Past Regrets
Chapter 1: The Beginning
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A three-year-old child looks longingly at her father as he disappears into the mists in the distance. Her eyes begin to mist as her heart fills with the doubt of ever seeing him again. She looks up at her caretaker with sadness in her crystalline eyes.
"It's alright, Tetsu," he muttered and placed a hand on her petite shoulder. "I'll take good care of you." Her guardian is no more than a boy himself, but he is the only person the father can trust with his little girl's care. Tetsu looked at her feet and nodded, a silent tear cascading from her cheek to the ground.
The boy looked out into the gray fog ahead, above, and behind him. They were in a dense forest surrounded by boulders and trees so tall their tops vanished in the mist above. Ahead, along the path where Tetsu's father waned, was a large stone and on the other side of it was a sheer drop to a valley below.
"Is Papa coming back?" muttered the small child.
"I don't think so," answered the boy, squeezing the child's shoulder to comfort her. This action only made her orbs glaze in tears. She turned and smothered her tiny face in the boy's torso, muffling her sobs. He knelt and held her firmly by the arms, looking into her tear-stained face. "Don't worry. You'll be okay."
The little angelic face nodded again, keeping her eyes cast away from the boy's. Though she was so young, she understood more than many people did about life, death, and the fact that people leave without returning. The boy stood up and grasped the little girl's delicate hand, leading her into the woods.
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Fourteen years have passed since Tetsu was left with the boy. The boy was now a twenty-two year old man who went by the name of Okamura Hisoka. Tetsu has grown up to be a formidable and elite ninja of the age of seventeen. Together, they match in power and dominance in the shinobi world. The pair was a force to be reckoned with when in battles, making them known to everyone in the land as the Shuriken Assassins. So effective was the name that the name sent chills down the toughest outlaw's spine.
"Why aren't you eating?" Hisoka muttered as he sipped a cup or green tea. Tetsu didn't respond. She stirred the noodles in the bowl with her chopsticks and stared at them with the hard stare she usually had upon her face. "If you don't eat it, then I will," Hisoka joked, aiming for some sort of cheerful reply. She shoved the bowl of ramen in his direction and stood up, walking out of the main room and into her own. Hisoka looked up at her closed door and frowned.
Tetsu knelt down on her bed and shoved her face into a soft pillow. Hisoka slid the door open slightly and looked at her with worried eyes. "Well aren't we acting immature today?" he stated playfully.
"He left today," she murmured from inside her pillow. The man looked over at a calendar on her wall and sighed.
"You need to stop this. It's ruling your life. You don't even remember what he looks like," he spoke, his jesting tone gone.
"What kind of father leaves his little girl with an eight year old boy," she muttered.
"The kind of father who cares enough to hide her from everything and everyone in his life."
"So he hides her in the most dangerous place in the world-"
"Because he was protecting you-"
She shot up and got inches from his face. "What was he protecting me from, huh?! You always say that he was protecting me from things but you never tell me what they are!" she shouted, frustration welling up in her azure eyes.
"I promised him never to say anything-"
"I'm old enough to know! I'll finally have a last name! A real last name! It wouldn't change me in any other way! It will just give me closure!"
"I will not betray his trust, Tetsu!" he shouted angrily. Tetsu's heart nearly stopped with his statement. In the fourteen years she'd lived with him, he hardly ever yelled at her. They had this fight every year since that day.
"You will hold to your word even though you haven't seen this man since I was given to you. He could be dead for all you know. Why do you keep this man's promise?" she whispered in a low voice. Hisoka looked away from her penetrating eyes. Her slightly open mouth closed and she swallowed, surprised and taken back by his pause.
"He's not dead, Tetsu," he spoke softly. Her eyes widened and she gritted her teeth so hard she nearly popped her jaw.
"You know him still?" she scowled. He looked back up at the fuming young woman and into her dagger-shooting eyes.
"I know him."
Tetsu stumbled backward as though she was just hit with the force of a dozen hurricanes. She felt her heart rip out and get squeezed in Hisoka's hand.
"You... you never told me this?" she whispered, looking at his face with for answers of some sort.
"I knew that you'd try and go find him-"
"You didn't tell me!" she roared.
"Please, Tetsu, let me explain-"
"I refuse!" she shouted and stood up, knocking him down, and stormed from the room.
"Tetsu!" he shouted and followed after her.
"You've lied to me! You've lied to me for fourteen damned years!" she screamed and grabbed up a rucksack from the ground and rushed back to her room. She started to throw things into her backpack when she dropped it, kneeling to the ground in sobs. Hisoka appeared in her doorway with shame upon his face.
"Tetsu... I'm sorry-"
"Not as sorry as I am," she interrupted and started thrusting things into her pack again. She threw it across the room in anger, trying desperately to stifle her ongoing weeping. Hisoka walked over to her and stooped beside her, wrapping his arms around her warmly.
"I'm so sorry," he apologized again. She gripped his arm and held it there tightly. After a moment of sitting like that, his embrace tightened. "Would it help if I told you where he is?" Tetsu stopped breathing a moment as an ingenious plan formed in her head. She nodded and sniffled softly.
"He's a chǔnin from Konohagure. He's a teacher at the ninja academy there." It seemed as though an enormous weight was taken from her shoulders as she sighed and nodded in understanding.
"His name?"
"Iruka."
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In the dead of night, Tetsu began to concoct a plot to see her father. Being raised in Kirigakure no Sato, she had a bad outlook on life. Still, she wasn't completely tainted with malice like the others in the village. She felt, at first, that she would go assassinate her father for what he had done to her. After thinking that there must have been some reason for his abandoning her, she decided to find him and get an explanation and go with if from there.
Sitting up in bed, she glanced at the knapsack that was on the floor. Sneaking quietly over to it, she began to pack more. Inside the pack were food supplies that could last a week, shuriken, makimono, a spare change of clothes, and medicinal herbs.
After slipping quietly out of her sleeping gi, she put on a yellow and navy shirt, a matching pair of pants, a vest, and her black zori. Slinking quietly out of her room, she turned around after closing the door to bump into Hisoka's chest. She backed up against the door and smiled innocently.
"Where do you think you're going?" he mumbled, spying the rucksack on her back. "It seems I was correct in thinking you'd search for him."
"I can't sleep. I want to go out and get some air," she responded and veered around him. He grabbed the neck of her shirt and she flew backward to stand in front of him.
"A likely story," he stated and looked at her sternly. "It's dangerous out there. You can't go out alone."
"I'll be fine," she growled and attempted to get around him again. She was grabbed by the hood again and pulled back.
"You're not going out," he demanded.
"You can't stop me," she said in a low and sinister voice. In a flash of light and a puff of blue smoke, she disappeared. Hisoka grumbled and looked around the room. Not finding her, he looked outside and saw nothing either.
Lucky for Tetsu, the pair lived in a tree house hundreds of feet above the ground. She was walking upside-down along the bottom of the house with a smirk of accomplishment on her face. Since there was no stairs or ladders to get to the ground, she needed to use her ninjitsu to get to the ground. She concentrated hard on the soles of her feet as she walked down the closest tree to get to the ground. However, before she could reach the ground, a puff of purple smoke and a very irritated Hisoka appeared before her.
Tetsu growled and turned around, running up the tree just to have him appear in front of her again.
"You can't find him, Tetsu," he stated before she turned heal to run down the tree again. He appeared before her again just in time for him to see her smirk. She disappeared and reappeared on the ground, running hard into the muggy woods.
The mist in the forest was so dense it was hard to see inches in front of her face. What little light the moon and stars could bring couldn't reach the forest floor, making it nearly impossible to see.
'I guess it's time to start putting my kirigakure jutsu training to work,' she thought to herself and closed her eyes, concentrating on the mist around her. The chakra inside of her became that of the mist. She continued running as far as she could from the house, her eyes still closed tightly, finding her way using every sense but sight. The mist was hiding her every movement and sealed her presence from outsiders like Hisoka.
Hisoka looked around in a frenzy, angry with himself for telling her about her father. 'If I were her, what would I do?' he thought still looking about hurriedly. Thinking quickly, he realized that she would use the newest art she'd mastered: kirigakure jutsu. He closed his eyes and released his chakra into the air, letting it absorb his being.
'I will find you, Tetsu. You can't run for long,' he said and sprinted blindly into the depths of the forest.
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Naruto © Masashi Kishimoto
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Thank yous go out to Galyax and krn-kimbap for reviewing the prologue! Don't worry... the chapters will be longer in the future! Thank you so much. This is my first Naruto fan fic and I'm obsessed with it! I'm glad you liked it! Thanks again!