The Archangel of the Hidden Leaf

Chapter 2:

Deathwish

The sound of a zipper momentarily filled the dim room. Looking up from his bag, Kakashi inspected the wooden shutters and saw that the sunrise still had not hit the horizon. The sky outside was just beginning to transition from dark blue to deep violet, and the stars fading away each passing minute.

Behind him, Yamato slid open the door and found Sai and Sakura waiting on the other side. Both of them looked a little bit tired, but they were ready to leave, nonetheless. "Punctual," he stated, impressed. "I like it." Then he turned his head side to side, seeking the missing one, but he was nowhere to be found. "Well, 66% punctual."

"I'll get him," Kakashi sighed. "Meet us outside."

The three of them nodded once in acknowledgment before making their way down the right side of the hallway. Kakashi slipped his bag over his shoulder before leaving the room as well, but he went down the left side of the hallway instead. Every step closer to the room that Sakura, Sai, and Naruto shared made the sound of snoring louder and louder. Even standing outside the door, it was almost as if there was no wooden barrier in the way.

On the other side, Naruto was completely sprawled out on the floor in an odd position and direction compared to how his sleeping bag was laid out. His mouth hung open wide with a dribble of saliva traveling down his chin. After waiting a moment to see if Naruto would at least hear the door open and wake up, Kakashi walked up to him and bent over to tap his cheek with the back of his hand, the metal piece making contact against his skin. "Hey. Get up," he prompted.

As a response, Naruto gave out an even louder snore.

"Hey!" Kakashi repeated, giving him a single hard backslap.

"Ow," Naruto winced, finally opening his hazy eyes to find his sensei standing above him.

"I told you we're leaving at dawn, and you were the first to go to sleep. Why are you the last to wake up? Late at that, too."

"Huh…?" he moaned, his gaze shifting around to see how dark the room was still. Then it hit him. Suddenly he jolted up and jerked his head back toward the window shutters. Now the sky was transitioning from deep violet to dark purple, but there was still no sign of the sunrise. "What the hell?! The sun isn't even out yet!" he exclaimed.

"Exactly. It's dawn," Kakashi persisted, stepping back. "Hurry up and get ready. Everyone else is waiting outside."

"Ugh fine."

The forest was never-ending. Every plant, from angiosperms to gymnosperms and lichens to mosses, looked the same. The only change was the lightening sky and the sunrise that crept over the deciduous canopy. Juvenile rays from the sun penetrated through the foliage brighter and brighter as the minutes ticked by.

It started getting difficult for her to avoid those rays as she limped in her stride. The Akatsuki fugitive had been running for hours, doing anything she can to create distance between her and Deidara and Tobi. Tired pants made it sound like she was suffocating from tightened bronchi. Her mouth was dry as viscous saliva drooled out from the corner of her lips. The burn remnants on her arms were now also ringed blisters around her wrists from the rope that had restrained her. She got loose from it after hours of straining against the fibers. At one point, she even tripped over an eroded tree root and fell to the ground. Now her knotted and matted hair had twigs and leaves entangled within it as a result.

Her state of mind was completely distorted by this point. Every beat of her heart made her head and eardrums throb painfully. Her legs were numb from the aching muscles screaming at her to take a rest, but she continued to move in spite. The worst pain was probably from her abdomen. She did not remember the last time she ate something decent or of a good portion. Malnutrition gnawed away at the protein of all her muscles, making her emaciated with bones protruding where they should not have been. To make matters worse, the environment around her became a playground of exotic colors to her eyes. Exhaustion was trying to play mind games with her, but she refused to participate.

Unbeknownst to the girl, the forest was actually thinning out slightly in the direction she was heading. Then she found herself in a certain scent that made her nose scrunch in disgust and her stride slow to a stop. Rotting flesh involuntarily filled her nostrils with every tired inhalation. She could imagine the maggots and gnats involved in the process of decomposition. But there was meat…and blood…

The thought made something surge inside of her. Her heart erupted a single violent beat that shook her core and jabbed a knife in her skull. The sensation made her double over and hold her temples, and when the surge increased in intensity, she fell to her knees and cried out. Against her will, her body changed, but she was so desperately ravenous that it almost felt good. Saliva pooled in her dry mouth until it lubricated every crevice and came pouring out onto the soft grass.

After a minute of this, the surge plateaued within her, stabilizing her morphing. She gripped handfuls of grass and soil in her fists as she opened her eyes. The exotic colors that toyed with her vision before were no more. Instead, as she gazed around at the ground and trees and bushes and sparse flowers, the colors became hyper-defined. Green was now multiple different shades combined into one pigment on a leaf. Brown was now etched into the tree bark while accompanied by white, orange, and green lichen. A little dandelion that was a few inches away from her lap was a vibrant shade of yellow littered with round particles of pollen. The smallest details stood out to her, most of them unseen by the naked eye. And not only that, but her depth perception had lengthened tremendously. When she remembered the odorous carrion, she deeply inhaled the scent once more and cocked her head in the direction it was coming from. It was almost like she had tunnel vision in that instant because she looked far ahead and made eye contact with a still deer hoof that was lying out from behind a dense shrub.

Her instincts kicked in when she locked in on her target, so she got up and made her way over. Finally, she had food…Disgusting, rancid meat.

The day awakening also awakened the human race. In the Hidden Leaf Village, the sounds of the inhabitants grew louder from the bustle of life. Civilians headed for work, opened their businesses, or commuted around while shinobi joined up in their units and teams for duties.

Two such shinobi were Izumo Kamizuki and Kotetsu Hagane, chunins who were mostly responsible for guarding the village entrance or running errands for the Hokage. They both walked together to their post for the day, chatting and laughing like they did every day. But as they approached closer, an unpleasant aroma manifested around them. They both slowed their stride with the village's massive open gate looming in front of them.

"You smell that?" Izumo asked his friend, scrunching his nose after sniffing a couple of times.

"Yeah. Rotten eggs," Kotetsu replied. Trying to be funny, he then pushed the cloth bandage that ran across the bridge of his nose down to cover his nostrils instead.

Izumo laughed out loud at the sight. "So that's why you have that."

Unfortunately, however, when they reached their post to take over guard duty, the stench was even worse. Two chunins who had been keeping watch overnight were standing outside, and the sight of their replacements made them openly filled with relief.

"It's about time!" one of them cheered.

"Hey, Toneri. Hey, Kata. How long have you been smelling death for?" Kotetsu questioned them, placing the bandage back on his nose properly.

"Probably the last three hours at least," Kata answered, brushing fingers through his cropped brown hair.

"Geez," Izumo responded. "Why didn't you do anything about it?"

"We couldn't leave our post. But now that you're here, we can take care of it now."

"Hmm, maybe you should take Izumo with you. I'm sure he'd have a blast!" Kotetsu teased, patting Izumo's shoulder. His friend's germaphobia was always a feature that he tried to exploit in times like these.

"Shut up. There's no way in hell I'd go move a dead animal," Izumo insisted, feeling some itching in his hands from the thought of handling such a disgusting specimen.

"Don't worry. We'll take care of it," Toneri calmly assured him.

Izumo evaluated his signature pupil-less lilac irises that made up the Hyuga clan members. With eyes like those, it would be easy to find the source of the stench. "Have fun then," he joked.

Toneri and Kata turned toward the entrance behind them to go investigate, relieving themselves of their duty. On the other side of the high walls, they were met with a dirt path that cut through the surrounding forest with ease. Since it was early in the morning still, nobody was out roaming around on it. The only things present were chirping birds and scurrying squirrels in the trees.

"Considering it smells this bad, it's probably a deer or a fox," Kata assumed.

"You're right," Toneri affirmed. He made a single hand sign and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. "Byakugan."

Kata watched as the Hyuga's eyes intensified with veins violently protruding in places on his face like his eye sockets and cheeks. He then scanned their surroundings, everything in various shades of black and gray accompanied by white. It was all visible to him, even the internal elements of organisms.

The left side of the path revealed nothing peculiar. It was calm with only small animals moving around for food or shelter. The right side of the path, however, had an anomaly in it.

Kata noticed Toneri's change in expression. The veins in his face eased a little bit, affecting his concentration. "What is it?" Kata asked him.

Not replying immediately, he began to stalk toward the tree line. Kata had no choice but to follow him blindly to back him up.

Five pairs of feet landed on solid ground swiftly. After a couple of hours of bounding from branch to branch, it was a good feeling to be steady on a flat foundation. Not only that, but a clear view of the light blue sky above was now out in the open. Sai gazed up; the light emitted from the sun pierced his corneas. As he shaded his face with his hand, he got a better view of the cottony clusters of water vapor above them. There were not many clouds casting shadows on the earth, but the ones he could see presented themselves uniquely to the eye of the beholder.

When the others started the final stretch to the Leaf Village, Sai took a moment to take in what he interpreted. Each cloud shifted across the atmosphere at its own pace according to the wind, and as a result, their identities morphed every few minutes. But what he saw in a couple, humorously, were animals like a rabbit and a cat. The others, he could not decipher, but perhaps someone else could.

Fixing his gaze back on the group, who were now a few footsteps ahead of him, he followed close behind. There was no longer a need to travel with haste since they were on the path that would lead straight to home. All they had left to finish for their mission was to report to Lady Tsunade. Then, they would be free–

Kakashi, who was leading the group with Yamato, suddenly halted in the middle of his stride. Naruto and Sakura easily read his body language as he briefly turned his head slightly and sniffed the air. "What is it, Kakashi Sensei?" Naruto questioned him, sensing the sudden alarm in him.

He took a moment before responding. "My sense of smell is strong but…surely you all can smell that, too."

Curious, Naruto and Sakura started deeply inhaling through their nostrils to get a whiff of anything that seemed noticeable or odd. For a split second, Sakura captured an acrid smell in her olfactory senses that she could not identify, but her reaction was cut short by Kakashi jerking his head back toward the path in front of them and running. "Come on!" he prompted Team 7.

The other four followed suit on instinct, trailing Kakashi. Whatever it was that caught his attention had more than a manifesting scent, and the biggest misgivings now relied on the location of the problem. Naruto could feel his stomach start tying in knots with the distance between them and the Leaf Village closing. Is something attacking the village? he wondered.

Sakura, with the breeze making her pink hair flap and bounce around her shoulders, prayed to veer off the path any moment. If Kakashi was this adamant about what he smelled and heard, then it had to be bad. She could only hope that only shinobi were involved and nobody innocent or helpless.

To everyone's dismay, the village gate came into view with its overwhelming magnitude towering above the trees by hundreds of feet. And the smell Kakashi detected so faintly before was now almost overbearing to any nose on the premises. Naruto almost gagged, but he was quickly distracted when the sound of screams and snarls hit his ears. Shinobi were also flooding from the gate to the wooded area on the left of the path. Although Team 7 headed in to also tend to the issue at hand without hesitation, none of them could help but be bewildered by the sounds coming from the source. It was obvious that somebody was injured or dying because those gut-wrenching screams were mixing with gurgles. But those snarls and screeches…They just did not sound like any living creature that had been heard before. It was almost demonic, like a roar originating from deep in the chest cavity but tearing its way through vocal cords until they were merely dislodged flaps of cartilage loose in the larynx.

Finally veering off the path, the five ninjas easily found a small cluster of bodies. Each person was on edge with kunai knives, shurikens, and swords in hand, ready to attack, but they were all holding back for some reason. Their eyes were wide in bewilderment, and their bodies were stiff from shock. Naruto burst through them without thinking, and he was met by a total blood bath. There was a mutilated dead body on the ground, the visible but stained flak jacket indicating he was at least a chunin. The once screaming shinobi was now just a gurgling heap of exposed neck wounds who lay in the arms of a shinobi using medical ninjutsu. The green hue emanating from his palm was failing to heal the fatality, so he quickly died, the lilac gaze of his Byakugan staring into nothingness.

The volume of blood covering the grass was surreal. There was so much that it practically pooled around the dead body, and the iron smell wafting off it was only adding to the mordant stench of decaying flesh. What was left of a deer carcass, which had a freshly shredded belly with rotting intestines laying out in the open and darkened blood all over the place, laid a few feet away from the carnage.

Seeing it all blocked out Naruto's hearing for a long moment; ringing sealed his eardrums. It was so gruesome and mortifying to take in that he, too, froze in place like the others. Sakura's shallow breaths came in staggers. Although she was trained in medical ninjutsu and could perform surgeries with no reservations, nothing could have prepared her for such a scene. The color drained from her face, but she remained standing. Sai, although he was trained to never feel emotion back in the Foundation, could not help but feel helplessly petrified as he stared above everyone's heads.

A red droplet fell in front of Naruto, followed by another. It brought him back to the present enough to look up. Demonic screeching and snarls filled his head again. Above him, suspended in the air by thin cables binding wrists and ankles, was a person. She ferociously thrashed against the cables as shinobi, two in the trees and two on the ground, kept a tight grip to prevent escape. Naruto took a nervous step back, getting a better view of the monster she truly was. On her skin as white as snow, from the bottoms of her feet to the lower half of her face, was plastered with bright red blood. What little clothing she had was ragged, and the mass of dark hair that swayed with her thrashing revealed what was truly making everyone hold back from ending her life right on the spot.

Her face.

Crowded, jagged fangs jutted from her mouth as if there were too many of them to hold inside. They had fragments of tissue trapped among them and hanging off some as she continued to roar out and spit blood. But farther up were what could only be described as two black holes for eye sockets. There was nothing observable in them. Instead, there were defined, colorless circles that must have been the size of saucers. This feature seemed to have distorted the shape of her skull, giving a confusing impression of whether everyone was looking at a human, an insect, or something else. Nonetheless, this was a face of nightmares, and it was petrifying everyone.

Air seemed to stop entering Naruto's lungs as he stared. He was both scared and intrigued by this creature. She had some human features, yet she sounded and looked like something from Hell itself. Now she was completely defenseless as she remained suspended above the brethren of Leaf ninjas, awaiting her untimely crucifixion.

A rectangular branch of wood suddenly shot out from behind Naruto and stretched out to the creature. It appeared that the Wood Style user had snapped out of his fixation. Captain Yamato manipulated it easily to split into multiple smaller branches and surround her, wanting to cage her. The ninjas keeping the cables taut pulled even tighter to try alleviating the thrashing for him, but all it did was keep them steady enough for the wood to accidentally splinter against them.

Then a dreaded snapping noise insinuated.

One of the cables holding her wrist broke off, instantly giving her dangerous freedom. Yamato realized his mistake a second too late. The girl reached over herself to graze the cable holding her other wrist against her jagged teeth, freeing her other arm. Now with nothing holding her from above, she dropped onto the branches that were now beginning to entwine around her. The shinobi on the ground each took a nervous step back as they watched and prayed for Yamato's trap to work, but Naruto saw the two remaining cables fall to the ground and her slender body slip through the cage.

The creature plunged to the ground and landed on all fours, releasing another screech. Naruto barely had time to react. He suddenly had the mouthful of jagged fangs going straight for his face since she leaped for him. The kunai knives started flying in response, a couple grazing her flesh, but Naruto quickly dropped to the ground and planted the sole of his foot directly into her stomach to launch her away. Sakura leaped high, seeing the opportunity given to her, and smashed a fist full of chakra into her back to send her crashing straight back to the ground. The force used was powerful enough to break open the Earth's crust. Bones crunched on impact, and the girl collided against the soil with a deep rumble that could be felt by everyone.

"Yamato!" Kakashi signaled.

A new wooden branch generated through Yamato's arm and quickly encased around the creature in the shape of a rectangular cage while she remained still. The wood was thick enough to not be broken through easily, but Yamato kept himself attached just in case she attempted.

But there was still no movement. The other shinobi gathered around apprehensively. Was she dead? Sakura went to reach inside to check for a pulse, but Kakashi stopped her with a hand against her shoulder. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he warned. She glanced at his covered face, both understanding the risks but wanting to know if she enacted the final blow.

A whimper made Sakura whip her gaze back to the creature. She began to stir weakly inside the cage, realizing she was truly finished. Pain radiated from her back, and the taste of blood was all inside her mouth. The brilliant aurora of colors in her vision showed shadows and silhouettes surrounding her. She reminisced on what she had done minutes ago leading up to this moment. It was all so terrible, and she knew it, but she could not stop herself from acting upon her ravenous instincts. Tears welled and trickled from her eyelids. Then, in her moment of clarity, she spoke. "Please…kill me. Do it. Please…" she quietly wept, thinking of her innocent victims.

The desperate plead took everyone aback. Nobody expected the creature to know how to speak. Naruto felt a sudden pang of guilt and sadness, but he quickly thought about the two dead shinobi behind him and disregarded the feeling. Kakashi observed her stir from pain, and then start going back to violently thrashing again in her captivity. The sound her snarls hinted that her moment of clarity had passed.

What is going on? he asked himself.