as he went after Benjiro. "Go! Let's split up to find her!"
The back of Akina's calves dripped in blood, drizzling out through the long thin burning scars. Akina couldn't think about the pain that still lingered at her calves. For the pain they just got done with at her left arm— It was still in its stinging agony from the bloody knife that then kept opening and opening up her paler than usual skin.
Akina prepared herself, for the man positioning the knife next to Akina's wrist and then— SLICE! "Ahhhhhh! Uh…! Oh hell!"
He ran the knife straight down the back of her forearm. The man placed his hand over the fresh cut which trickled out blood. His hand lit up in chakra, making one of Akina's chakra strings come out of the cut to the man's hand like a magnet. He then sliced off the now dead chakra string. Akina feeling like she was going to puke.
"Huff—Huff…" Akina breathed, sending daggers off her green eyes to the man with the onyx ones. Guilty onyx ones, always assuring her by telling her, "Just one more… Next to your heart."
Itachi ran at a fast pace through the tunnel, his foot sank slightly when he stepped on a certain tile— The walls opened up and started shooting kunai left and right! Itachi activating his Sharingan to dodge them all, about a hundred kunai lied on the floor around him. "I must be getting close. I'm coming, Akina… Just hold on."
And Itachi might hear another cry if he didn't hurry, possibly Akina's last cry. As the man pulled Akina's maroon yukata slack, revealing the middle of her chest, raising his knife straight to the middle to go and cut— "Come on already!" The angry man ordered.
Which only annoyed the man cutting. "I'll be cutting you, if you don't shut—" BAM! Went down the iron door as— SLICE! Went the knife imprecise when the man cut to the sound of the door swinging open!
"GASP-HACK…" Akina wheezed as she felt the knife go in too far, her blood spilling out in globs, while the man felt guilt come over his angered mind.
"I— I missed." The man turned his gaze to the door that had been kicked in— And there stood Uchiha Itachi with his crimson glower. "He's an Uchiha… Kill him!"