Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto in any way and make no claim on its copyright or any characters from the series. Original characters are my own property.
Author's Notes: New chapter time! Okay, just to note, there's some fairly dark things in this chapter. I've tried to avoid being too graphic but just so that's said. Oh, and this incident is very important to the rest of the story, though that should be obvious.
Thanks for all reviews!
Other Gifts Continues
As they traveled down the mountainside in chill afternoon Suzumebachi was continually impressed by her cousin's ability to rapidly absorb major revelations.
"Are you sure you don't have any questions?" Suzumebachi asked after a brief pause, as the pair exited the woods and entered the slender fields in the flattest part of the valley, near the village.
"Not really," Kuroari replied, and when she caught Suzumebachi's questioning look, elaborated. "Essentially, the forbidden scroll was found, the Tsuchikage drew that tattoo on you and gave it to you, and now you can summon intelligent insects from some other reality. You made that knife in return for becoming one of the insect's students, and you've been studying the scroll and learned some jutsus but you can't teach me any of them because the Tsuchikage forbade it. I believe that's everything?"
Chastened, Suzumebachi replied. "Right, and again, I'm sorry about the jutsus."
"Not your fault," Kuroari managed, though her disappointment was clear. "Anyway, you'll just have to impress the old man enough so he lets you share the knowledge."
"I suppose," Suzumebachi said nothing more. Her feelings were mixed on the things she had revealed. It felt as if she had disobeyed the Tsuchikage's intent, but she could not see another solution. Chul'To's speech had been far too obvious a signal for someone like Kuroari to miss, and so she had revealed the truth, holding back only the existence of Harvestman, which had been surprisingly easy. The odd part of it all was how comfortable Suzumebachi felt telling Kuroari. At no point had she felt her cousin would betray the information or spread it around. It had not even been necessary to ask for her cousin's silence, Kuroari had offered it immediately once the forbidden scroll had been revealed. Such a level of trust was unexpected and heartening, though, considering the day's events, perhaps not surprising.
By the time they reached the village the sun was descending behind the valley wall to the west, and light seemed to flee the valley floor with great speed. The Kamizuru ninja saw no one in the village moving about, but that was not truly surprising. The villagers had seemed hesitant to wander about throughout the past few days, uninterested in traveling in the cold. Suzumebachi shared the sentiment, but she would have thought people who lived in such cold climes would have adjusted to the temperature better.
"We should speak to the headman," Suzumebachi said as they approached the first buildings. "I'm not sure the trouble here has ended, but our mission is complete for now."
"I think you're right," Kuroari replied cautiously. "We need to determine the consequences of those summons back in Iwa, and inform the Tsuchikage."
As they walked through the village all was quite, and there was no one at all about. This was somewhat odd, Suzumebachi did not remember things having been so somber, and the absence of anyone gathering water at the river to cook for a late meal was strange. It put her on edge.
They saw the first evidence in the small open area before the hall. Scraps of clothing lay on the ground, and there were blocks of ice lodged in the snowpack, strangely out of place. "Maybe there was an accident carrying?" Kuroari wondered.
"I don't like it," Suzumebachi told her cousin. "Something's changed here, and I hate to hope for coincidences."
Kuroari nodded, and they headed to the wooden doors.
Suzumebachi pounded on the doors with her gloved fist, and then waited, only to have silence answer her. She repeated the action, striking harder, making sure she would be heard even if those within were in a drunken stupor. Yet there was still no answer.
The two ninja stepped back, and both drew weapons.
Holding her tanto tightly Suzumebachi grabbed a door handle with her left hand and pulled. It should not have opened; the door ought to have been barred from within as it had been the past four days, but grudgingly, with protest, the heavy wood swung back.
Warm air from within the hall rushed out to meet the cold, and it carried the unmistakable scent of death with it.
Kuroari, standing directly in front of the opening, not shielded by the door, gagged and coughed, unable to resist the powerful urge. Turning, Suzumebachi was warned by the horror in her cousin's eyes before she took her own glimpse into the gloom within.
A vision utter horror greeted her. All within the long hall lay the dead, men and animals both, men, women, and oh so numerous children, all lying in place. They were not peaceful in death, but lay with clothes in tatters, bodies blackened and soiled, in positions and expressions telling tales of great suffering. All this, and not one bore an obvious wound.
Pulled by the siren call of revulsion, Suzumebachi stepped across the doorframe, her boot touching the stone floor.
The silence broke. Within the air turned black, and a brutal, loud, asynchronous buzzing materialized as untold numbers of flies swarmed upward, and then surged toward the door.
"Get down cousin!" Kuroari shouted.
Suzumebachi, feeling the incredible surge of malice just as her cousin did, obeyed immediately.
"Gisan Sutingaa no Jutsu!" Kuroari's blast of acid smashed into that oncoming cloud, a wave of liquid to encapsulate the flies in their massive numbers, the liquid gumming up their wings and the weight bringing them to the ground.
The moment the blast of acid had passed Suzumebachi jerked back into the snow. She grabbed the door's edge with both hands and pulled with all her might, slamming it shut on the death within.
When the door struck into place and no flies came forth the two ninja looked at each other for a long moment, breath coming in heaves.
Kuroari broke the silence. "What now?"
"I think we should burn it," it was a knee-jerk reaction, but Suzumebachi could consider nothing else so appealing as allowing flame to claim such a desolation.
This suggestion seemed to adjust Kuroari's mind away from the horror she had seen. "Even if that's the right action, I don't think we can light such stout timber on fire, unless you've learned katon moves I don't know about."
"Damn," Suzumebachi growled, knowing her cousin was right. Instead of saying something unnecessary she considered the next move. "We need to check the other houses."
Kuroari nodded, but her face was grim, and she slowly raised the snowmask to place at least the sense of a barrier between her senses and these visions. "We should be careful, those flies can't be natural, even if there we eggs in there, it was far too many, and they should not have developed so fast." She did not bother to state the obvious, that the cold meant they could not have come from outside.
"Right," Suzumebachi replied. "Let's see the rest of this."
It was a quick search, but speed did not make the horror go away. Instead, it seeped deep into the mind, the tormented bodies, found in home after home, the swarming flies so often found with them, these could not be pushed away, only drew deeper, scarring vision, until every door became a trial of tremendous will, every buzzing noise delivered like a lash.
The worst were the children. Adults and animals they found, but they were surprisingly few, less than either ninja expected, but the children, these were obvious. Small forms, held in contorted positions and faces strung in silent screams, they were present all, Kuroari related, in a short, clipped sentence, that it seemed every single child the valley contained was dead within the village. The weight of such a thing could not be borne with any ease, if at all.
When they were done at last it was full dark, but the two ninja kept active even as the temperature plummeted. With careful motions they disassembled their tent, packing it up and putting all their gear in order for travel. Their own belongings were completely undisturbed, but by silent agreement they refused to camp anywhere near such horrors.
Only after midnight, several hours of silent trudging under the pale light of a half-moon behind them, did the two Kamizuru ninja stop. They set up the tent again, but now, with the shield of distance and time to protect them, dared to discuss what had happened. "How?" Suzumebachi asked first. "How did they die, and in only a few hours too? There were no weapon marks on any bodies."
"Poison," Kuroari replied. "That's most likely. If they slaughtered a goat and it was poisoned it could well kill almost everyone, it would only take one poisoner with a strong dose."
"Is that the only option?" Suzumebachi asked after thinking about it for a while. "I know some poisons leave bodies like that, but it seems so exotic."
"Well there could be a jutsu to kill a person without leaving a mark," Kuroari offered, but the doubt was clearly audible in her voice. "But to use it on such a scale seems unbelievable, poison seems most likely. It could be fungal perhaps; such a thing might be found locally."
"Alright, but why?" that was the far more important question. "Why kill the villagers, and are we connected?"
"That is the question isn't it," Kuroari muttered. "It makes no sense to me. What do you think?"
"I think it is connected to us," Suzumebachi replied, letting her anger loose, the anger that had been rising as soon as she considered this possibility. "I think those centipedes were supposed to kill us, and the village was targeted at the same time. Whoever engineered this ruckus in the first place decided to eliminate the whole thing."
"Maybe you're right," Kuroari offered. "But that leaves one problem, where did the survivors go?"
"Are we certain there were survivors?" Suzumebachi wondered. It appeared almost impossible to her that a village could have been so completely snuffed out, but she would take nothing for granted. "There were no tracks out from the village."
"They probably walked along the ice," Kuroari said. "That way there would be no tracks. Maybe it was a slave raid," she spoke suddenly, as if the idea had just occurred to her. "Since only adults lived perhaps those considered unsuitable were poisoned and the rest carried off."
"But in that case there should have been violence," Suzumebachi countered. "Recall the hunters, these villages could have defended themselves. Besides, would anyone actually raid for slaves these days? The last brigand state was destroyed decades ago."
"Still, I think the deaths were meant to disguise the living who are missing. If we had perished too the next to investigate would never notice the lack of numbers, and surely there would be an investigation, the villagers were only a fraction of the people in this valley. A herder will stop by soon enough," Kuroari fell silent for a moment. "I hope the flies aren't actually dangerous then."
Suzumebachi was having the same thought. "They'll probably be dead by morning, the temperature has fallen, and with no fires heat won't be maintained. It should be alright, but what about the flies?"
"Meaning?" Kuroari's tiredness showed, and she crawled lethargically into her sleeping bag, not picking up on the nature of the question.
"It's too cold," Suzumebachi felt exhaustion folding over her as well, but she was not yet ready to let it claim her. "And it was too fast. There shouldn't have been any flies, so how did they get there?"
"I don't know," Kuroari mumbled, and her voice degenerated. "Couldn't we have done it though…"
The words, once puzzled out, flashed through Suzumebachi's mind with ice-cracking force. She reached out and shook Kuroari violently. "Like us? You mean an insect master? Another ninja, out here?"
The jostling apparently shook some energy back into her cousin. "If the centipedes and the villagers are connected, then it has to be doesn't it?"
"But who could do such a thing?" Suzumebachi could hardly believe it, didn't want to believe it. "Who would do such a thing? It can't be our family!"
"Probably not," Kuroari mumbled. "None of us summons centipedes." Then she spoke very clearly for a moment. "Cousin, I'm tired and cold and my mind keeps replaying images I can't stand. Let's go to sleep and try to figure the rest out in the morning on the way back to Iwa."
Suzumebachi heard the soft rebuke, and recognized how strained her cousin's endurance, not hardened by endless training sessions on freezing hillsides, truly was. "Okay, let's do that, sorry," she rolled over in her sleeping bag and fell silent. Even in the silent darkness, tired as she was, sleep would not come quickly. The chilling cold seeped through the tent, and it was occasionally punctuated by sharp blasts of wind, keeping the body agitated and awake. As it was, Suzumebachi's mind could not accept the darkness, but continued to call up all the horrible images of the afternoon, playing over again and again the scenes revealed with each opening door. She wanted to scream at the endless terrible openings, again and again they came, until the stress finally overtook her reserves, and the darkness took her inside the door and let her rest there.
In the morning the two cousins would discover their mutual thrashing had managed to rip out every last tent stake and collapse the fabric over them.