Nineteen
Mirror
Ghost of the past
Image
Mirage of foolishness
Reflection
Truth that stares
Glass
Transparent shield
Face
That only one can read
Bits of rays trickled through the foliage of greens and touched upon a figure. A lazy jounin lay in bed the next morning and wondered at the impending meeting that was to take place later. Glancing at the clock, he decided that he could still enjoy some moments with Kei and settled back down to hold her sleeping form close to him. He inhaled the familiar jasmine scent and sighed.
Despite the peaceful morning, his mind couldn't help but travel back to some weeks ago in Herb Village where a certain boy with raven hair and a curse seal that was proving to be more than a handful.
Sometime back in Herb Village...
The lot of them was having breakfast and it has been some time ever since Sasuke came to Herb Village. He had refused to dine with the rest of them initially but then Maemi-sama decided to end his childishness and ordered for him to have his ass hauled to the table at the appropriate meal times. He has been given back his chakra abilities and his Sharingan. But with that, came the problem of him running away. For the most part, all were futile attempts and he was usually found by Ken eventually and dragged back. Usually they would only go out to get him a few hours after he gets trapped in genjutsus or being swallowed up by the maze.
He usually sulked as he ate. Refusing to interact at all.
Nothing was getting to him.
No one was getting to him.
He chose to ignore all of them.
The only one that has zero reaction towards him is Kei, who was currently sitting beside him. She has reserved all forms of reactions save for polite greetings.
Until now.
"Why are you still alive?"
Kei's voice was low and whispered.
The table froze.
The boy looked at her with blazing red eyes. He had gotten his ability back after two weeks of 'good' behavior.
"Why didn't you kill yourself? Why make yourself only but a burden to everyone else?"
He glared.
Thwack!
She had used her chopsticks to whack his hands. The impact caused the surprised boy to drop his. A bruise appeared on the hand.
"Get out of the room. Your mood is causing the rest to lose their appetite."
And he lunged for her throat, only to have his fingers caught between her chopsticks. Without blinking, she released her hold and clenched her hand into a fist and punching him straight on in the chest. The result was a boy being flung out the room, via the window and landing on the grass below them.
She excused herself. Putting the chopsticks down, she jumped out to belt some discipline into the boy.
Kakashi watched. She looked as if she was going to kill his apprentice rather than slap some reality into his face.
Maemi-sama and the rest continued to eat. It appeared to be an everyday ordinary thing. And so, he trusted them and followed their cue to continue with his meal.
Outside, we find one angry Sasuke facing his sensei's wife.
"My, aren't you the victim? Poor Uchiha Sasuke….."
His anger was building.
And it flared in the Chidori that he activated.
Interesting, she thought as she watched a trail of destruction that followed the path he was recklessly racing through to get to her. His right hand grabbed onto to sturdy the left one and with red eyes he cursed her in blind fury and was aiming to kill.
"I'll kill you!"
The Chidori fizzled out as he realized that his arm was caught just below the elbow. His Sharingan faced off with her blue-grey eyes.
"You're weak."
She bowed her head to whisper to his ears.
His eyes widened.
"You're weak because your talent is wasted under the influence of using power that it's not yours."
He pulled from her gasp and glared.
"You lack strength in yourself."
He breathed harder.
"You will never win your brother in you current state."
And the sparks crackled as Chidori grew and he lunged for her again.
This time she flew, only to whack him in his left eye blind spot. He flew up in the sky and was rotating to land on his feet when he saw her hand in a seal.
"Suiton – Manipulation of Water!"
And she put her hand onto the grassy land.
He saw tremors that were coming from five directions. They were heading for him. He braced himself to land and kick up to prevent him from sitting in that spot for too long.
The tremors met and circled around him in the ground as he kicked himself up into the air.
"Not good enough." He heard her say.
Her fingers crossed.
"Water-entrapment!"
And he realized that the tremors were water. And it rose upwards, capturing him within its gasp. The water grabbed and sunk him in the middle of a water globe.
The water felt heavy. The pressure was different from times when he was swimming in streams and lakes.
And he was starting to feel oxygen deprivation.
He decided to try Chidori again. Even if it was going to zap his chakra and cause him to pass out, it's better than not trying anything at all. He saw her walking towards him.
Her fingers cupped to form a circle.
"Dragon Breath!"
And she blew through the circle, to which he saw a stream of blue fiery chakra come from her hands to engulf the globe in flames.
The boy struggled to be calm in order to execute a jutsu.
The temperature heated up tremendously and he was struggling cognitively to deal with his predicament and work up the strength to work a jutsu to counter her.
A jounin and another raven-haired one watched from the side.
"I suddenly feel like having a hot spring bath." The jounin said as he watched the flames engulfed the watery sphere containing his student.
"Ah."
Kei watched the boy's reaction. Ten seconds later, she intertwined two fingers between her hands.
"Solidification!"
And the water froze in an instant.
Extreme heat to extreme cold.
The boy's cardiac system was working doubly hard to deal with the change in environment. And he struggled to breathe.
Damn. I can't move to do any jutsu to break out. It's not regular ice that I'm trapped in.
It felt almost like the frozen state that one gets that dipping something in liquid nitrogen. It was solid and freezing cold.
Some minutes passed and his system was slowing down.
Ba-bum.
Eye lids grew heavy.
A gulf of sleepiness was passing through.
"Sublimation."
She said quietly to release the boy. The ice sublimed into vapor and he fell to the ground shivering. The tips of his hair and clothes had icicles clinging to them.
He lay there and warmed up in the sun's rays.
And his sensei moved over to examine him.
He was fine.
The boy cursed and punched the ground. Blood dribbled down the gentle unevenness formed by the tendons and ligaments in his hand.
Frustration leaked through.
Disappointment raged.
Again, he had to deal with defeat and the ugly truth that he was still too weak to kill that one certain man.
Uchiha Itachi.
"Why do you live?"
Again she asked. She was squatting down next to him as he pulled himself up to a sitting down.
"To avenge my clan and to restore it to its former glory."
She breathed deep and sat herself down and leaned on Kakashi, who was reading his book.
"He's strong isn't he?"
He merely bowed his head.
"You miss him, don't you?"
He looked at her and saw that she was watching the clouds stream by.
"Things that have passed can never return. Past riddled with death, blood and loss are the hardest to deal. They leave people without conclusion and many times with very little notion with what to do next."
He looked away and saw that Ken was lying on the grass near them.
"When you close your eyes at night, you can hear their screams from within the darkness. The images are perpetually stuck in rewind mode and you watch endlessly how they die. You can see the precise moment when they take their last breath."
She shut her eyes.
He scoffed her words.
"If you don't do something, you'll going to end up like me – half here and halfway there."
He peered from the corners.
"When you die and get dragged back to reality, you do not come back as a whole. The rest of your life, you will live with one foot here on earth and the other in the grave. The death knell rings all the time for you. You live a cursed existence."
She leaned closer to Kakashi to borrow his warmth.
The jounin looks up from his book and raises a hand to rub her back.
She smiled.
Cursed existence……
FLASHBACK
And she couldn't help but allow her mind to run back to her younger self of sixteen years, who lay on the ground, spurting blood from her mouth and breathing hard. She lay there in the middle of a training room where individually participant would be randomly paired off to fight. In some cases, to their death even.
She may have defeated her opponent, but she didn't look in a better state than he did.
There an immense pain in her chest and back, thus her difficulty in getting up from the concrete floor.
Feels as if someone was skewering me with a spear! Shit! The pain is worse than the last time.
"It would seem that the sealing jutsu has its shortcomings."
A deep voice floated from the shadows.
She looked up. An elderly gentleman was walking out and his profile shone under harsh spotlighting. The head was a man whose face was not seen often.
"…………"
"Interesting that the vessel holding creature such as the Seiryuu, not only requires compatibility in chakra built but also in age as well. The vast amount of chakra needs a body that can grow and integrate the chakra with the vessel's own. Something we overlooked with Kei."
The girl finally managed to crawl up into a sitting position, supported by shaking arms.
The head continued.
"The key lies in balance aren't it, Kei? If you use too much genjutsu and ninjutsu, you deplete your own chakra level too fast for the Seiryuu's one to replace it. No wonder you rely on taijutsu so much."
She kept her head bowed, even thought she felt as if she was about to faint.
"Moreover, there's an amount of the Seiryuu's chakra that you can't integrate."
She froze.
"The pain you're feeling. It's resulting from the immense power that is trying to find its way out of your body.'
He bent down to her ears to whisper.
"It feels as if it's burning up your insides, and trying to burst through your skin, doesn't it?"
"…………….."
She kept her gaze down. He was speaking the truth. The pain was intensifying each time especially when she needs to use a lot of chakra to perform all the various jutsus.
She shut her eyes.
It was true that her chakra had increased tremendously but it seemed that there was always the knowledge of another that was living inside her and who was trying its best to break out of her. Her attempts at trying to integrate the vast chakra into her own seemed have come to standstill. Or rather, the integration process is going very slow. Too slow for her own good.
"What a pity Kei. I actually had plans for you but it seems you might not be surviving long." He had said.
END OF FLASHBACK
Well, she proved him wrong. She has been defying fate and lived for eight years already but then again, everything has its limit and this time round, time was really running out.
She looked at the boy. She knew that he wasn't going to understand the concept of treasuring the chance to find the reason to live.
He was still after all a young boy.
She stood up to walk.
Sasuke stared speechless as he watched her walked away. Her parting words this time hit him hard.
"People died so that you could live and all you can do is court your own death. Don't you think you let them down? Think about it. The past once gone, never returns. The present is all a gift that the people of the past have left for you to treasure. If you throw this away, then all hopes of any future are redundant because you don't deserve it anyway."
That somehow felt more painful than any real slap to his face, it would be the first time that someone had managed to get through to him in a while and remind him of the ones who have gone and to think of a future that might never come if he doesn't do something soon.
And now to a present time in Konoha……..
That same lazy jounin finally decided to meet up with two of his student, after making them wait two hours out under the blazing afternoon sun where the wooden poles of their first lesson were.
"You're late!" One loudmouth blonde and one pink-haired one yelled when they saw him.
"Gomenasai, I just got married and wanted to spend more time with my wife."
"………………"
They weren't sure if he was lying this time. The excuse sounded pretty convincing for once.
"Anyway, there's someone whom you might want to meet."
And a dark figure walked out from a nearby tree. He took slow steps to the group.
The other two were stunned.
Relief.
Surrealism.
Tears.
And many other emotions overwhelmed the young ones as they saw a familiar face approach them. One whom they thought they would never see again.
"Sasuke!"
A reunion was taking place. One long awaited reunion of between members of one team and their sensei in a place they all call home.
Meanwhile, in Tsunade's office…….
"Tsunade-sama!"
The woman who refuses to look her age looked up from her papers at the shinobi who appeared in front.
"Report."
"Hai. There is a girl in unusual clothing who has appeared at the gates, asking to see Kendon."
"Details. What do you mean by unusual clothing?"
"Ano, she is dressed in clothes that I have not seen before. It seems almost ancient and very foreign."
"Hmmm…….."
"She also seems injured and traumatized."
"I see…."
"Never mind, bring her in and get Genma to fetch Ken here too."
"Hai!"
And with a poof, the shinobi disappeared to perform his assigned duties.
Within half an hour, the girl in question was brought in. And indeed, the guard's description of unusual clothing was befitting. Tsunade was bandaging her wounds when Ken came bursting through the doors.
"Ken!"
And the silvery-white haired stranger ran straight for him. The guy was shocked to see her but embraced her nonetheless.
"Kaede."
He calmed her down a little before he got her to speak of what happened.
"Ken….the village…..the village….."
She was starting to tear.
"It's gone!"
And she cried. Sobbing her heart out as she clung onto his clothes within the security of his embrace. She was finally able to come to terms with what had happened.
"What? But how can it be?"
But she could say more, others soon came bursting through Tsunade doors. It was very much to the Hokage's puzzlement since she has yet a chance to query into the situation.
"Ken! Kaede! What's going on? What are you doing here?"
The girl looked up with her tear-streaked eyes and through sobs managed to paint a rough picture of what had happened.
"Village…….gone……. Maemi-sama…..Chief……Everyone's………dead….."
"Oh shit!"
The rest looked stunned.
"Could someone explain the situation to me?"
A very confused Hokage sat at her desk asked the lot of them.
It took some minutes before Kei was composed enough to explain to Tsunade.
"Kaede comes from a village that has chosen to isolate itself for many centuries. It's called the Herb Village, well-known for its vast knowledge in medicinal treatment and anything of the sort. All who chanced upon the village are to keep a vow of secrecy to protect its existence. Ken and I, together with Sasuke and Kakashi had been spending time there for the past few weeks before our return."
Tsunade nodded.
"The village has been well-protected by people's vows of secrecy and the numerous jutsus that have been protecting it. But how it has come to this state is incomprehensible..."
"Fuyu."
"Nani?"
"Black dragons attacked the village to search for all of you."
"Nani! Impossible!"
"They tracked and found the place. The village was defenseless to their attacks. Everyone was killed." And the girl sobbed again and Ken held her close to try and sooth her frightened state.
This time they were really stunned beyond words.
Kei even had to move to the window to compose herself.
Maemi-sama must have forced her to use a route out the place to search for us here while the rest of them sacrificed themselves. Shit. What have we done? We led them there and now, the village……..
"Kei, they are probably on the way here."
She snapped out her thoughts.
"Hokage-sama. You have to evacuate everyone to save this village!"
"Nani? Evacuate the village?"
"You have to! Otherwise everyone is going to die! We will also leave to try and get away so that we may divert them from reaching here."
"It can't be to that extent….."
"Hokage-sama, they wiped out Herb village. And that village wasn't that much smaller than this one. Please, do heed our advice and save everyone."
"…………."
"Please, we are not lying anymore! I can swear upon my honor. No more secrets between us and the village of Konoha! There isn't anything more to hide from you anymore!"
Maiko pleaded.
The lot of them were distraught. The Herb Village was in some sense their home. To hear that it was destroyed because of them felt like a knife had been driven through their hearts.
Kei and Ken especially were very guilt-ridden.
Which is why they were not going to let Hidden Leaf Village suffered the same fate. There is no reason for more blood to be shed because of them.
"I believe you."
They looked at the Hokage.
"I believe that you are telling the truth. I will call for a council meeting. To which, until then, none of you are to take any actions of your own will. As shinobis of Hidden Village, you owe your allegiance to me!"
They stared.
She had called them people of this village.
"Tsunade-sama…….."
"Go rest now. You will be called up later to provide all the information we need to plan a solid defense against the Black Dragons. Ken, take Kaede with you too. Now go, there's much work to be done!"
With watery-eyes, they nodded and bowed.
"Hai. Tsunade-sama."
Author's note:
Hey everyone!
So sorry that the update took so long but the transition back to the semester hasn't exactly been smooth. On top of that, I have to apologise if you found the chapter to be a little confusing and disorganised. I promise that it is not to follow for the rest of the remaining chapters.
Anyway, thanks so much for everyone's support and yes, I do realise that there are gaps to fill up here in the story and all the bits will be tied promptly as we progress towards the ending. Do be patient though all right?
Thanks again! I would've never made it this far without you all!
Cheers,
Arte
Special thanks to:
Loveable-M
Enkie
