Kanzu threw down another Sound-nin, spinning around and sending him into the cement wall behind them. Rikou looked around from where she sat on the ground, looking around at the large number of Anbu dashing through the arena. Her muscles didn't seem to want to work, so she simply sat motionless with her team mates.
"You three, you are elite gennin, I want you to stay together and help deal with the Sound and Sand! Go!"
Ken and Kirema nodded, but Rikou was still frozen. She covered her mouth, her head spinning, and Ken moved to her side.
"What's wrong?" he hissed. She swallowed and closed her eyes, feeling sick.
"...I'm going to have an attack..."
"What!? Now!?"
"We have to find that doctor!"
Ken paused for a moment as Rikou struggled for breath, she had had too much sun.
"We don't have enough time... The doctor could be anywhere... It would take us hours to find her. I'll just have to do it myself."
"What?" hissed Kirema, his eyes wide. "But you were only taght the basic stuff! You don't fully know how to deal with an attack!"
Ken paused again, his eyes darting around as he tried to think up another plan. "There's no other choice..."
Rikou began coughing violently, her shoulders shaking as she struggled to breathe between coughs. She clutched the sides of her head, closing her eyes and trying to relax, but it was useless when she remembered she hadn't taken her pills for over a week.
"Rikou!" She managed to lift her head to meet Ken's eyes.
"...Yeah?"
"I'm going to try to stop it, okay?"
She nodded, coughing again, and he reached up, removing her trenchcoat as another kunai whizzed past them. Her arms felt heavy as he slipped it off completely. His face was serious as he remembered the steps, concentrating.
"Umm... I don't have the pills or the anesthetic, so it's be painful, but I can still do it..."
Rikou squeezed her eyes shut tightly, clutching her head again as another bout of coughing shook her thin frame cruelly. Her heart and lungs had slowed dramatically, and she broke out in a cold sweat, her muscled aching from lack of oxygen.
Ken swore quietly under his breath as he reached up a hand, placing it on the dark red tatoo on her shoulder. She gasped in pain as the scars on her body began to burn black, spreading over her body, searing across her body. A series of circles appeared on her back, and Ken brought green chakra to his other hand, placing it over that and running his own chakra through her body, aroung her lungs and heart, speeding them back up to normal speed.
Ken's forehead beaded with sweat, his silvery hair hanging in his face as he finished the treatment, dropping his hands and sighing. Rikou moaned softly, clutching her head and coughing a few times. When she raised her head, Ken gasped to see a trickle of blood leaking from the corner of her mouth.
"Rikou! What's happened? Everything should be fine!"
Rikou wiped awaay the blood, coughing again. Her lungs and heart were back to normal, but the pain was still present.
"...I forgot to take the pills..."
"What!? For how long!?"
"Over a week..."
"WHAT!?!?" Ken began cursing loudly, running a hand through his hair as he frantically thought of what to do.
"Your brother had the same pills, right? We have to get to his house!"
Kirema looked around at the fighting, scratching the back of his head. "And how do we do that?"
"Damnit... Just run."
Ken slipped Rikou's arms around his neck, grabbing her legs and lifting her off the ground. Kirema stood as well, grabbing her kamas as he followed Ken along the side of the arena, skirting the edge carefully to avoid being seen. They came across a hole that went straight through the cement wall, and Ken jumped into the forest below, followed by Kirema.
"Do you remember where his house was? I've only been there once."
Ken nodded, leading the way to Hayate's apartment quickly, staying in the shadows and pausing every once and awhile to make sure they weren't being followed. Rikou shifted slightly, squeezing her eyes shut as tight as she could and biting her lip to give her some other pain to focus on, but it didn't help.
Ken paused against a wall, gazing out into the street as nine shadows dashed past them before dashing out towards the apartment building, pushing past the door and up the stairs two at a time up to the second floor.
"Rikou... Which door?"
Rikou shifted slightly, her head throbbing as she tried to remember. "Ugh... 206... The keys under the mat, I think..."
Ken dashed down the hall, stopping at the door as Kirema pulled a key from under the small mat, fiddling with the lock for a second before pushing the door open. Ken rushed in and placed her on her brother's bed, before dashing off to look for any of the pills.
Kirema went into the small kitchen, grabbing a glass and filling it with water, bringing it over to Rikou before joining Ken in his hunt. A moment later, they both returned with a number of containers full of pills.
"Geez, how much medicine did your brother take? This is unhealthy," said Kirema, picking up a bottle and examining it.
"Which one is it, then?"
Rikou opened her eyes, looking at the bottles with blurred vision. There was an explosion nearby that rattled the windows. She reached out a hand and indicated a bottle which Ken then opened, reading the instructions quickly before shaking out three pills.
Rikou placed them in her mouth all at once, drinking down the water quickly before falling back onto the bed and letting the cool feeling wash over her, numbing her body, cooling her mind, soothing her skin. She let out a sigh, placing her hands over her face and taking a few deep breaths.
She sat in the silence for a moment before sitting up and dropping her hands away from her face.
"We should head back out now, Kanzu-sensei told us to help in the battle," said Kirema.
"I don't want to fight anymore," she said quietly.
"But Kanzu-sensei ordered us to," argued Kirema, turning to her.
"... I just... Everything's falling apart."
Ken shifted slightly, glancing at Kirema for a moment. "What are you talking about? The Leaf's gonna win this, we have many talented shinobi on our side."
Rikou shook her head. "It's not just that... First Dad, then my brother, then the Akatsuki appear again, then I have to fight Ken in the exam, then Kankuro... the Sand betray Konoha, and now a war... Everything is falling apart... I can't take it anymore, I give up."
"...Rikou, you can't disobey our sensei, he gave us an order."
Rikou shifted, sliding her feet off the bed and placing them on the floor. She brushed past the two gennin, moving towards the closet.
"I'm not disobeying him... I'm going after the Sand gennin."
"What!?"
She glanced at them for a second, before opening the closet and disappearing for a moment. She rummaged around through her brother's clothes, jounin vests, Anbu outfits, looking for one of his older ones and pulling it out, an Anbu uniform, one of his first. He had become an Anbu at an extremely young age, at fourteen, so the uniform would fit her perfectly.
When she emerged from the closet, Ken and Kirema were still staring at her. She brushed past them, moving into the bathroom and stripping off her dirtied clothes along with her sword, and starting to get into the uniform, strapping up the shirt and pulling on the tight, black pants. She pulled the long, black glove up past her elbows and strapping the white arm guards overtop. She removed her Leaf headband, gazing at it for a moment before hanging it up on a rack of towels.
She re-strapped the sword around her body, glancing in the mirror and brushing her hair from her face before stepping out of the bathroom, back to Ken and Kirema. She brushed silently past them again, moving back into the closet and pulling an Anbu mask and a brown cloak from the back wall. The mask was a racoon mask, decorated with blue lines that curved gently around the eyes. He had many masks, one for each year he had been in the Anbu, which was nine years, and he also had a uniform for everytime he grew out of his old ones, which was often.
When she stepped out of the closet again, she finally met Ken and Kirema's eyes. Ken's mouth was open slightly as he stared in silence at her.
"...What are you doing?"
"Going after them."
"What's with the uniform?"
Rikou paused for a moment, to say she was wearing it for her brother sounded lame, so she made up another excuse. "This way, they won't know which Village I'm from, it provides better camouflage, and it's easier to move around in."
"What!? You're leaving now?"
She paused again. "No idiot, I'll wait until the war's over," she said sarcastically.
"What!? Then I'm going with you, Kanzu-sensei told us to stay together, right Ken?"
"Huh? Oh, right. I'm going too."
Rikou sighed, throwing the cloak and mask on the bed before heading back into the closet and pulling out two other uniforms, slightly larger than hers. She threw them out at the two gennin before moving to the back and pulling a grey and a brown cloak from the wall along with bird and weasel masks.
She threw them roughly at the two gennin, where they moved into the bathroom to get changed as well. When they closed the door, she looked back into the closet. Something had caught her eye. She reached out and picked up an old book from the ground, sitting back on the bed and opening it.
Gekkou History...? She read the title again before glancing down at the writing below it, glancing at one of the pictures and gasping. It was an exact replica of herself. She turned the page, another picture of a girl around her age with the exact same look as her. Flipping through the book, she saw a total of twelve girls, all of which looked exactly like her, the only difference being their clothing and hair. They all had the same shocking green eyes, at least in the colour picures, and the same, morose look on their faces.
"What...?"
She flipped back through, reading the names and ages, Gekkou Midori, 14, Gekkou Kaijin, 11, Gekkou Yuri, 13, Gekkou Atari, 13, Gekkou Shikon, 12... She reached the last page to find her own name, Gekkou Rikou, along with a picture of her and a biography written in her father's writing. She flipped past it and read further.
The curse...? She read down the page, flipping it over and reading the article to the end. Puzzled, she re-read it again, still not understanding.
'The first born child of the Gekkou clan. Gekkou Midori, was cursed at the age of five by the Key Keeper, Yami Kagi, an 'S'-class missing-nin from the Hidden Cloud. Kagi bribed her with three wishes, which he had promised to fufil if she gave stole two things for him, a legendary sword from the Hokage and a key. Once she aquired these items, he betrayed her, placing a curse upon her that promised an early death. The curse came in the form of a deadly disease, causing great pain before death.
'However, Gekkou Midori managed to surpass her expected lifespan, passing the name to the next generation, but dying while giving birth. She had twins, a boy and a girl, each cursed with the same sickness as she, although the boy's was in a different form. The girl, however, named Gekkou Kaijin, was cursed with the same disease as her mother. This curse has been passed through the generations, at least one female cursed with the same disease at any givin time.
'The cursed children had a life expectancy of eighteen years, although it wan not uncommon for them to live past twenty. Traits that they all shared were their striking green eyes, raven black hair, low tolerance for sunlight and a curse seal on their right shoulder...'
Curse seal? I thought it was a tatoo...
'One of the cursed children managed to steal three keys from Kagi before she died, hiding them away and angering the Keeper. He promised to give back their normal lives if they returned the keys, but not trusting him, the Gekkou clan retained them. To show them he wasn't lying again, he granted the current cursed child, Gekkou Atari, with two more traits. The first was a summoning scroll for the crow demon, Kuro, and the other was a hidden store of chakra that could be called up in dire circumstances.
'The Gekkou clan was not convinced, so they remained the keepers of the three keys. These new traits continued to be passed down through the cursed children. The only way to release the curse is to kill the Keeper, but to this day that has been impossible as he has fallen back into hiding. One of the items that was first stolen, the legendary sword, was stolen back from Kagi by Gekkou Shikon at the age of fifteen and returned to the Gekkou clan, although they never returned it to the Hokage.'
Rikou turned the page in confusion, but it was ripped up. She flipped to the next pages, but they were all blank. She scanned the article again, not understanding completely, but getting the main idea.
The door to the bathroom suddenly opened, and she jumped at the sudden noise, closing the book. She herd a slight jingling and looked to the ground where three keys had fallen from the pages of the book, picking them up and examining them.
These must be...
"What's that?" asked Ken, stepping out in uniform.
"...It's nothing."
She shoved the keys into her weapons pouch and replaced the book in the closet. She turned to the other two, lifting her cloak and her racoon mask and attatching it around her head. She pulled the dark brown cloak over her body, pulling over the hood. She turned to Ken and Kirema, each wearing their own cloaks and masks now.
"Who's gonna lead?" asked Kirema, glancing at Rikou. She was silent, unsure of the answer.
"Rikou should, she knows the Sand better than us."
"What? But-"
"Face it Rikou, you're the best at tactics," said Ken. Rikou sighed in exasperation.
"Fine, let's go... actually..."
She pulled off her cloak and removed the ninja-to, moving over to the wall of swords and gazing up at them through the mask. It must be the katana, she thought, reaching up and removing the sword from the wall. She strapped it across her back before replacing her cloak and heading out the door, dashing outside and jumping onto the roof.
The three stood, the wind blowing their cloaks as Rikou turned slightly, getting her bearings. To the east, three giant snakes had their fanged heads raised, attacking the gate. She turned towards the forest.
"Let's go," she said quietly, vanishing as she jumped towards the trees.