Tale of the Setting Sun
Chapter 44: "Silhouette"
The sun had set, and the night was deep. A flock of birds circled the skies, their wings cutting through the air in serene silence—a sharp contrast to the current events unfolding on the ground far below.
Alarms sounded from the Hidden Leaf, echoing through the trees outside its walls. Packs of ninken sniffed the forest floor, leading masked ANBU in every direction away from the village.
A distance away, a lone blonde woman hurtled through a dark, grassy plain, leaving behind a trail of flickering blue flames that erased her footprints.
Further north, the Hidden Cloud had fallen silent. Its infamous clouds had retreated from the mountain range, and the smell of decay had begun to envelope the once-renowned village.
To the far west, smoke rose from the turrets encircling the Hidden Rock. Dark-eyed golems towered above its walls and drums beat steadily as every citizen, from child to elder, gathered in the village center to listen to their leader.
Southwards, a team of Sand-nin led by a hooded puppeteer raced urgently through the moonlit dunes of their home.
Finally, to the east, in a cave hidden by fog, a number of shadowy figures surrounded a mutilated body, drawing out the last of the chakra contained within.
All this, the birds witnessed from above. As a low-hanging cloud passed by, the flock simultaneously tipped to the side, revealing a multitude of glowing, ringed eyes. Then, with another flap of their wings, the night swallowed them.
Thanks to Naruto's clones distracting the Hidden Leaf's hunting parties, they had put enough distance between themselves and the village that they had stopped for a break. Gaara had yet to emerge from his unconscious state, and Karin was asleep, presumably exhausted from the prolonged use of her chains.
Awash in the moonlight, Naruto sat wide awake, though he was far from being alone: The forest was alive with the shuffling and scuttling of creatures carrying about their nightly routine. A large spider web spanned a tree a stone's throw away from where Naruto sat, its strands illuminated one moment before fading into darkness the next. An insect had gotten itself stuck on the web; as it squirmed, a bulbous black spider suddenly shot out and rolled it up into a knot.
Naruto closed his eyes, and the world faded around him, leaving him sitting in a pitch black space. However, here, too, he was not alone. A multitude of faces surrounded him, silent and pale. They were there because each one of them had unwittingly left a piece of themselves within him.
It must have been because it was all in his mind, but for once, the words he really meant to say spilled easily from his lips.
"Iruka-sensei," he greeted the first one, a chūnin with a scar running across his face. "I never had the chance to thank you for what you did."
After the invasion of the Hidden Leaf, Naruto had seen Iruka's name on the list of the deceased. The name had brought with it a flash of nostalgia: When Naruto had been struggling to improve in the Academy, Iruka had discretely directed him to the Archive Library—though at the time, he hadn't realized the man's intent.
"You've abandoned the village," Iruka's voice rang hollowly in the darkness. "Where will you go now?"
"Somewhere I can rally my defenses." Right now, his first priority was in leaving behind Fire country and securing a position away from his pursuers.
Next to Iruka, stood a dark-skinned girl with spiky hair that Naruto recognized immediately. The jinchūriki from the Hidden Waterfall, Fū—one of the many killed by Akatsuki. Naruto had heard she had been taken on her way back from the chūnin exams.
"You didn't deserve what happened to you," he said. "I wish I could have saved you."
Her orange eyes arched mockingly. "What can you do?"
"I have the Nine-tails. I can make a difference."
Besides Fū, a thin freckled woman stared at him. Her name was Kaine, and she had once hired Naruto and his team for their fateful mission in Wave country. The last he had heard of her was that she had succumbed to the wounds inflicted on her during the interrogation.
"My team died because of you," said Naruto. "But I understand you believed your actions would bring peace."
"Is it even possible?" she whispered. "Can this cycle be ended?"
"I don't know. But I have to try."
Standing a ways back, an older woman with strands of white mixed in with her brown hair looked off into the darkness. Her expression was stern and guarded, her hands folded neatly on her lap. Even though Naruto hadn't seen her since he was a young child, he recognized her immediately.
To the woman who had once been his caretaker—the woman who had been his teammate's mother—he said, "I'm sorry I couldn't protect you or Mayu. I'm going to do what I can from now on to make sure something like that doesn't happen again."
With her body still angled away from Naruto, the dark pupils of his ex-caretaker's eyes slowly shifted back until they met his own. "Then first, you must decide. Who is your enemy?"
Naruto opened his eyes.
The clouds shifted, and a ray of light fell across the spider web. The spider scuttled away, retreating into the shadows, and the light extended to Naruto's face.
On the other side of their camp, Karin stirred and opened her eyes. Pushing herself up on her hands, she put her glasses back on and turned to him. "Naruto? Is something wrong?"
"No, I wouldn't say that."
Karin fidgeted under his gaze, a faint blush tinting her cheeks. "Then why are you staring?"
Who is your enemy?
"I wanted to ask you. Why did you take my hand?"
A look of surprise lifting her chin, Karin blinked rapidly. "Because...you held your hand out to me, I guess. Why do you ask?"
Who is your enemy?
"What if I were to tell you that by following me, we were almost guaranteed to be killed?"
Karin's blush faded from her face, and after a moment, she sat up straight. "Not if I can do something about it."
Naruto looked down. "You may not be able to—I'm a missing-nin now. So not only do we have to worry about Akatsuki, but bounty hunters from my village will be trying to chase us down." He paused. "If you're having second thoughts, I won't stop you from leaving."
A beat passed, and for a moment, Naruto felt his breath catch in his throat—then Karin replied, "No… I made my decision as well, Naruto, to be on your side. Your enemies are my enemies now."
This time, it was Naruto's turn to blink.
Looking back up, he saw that even in the moonlight, Karin's hair was a fiery red. Her expression blazed equally fiercely back at him, and he thought—if they really were both Uzumaki, they were quite different. Yet somehow, they were both here in this place, at this very moment.
Naruto felt the corners of his lips tug back in a smile, a motion that brought with it a lulling sense of warmth. And just a little bit of sadness.
Karin's life had not been kind to her, he thought, to have led her to him.
"Thank you," he said.
It was cold.
Snow drifted down from the sky, covering the bridge in white and melting away where it touched his bare skin.
A cold wind brushed against him. He shivered, but he had nowhere to go. He was all alone.
The snow continued to drift by. Slowly. Serenely.
Suddenly, a dark shadow fell on him, and he looked up.
There was a tall man there—a ninja. Bandages covered most of his face, leaving just a pair of dark eyes.
At the sight, he immediately clambered to his feet, reaching for the man. "I did it," he said, his voice high and child-like. "I killed Kakashi of the Sharingan. I finally avenged you."
But the dark eyes only stared down at him in cold ambivalence. "Who the hell are you?"
The words were a slap to his face, and he froze. Suddenly, he saw his raised hand, the one good hand he had left—there was something dark red on it. It was blood, he realized, and it was spreading.
He watched in horror as it rapidly surged from his fingertips, to his wrist, to his arm, his shoulder—then it was in his neck, and suddenly he couldn't breathe anymore, it was strangling him, suffocating him, and the entire world was beginning to turn red —
Haku's eyes flew open and he sat up, a silent scream splitting his lips. His heart was pounding in its ribcage, his skin cold with sweat. He looked around at his surroundings wildly, searching—but the world was no longer red. It was not snowing, either. It was dark, and the air was heavy with humidity.
"Haku?" a high voice cut in. "Are you okay?"
Letting out a rattling exhale, Haku closed his eyes, clearing his thoughts and collecting himself. "Yes... I'm alright."
Since leaving the Hidden Leaf with their mysterious new 'ally,' they had taken a roundabout route in order to throw off any possible pursuers. So far, however, they had been left alone.
Her gaze still searching him suspiciously, his teammate Ajisai frowned. "If you say so." At the sight of her face, Haku felt his stomach twist guiltily. She had declined Kabuto's offer to heal her broken nose with medical ninjutsu, and the swelling was only now starting to gone down.
Speaking of which… Haku and Ajisai seemed to be the only ones around.
"Where did Kabuto go?"
"He said he was going to scout the area. Something about searching for the hidden pathway."
Haku raised an eyebrow. "A hidden pathway? Can we really trust him? Who's to say he isn't just leading us into a trap?"
For some reason, Ajisai seemed perturbed by his words, her eyes flickering uneasily away from him. "If he was going to do that, he would've done it while we were still in enemy territory."
"...I hope you're right."
Ajisai hesitated—and then said quietly, "If only Suiren was here, we'd know for sure." Suddenly, she grew very still. "He's coming back."
Ajisai had discreetly placed a tracker on their mysterious guide near the beginning of their journey, and they had been careful to talk only when Kabuto was outside of hearing range. The bushes in front of them parted, and Kabuto strode into the clearing. As Ajisai surged forward to address him, Haku hung back.
Now that he'd regained some semblance of control over himself, It felt strange being there. He'd never thought about what he would do after he had gotten his revenge for Zabuza.
Ever since that red-headed Leaf-nin had spared him in Wave Country, Haku had considered himself a dead man living on borrowed time. When the man with the snake had marked him, he'd thought his luck had finally ran out. And yet, against all odds, he was still here—a mercenary from the Hidden Mist, masquerading as an agent of the Hidden Rain.
"A guide's going to be meeting us," said Kabuto. "They'll be taking us the rest of the way to meet your leaders."
Ajisai's eyes lit up. "Lady Angel?"
As his teammate's frame visibly loosened up, to his surprise, a sense of relief also washed through Haku—followed shortly by a stab of revulsion. It seemed his years of pretending to be an Ame-nin hadn't quite left him untouched by the Akatsuki's brainwashing.
Still... Zabuza had once worked for Akatsuki before meeting his demise.
Haku raised a hand to his covered shoulder.
At some point since they had left the village, the seal on his body had almost completely disappeared.
The little he knew about fūinjutsu told him that it was possible that the man who'd put the seal on him had died. Likely, he had been killed in the raging battle at the Hidden Leaf. But somehow, Haku didn't think that was quite the case, as he could still feel a tiny presence on his shoulder. Though much smaller than it had been, it was still there, darkly pulsating.
What could it mean?
Sasuke's team was in shambles. There was really no better word to describe it.
Immediately following Naruto's escape, they'd all been brought into the intelligence division for intense questioning. While it soon became clear that they didn't know anything, the situation worsened when Kakashi refused to have his memory probed. He was taken away, and the remainder of their team was immediately put on house arrest with their ranks suspended. Fifteen hours had passed since then without their receiving word from anyone on the outside, and Sasuke was about to explode.
Meanwhile, the entire situation had left Sakura—already on the verge of a breakdown since the news of Ino's death—curled up on the ground in the fetal position, mumbling nonsensically to herself. Even Menma, usually a ball of energy and source of non-stop mindless chatter, hadn't spoken a word since their house arrest—though that may have been because at some point in the investigation, he'd gotten his mouth duct taped shut.
As for Sasuke, he didn't know what to think: Naruto, killing a dozen Leaf agents?
...Well, that, he could believe. Or at the very least, he believed Naruto was fully capable of having done it. But more importantly, Kakashi—his sensei, an accomplice? That was impossible, and he would swear it on his clan's crest if it came to it.
Unfortunately, nobody cared what a mere chūnin thought, and once again, Sasuke felt frustration roiling in the pit of his stomach.
Thud. Thud.
His eyes furious and wet above the duct tape, Menma appeared to have turned the entire wall by the door into his personal punching bag. And as pointless as it was, Sasuke was on the verge of joining him when the door suddenly opened and a masked ANBU stepped in.
"Uchiha Sasuke?"
He lowered his fist. "That's me."
"The Hokage wishes to talk to you." The ANBU looked pointedly around the room at his teammates. "Just you."
As they traveled south, the forestland gave way to an expanse of salt flats that reflected the night sky. Looking down at what appeared to be stars glimmering under her feet, Karin felt her breath catch. She'd never seen such a beautiful sight before.
Looking coyly over at Naruto, she felt her cheeks heating up. Somehow, in the span of a few weeks, she had gone from having fat, ugly Grass-nin draining her chakra to accompanying her crush under a starry night sky.
How romantic, she thought. She was so lucky.
Suddenly, something at her back stirred, rudely dragging her out of her fantasies—Gaara.
Holding back a sigh, she warned Naruto, "He's waking up,"
Her chakra chains had been holding Gaara midair throughout their journey. The two of them came to an abrupt stop, sloshing the water at their feet. Through the entangled chains, Gaara's dark-rimmed eyes were already wide open, regarding them in clouded confusion.
"Where am I?" He struggled briefly to no avail. "Where are you taking me?"
"Gaara," Naruto began calmly. "You were losing control in the cell, and I decided to bring you with — "
"I told you," Gaara snarled. "If you don't leave me alone, I'll kill you."
Annoyed, Karin sniffed. "I'd like to see you try." Her chains tightened around Gaara, who let out a low growl.
"Karin," said Naruto.
With a sigh, she loosened her chains by a fraction. Gaara immediately jerked forward, but the chains remained bound around his form. Realization dawning upon his face, his back arched; his face contorted, lips drawing back to reveal his teeth, and Gaara let out a scream.
It was angry and hateful, but nothing like the screams Karin had heard back in the Leaf village. With her chains sealing away Gaara's tailed beast, the scream was solely human, and it soon petered away into nothing.
Finally, facing the night sky, Gaara muttered in a dark voice, "I'm going to kill you. I have to. I have to."
Frowning, she turned to Naruto. "He's not going to come around, you know. Words have no effect on him."
Suddenly, Naruto walked past her. Before she could cry out in warning, he'd raised a hand and gripped one of the chains binding Gaara.
"You're a jinchūriki. The Akatsuki will be coming after you soon. You have two choices: You can choose to stay with us, and pray to survive another day. Or you can choose to leave, and die when they extract your tailed beast from you. The decision is up to you."
Karin swallowed; she could feel the chakra in the chain straining under the force that Naruto was exerting.
"I choose to kill you," Gaara spat. "I choose to listen to your screams as I rip you apart."
Naruto paused—and then released the chain. "Karin, let him go."
"A-Are you sure…?"
"He's out of immediate danger here. And I need your sensory abilities more than I need him."
Despite the rising gravity of the situation, Karin flushed with pleasure; it was true that when her chains were activated, she was unable to use her mind's eye to sense anything. She shot a look back at Gaara—though his body was relaxed, judging from the murderous look in his eyes, she wouldn't have been surprised if he made good on his promise the instant he was freed. Letting him go here was akin to releasing a rabid animal into the open.
Still… Naruto was there with her.
Closing her eyes, Karin traced the outline of her chakra that connected her to Gaara. Though she wasn't exactly sure why it had taken the form of chains, somehow, it felt the most natural to her. She called it back now, and with a clinking sound, it began to unfurl itself.
When the chains had completely disappeared back into Karin, her senses returned, and she found herself once again surrounded by two monstrous chakra signatures. Shivering, she opened her eyes—only to realize that somehow, Gaara had disappeared.
In his place, a rising wall of sand glistened in the moonlight.
There was no time to run; it was already surging towards them. Karin felt her eyes begin to widen, her body frozen in place, her mind replaying the scene of the genin in the chūnin exams that had died from sand exploding through his body, and she thought, This is it —
What followed next happened in the blink of an eye. One moment, Naruto was standing next to Karin; the next, there was something that could only be described as an explosion. Unbearable heat and wind buffeted her face, and the wall of sand crumbled apart.
Coughing through the resulting cloud of dust, Karin could make out two figures on the ground. It was Naruto—he had pinned Gaara to the ground, both with a hand to the throat and also with a pressure so suffocating, it stopped the shout in Karin's throat.
As the air cleared, his changed features grew more apparent: His red hair fell to his shoulders, and the whisker marks on his face had grown pronounced, giving him a more feral appearance.
Naruto's voice, however, was steely calm. "You won't hurt her. I won't let you."
Seemingly unable to move, Gaara's eyes bulged in anger. "Why? We're both jinchūriki. We have the same eyes. So what's the difference between you and me?!"
"The difference is that I know who my enemy is," said Naruto.
Blood trickled down from the corner of Gaara's lip, and he let out a maniacal laugh. "Anyone who isn't me is my enemy. The whole damn world is my enemy."
"Was your sister your enemy, too?"
Gaara's laugh cut off sharply. His eyes narrowed. "Shut up. Shut up."
Naruto ignored him. "You did kill her, after all."
"Shut up!"
"Her name was Temari, wasn't it? She was a good shinobi. She didn't deserve to die that way. She was just trying to stop you."
The ground around them began to shake, and Gaara's voice dropped to a cold whisper. "Nobody can stop me. Nobody will stop me."
"And yet here we are." Though nothing changed in Naruto's expression, suddenly—impossibly—the pressure in the air doubled. The ground fissured with a loud crack, and Karin stumbled, her pulse drumming in her ears.
Then—without warning, the pressure faded away, gone as quickly as it had arrived.
Pulling back, Naruto reached up to his forehead and loosened his hitai-ate. For a moment, he gripped it in his hand. Then, he dropped it, letting it land with a splash at his feet.
"If you ever find yourself in need of an ally," he said. "Come find us."
Gaara didn't respond.
Naruto began to move, and Karin followed him, looking back only once to see Gaara's lone figure becoming smaller and smaller in the distance, before disappearing completely.
Once the ANBU had delivered Sasuke to the Hokage's office, to his surprise, the agent bowed and backed out of the room. The door slammed resoundingly shut, leaving behind just Sasuke—and the man known as Shimura Danzō, who was currently seated behind the desk, wearing the hat that bore his new status as the Fifth Hokage.
A single dark eye regarded him from a face swathed in bandages; Sasuke wondered passingly whether he had lost his other eye in battle. He didn't know much about the man, only that he had been one of the Third's advisors.
The minutes began to tick by in silence. Nonplussed, Sasuke remained still, determined not to give anything away.
Suddenly, Danzō spoke. "Do you know why you're here?" His voice had the low, raspy quality of someone intimate with silence.
Sasuke scowled. "Where's Kakashi-sensei?"
"Once the Intelligence division has determined he knows nothing of the jinchūriki's escape, he will be allowed to return to his duties."
"You're torturing him?"
"So long as he doesn't resist the interrogation, such methods will not be necessary."
"Touch a single hair on his head," said Sasuke. "And we'll see how long you stay in this office."
Danzō didn't look impressed. "Watch your tongue, boy. That mulish pride was once your clan's undoing. I wouldn't be so hasty as to try and follow in your family's footsteps."
Sasuke felt the heat rise in his face, and took a step forward. "You - "
"I am the Fifth Hokage. I will be addressed as such." Though Danzō hadn't raised his voice, Sasuke felt a chill that quickly quashed his temper.
It suddenly struck him that while he may have never heard anything of Danzō's skill or accomplishments, all this meant was that he knew absolutely nothing about the other man. And on the battlefield, an ignorant shinobi was as good as dead.
"Kakashi-sensei would never betray the village… Hokage-sama," he gritted out. "Nor do I know anything that could possibly help you find Naruto."
To his surprise, Danzō replied, "I know. I did not call you here to ask you of the jinchūriki."
"Then why…?"
"While Kakashi is...or was, I should say, famed for his use of the Sharingan, he never did manage to utilize it to its full extent." Danzō paused. "It is about time you were properly trained."
Taken aback, Sasuke blurted out, "Trained? By who?"
But he needn't have asked; before Danzō even spoke again, he knew the answer.
"By me," said Danzō, steepling his fingers together. "I will be your teacher."
A torrent of rain welcomed their entry into Rain country, and as droplets slid down Haku's bare face, he felt a shiver run down his back. Though they were nowhere near the village, back in the rain, it almost felt as though a pair of eyes was trained on his back.
Now back in familiar territory, it quickly became clear that their newfound guide was not going to follow the great river to the Hidden Rain as they'd expected. When they caught their first glimpse of high-rising mountains in the distance, instead of terrain flattening out to marshland, Ajisai came to a screeching stop.
"Where are you taking us?" she demanded, a hand creeping to her pouch. "Are you really our ally?"
With a look at his teammate, Haku followed suit, drawing senbon needles in a flash.
Kabuto turned around, his hands raised. "I didn't lie. I'm taking you to your leaders."
"And where would that be?"
"We're nearby," said Kabuto. "The guide is going to meet us to take us the rest of the way."
Ajisai's expression grew cool. "Well, if you're really not lying, then you won't mind this."
Before Kabuto could react, Haku flicked his wrists. The thin needles flew through the air, embedding themselves in Kabuto's chest. Taut string, barely perceptible to the naked eye, connected the needles to Haku.
"These needles will tell me whether you're lying or not," he explained. When Kabuto's eyes bulged, he added, "Don't worry; they're thin enough that they won't kill you...unless you move around too much."
"Now…" said Ajisai, drawing closer. "Let's do that again."
"That won't be necessary," came a new voice.
Alarmed, Haku's head turned just in time to catch something blue fly through the air—a bird?—before landing on the shoulder of a girl emerging from the rising fog.
Where had she come from? Haku hadn't sensed her at all.
While she was dressed in dark Akatsuki robes, she couldn't have been more than Haku's age, if not younger. With her bright orange hair and the series of piercings in her face, he was quite sure he had never seen her before. And yet, something about her features left him feeling deeply unsettled.
"What's going on? Who are you?" Haku asked.
A pair of ringed eyes turned towards him. "You do not recognize your god?"
It was a girl's voice, but at the sound of it, Ajisai let out a loud gasp before immediately lowering herself to her knees.
"Lord Pain," she murmured in reverence.
In a flash, Haku thought of the stories his mother had once told him when he was young: In particular, the story of a faceless being that stole children's faces and wore them as masks.
Though the stories had referred to it as a god, in his nightmares, it had always looked more like that of a demon.
The girl beckoned towards them, her pale face devoid of all human emotion. "Follow me, and all will be revealed."
A/N: Happy Fourth of July to all my fellow compatriots.
An anonymous reviewer pointed out that Kakashi usually has his eye covered so losing it shouldn't have made a difference in his depth perception, and to you, I say "oh well."
As always, thank you for your reviews, and to my beta blueandgold.