Hi, this is a translation of my French fiction Sennin. I must warn you, my English is not exceptional, it is sure that hundreds of mistakes remain, so if you read a few days/weeks after I posted it, consider that there will still be some mistakes when you read it (probably some her/his for an object, some conjugation mistakes, and some expressions that don't mean anything in English but are correct in French. Thanks to my foreign language and my stupid brain.) that's why I would like to have a beta reader. If you are interested, please send me a private message, thanks.
I put you below the complete summary:
Everything was connected to that night on October tenth, the day the Third and Fourth Hokage died, twenty years earlier. They didn't know what really happened that night, since the stories differed from one point of view to another, but it was clear that the attack of the thousand-year-old demon had changed everything. The simultaneous disappearance of the two most important figures of the Hidden Leaf Village, Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Sandaime, and Minato Namikaze, the Yondaime, had thrown Konoha into anarchy and weakened the country's defenses, giving the power to a man who was far less forgiving than the bearers of the will of fire.
Everyone who heard the rumors about Kushina Uzumaki's pregnancy rightly thought that the child of the Fourth had perished with his parents. It was not the case. Hidden from the world, the heir of the Senju had survived, but vanished only a few days later without leaving any trace, abandoning to its sad fate the gangrenous Leaf. A single targeted attack by a giant fox was enough to weaken the greatest power on the peninsula and its allies, shattering the balance of the five great nations and extinguishing the supremacy they had previously represented.
Like a cycle that could not be stopped, the fourth Great War that followed lasted more than a decade and plunged the peninsula into suffering and chaos. The war was not the longest or the deadliest, but the way it ended made it the most memorable. Two thousand shinobis on the borders of the Land of Rain and Grass lost their lives in an instant, vaporized by a pulse several kilometers in diameter that no one knows the origin of to this day.
Three years after the end of the Fourth Great War and twenty years after the disappearance of the most powerful tailed beasts in human memory, the five great elemental nations, having not learned from their mistakes, are moving their pawns and plotting in the shadows. The fifth Great Ninja War is coming, and it will be the last.
Sennin, the tale of the utterly gutsy shinobi.
TLDR: If you decide to read this fanfiction, you should know that I took some liberties when I started it (still today, since I write it in order to improve myself, I try a lot of things, either in my style or in the plot. To give an example, chapter 3 and 4 are a continuous scene of 28k/word), but you'll find that out by yourself. It certainly differs from other stories you have read about the Naruto universe and its close to an original novel, although it is still very much rooted in the manga universe (that's what people tell me when they read it). The plot takes its time in its progress and the romances as well. To give another example the "prologue of the story" gathers the first four chapters, almost 60k/words. And I can only assume that this fan-fic will exceed a million words, so if you want to read it, know that I still have a few years of publication left.
Happy reading.
(Do not ask me the parings in review, please, that's the point of this fanfiction to play with, it's really complicated. But if you really want to know, feel free to send me a private message, then I'll tell you everything you wish for. Even what I haven't written yet.)
(I only answer reviews by private messages or quickly before the chapter if it's not possible otherwise (Guest). I don't want to inflate the words of the fic unnecessarily).
Tags : Drama / Psychology / Action/Adventure / Romance / Realistic / Alternate universe - Canon divergence / Humor / Angst and Hurt/Comfort / Graphic depictions of violence / Major character death / Mental instability / Moral lessons / Injustice / War / Past rape/Non-con / Adult content / Explicit language / Emotional/Psychological abuse / Alternate universe - Modern technology / Original character(s)
Chapter size : 12500 words.
The ninja of the Leaf
His eyes squinted over a grimace distorting his facial features, half hidden by his black raincoat, Takeshi focused his attention on the pouring rain before looking with an annoyed eye at the door behind him.
Embedded in the mountain and partially covered with roots and brambles continuing their slow ascent, this one particularly irritated him. It even made him want to get the hell out. Luckily, the drops of water pounding on his hood managed to make him remember that he could not leave his position under any circumstances.
With a bored look, he turned his attention back to the lush forest, usually full of life, but this time silenced by the thundering storm. A flash of lightning illuminated the immense pines and spruces that swarmed the horizon and, under the rumble of thunder, he could not hold back an umpteenth sigh.
"Talk about a position of great responsibility." He grumbled, angrily wiping his face with his soaked sleeve, which did nothing to calm his mood. "Waiting in the rain for nothing to happen."
It had only been a month since he started this brand-new job, or rather, this brand-new ordeal. A tiny month, yet he was getting so bored that he felt like a whole year had passed. At that moment he would have given anything to go play a game of cards with Judan and Tsuke instead of standing there doing nothing, planted like a lone tree in the mountains.
"Fortunately, Reimu and her advantageous arguments come to see me from time to time."
As soon as he whispered the woman's name, his temperamental impulses went away.
He simply could not feel anything but relief when he thought of her. He had only seen the complex manager twice, from a certain distance and with the sun spoiling his view, but it had been enough for him to fall in love with her, literally. He will finish his days with, he was convinced of it.
Having maintained his silence until now, Hidetoshi beside him, a cigarette in his mouth and about twenty years older than him, laughed slightly at his last tirade.
"Kids these days…" He scoffed as he inhaled the smoke, warming up in the best way he knew of. "Look at you, you're what… sixteen?" He speculated, raising a drenched and mocking hand in his direction.
Not allowing him the pleasure of spitting out the acerbic tone lodged in the embrasure of his lips, the bastard who was also his teammate continued.
"Come down-to-earth, my boy. You're just a weakling, a wimp. It is seen that it is a woman who likes men, the true ones." He asserted in a hilarious voice before spitting out, between two caricatured laughs, a scattered smoke. "If you want some good advice, try your luck in twenty… maybe even thirty kilos." He added by laughing this time frankly.
Hate took over every single one of his teenage thoughts and didn't give him a moment to think about his next words.
"Did you look at yourself before talking about weight, fatty?"
Following his reply Hidetoshi's hundred and ten kilos turned towards him and, judging by the expression of the man, Takeshi was sure he had touched a sensitive point.
"Be careful what you say, little s…"
A crackling sound, coming from the small white gadget lodged in their right ear, tore the opportunity of the forty-year-old to finish his insult and brought them brutally back to reality.
Frowning his eyebrows, Takeshi instinctively placed his right hand over his hood and watched, with a worried look, the expression of Hidetoshi on his left. Similar to his own, the grown man had reproduced the same movement to the exact millimeter.
Time seemed to stretch until the shrill sound got gently muffled by the rain that fell on Takeshi's raincoat, before fading away completely. Under the appeasement of his heartbeat, Takeshi took another breath of air, convinced that it was only an interference.
The light breeze stopped abruptly, and the cavernous voice came through his earpiece.
"He… is coming…"
On this half-moon evening, a shiver ran through his becalmed body. He knew, with a quick glance at the hardened steel door in his back and the simple tone of that saturated, moribund voice, that his boredom had come to an end.
"Why are you making that face?"
Locked in the wooded hear, his chocolate eyes watched the glare of the lightning crack the heavens. In a rush of courage and adrenaline, he managed to turn his fear towards Hidetoshi.
"Didn't you hear?" He stammered, hoping that it was the case, that the voice he heard of had been made up by his mind.
"Heard what?!" Barked the forty-year-old in a tone annoyed by his strange behavior. "Why do they always put me with crazy people?" He frowned a few seconds later.
Hidetoshi clearly could not imagine how much Takeshi wished his words were true that he was simply crazy, but deep down the teenager knew that this was anything but a figment of his imagination. He knew that he had indeed heard the last words of a man.
As he was about to explain to Hidetoshi the reason for his silence, a flicker of light in the back of this one, continuing to stare at him, caught his attention.
"What's… that?" He asked in a much more fearful voice than he would have liked to convey.
With a skeptical look on his face, wondering if this was another one of his ravings, Hidetoshi spit out the smoke he had just inhaled and threw his cigarette away. With a slow and uncertain movement, he then shifted his attention to the west, where his stunned chocolate eyes were orbiting.
Several kilometers away from their position, beyond the forest and the rain that blurred their vision, located between two steep mountains, a source of orange light, looking like a fire, was illuminating the horizon.
"That's the sixth outpost." Replied Hidetoshi, his jaw contracted as he placed the palm of his hand on the hilt of the blade hanging from his back. "What did you hear?! Answer!" He yelled in a stern tone as he drew his weapon, reproaching him for not having said something yet.
"It-it wasn't very c-clear… but it said that someone was coming," Hastened to answer Takeshi, overcome with panic.
A blank followed his explanation. A blank during which he wondered if the sharp blade of Hidetoshi was meant for whatever was causing the fire or for his inexperienced explanation.
With a serious look on his face, Hidetoshi hesitantly walked towards the largest of the conifers that surrounded them.
"That's all?"
This situation was simply meaningless, Takeshi was convinced. It was all just a big coincidence.
"That's all."
His uncle, just before he gave him this job, had made it very clear that he would be in no danger if he accepted it. In more than fifty years since this place had been founded, there had not been a single attack or attempt of infiltration. It was a veritable fortress hidden in the steep mountains of Yarabi, located northeast of Tsuchi, the land of the Earth. Only a madman or a suicidal person would venture into this area with the aim of assaulting it.
Another shiver took him by surprise.
Crazy people… this peninsula was full of them.
"I'm going to see what's going on."
The fear and apprehension of being alone turned his stomach upside down, but swallowing hardly, Takeshi did not show anything and just nodded. If that was the case, if they were really under attack, then there must certainly be some injured people, so his concern was secondary.
Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath to gather his courage and the last thing he saw was Hidetoshi jumping on one of the many branches of a massive fir tree.
He was a Shinobi and had to act like one. No matter what situation he was going to face, he would overcome it as he always had. As his father's education had taught him.
"Stay here and prevent anyone from ent…"
He abruptly reopened his chocolate eyes filled with incomprehension as the voice of the forty-year-old stopped abruptly. His fearful and adolescent expression inevitably met the grimace of his partner perched on the branch of the conifer. The irises of the man left their orbits and pulled by the weight of his body in balance on his perch, he fell backwards.
From the top of his sixteen years, Takeshi watched the free fall of the man at about ten meters from his legs nailed to the ground. What had just happened replayed in his mind, making him realize, after a fraction of a second to put everything in order, that he had seen nothing, felt nothing, perceived nothing. He did not know where the attack came from, nor even if there had been a real attack.
Once again, an unusual thought, with the sole purpose of not making him give in to panic, crept in between two of his panicked pansies.
Maybe it was all a fluke, maybe Hidetoshi had just slipped and was going to catch himself just before he hit the ground.
The thud of the body crashing heavily on the soaked ground stopped his thoughts, even the most horrible ones, leaving only the image of his little sister waiting for him to return to his home village. Letting him remember her sparkling smile and her jet-black eyes, letting him admire her beautiful innocent face and her brown hair. Reminding him of what he was protecting, the reason why he had joined the armed forces.
The adrenaline of this vision spread through every part of his body. With a hectic hand, he grabbed the handle of the blade behind his back and realized that he had no time to reassure himself or even think about the fact that, whatever had just happened, he was next in line.
As his thoughts, his breathing and bravery abruptly came to an end. Eyes wide open, he gazed at the lightning bolt that fell on the steep mountains. An indescribable strength, like a snake that would have waited for its prey to move, had just slithered over his right forearm and hindered his movements, preventing him from drawing his blade.
If he was not able to hear his heartbeat, he would have sworn that his organ had stopped along with his ability to analyze what had just happened.
No chakra fluctuation, no appearance, no air movement, no noise. Nothing.
Yet there it is, the dreadful strength that was crushing his bones. The latter who had managed to take down a Chūnin with disconcerting ease and had traveled the distance between them in a fraction of a second, without him feeling it, as if it had literally teleported.
Takeshi watched from the corner of his eye the figure that caused his inability to move, but didn't have time to realize the gravity of the situation. A blow in his abdomen tore away the last of his concerns, letting him spit the little air still in his lungs. The strength hung on his arm released him slowly and moved away from his body fallen against the ground.
Sitting down, accompanied by the weight of the chains that burned his wrists, he opened his eyelids marked with dark circles and glanced at the only door of the room in the same silence that he had maintained for the past several hours.
One of the guards posted in front of him opened it and gave way to a tall man, with incipient wrinkles and brown hair, wearing the traditional outfit of the ninjas of Iwa.
Sporting a stubble beard and an athletic build, the newcomer sat in the only vacant chair on the other side of the iron table, the only one facing him.
"You're a real enigma," He sighed as he realized that once again, he would be the only one talking. "No border crossing records, no identification papers, no signs of any kind to prove any affiliation with anything… and top it off, you remain immersed in this silence."
He listened to the Iwa ninja's monologue with a detached look, which caused an annoyed expression to appear on the face of this one.
"Since you don't seem to want to talk, let me explain." Pointed out the man with exasperation. "The next time I leave this room, it will be my last, and these people will make you bitterly regret not opening your mouth while you still can."
He let the doubt linger for a few seconds. Then, with a tired movement, returned his attention to the dried scarlet stains that decorated the floor, the ceiling and the wall, before observing from the corner of his eye the four painters who surrounded him.
Dressed in black and gray body armor, the four Anbu were examining his every move.
"Speak now, after it will be too late."
For the first time since his arrival and under the pressure of the man who had conducted his interrogation, he jingled the handcuffs that bound his wrists. Instantly, the four white masks put their gloved hands on the weapons they carried. With a slow movement, he grabbed the plastic cup on the table and took several sips before carefully putting it back where he had found it.
Just as everything seemed to indicate that he was finally going to speak, that they were finally going to hear the sound of his voice, the silence settled and did not go away. At least until the ninja of Iwa expressed his frustration.
"Very well, if that's what you want."
Under the creaking of his chair, the ninja of Iwa got up towards the door in an irritated step and struck it with strength. Someone opened it and in the following second closed it under the disappearance of the maroon clothes, leaving him to his four executioners.
"Son of…"
The voice filled with animosity stopped short, and the irritation that the Iwa shinobi had been expressing until then simply vanished.
"Reimu-sama? What are you doing here?"
Confronted with the sudden respectful tone that the man had just displayed, he placed his concentration on this unknown source behind the mirror before feeling spied on, as if this presence was watching him carefully from the other side.
"The whole building is talking about this case, it's hard not to be interested." Replied the honeyed and feminine voice after several seconds. "Is it true what everybody says?"
The attention that this Reimu was giving him faded away.
"From what I've heard, yes, it's all true."
He didn't need to focus on Reimu's emotions to know what she was thinking at this moment. He could have felt her skepticism from a mile away.
"Shuhan and Atoashi ended up with both shins broken without even seeing his movements." The man added, placing in a thud his forearm against the glass. "That bastard stood up to four Jōnins using only Taijutsu… it's beyond comprehension."
"How did they stop him?"
"He gave himself up."
The silence of the woman made the shinobi of Iwa understand that he could proceed.
"A squad assigned to guard the northern bay on the borders of Yakishio was passing by at the time he attacked Shuhan and his team. I imagine that when faced with a full squad, he quickly resigned himself."
Again, he felt Reimu staring at him, but this time it wasn't just curiosity, there was something else. A feeling that he detected very quickly: disbelief.
She was not the type to believe in this kind of coincidence.
"The squads sent north are almost entirely made up of newly promoted Chūnins, am I wrong?"
The man did not answer, and his silence only reflected the fact that he understood what Reimu was trying to say.
"Why did he surrender so easily to a score of Chūnins if a split of a second was all it took for him to take down a unit of experienced Jō…"
He stood up suddenly under the clink of the chains hanging at his wrists.
In a growing agitation, the four Anbu confined with him drew the katanas they carried from their scabbards and threatened him with them.
If he could not hear the two short breaths that animated the observation room, he could have sworn that no one was in there anymore.
"Sit down!"
Standing in front of the chair, perfectly still in the interrogation room, he turned his impassive expression towards the mirror and looked very clearly at the exact spot where he knew the female voice was. The sense of dread he felt on the other side of the mirror was so overwhelming that he heard her swallow uncomfortably.
"What the…"
His azure irises got lost in the contemplation of their own reflection while, closing them for a short moment under the screaming of the three men and one woman threatening him with their weapons, he found himself, when he reopened them, under a pouring rain, in the middle of one of his numerous reminiscences and a verdant forest.
The storm falling on his hood as the only source of surrounding noise, he observed with an impassive air the two inert bodies that were on the ground. One at the foot of a huge fir tree, eyes bulging and mouth wide open, and the other at his own, flat on his stomach, one hand tetanized on the handle of the weapon in his back.
He took a quick look at the blaze illuminating the horizon and the immense valleys of Mount Yariba, before moving towards the hardened steel door at his back. This one, which measured two meters and a hundred kilos, was embedded in a concrete wall sinking into the rock and the mountain above.
He grabbed the door handle and pulled on it as the steel creaked and twisted. The hinges on the other side simply jumped. The door emitted a final death rattle as part of the concrete wall ripped away from the mountain. The next second, the steel crashed heavily to the ground with a deafening din. As the dust settled, he looked down at the rusty staircase that was going down into the rock. Then he jumped over the chunks of concrete blocking the path and entered the underground bunker.
With another creaking sound, this time coming from the rusty steps he was descending, it did not take him more than three jumps and a similar number of seconds to reach the reason for his presence: a huge generator five meters high and ten wide.
Approaching the machine, he grabbed the explosive scroll from the bag attached to his right leg and infused his chakra into the paper. In a gray smoke, the paper ignited as he threw it towards the huge fans who instantly vacuumed it up. One breath later and under the light of the smoke detector on the control panel to his right, a derailment caused the generator's power to malfunction and the propellers to stop completely. From then on, the alarms sounded.
Backing up slowly at first because of the loss of energy from the fans from which black smoke was coming out, he finally turned around at a bewildering speed. If it had taken him three seconds to go down into the cavity, a fraction of that time was enough to get out. The volatile dust didn't even have time to transcribe his movements that he landed next to the two unconscious bodies and picked them up. Then and only then the rumbling reached him.
Contrary to the thunderous and ephemeral noise of the thunder, the rumbling did not stop and even increased in volume.
Stopping a hundred meters away, he turned his attention away from the two unconscious ninjas at his feet to observe the blinding light, to observe the cloud of gravel and smoke being ejected from inside the mountain.
The blast made his hair fly back and forth and left him to admire the fireball that devoured the mountainside, lighting up the sky for miles around. Inevitably and knowing what he had done, he watched the dozen other strategic sites scattered throughout the mountain range implode in turn and take their respective generators with them.
Under the incessant shaking of the ground, he watched the outposts, still intact and forming a circle around the penitentiary complex, fade away one after the other towards the main building in the center.
His task finished and in need of chakra, he closed his eyelids to join his creator.
He opened his eyelids again as the blades of the four Anbu whistled through the air of the room. His mind saturated with the memory of his clone, he had the reflex to send the iron table flying into the path of the first white mask before stooping down and dodging the offensive of the second. Crouching down, he used his hands and did a backward somersault in order to hit with his feet the chest of the last two.
"Aren't those chains supposed to seal off his chakra!?" Rose the muffled and feminine tone from the other side of the mirror.
The yellowed neon lights above his concentrated look went out and plunged the interrogation room into complete darkness. And from the panic he felt around him, he concluded that the same happened to the whole building.
A few sparks flew, illuminating what appeared to be a one-sided confrontation as the two people in the observation room watched in fear. A dead weight smashed into the mirror and cracked it in a sinister crunch, which only had the effect of increasing the tension even more.
"What the hell is this!?"
An earthquake bringing a dozen others, stifled Reimu's vigorous protests, shook the ground and the walls, and almost made her lose her balance.
Coming to her senses under the astonishing silence of the neighboring room, the head of the complex rushed in a common gesture with Mukushi towards the only exit, but stopped all movement and simply stopped breathing as soon as she turned around.
She then lowered her terrorized attention on the bluish glow that illuminated the figure in front of the entrance. Taking a spherical, rotating and dazzling form in the hand of the one she had been staring at for more than ten minutes without recognizing him, the technique that had traumatized an entire generation of the Earth nation materialized right in front of her.
A grinding of teeth escaped from Mukushi's mouth at her side as, accompanied by his almost imperceptible whisper, she stared at the ghost of Minato Namikaze.
"Impossible…"
Half sitting on the desk in the middle of the common room where about forty people were busy working on their computers, Tsuke was unable to hold back a laugh at the absurdity of the story he had just heard.
"You're kidding me, right?" He asked for the second time, unable to believe the far-fetched story.
"No, I'm telling you that this moron drowned in a manhole, he fell head first trying to catch what he dropped." Judan replied, sitting in front of the desk, hilarious.
"These immigrants will never cease to amaze me." Tsuke said, shaking his face to clear his mind of what he had just heard. "And where was he from this time? Wait, wait, let me guess… from the Fire?"
Signing a sheet of paper that he tucked away in a binder, Tsuke's childhood friend set the file down in a corner of the desk and brought his attention back to him before shrugging his shoulders.
"He had no papers on him, but from his personal effects he might have come from the Rivers or the Wind, we don't really know."
Just as Tsuke was about to reply, Motoichi, one of their colleagues, dressed identically to them in red and brown, came up and grabbed the freshly finished file. But instead of leaving as usual, the man leaned on one of the many low walls that separated the offices.
"Did you hear what happened to the unit forty-two this morning?" He whispered in a low tone, which inevitably caught their dispersed attention.
"Yeah." Uttered Tsuke with a chuckle, not bothering to lower his tone. "I guess Shuhan exaggerated again so he wouldn't get in trouble with the hierarchy." He added, jabbing his elbow into the shoulder of his partner still sitting in his chair, who joined him in his amused sneer.
"I don't think so." Says the newcomer, raising his voice just a little and looking serious, urging them to stop their antics. "I visited him at the Jinkou hospital this morning, it would be a miracle if he can walk again."
The scoffing suddenly faded away and were replaced by two dazed faces.
"That bastard is being interrogated by Mukushi right now. I guess, considering the circumstances and the lack of space, his execution will take place during the night." Motoichi said, pointing to the corridor behind them. "Well, that's not all but I have work to do, me."
Under the haggard look of his two colleagues, Motoichi resumed his walk between the offices before stopping only a few meters further, in the middle of the main aisle, when the electricity emitted its last rays to the astonishment of everyone.
The whole room began to glow and everyone looked at each other in shock. The pouring rain brought a deafening roar and all the frightened thoughts faded away. Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and quickly realized, by looking at the many windows on the north side, that what they had just heard was not due to the storm.
They looked with some panic the blast that went up in the air a few kilometers north of their position, blowing out the main generator. Standing still in the room, they exchanged several glances and whispers, both panicked and frightened, before a second and much more spectacular explosion from the same location lit up the north side of the Yariba steep mountains.
In an almost unreal silence, they watched in terror the immense ball of fire that devoured the side of the mountain. Sheltered from the storm under the foliage of the trees of the forest that surrounded the complex, thousands of birds soared into the sky before being struck one second later by an invisible force that instantly stunned them and make them fall back down.
In a rain of birds, the shock wave reached the double glazing of the building, which did not resist for a single second.
Protecting themselves as best as they could from the shards of glass that shot up in a violent storm inside the enclosure, dozens of panicked screams went up to the twentieth floor of the building, without anyone not on the first floor understanding the reason for the explosion.
Holding the folder firmly in his trembling right hand, Motoichi watched, from the corner of his eye, the shadowy figure who emerged from the corridor in front of him and stood under the glare of the blast.
With cherry red hair and ink black irises, she was dressed in a white blouse and black jeans. The same civilian outfit that he had ogled when she had passed in front of his office ten minutes earlier.
Despite the fact that he knew the woman for three years now, Motoichi moved his hand inside the satchel hanging on his left leg and, arming himself with the bladed weapon inside, swallowed painfully.
It was not only the horrified face of the thirty-year-old and the handcuffs hanging from her wrists behind her back that forced him to make this move. What was mainly responsible for his dangerous movement was the man behind her. The one who, maintaining the kunai under the throat of the person in charge of the complex, was about to execute an irrevocable move if ever someone decided to play the hero.
"What the hell?" Muttered Motoichi with difficulty.
"R-Reimu-sama!"
The twenty or so people present gulped and looked at their superior who, with her head slightly pulled back, sent a glance towards the two rooms in the corridor.
"Judan, Tsuke, go take care of them." She pleaded with a calm tone that betrayed deep anguish.
A grin of pain ripped through Reimu's features as his tormentor pulled roughly on his hair and pressed his weapon further against her throat.
The two men went around the room and passed as far away as possible from the situation before rushing to the interrogation rooms.
Reimu noticed the expressions of everyone present change from convinced to hesitant as they realized that by them, she meant Mukushi, but more importantly the four members of the special forces.
The deflagration at more than one kilometer finally resorbed and left only the light of the full moon as the only source of light, which sparingly illuminated the moribund atmosphere of the room.
What could they do?
Without Reimu's knowledge, which is why she almost fell over, her assailant pressed against her back and forced her forward between the desks. Making her pass in the main aisle less than a meter away from a man carrying a file cabinet, he made her turn around in order to continue their crossing backwards.
The braver ones began to move in their direction, ready to help her before they reached the outside, but stopped their futile attempt when she was dragged past the entrance. He stopped a few meters away and, surprised, she bumped into him with a terrified expression.
That's all it took for the kunai on his throat to tighten further.
In an instant, thousands of images and sensations crossed the mind of the young woman, scrolling at the speed of light, they reminded her of her entire life. From her first day at the Iwagakure academy to the kiss on her son's forehead yesterday.
She closed her eyelids, understanding that her time had come, and in a reflex that she knew was humiliating, stood on her tiptoes to delay the inevitable.
The two hands hung on the shirt of the man in his back, she felt him release his hair which fell silently on his shoulders and gently release the pressure on his throat, what allowed her to go down on the sole of her feet.
Only then did she reopen her eyes and turn her attention to the bars at their backs, the ones that obstructed the passage to a deplorable corridor, the antipodes of the room they were in.
"O-Open the door." She articulated with difficulty while throwing an accusing glance at the guard in charge of the regulation towards the lower levels, the finger posed on the button activating the system in its fortified shelter.
She didn't know why he was trying to go that way, or even why he wasn't trying to escape, but one thing was sure, if he walked down that hallway, he would never get out of that place alive, and if that was his wish, she could not refuse him.
Once again and in the space of a few seconds, he did something that surprised her and all the distraught looks that were watching the scene: he swung his hand that had released his hair in a movement as quick as it was imperceptible behind him and blew up the lock and the hinges of the bars. In a deafening noise, the iron structure bounced several times and ripped off the tiles and the concrete before deeply embedded itself in the wall at the corner.
The guard, his finger suspended above the button activating the opening of the door, swallowed with difficulty.
In order to follow the rhythm that he imposed on her, Reimu released the t-shirt and moved back as quickly as she could. In a last glance, she examined the alarmed and sorry looks of the first floor.
A long silence followed as well as an almost general cessation of movement as they disappeared down the hall. Several protests went up to the room as dozens of men and women who had witnessed the explosion came down from the upper floors, looking for answers.
"Go and see if there are any injured people on the scene, and warn the nearest units, he can't be alone, we're going to need reinforcements!" Shouted a voice as a call to reason, definitely bringing the room out of the lethargy it had been in.
If she had been asked this question twenty minutes earlier, she would have answered that Yariba was an impenetrable natural fortress. And that this was why, fifty years ago, the hidden village by Rocks had decided to make this place the largest penitentiary center in the country.
She would have said that, formed by four impracticable mountains of more than a kilometer of heights that faced each other, only four paths made their way through the mountain and the forest. These paths, dotted with more than a dozen outposts and oriented towards the four cardinal points, led down into the inner basin where, in its center, stood the immense complex.
She would have remembered that, of a surface of thousand square meters and twenty floors, the building reached more than sixty meters in height for two hundred depth and possessed a unique structure of its kind, labyrinthine. Similar to the roots of a tree, this one contained more than two thousand cells for five thousand prisoners and was, to this day, considered as the biggest prison of the whole peninsula.
If someone asked her now, she would answer that Yariba was an impenetrable natural fortress, except for one man…
The air conditioned was gone. A nameless dampness had insinuated itself around her at each new corridor he had made her cross and each new staircase he had made her walk down to the gloomy maze. If he wasn't illuminating the place with the red glow stick that he had made appear in a cloud of smoke, it was clear that she wouldn't be able to see even the tip of her nose.
What level of Fūinjutsu could he possibly have that the people who had searched him had found nothing?
As she turned her attention for the third time to the sign hanging on the wall that indicated the seventeenth basement, she realized one thing: he didn't know where he was going and, worse, he was going in circles.
As if he had perfectly heard her thoughts, he slowed down his walk, forcing her to stop in her turn. The back glued to his chest, she could not hold back her startle when the vibration of his voice crossed her body.
"The prisoner three thousand two hundred and thirty-four, where is he?"
Feeling the pressure of the blade on her throat diminish, Reimu freed herself from his grip and hesitantly stepped forward. After a breath that filled her with courage, she finally turned to face him. Her dilated pupils widened with surprise.
The serenity on his face, despite everything that had just happened, was surreal.
"How would I know? Do you even realize how many prisoners there are here?"
He brought the tip of the kunai up under her chin, and the cold, resilient wall she encountered in her back shattered her hopes of retreat.
"Section E… in the twenty-first basement…" She finally admitted.
She couldn't understand. For the first time in a long time, she was lost.
She had only met him once, and that was why she had not made the connection right away, blond men with blue eyes, she encountered them every day. But now that she had observed for the second time this technique, the one that had traumatized her to such an extent that she had forgotten the shape of the face of its user, the perfect gold of his hair had come back in her mind.
The Yondaime Hokage. The man who faced armies.
She was not eleven years old when she had seen that exact golden hair for the first time in the Land of Grass and, she must confess, she still did not know why she was still alive to talk about it.
After giving absolutely no chance to the fifty members of the unit she had been affiliated with, regardless of their age, the future Kage of Konoha had turned on her… and done nothing. It seemed unbelievable considering the reputation of the great Minato Namikaze during the Third Great War, and indeed those were the words the Chūnin who had retrieved her report had used, unbelievable, but it was the case. The Yellow Flash of the Leaf had spared her. He had stared at her for a long moment, as if he had seen a ghost, before letting her go. Of course, she didn't hesitate to run, and although she thought he was playing with her and would attack her as soon as she felt any hope, none of that had happened.
He allowed her to live.
Taking her courage with both hands, she overcame the azure irises which overhung her by a head.
Was that really him or was her memory playing tricks on her? He had died over twenty years ago, how could he not age?
Strangely enough, the first thing that came to her mind at that very moment was not to get out of this unscathed, but to find the answer to her question.
Without threatening her directly, the Yondaime made her understand, by moving the kunai a few centimeters away from her face, that she must start walking again, but as soon as she took her first step, her heart rate went crazy.
A group armed with flashlights and gasping for breath dashed out of the intersection at the end of the hallway as she wondered if these courageous men had any intelligence.
Being mostly simple civilians, underlining the fact that they had absolutely no chance, their action would just precipitate her death.
"Don't worry Reimu-sama we will get you out of there!"
Accompanied by angry grunts and a light that reflected their movements, the group charged towards them.
A golden-haired clone materialized beside them in a cloud of smoke and, leaving the reddish glow, moved into the darkness towards the group of men.
Reimu's ink-black irises closed several times as she watched the darkness, not understanding the purpose of this maneuver. She didn't have time to think about it more that the blade in her back forced her into another corridor.
The many screams of terror and what sounded like the collapse of one of the supporting walls made her realize that, once again, it had been a one-sided fight.
When she reached the last steps of the staircase of the twenty-second basement, the question that Minato had asked her a minute earlier came back to her memory. And this one seemed even stranger than the presence right behind her.
The prisoner three thousand two hundred and thirty-four… Why risk his life for this particular prisoner? It didn't make sense, he was wor…
Her thoughts came to a halt as her attention shifted to the glow stick that fell down the steps of the E section staircase.
"No! WAIT!"
A howl of rage rang out, followed closely by a blade that sprang from the intersection and had the sole purpose of slicing through anything that stood in its path.
Distraught and falling backwards, Reimu looked at the sharp point of the katana stopping only a centimeter from her eye, before examining the kunai that had stopped the blade and, therefore, saved her life. The small bladed weapon surged with chakra and sliced through her opponent like a piece of butter.
The man behind the surprise attack, having put all his strength and weight into it, toppled forward for lack of adversity and, with an expression of incomprehension, met the cold, hard fist of the Leaf ninja who sent him flying across the hall into a dilapidated door.
Only now the glow stick made contact with the floor tiles and began its first bounce back to section E, revealing a second man behind the warning she had heard just before she saw herself die.
Hidden in the shadow of the corridor, the ninja of Iwa was armed with a katana similar in every way to the one his savior had just cut.
"Bastard!"
Easily dodging the inquisitive weapon, the Fourth Hokage swept the guard's supports with his legs before delivering a knee strike to his abdomen, sending him against the door to join his predecessor. With the drumming of his chest and the clanking of the weapon on the floor, Reimu looked at the bodies of the two unconscious men in front of the iron door that displayed the marks of their collisions.
The Yellow Flash passed in front of her and, without a word, retrieved the red stick before pushing open the rusty door. The latter came off of its hinges with a creaking noise and crashed to the ground in a thunderous sound that announced their arrival. All eyes in Section E turned in their direction as he stepped back to grab her forearm and raise her.
"Which one is he in?"
Reimu raised her attention to all the cells amalgamated on several floors, sometimes containing up to five inmates, while, from the corner of her eye, she stared at him, hoping to observe some form of mockery.
"Do you even know who you're looking for?" She asked seriously, trying to understand his involvement in this story.
Facing his silence and the look on his face that made her realize that her question would remain unanswered, she resigned herself and pointed to the gaols on the floor below. "Eighty-two."
"Look guys, we have company!"
"It's her! That's Reimu!"
"Check out that pair of asses!"
"Come to me baby I can make you happy!"
A multitude of eager eyes ogled her form as she descended the central staircase. Inevitably, one of the prisoners ended up looking at the handcuffs on her wrists.
"Looks like she's in trouble!"
"Hey boy, don't be stingy and share we'll take care of it for you!"
Paralyzed by fear, she stopped in the middle of the lower floor of the parched earth and turned to her captor. With a frightened look, she begged him with all her eyes.
A slight hissing sound seized her heardrums, and in a morbid silence where the drumming of her heart managed to reach her hearing waiting for only one sound, only one answer, he nodded her to leave.
In spite of everything he had done and in spite of the circumstances that had brought them together in this place, she was grateful to him. But this same gratitude made her do something she would never have thought of: Turning hastily, she stopped in the middle of the stairs and brought her attention back to the famous Namikaze one last time.
"Why… Why didn't you kill me that day?"
As impassive as ever, he did not answer and she thought that, like he had done since she had been able to observe him, he would not answer, but to her great surprise he opened his lips.
"Certainly because you look like my mother."
A slight blankness took over most of Reimu's thoughts.
His… mother? What did he m…
With her sudden comprehension, she stared at the stranger in the center of Section E.
She had been wrong all along, and was only now realizing it. Minato Namikaze was indeed dead. She had finally found the answer to her question.
The Hidden Leaf Village was full of secrets.
It was under the sound of a mad rush up the stairs and the pounding of the cell bars that all the prisoners watched their fantasy take flight.
Unlike the other cells on the floors above his golden hair, where simple bars prevented anyone from getting in or out, the entire bottom row was a sort of containment room where no light could venture, if any light at all.
"What the hell do you think you're doing? Don't touch that cell!"
Under a flood of insults that he had never heard before, he forced open the deteriorated lock and opened the rusty door of the eighty-second cell. The latter, scraping the dry earth, stopped halfway. An indescribable stench, much stronger than the one he had smelled when he entered the place and which he had already become accustomed to, escaped from the closed cage.
"It is my toy, it is mine you hear me?! You touch him you're a dead man!"
The shouting and banging against the bars intensified, and even when he entered the cell, it did not stop. Only then did he move the red light on the prisoner three thousand two hundred and thirty-four. Instantly, his breath came out in disgust. For the first time, a feeling of anger materialized on his features, making him want to turn back and eliminate them all.
He now understood why this woman had questioned his words about the prisoner: there never had been a question of he.
Sitting, arms tied above her head where greasy and lousy hair had stopped fighting gravity, a worn and perforated cloth partially covered the naked body of the prisoner, of the young woman. Strangely, she did not give off the slightest presence. If he didn't have her in front of him, he would have said that he was alone in the cage.
Crouching down in front of her, he placed his fingers on her temple to make sure she was still alive and, in a broken self-defense mechanism, a barely audible sound came from her dry throat.
"Please…"
He immediately stopped all contact.
Despite the fact that she had just explicitly expressed mercy, she again gave off nothing at all. Not the slightest emotion. It was as if those were long gone. Sighing again, he planted the kunai on the ground and stood up to walk to the entrance of the cell.
It had been a few seconds now since the drumming against the bars had faded, and although he didn't need to see them to feel their presence, curiosity still drove him to the entrance of the cell eighty-two.
The twenty Anbu scattered over the three floors facing the toy closet in Section E, glared at him.
"You dogs! Take off those handcuffs if you dare!"
On the second floor of Row B, in cell number twenty-five, the three inmates, sharing the hell of the one who had just screamed his lungs out, stepped aside from his madness. The next second, a blade split the air and lodged itself in the throat of the forty-year-old.
The man fell heavily to the ground and drowned in his own blood.
Watching the scattered shadows, he realized that it was not time for retaliation today. This time the effect of surprise was not on his side and they were considerably more numerous. In perfect silence, he took a step backwards and, in an equally exemplary calm, the white masks began to drop from their perch to land at his level.
He then turned to the reason for all this and crossed the path that separated them in an instant. With a backhand, he broke the chains that blocked her wrists before catching her in her fall. Inspecting her sleeping, bruised face, he lifted her and made sure to hold her perfectly.
The fastest special forces member rushed with an almost imperceptible movement into the red cell, but was thrown out of it with a violent gust of wind. The door, rusted by time and humidity, tore off its fasteners and slammed into the next cell, smashing through the wall and revealing another entity that had stopped fighting. When the storm passed, several masks rushed into the cell, empty of all life.
[…]
On the outskirts of a small village in a deep sleep, a bright light from inside the window of a small hotel illuminated the trees dancing in the wind and rain. A thud echoed throughout the building, as if something heavy had suddenly fallen on the floor of room seventeen on the second floor.
He walked over to the only bed in the room and laid her gently on the pillow before covering her with the thick beige blanket. Unconsciously, she sank deeper under the comforter in a light moan.
Immobile in front of the bed, he simply observed her during more than one minute. Then, after a tired breath, he headed for the bathroom.
Illuminated through the window of the room by the light of the street lamps which lined the alley, he opened the tap of the wash-hand basin and sprinkled his face with icy water. Exhausted, he examined his dark circles in the mirror before catching himself in extremis with the ceramic when a violent dizziness caught him off guard. His eyelids closed of themselves while, shaking his wet face vigorously, a strong heat climbed along his spine. A nervous smile distorted his features while the side effects began to be felt in every part of his body.
With a weary movement, he stopped the flow of water and left the bathroom with the help of the wall on which he leaned to keep his balance. Stopping a short moment in the doorway, he decided to cross the room with an impotent step and gave himself up in a grin of pain on the only armchair of the room.
He hadn't told him.
The sun began its reverence on the horizon under a driving rain while he looked at her one last time. He listened to her drowsiness and watched the perpetual movement of her eyes behind her closed eyelids that revealed to him the nightmare she was going through.
He should have told him that it was a woman. Some things were harder to forget than others.
"We received it this morning."
Standing in the middle of the office, Kazunori turned his attention to the seven people in front of him, who then stopped talking. With a certain form of admiration and respect, he observed more precisely Ōnoki, his Tsuchikage, in the center of the group. Old, small, with white hair and a bulbous nose, the latter was seated in the only chair the office had, his son and his granddaughter at his side.
If the Kage and the two-meter-high mountain of muscles that was Kitsuchi didn't seem to be interested in his person, but more in the face on the television set that he had brought for the occasion, Kurosutchi stared at him without blinking, as if he was the one responsible for what he was about to explain. Besides, it was a miracle that his first words did not start with a stammer.
"It happened last night." He indicated in a tone meant to be as respectful as possible. "This man blew up the main generators as well as the auxiliary generators of Yariba, before breaking in with the help of a hostage. He managed to break through to section E of the twenty-first basement where he went to break into the cell ei…"
"Why didn't you stop him before?" Cut him off Kutsuchi with a hoarse tone.
Kazunori could not help but swallow. Readjusting his glasses with a trembling hand, he met the stern gaze of the Jōnin of Iwa.
"They… they tried, but he single-handedly took out four special forces members and over thirty-two guards tasked with guarding the outposts." He replied before resuming under the insistent gaze of the Tsuchikage's son. "The squad that was warned of the attack preferred to let him trap himself in the compound."
"In that case how come he managed to escape with the prisoner three thousand two hundred and thirty-four?" Kurotsuchi immediately asked, making it clear to her that she was already aware of the story.
The fine features with short and black hair, the young woman was no longer looking at him. She seemed now also obsessed by the television where, on the cathodic screen, was the pixelated face of a man with golden hair.
"That's when something happened." Kazunori replied, pressing the button on the remote control he had been holding in the palm of his hand since he arrived.
Everyone went silent, wanting to know what was this unexpected thing that played in favor of the humiliating escape.
"Sorry about the quality of the image, but only the old portable battery cameras that took over after the blackout were able to capture what happened."
The video from a security camera switched to playback mode. The man in the red pixels of the screen left his position and ventured behind a rusty door where a faster, more skilled member of the special forces entered in turn. The video blurred slightly as a gust of wind blew out of the jail, sending the Anbu and the cell door crashing across the section.
"Did you see it?" he asked with an incredulous grin.
His grin vanished as he charged the faces of everyone present except his Kage.
Ōnoki did not move a millimeter. Silent and with his hands clasped together before his squinted eyes, he still hadn't taken his eyes off the television screen.
"See what?" Asked another man present in the room, who had not seen anything at all.
Kazunori started the video again, but this time in slow motion. As before, a person entered the cell, followed closely by the Iwa special forces member who, once again, was ejected from the room he tried to enter.
"There." He indicated, placing his finger on the screen just as the burst swept through the door as well as the view of the squad on the scene.
A flash, lasting only a fraction of a second on an already slow-motion video, illuminated the interior of the cell, yellowing the pixels of the screen.
The pain in her wrists and the stiffness of her arms woke her up from her torpor. A forgotten sensation, which mixed warmth and soothing, made her sore eyelids flush.
Reluctantly, she turned her face away from the reassuring warmth and closed her eyelids with force. With this simple gesture, she managed to make this strange flaming color disappear in order to return to what she wanted most: darkness.
A sweet smell entered her lungs in perfect coordination with her eyebrows, which furrowed relentlessly.
She gradually regained consciousness and immediately noticed that the hard and wet floor seemed much softer than the last time she woke up. Even more surprising, the usual coolness present at each of her faintings had been replaced by a light layer of textiles who was covered her warmly.
At this thought, she opened her eyes in fear, and the palpitation of her heartbeat caused her to grimace in pain. Other colors than dull gray and dark presented themselves to her stoic expression.
Shades she had forgotten the name of.
With her eyes wide open, her mouth dry and half-open, she used the little energy still present in her and hurriedly got up in a second rictus which revealed the suffering of her gesture.
Her heart, which was now hammering her eardrums, only disoriented her more. In a movement that she did not control, she placed the palm of her hand on the trajectory of the rays of light that were burning and blinding her. Only then, and from the corner of her eye dotted with shattered vessels, she saw him.
In a reflex, she brutally closed her eyes and lowered her face, letting panic take over her thoughts. Her breathing instinctively stopped, giving her a perfect silence during which she stood still, hoping that he would disappear. She kept her silence for almost a full minute and just listened to the soothing silence, before inevitably hearing it.
At first, she might have thought it was hers, but with the lack of oxygen beginning to be felt in her throbbing lungs, she knew it was not. The breath that came to her was not hers at all. Opening her eyes cautiously and without moving a millimeter, she raised her attention to the exact spot where he was spying on her.
It was at this point that she realized her paralysis was not a choice. She just couldn't do anything anymore. Even thinking had become an ordeal.
With her straight back and her eyes wide open, a few moments passed without the situation changing, without her hydrating her pupils. She stared at him in the corner of the room, and he observed her in return.
In an instinctive betrayal, she took a breath of air, but so weakly that she remained motionless. A small black shape to her right, on what seemed to be the bedside of the bed she was on, caught her eye for a moment, before she turned it back to the corner of the room.
"I thought you'd feel safer if you had him by your side."
In yet another reflex, she grabbed the kunai off the furniture and aimed it at the corner of the room. A grimace twisted again on her pale face as her arm quivered in pain.
A tear rolled down her bruised cheek, which she wiped away with the back of her hand, before realizing there were no tears. She didn't even have enough water in her to cry. In fact, she couldn't remember the last time she had drunk water.
Her vision blurred and she lowered her sharp weapon a bit as she looked at her wrists with amazement. The iron was gone, strangely replaced by bandages.
Struggling to keep her eyes open, burned by the blinding light of the glass to her right, she aimed the weapon at the beige door to her left. The continuous sound that emanated from behind it, where the delicate scent that had awakened her was coming from, faded away without warning. She simply hadn't noticed it until it had stopped.
Remembering the one she was threatening a second earlier, she brought the weapon back to the corner of the room, then back to the door, then back to him, then to the door…
Threatening for the umpteenth time the look of no concern that he displayed, she was totally disconcerted and plastered herself against the cold wall in his back when he burst in a cloud of smoke. The door opened, causing her to miss a heartbeat and stop breathing for the second time.
A sour taste lodged in the back of her throat as the spitting portrait of the one who created this illusion passed by her with a quick glance, bringing a damp warmth in its wake.
He crossed the room until he was facing a chest of drawers where, dressed in simple black pants, he grabbed a t-shirt of the same color previously placed on it in order to get dressed. He then turned over in her direction and listened to the incessant tinkling of the bladed weapon that she maintained between her trembling fingers before observing her wrists where drops of blood fell on the immaculate sheet. With a sigh, he made a step in her direction and, taken by panic, she recoiled violently against the concrete wall and hit the back of her head.
This illusion definitely conveyed pain with an accuracy that she had never felt before.
Sitting down on the chair where her replica had been a few seconds earlier, the illusionist ruffled his wet golden hair.
"If you feel capable of it and haven't forgotten how to do it, you can always try to break what you think is a Genjutsu, but I can assure you that nothing will happen."
She looked at him, stunned. He was playing with her. He was reading her mind, there was no doubt about it.
"You were kept prisoner by Tsuchi for a little more than two years." He explained without taking his eyes off her. "And, last night, I freed you."
A silence of which she was the sole instigator settled.
No… No… No…
She had no right to believe in this story, she had no right to taste hope. It was something she no longer desired. What had made her endure this feeling had been the worst thing that had happened to her. Worse than anything they had done to her. It was all a bunch of bullshit. No man could ever get her out of that hell. No way. It was a one-way situation, there was no way out. She couldn't afford to think about it, it was all a lie.
A lie…
Putting her feverish anger on the golden hair, she couldn't hold back the invisible tears that won her.
He was a monster, there was no worse feeling, why make her feel that way?
"Calm down."
His voice was the opposite of what he had been expressing until then. The softness was gone and replaced by a dry tone.
Out of the corner of her eye, she looked at the blood-soaked bandages around his wrists and placed her only non-threatening hand on her face. A disturbed, raucous laugh erupted from the back of her throat, burning her windpipe.
Now he was worried about her. How far would he go to finally break her again? Was her suffering so pleasurable to watch?
"You're going to hurt yourself worse if you keep this up."
Following the return of the calm tone, she slowly lowered her stray gaze to her chest, which was rising at each of her gasping breaths. Her attention continues to fall on his body dotted with bandages that became fairly redder with each of her movements. At the limit of her strength and in a tired expiration, she lowered her armed arm on her knees curled up under the blanket. An umpteenth heavy silence settled while she continued to stare at him.
Three knocks on the only door of the room instinctively raised her only sharp protection in a rush of adrenaline. On the verge of exhaustion, she realized that this was the end of this wonderful dream. She knew the song, a scenario that had amused them many times. A man was going to come in and tell him to stop playing with her and get it over with. The rainbow of color would then become dull again and the Genjutsu would end.
Accompanied by the movement of the blade, she followed with her eyes his crossing until she had to stop on the corridor that led to the front door. The opening of the door let in fresh air that gave her a shiver of panic and incomprehension.
The illusion had never been so perfect.
She heard a female voice, but didn't focus on it enough to understand what they exchanged. The sound of the door closing came a few seconds later as he reappeared with a tray in hand. He walked over to the bed as she became one with the wall behind her back. A smell she never thought she would experience again reached her nostrils and forced her to contemplate the tray where a bowl of rice and some soup and fish were laid out.
"Eat while it's still warm." He advised her in a soft voice as he placed the tray on the sheet.
She immediately took her eyes off of the sin and gave him an incredulous look. Did he really think she would fall into such a grotesque trap?
He sighed for the second time and then crouched down in front of the bed. Grabbing the chopsticks that had been stuck to the bed, he picked up a piece of fish before eating some rice and taking a sip of the soup.
"You see, there's nothing to worry about."
In silence, he resumed his position on the armchair and observed her without a sound. Just as silently, she swallowed the pasty saliva that had accumulated in her mouth.
A whole minute passed without her making the slightest movement. She tried to catch a glimpse of the cunning in the azure of his eyes, but he did not show anything. A minute later, she decided to put the weapon down in an accessible place, without taking her eyes off of him, and after another minute had passed, she finally lifted herself off the wall to grab the tray with her fingertips and pull it towards her.
Leaving the chopsticks behind, she grabbed the rice directly with her hands and brought it to her mouth. A moan of pleasure escaped from her being. The rice finished, she attacked the slices of raw fish and then the soup before finally coming down-to-earth and realizing that there was nothing left.
"Do you want more?"
She raised her appetite without saying a word.
He took her silence for a no and left his seat, which had for only effect to provoke at her another burst of panic. She inevitably put her hand back on the weapon that she had previously placed at her side.
He moved to the chest of drawers and opened it. Then, turning over, he deposited a pile of clothes on the bed.
"You can take a shower and get dressed if you want. But don't put any clothes on if you feel they are tight, it might delay your recovery." He advised her as he turned to close the drawer.
She released the pressure that she exerted on the blade and looked at him again with an incredulous face, but this time not for the same reasons. The dresser closed, he grabbed the tray and left the room without a word. Immediately and in a reflex, she glanced at the bedroom window and tried to find a way out.
Slowly, the relentless truth came back to her mind.
If it was a Genjutsu, all attempts would be useless and would be reduced to trying to find a way out until she woke up. If it was reality, which, of course, was not possible, she simply could not escape from this room without going through the front door, where he would catch her without restraint.
For only exit, her brain made her observe the bathroom where an umpteenth thing that she never thought to live again awaited her with open arms.
How far could this mirage go?
This question occupied most of her thoughts as she moved with difficulty in the tub. Her tears mixed with the scalding water as it made contact with her body, turning her hair back to its former color.
She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the frozen tile floor of the shower stall. Even when the creaking of the bed behind her back startled her and almost made her slip, she didn't open them. She didn't know how long she stood there, not moving, doing nothing but enjoying the moment before this dream inevitably came to an end. An hour, maybe two. But she felt herself leaving, far, far away from this place, and sinking a little more into this illusion.
[…]
Leaving the room, he went along the corridor. While surveying the faint presence she was giving off, he placed the tray in the cabinet built into the wall where a multitude of others were stored. A smirk appeared on his face as he heard the shower faucet turn on.
Three knocks on the window in his back attracted his curiosity as well as his reflexes which settled on the emptiness of his right leg. The vision of his satchel on the bedroom dresser came to mind as his pulse quickly returned to a normal rhythm. For the first time in a long time, he had been caught off guard. He had been so focused on her that he hadn't felt his approach.
He walked a few feet to the window and opened it. The breeze of the winter's stammering made his golden hair twirl.
"How did you find me?"
The little green amphibian, about twenty centimeters tall and sitting in front of the open window, stared at him with its bulging eyes.
"That's my job." He replied in a husky, calm voice, contrasting with his small size.
As usual, the toad regurgitated a blue scroll.
He retrieved the saliva-covered scroll and, opening it with one hand, deciphered the coded language.
"Shima-sama is worried, she's wondering when you're coming home." Said the little toad under his lack of attention, too captivated by what he was reading.
"Is he sure about what he's saying?" He asked, bringing forward the scroll he held firmly in his hand.
"You'll just have to ask him yourself," Advised the messenger, who gathered his paws. "I remind you that for obvious reasons, I don't understand a word of what is written on it."
The animal bowed out in a cloud of smoke and left behind only an exasperated feeling.
After he left, he closed the scroll and injected some of his chakra into it before throwing it through the second-floor window and closing it again. The rolled-up paper did not have time to touch the ground below that it was consumed by flames. He resumed his walk and stopped in front of a vending machine. Inserting several coins, he pressed one of the many buttons on the machine which started to operate.
"I heard some strange noises last night coming from your room young man." A woman's voice rose from behind him, demanding his attention. "I don't know what you used those clothes for, but know one thing, in this establishment we don't accept that kind of girl."
He remained marble, as if he had not heard the insinuations of the manager of the hotel, before catching the two bottles that he had just bought and continuing his way. Arrived in front of the door seventeen, he opened it under the attention of the other side of the corridor and rushed inside silently.
The flow in the bathtub reached him. Going along the wall, he stopped at the half-open doorway of the bathroom. His merciful gaze fell on the water trickling down her scarred and thinned body, inevitably peeling off the bandages that had not finished healing her.
He finally turned away from his indiscreet gaze and placed the two bottles on the cabinet to his left. He then walked towards the unmade bed and let himself fall on it. Blowing his temporary tiredness as the bed base cracked under his weight, he felt her fear under the water jet but, too tired to worry about it, he just closed his eyelids. Lulled by the sound of the water falling into the bathtub, he lost himself in his dreams in order to try, just for a second, to forget about his worries.
On his knees and out of breath, his frightened gaze fell on the smile adorning the scarlet face of his master. A movement in his field of vision forced him to take his eyes off of it for a moment to look at him, the one who had started it all. He screamed his weakness when the whitish hand rose in the air to threaten the one who taught him all. His mad look forked between all the people in front of him, before stopping on the happy smile that his master was addressed to him, saying more than any word.
A sonic impulse and a hot blast swept away most of his senses, leaving him to watch the place where his master was imploded in a smokeless explosion. Pupils dilated, wide open, he lost his free will. Those same dilated pupils took on a crimson color and were followed by the ascent of his flailing body. The only god around, surrounded by his apostles, placed his whitish hand in front of his impassive face.
The name of a thousand-year-old demon rose in the dusty atmosphere. He took a step towards the immortal being. Then another, followed by another and another. Unstable orange spheres materialized in his hands and illuminated the sinister surroundings.
The divine voice thundered its punishment and the ground sank beneath his feet.
He opened his eyes abruptly as the adrenaline surged through his muscles causing them to contract. The curves of the bed did not have time to recover from his disappearance that he slipped on the wet tiles of the bathroom and caught her head just a few centimeters of the ground.
Sighing, he lifted her, soaked and unconscious.