Author's Notes: Ah, another chapter once again, the last stitch before the peace ends and the violence begins. Perhaps, since sharks feed mostly at night, before night falls? Probably, I'm just being a bit over the top there. Anyway, big chapter, long, involved, but important all the same.
Hey, I managed two reviews this chapter, nice, I'll comment in the hopes of encouraging more.
To the Nameless Reviewer: first of, it's dude, just to make that clear to everybody, though I think I've said so before. Nice to be appreciated and I do try to skip time through parts where nothing significant is happening to either the characters or action wise. I wish I knew the reason for the low reviews, heck I even wish people who think I'm destroying Naruto or something would comment, I'd be nice to know why people aren't reading this.
AJ: that's probably true about a lot of original characters, though maybe less than you'd think. In this piece I've put in characters who are really powerful (everybody will see just how powerful real soon) but I've focused on the price they pay for their power. Something I think the main Naruto plotline hasn't done convincingly yet.
Chapter 21 – Watercolors
It was a bright night in Rain to celebrate the beginning of spring. The sky was perfectly clear, a great rarity in that jungle climate, and the brilliant crescent moon and stars illuminated deep into the canopy, covering everything in a smooth touch of pale light. All the lights in the village had been put out, save those in one building. There, in the great ninja hall of Rain, brilliant colors bathed the room, as filtered lanterns hung from every branch in the great natural canopy that formed the ceiling. This scintillating rainbow of color moved slowly in the gentle wind that blew through the canopy, playing over all those beneath it.
Ise stood quietly watching that play of colors, taking solace in them. He was otherwise quite discomforted, he felt out of place at this ceremony. It was a great occasion, and the rain ninja had spared nothing to celebrate the beginning of spring here. Many dignitaries were invited, daimyo, merchants, and artists. The rain ninja displayed great artifacts and special finery to impress their guests, and fed everyone on the bounty of the verdant jungle, fully in bloom now that the chill days of the mild winter had passed. All this beneath the swirling colors in the great hall was quite captivating, and with strong jungle drinks poured many of the guests were simply in awe as the ceremony began.
Standing in formal garb grudgingly loaned by one of the unfortunate ninja who drew guard duty this evening, Ise felt decidedly out of place. He was taller than the ninja whose clothes he wore, and so nothing fit properly. His spear was wrapped in cloth and streams, its sharp point covered and padded, made useless. He felt strangely naked because of that, for his spear was an essential part of his image. As he had told Shiori when he arrived, it was that spear he carried that separated Ise from Kisame, the only visible difference between the two shark-blooded ninja. Why must I be here? Ise wondered, as he listened silently to the completion of the formal ceremonies, the invocation of spring and the charging of the rain ninja by their daimyo for the coming year. I do not like this. A killer like me does not belong at such a festive event. Yet even as Ise thought this, he stole another glance at Yi, and felt his conclusion was completely wrong.
Unlike Ise, Yi's borrowed formal wear fit her perfectly, the streaming blue kimono matching her blue highlighted hair with a brilliant echo that accentuated her sharp and fiery countenance. She had found or made makeup somewhere as well, and so her eyes were shadowed in flaming red and her lips burned with a cold blue complement. She seemed supernatural and unreal, but also stunning. To Ise, who had never seen Yi save as a lost wanderer and a working ninja, it was mesmerizing. I had not thought she could appear so beautiful. It is very strange indeed.
Yi caught Ise's stolen glance at her, and smiled slyly. For her part she thought the tall shark-blooded ninja looked perfectly imperious and intimidating. He wore an officer's ceremonial garb, and though it might be too short, that only served to allow Ise's scaled arms and legs to show through in their fearsomeness. To Yi's eyes Ise stood as a shark among a school of lesser fish, free to strike whenever he chose, and immune to any of the fool's mockery. I wonder though, how well does he dance?
There was little time for Yi to ponder before the ninja were all called to answer that question. The daimyo finished his speech to appropriate applause, and then Shiori took the stage. "We have welcomed the coming spring, and the new year it brings with our proper words, but now let us welcome it with our spirits, show them the endless, unbridled energy of the Rain!" her voice rose momentarily, an awkward thing coming from the quiet, secretive woman, but her words mattered little. The moment Shiori's speech ended the band, hidden in a special corner of the hall, began to play.
It was wild music they played, evoking the masterful storms of the jungle and its endlessly changing forms, a type of music far different than anything Ise had ever heard before. The music of Mist celebrated the mystery of the ocean, and its majesty, but there were shared roots here, and Ise could quickly sense it, for both forms of music were infused with massive, thunderous power, an exultation of the fury and strength of the waters of the world. Beside him Yi gasped softly, and then grinned with sharp eagerness.
Rain ninja and their guests wasted no time, but spun outwards into a wild, churning, raging dance. It swirled around Ise and Yi for a moment, jostling them quickly to the edges, for that floor had no room for idle members, and you cannot fail to move in the center of the storm. Quickly moving to the edge of the hall Ise stood in surprise at the tremendous display of wildness by the ninja, it was so unexpected and so uncommon, that he was shocked. Mist ninja did not do this, did not give up their ninja restraint all together, preferring instead the privacy of passage at sea or on the rocks with the changing tide. He looked on that mass of free-wheeling ninja with a certain trepidation, wondering how it could survive, and if he dared enter into such a stormy release.
Yet the shark-blooded ninja would have little choice. Beside him Yi spent a few moments watching the dance, determining enough of its tempo and flow that she felt confident. She had danced some times in her past, not in wild release like this, but with great focus and power, as the dances of the mizain drew on the formless dance of flames, and summoned forth its great energy. There is no one here to channel this force, but a force is being released nonetheless, Yi realized. She saw, and watching, refused to be pushed idly aside. This is all the freedom the ninja allow, and I will take my peace of it now, before the chance may be lost for good. She smiled a sharp, thin, smile, planning, and then grasped Ise's right hand with her left. "Come on, we're wasting time."
"But I…" he stammered in response.
"No buts, you're a shark right, so follow the fish in their school, and dance with me."
So Ise found himself spun out onto the floor, following Yi. He tried at first to stay in control, to focus and adjust his motions as everything moved, but it didn't work. He failed to stay together, and slammed into many other dancers, earning harsh looks from the rain ninja and their guests. Yi tugged at him softly, trying to bring him into the flow she had already partly stepped into. "Come on Ise," she whispered. "Let it go, and dance with me."
Long ago the shark blooded ninja had cultivated control, had put forward his ninja way over the tug of his blood, but now he needed to back off, to surrender a bit to the world around him, to avoid forcing things. It was desperately hard, but the tugging in Yi's voice, and the hope he saw there, forced him to give in for her sake. He stepped back, and it was a strange feeling. Suddenly, Ise felt like a stranger in his body, a body that moved of its own accord as if unseen hands guided it, a body that dodged incoming obstacles and people before it even detected them. He was outside his body, and yet in it at the same time, the surface of his skin was its own entity, able to move and swirl in consciousness of a greater reality. It is like swimming, Ise thought as Yi pulled him around in a tight spin, wrapping closely about him and then spinning wide again. Everything moves together, a fluid world of motion.
The lights played over them, and Ise found he need not focus on the world around him for the first time in ages. He could simply relax and watch things about him, taking in the world in an unbelievable level of awareness and detail. His shark's senses sharpened everything, but they brought not singular sensations and searching impulses as before, but a swirling, fascinating mixture. Ise watched the lights play of Yi's face as if he had never seen her before, a world of pattern and possibility revealed there, a form that needed no definition or explanation, it was complete in its own complexity, a thing simply there, and then gone again, as the lights changed. Every moment revealed and concealed a thousand such things, a brilliantly colored world, inconstant, and permanent in its own moments, needing nothing more.
Ise found all this fascinating, enchanting, but there was something confusing about it all, for in his loss of focus he moved, but he still felt distant. This is not complete, he sensed, but he did no care, not wishing to shatter the moment.
Around and around they spun, Hoshigake and Mizain, and Yi laughed breathlessly between songs. "I told you, you can do this," she gasped, and then spun him back about as the music rose once more.
It went on like this for some time, and neither Ise nor Yi felt like keeping a count, they were enjoying this moment, their first truly pleasant one in rain, and likely the last release they would have before another long, hard journey.
Yet the moment of crystalline, fluid clarity was shattered abruptly.
Spinning around near the edge of the dance form, Yi suddenly stuck another.
It was a rain ninja, one obviously quite drunk, who had dashed across the dance floor heedless of what might happen. He took one look at Yi and pushed her aside angrily. "Out of my way, Mist interloper."
It was not the right move. Before Ise could react, before he had switched out of his dance mentality to realize what had happened Yi had reacted. Her joyous moment had been interrupted, rudely, sourly, and insultingly. She reacted with her emotions, already strong and fervent from the long minutes of breathless dancing. "Mist interloper? You struck me, you damn drunk fool!"
The rain ninja held a drink in each hand, and at Yi's words he took the one in his left and splashed all over Yi, ruining with fruit and alcohol the borrowed kimono, and drenching the Mizain girl in sick sweet liquid.
The scent burning in her nostrils and clinging to her tongue, Yi reacted without thinking, her mind completely separate from anything but this single action. It was as if she and the drunken rain ninja were the only ones in the world, and he had just slighted her beyond bearing.
Yi reached out and grabbed the rain ninja's right hand, bringing the drink he held up towards his face. As she did her anger flared beyond compare, for the eyes of others began to filter into her tunneled vision. "Care to try that with this one!" she hissed.
In the rain ninja's hand the drink burst into flame.
The flames lasted only a moment, for Ise reacted then, dashing Yi to the side and knocking the glass free from the rain ninja's hand, so that he was merely scorched in the chin. "What are you doing?" he asked desperately.
"What am I…what am I do…oh gods!" Yi gasped the words as almost a scream, had she had more air in her lungs perhaps everyone would have heard, as it was only a few nearby ninja realized what had happened.
Then, with a suddenness that startled even Ise, Yi dashed from the hall at full speed.
It was left to the shark-blooded ninja to make half-acceptable excuses about something bad in the wine and the emotional nature of the dance, mollify and apologize to nearby rain ninja, and slowly make his way to the door. Still, he did not do so without noting entirely too sharp looks on many of the rain ninja. They know this was not simply the blunder it appeared. Why did you do that Yi? He asked the darkness. Could you not have just struck him? Yet even as he asked this, Ise already knew the answer. This is the price we pay for letting our guard down, even for a few simple moments.
Swiftly, Ise made his way through the moonlit village of hidden rain to the small dwelling he and Yi shared. He expected to find her there in the darkness, but she was absent. Indeed, when Ise opened the door he found the place much changed. His ninja uniform lay on the table, along with his entire share of the items they had packed for travel. All of Yi's items were gone, and everything else they possessed, what little it was, including Yi's borrowed kimono, had been piled together as junk.
Only after taking in this strange sight did Ise notice the note on the table.
It was a simple scrawl on a bit of paper, clearly written in haste. It read: sorry, leave tonight? Meet at bottom lake. –Yi
Ise crumpled the slip of paper up immediately, and proceeded to put on his ninja uniform.
There is a lake near the bottom of the vertical village that is Hidden Rain. It is not directly beneath the village proper, but off to the side, in the shadow of the great trees, holding all the water that runs off their massive branches. As the water for the village comes from above, and not below, the lake is little used, save as an occasional practice ground. On this night, with great ceremonies progressing above, the lake was completely abandoned, and sat in the silent darkness, a cold watery mirror to nothing.
Ise approached the lake cautiously, once again wearing his traveling ninja gear. He felt far more comfortable in that outfit than in the borrowed costume he had worn earlier, a costume that now lay in the pile of abandoned things from rain in an abandoned lodging. The bridges are cut, Ise had decided when he left. There is no turning back now. Suwa Shiori will be offended, but it is best to leave immediately. Yet, he wondered at this choice of meeting place. Would it not have been easier for me to meet Yi by the road?
So the shark-blooded ninja approached the lake with great caution, looking out into the darkness. Still, in the dim light of the moon and stars he saw nothing. There was little light this close to the ground, and the accumulated vapors of the forest dulled his keen sense of smell, making it less useful as a tool down in the dark bottom. Cautiously he stepped out onto the lake, suspended on the surface of the water by a practiced expenditure of chakra. He walked slowly, looking and listening as he progressed, but he found nothing. Finally, well out into the water, Ise's patience gave out. "Yi, are you here?" he called into the night.
Light burst into Ise's vision, swirling about him in a graceful spiral, as flames dashed out over the surface of the still water, caressing it with a soft yellow touch, burning slowly into the center. Once they came together the water surged upward to reveal a ninja in travel garb, a ninja with blue-red hair, Yi. She leapt upward with the burning water, and then spun back down, sliding across the swirls of her mizuho induced currents and moving with delicate grace. Ise gasped at the suddenness of it all, but then his jaw dropped completely when Yi began to dance.
It was not like the wild dance of the rain ninja above, no; this was a slower motion, formal and focused. It was a fluid and slow form Yi made, a practiced motion that evoked the timeless movements of the waves. Ise recognized the dance immediately, for it was the march of the tides, a ceremonial dance from Mist. He had seen it many times, but never like this.
Water fountained and moved around Yi, forming crests and waves, and ever as the water moved flames burned in it, on the surface and within they formed, providing and eerie aurora of light that suffused the full surroundings. Water flowed over Yi's fluid motion, coating her, and it in turn burned, so that her brilliant fire hair coat the essence of flame fully and moved in a mesmerizing way like nothing Ise had ever seen before.
Slowly, delicately, Yi passed through the complete motions of the dance, a sole revolution, and then turned to face Ise. There were tears in her eyes when she did so.
Ise stepped forward, and Yi spoke, her words rushed, but charged with emotion. "This…this is what I wanted you to see before, this side of my power, the lovely side of the horror," she spoke through her tears with effort, but Ise did not need to hear the emotions in Yi's voice to know her sincerity, he had learned he too well to require such obvious cues. "I'm so sorry for what happened, I lost control of myself, the anger, it came out when my guard was down. Can you forgive me for it?"
"It is alright," Ise replied with complete sincerity. "There will always be complications, we can work around them. Besides, you have given me an unbelievable gift, to show me this, your true self."
"Really?" her tears slipped away, and there was only hope in Yi's gaze now.
Ise only nodded.
"There is one more thing I would show you Ise," Yi said softly. "But you must trust me completely. Do I have that trust?"
Without hesitation Ise replied. "Who could I trust if I did not trust you, my opposite number?"
"Then close you eyes," Yi told him.
Ise did as he was told, wondering what was about to happen. He expected some grand display of Mizuho, and was surprised when he felt the slick feely on water sliding up his body. His shark's orientation made it clear he was not being submerged, but the water was slowly coating him. Then he felt a strange and unfamiliar warmth.
"Open your eyes now, Ise."
The shark-blooded ninja opened his eyes, only to see a world aflame. Yi stood next to him, and with absolute surprise he saw that each of them was covered in a skin of burning water. He looked down at his limbs and saw that skin move fluidly with his body, watching the flames flex and play over his form in their strange and fascinating way. There was no rational or legitimate explanation for that feeling, but Ise felt something primal touch him then, as Yi's flame coated hand held his own.
"A great gift," he said to Yi's smile through the flames over her face. "I only wish there was something I could give in return."
"I doesn't…"
"No, it does," Ise cut her off. "And there is something, if you trust me?"
"Of course."
"Then remove the flames from our faces for a moment."
Yi did as Ise requested, and he reached out his hands and put them to Yi's face, her soft skin feeling warm and smooth to his scaled fingers. He spread his hands and placed his thumbs below her eyes. With a single smooth motion he brought his hands across her face and then pulled them away.
Yi felt a sharp stinging feeling, and then a strange, indescribable sensation. She looked down into the water to see what had happened only to see slits opened in her face, slits identical to those on Ise's own, the slits of his gills. "Wha-"
Ise suddenly cut the flow of chakra from his feet, and pulled Yi down under the surface of the lake.
The two ninja were underwater then, breathing easily through gills, feeling no urgency to surface. They were also still aflame, brilliant lanterns beneath the cool surface of the lake. Together they spun around in those dark waters, seeking out everything in the range of vision, seeing a thing never before seen by either, the world of Mizuho beneath the waves. It was a world of myriad shadows and hues, of light lost in the darkness and reflecting oddly about the abyss. A world where tendrils of flame flowed off their bodies in brilliant coils, creating phantoms of color and motion to fascinate the eye in ways no normal phenomenon could.
Floating buoyantly beneath the waves the two hung together with linked arms for a long time, simply marveling at the thing they had created, an experience that only the shared use of their powers had allowed. Finally, with disappointment, Ise signaled by tugging on Yi's arms that they must surface.
With sudden motion they jumped up out of the water to stand atop it. Yi hung there in Ise's grasp, the two clinging to each as if the other was the only thing that held their universe together.
"My apologies, but the jutsu I used will provide gills only for so long," Ise muttered.
"That's all right, it was long enough," Yi replied.
The two walked together to the shore, saying nothing more of the experience, but simply using a few ninja tricks to dry their clothes. They were silent in the darkness for a moment, and then Ise spoke.
"It has been a long evening; perhaps we should start in the morning, when we are rested."
"Yes," Yi replied. "That's probably best. No one will bother us tonight anyway, they're all busy."
So the two ninja went to sleep with gorgeous memories to obscure the harsh ones of earlier that evening. Both believed that despite the incident earlier, all would be well.
The ninja world does treat a power such as Mizuho so lightly, especially not in the ever alert surrounded land of hidden rain.
In the final hours before dawn they struck, coming with brutal swiftness. Not even Ise's shark enhanced senses could wake him in time to mount any resistance. Strong strikes by wise hands smashed them with clubs of iron and wood, driving them to pain and darkness immediately. Ise had time only to regret that he had not paid more attention to the warlord's warning. This is what I get for trusting the tides in a shoal I do not know.