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Chapter Twenty-Three
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"Shebawiiiin," Kato insisted, chowing through his dango like no tomorrow.
I rolled my eyes. "See, Daddy? Look how you've spoiled him. He's going to get cavities on top of poor reasoning skills."
Daddy snickered. "People get two sets of teeth, you know."
"She's gonna wiiiiin," Kato said again through another bite. Strawberry fool.
I poked him with my empty stick. "Mangetsu's gonna win and you know it."
"Eiko, Eiko, Eiko!"
I leaned over the arm of the chair and turned away. "Not listening," I taunted, for once using my temporary deafness to my advantage. Kato retaliated by sticking dango sticks in my hair. Once he ran out of those, I think he switched to senbon, but I didn't care. I had plenty of people to distract me.
The lunch break ended as a proctor jumped into the arena to announce the start of the second round of fights. As the display screens flashed through the remaining six names, most of the higher-ups in our section returned to their seats. Some of them glanced at Daddy's seating arrangement and hid a smile.
The first matchup was Uchiha Eiko and Akio. Eiko jumped to one of the leftover puddles, swishing her hair out of her face. Akio landed on a nearby pile of rocks. There was no waiting game this time. The Uchiha girl threw a handful of shuriken and charged.
Although years had gone by, I still had one lasting memory of the first (technically only) time I ever sparred with Itachi. Kato had begged him to fight us one-on-one, and Itachi, the sucker, had relented. He had used his clan's taijutsu against our baby tantō and of course he'd won by a mile. But fights aren't about winning. That day, he'd treated us both like opponents. He'd seen the strategy behind Kato's attacks and he'd solved it. And that moment of cognizance was all I ever needed to see of Itachi's fighting. It was methodical and completely him.
As Eiko charged, the same moment of transparency happened in her. In one split second, she decided the makeup of her opponent and determined how to counter him. This was the breaking point of the entire fight.
If Akio could read what she had determined, he could use that assessment to break her. A good ninja could adapt to anything—but the Uchiha clan didn't assess and reassess. They were trained to make instant decisions and act on them quickly and by rote. I couldn't fault that philosophy. A clan strong enough to enforce the law in a ninja village is not stupid. Their goal wasn't being impetuous or jumping to conclusions. They were the first responders, and they were suited to it.
I hadn't even heard of a crime in Konoha for the first few weeks of my henges.
Eiko made her decisions and charged. Akio coated his limbs in rock and waited. He was a taijutsu specialist and he had every justification in meeting her hand-to-hand. Everything but the Sharingan.
And the Sharingan was, of course, what won the fight.
The Sharingan gets a lot of undeserved hype. It's stupid, really. Yes, it's a helpful ability, but it's not the one-shot skill of the ninja world. It doesn't predict the future like most people assume, and its effectiveness depends entirely on the ingenuity of its user. Madara used it to augment his attacks and use mind control. Genjutsu types, as Shisui told me, weave chakra with it and use it to fight their battles for them. By that description, Itachi's type wasn't hard to find.
Eiko wasn't a Sharingan master. She hadn't struggled to learn its secrets and mold them into her fighting style. She didn't bother with genjutsu. I'm pretty sure the only reason she activated her Sharingan was to watch her opponent and get the edge on any chakra attacks or genjutsu attempts. She was good at finding openings. That was what she used her eyes for.
Meanwhile, Akio thought Eiko could see the future, copy his jutsus, and knock him unconscious via eye contact. Poor guy. He was probably pretty desperate.
In Akio's defense, it was an even fight. He was better than she was at close combat range, and for a while, he had the upper hand. He started to beat her back. Then he got her to stumble over one of the unactivated genjutsu tags . . . she stabbed him in the eye the exact millisecond the tag activated.
A great swarm of thoughts triggered as I noticed her kunai find the one place the rock-covered boy was still vulnerable.
I couldn't bear to hear someone die again.
No, Wakato!
I'd seen easily through the genjutsu her Sharingan had negated, but without my own chakra to let me.
Daddy would be sad.
Isami would see.
But Isami, I remembered, had gone with her father on a supply run once, and his name now decorated the Memorial Stone. She was strong.
Kato, too, had seen conflict before, when—
From the subtle tensing, I knew that Daddy had seen the attack the moment it had happened. The majority of the crowd, however, saw Akio collapse in a thick carpet of daisies. So after the second it took me to process a multitude of reactions, Kato watched the injured genin pull himself up to his knees. Blood poured down the Earth genin's face and dripped cleanly through the fake flowers. Kato froze. And all I could think was that on that long-ago day that Deer had saved Kato from a kidnapper, my brother had seen a similar injury.
I pulled my little brother to my chest and trapped him even as I watched Akio collapse through a screen of my brother's pale hair. Medics swarmed over the Earth genin the moment Eiko was finally given the victory. Quite a few civilians shouted angrily that the genjutsu flowers were obscuring their view. I put my arms over Kato's ears for good measure.
The funny thing about my life here was that I couldn't avoid death. Kakashi had protected us from it thus far, but no matter how sheltered we were, we were going to be ninjas. The truth about our parents would come out, and that day, we'd have to be formidable enough to keep from being hunted. Plus, if the former Mizukage had been a puppet of Tobi's, and if our mother had gotten on Tobi's bad side, which she almost undoubtedly had. . . . Lucrative as my life could be, I could not afford to focus on seals and become a civilian. I needed to make a difference. I owed it. And in this world, I had a whole series to prove that the ninja life could get me to the top. I just had to choose my priorities.
One day I would kill. It was a simple fact. One day I would have to choose what mattered most, which was why I'd thought this through in advance. I had decided to follow this route, and in essence, I was already a killer. The sooner I rid myself of any illusions, the better.
Death is hard to ignore when one has unnatural hearing for more than six years. It's hard to listen to the heartbeats slip away, but there is a certain beauty in death. Listening to that profound serenity was much easier to cope with than, say, hearing our neighbors' constant push towards divorce.
My innocent brother sobbed into my shirt. I found it ironic that his traumatizing memories of a death were spurring my resolve to kill to protect him, but life isn't exactly logical. Daddy put his arms around both of us and sighed.
Well done, parent. Way to cave to peer pressure and let Wakato see this. You had time. You should have spared him.
My baby brother transferred his snot to Daddy's shirt, instead, and I repented of my criticism. None of us were perfect. Certainly not me.
Two more genin jumped into the arena. One of them landed gracefully. The other one landed on a giant hammer.
I would say that my initial impression predicted the fight, but the boy with the hammer was more than a predictable heavy hitter. When the graceful Hikaru started to use moves that had worked in the preliminaries, the hammer started a smack down.
Hikaru, for all his fast and pretty dance moves, eventually went down. With two broken legs.
It occurred to me that Akio was hammer-dude's teammate, and that the Chūnin Exams were a way to show off ferocity. Or grief. Or anything, really.
Kato had recovered by the time Mangetsu entered the arena to face off against a Sand ninja named Junrei. Kato wiped his face and straightened. I turned and tapped an ear to ask Daddy to drop the seal on my chakra, because it had been a few hours since the last time and I was overdue. Yeah, right. I just wanted to reassure myself that Kato was still really okay and breathing. Daddy shrugged and patted my head.
Oh, how I'd missed this pain!
I'd say it had missed me . . . but nope, it clearly hadn't.
Before I could forget to breathe, I pulled up the clan genjutsu Shisui had taught me. An illusory puppy appeared on the railing in front of us. With that done, I let myself notice the amusement Daddy's lungs were ghosting through his nose, and the painfully loud rhythms of my relatives' hearts assaulted me.
I'll skip the fun of a thousand people's every twitch attacking, and instead focus on what happened once I formed a second genjutsu and decided I that might as well search for Shisui.
Nothing happened.
Really, nothing. I could find Isami, and even a visiting member of the Uchiha clan. The other villages' guards were perched on the roof. Sans Shisui.
I considered getting Daddy's attention by changing a genjutsu into words, but it was a stupid whim. Anyone skilled could read something that basic.
Instead, I nudged him and shook my head when he moved to reseal my chakra. "I can't sense Sparkles," I mouthed.
Daddy smiled. "Yes, you—" The cheerful smile vanished. He muttered something foul under his breath.
Every head in the VIP suite swung toward us as Daddy formed a shadow clone and walked swiftly to the exit. He disappeared a second later, and everyone jōnin-level and above frowned. The Kazekage's kids outright glared, which was annoying, since it was kind of cute but I couldn't lose my concentration or I'd have to give up on finding Shisui.
Not that I located him, in the long run. The clone resealed my chakra as it settled down in our chair. Mangetsu won the match. And the final free-for-all fight began.
Uchiha Eiko of Konoha. Sachihiro of Iwa. Hōzuki Mangetsu of Kiri. Three genin powerhouses, and a fight that was guaranteed to be epic.
I guess it was.
Mangetsu and Sachihammer teamed up and knocked out the Uchiha. Sachihammer actually finished by knocking her out of the building. Ouch.
Half an hour later, the darling of the Mist village used his bloodline limit to negate a hit by dissolving into water, and half of him was caught in a nasty earth jutsu prison. In the elemental affinity version of rock-paper-scissors, earth trumps water.
And so it was that the Mist village held a grudge against Iwa for one clever, slightly underhanded trick.
Daddy's clone had to attend the subsequent chūnin promotion discussion (better a clone than waiting for Kakashi to show, no doubt), so Ao escorted us home and stayed with us until the sky darkened.
That's a very long time to wait when you've spent the last week waking up every four hours to, you know, not die. But I wasn't worried for me. If I died, the world would go on. If Daddy died, well, mine wouldn't. It's a selfish approach to the world.
Ao put his hand on my shoulder as I stared out of the window. Wow, who knew I had an offensive seal in my pocket? He plucked it out of my fingers and smirked down at me. "Your father is on his way." His face stilled. "You should pay more attention to your surroundings. A good ninja can make up for any lost sense. If you're going to use Yin chakra, you'll need to learn to cope with genjutsus."
Unfortunately, whatever sense goes with feeling changes in air pressure wasn't around, and I didn't really think I had much chance feeling vibrations through the floor. Certain people were absurdly light on their feet. "Maybe I can borrow your earrings," I snapped unthinkingly.
Ao smiled. It wasn't a pleasant expression. It made him look like a shark. "It's a pity you'll be returning to Konoha soon. I wouldn't mind taking on a second apprentice."
I stared. My incorrigible mouth said, "What did the first one do?"
He didn't miss a beat. "Toki," he drawled, "follows orders." Standards were low?
There had to be a humor-loving man underneath Ao's shell, but as usual, all I could see was the part of him that really hated my attitude. Such a shame that we weren't staying in this village! Lessons with this guy would be murder. I could practically smell his grudge.
Kato stomped on the floor to warn of Daddy's approach. "Thanks for the offer," I lied. I darted to the front door.
Daddy came up the steps without limping, dripping, or growling. Kato and I didn't hug him. Kato knew as well as I that only Daddy and Sparkles knew how to use the seal on my chakra, and neither of them would leave me on purpose. Besides, no good ninja kid is going to glomp his parent after a serious mission. "Welcome back," I said. Daddy ignored me and looked at Ao.
"Get them to Terumī's house. I'll pack up here and pick them up in the morning."
Kato straightened as Kakashi brushed past us. "Daddy, Kana-chan needs—"
"I know, son. I need to disperse in a minute, so go with Ao-san."
"Oh," Kato realized. "You're a clone?"
Kakashi was already in one of the bedrooms. "Come," Ao commanded.
I paused, uncertain. Could Daddy expect me to do the seal on my own? What kind of fight took five hours and a boost of chakra? I blinked. "Um. Don't die."
The clone might have replied (I could imagine a dry, "Well, I won't"), but Ao didn't let me trot over to find out. Kato and I were carted out and smuggled past Kiri's ANBU with a scary level of ease. Ao also bought toothbrushes and two pairs of pajamas without us noticing. Ninja level: Ao.
Mei met us after a few boring minutes and unblocked my chakra before Kato had time to hiss his disapproval. There was relative silence as I applied the appropriate genjutsu and played the endurance game with my special chakra. She kissed my forehead once my chakra was safely locked away.
"I love both of you so much," she told us sadly. "Let me feed you and then you'll go to bed. You're leaving as soon as Kakashi gets back. You'll need your strength." The motherliness of her phrase hit her, and she crushed us in an instinctive hug.
The leftover stir-fry was tasty, and then we found ourselves abruptly in bed. Her bed, funnily enough. I rolled over to face Kato after we had been hesitantly tucked in and she had rushed back to her responsibilities. "Are you going to trash her room?" asked I.
His eyes narrowed somewhat. "No. I'm going to sleep. We're leaving soon. Turn off the lamp."
"Still hostile?" I asked, knowing his answer.
"Turn it off," he huffed. "I need to sleep so I can wake up early and practice my lightning exercises."
Okay, maybe not the exact answer I was expecting.
I tried to stay awake to mull over life, the universe, and what was going on, but my body wanted to get some sleep before I had to hear again.
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Like all mornings, the next one started out dark and quiet. Daddy woke me gently and I sat in Mei's living room to listen to the remarkably loud sounds of sleeping birds and Katos. Kato woke up. So did the birds.
"Come on," Daddy said. "We're going home."
Mei's house was utterly still as we trooped outside. We walked through deserted streets until we reached a lonely group of waterfalls. They were dark and somber and depressing in the dim morning light.
It wasn't until we reached the mountains that I looked back at the part of my life that had started so well. There wasn't much of the village to see—the sun had brought a good coating of mist and scattered it around the valley. A few optimistic buildings peeked through, but nothing else could be seen.
I drank in the beautiful, proud mountains and the different colors of the persistent water vapor. Sure, Kiri was pretty.
Someone whacked the back of my head, and I whirled to find my Uchiha friend. His mask was cracked. The left half of his armor was charred, and the right side was completely gone. He'd gotten mauled. Still, that didn't shield him from my wrath at getting hit. Again. I could feel him snicker at my glare. I rolled my eyes at him and we moved on, him less energetically than usual.
Kiri and its thoughts were pushed firmly to the back of my mind, and the four of us traveled home.
Shisui hadn't been maimed by whatever had taken his and Daddy's attention. My hearing slowly returned as the built-up chakra went into genjutsus. All in all, I thought what happened during our visit was beneficial. Questions had been answered. I'd managed a genjutsu.
Daddy even taught us to augment our running with chakra on the return journey, which Kato said was to get us away from the Mizukage faster. For my part, I tried every trick in the book to get the healing Shisui to race Daddy. It was funny how competitive they got with two little kids cheering them on—once, they even ran through the night.
For having two snot-nosed kids along, it was a quick trip.
And then we were back.
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"Welcome back to Konoha, Hatake-san. Ah, thanks for the scroll, kid. You look like your dad, little man. You guys were at the Chūnin Exams, right? Then I guess you haven't heard? Uchiha Itachi massacred the entire Uchiha clan a few nights ago. Just one survivor—his kid brother. The whole village is a mess right now. Crying shame, but I guess pressure gets to the best of us."
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My chakra was still blocked, but somehow I heard the dark, echoing silence of the Uchiha Compound. Someone was weeping. Apart from the movement of plants and curtains in broken windows, there was nothing.
I heard sadness and regret.
And Shisui cried for the pain of survival.
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~This chapter is dedicated in honor of XER9AF, writer of the touching story A Play With Words. She passed away on June 22, 2016. We miss her.
This chapter was supposed to be longer, but then I discovered that I couldn't bring myself to write any more. I really didn't want to break that news at the beginning of the next chapter, although I guess it's a cliffhanger now. Well, you can muse over how much Kana's point of view forces you to share her emotions . . . and ignore any hints that she doesn't bring to attention.
I really wanted to prevent the massacre. I know most of you were with me on that, but it wasn't possible. Kana might have managed it if she'd stayed home. As it was, consequences happen. That's how I write.
I mentioned an apprentice named Toki, and that's a nod to shadownumera's Clearing Mist. I'm not using her character. Ha!
Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers anon (Now I'll know if I ever find you in real life!) and Maddened (Well, six years is a long time).
Well, guys, it's been fun not writing the next part of the story. I look forward to the trauma of writing it. :P I know it seems like all I do is laugh at any pain you get from reading emotional stuff, but I went through it to write it in the first place. So it's nice to hear someone joining in. Side note, here's my favorite quote from this chapter: "...and Itachi, the sucker, had relented." Do you have one?
Review reward is two sketchy concepts from the original plan of the massacre happening while Kana was in the village. Pretty outdated concepts.
Thanks for reading!