As Long As My Blood Flows

Chapter 4 - Necessary Conversations

When Ino darted away from me looking like she'd seen a ghost—which, I supposed, wasn't too far from the truth—I panicked. If she told anyone about what I knew…! Thoughts of Danzo hearing about it, capturing me, and torturing me for information, then slaughtering me like a pig in order to eliminate me as a threat made me shiver. The man was incredibly hazardous to my health; perhaps moreso than any other potential threat in Konoha. The only man I feared as much as Danzo at the moment was Orochimaru, for the exact same reasons.

I had to stop her before she let anyone know anything.

Sending chakra into my legs to help with faster running, I bolted after her, heading to the edge of the training ground where Iruka-sensei and all of my 'captured' or otherwise defeated classmates would wait for me. I dodged around trees, leapt over bushes, and after a few minutes, caught up with Ino.

"Oi!" I called out, and she flinched, looking over her shoulder at me with wide eyes. "Ino, wait! Please! We need to talk before you go to anyone, especially adults, please!"

Ino hesitated, her feet slowing down, and then she came to a stop, fully turning towards me. A bead of nervous sweat rolled down her forehead.

"A-All of that, all of that was… real?" she whispered, voice cracking, as I came to a stop in front of her, panting. "You're really reincarnated? A-And… Naruko has the Nine-Tails inside of her!? That's why everyone hates her!?"

Taking a deep breath, I nodded, biting my lip. "Y-Yeah. She does. I confirmed it myself after applying my sensory abilities to her. She has waaaaaaay too much chakra for a normal kid, even a kid who's a shinobi-in-training."

"A-And Konoha is going to get—" She trailed off, paling horribly. "M-Madara… Why shouldn't we warn anyone, Ren!? Uchiha Madara is—"

I cut her off with a stern glare. "Do you want Danzo watching your every move, waiting for the chance to torture you for as much information as you can possibly give him?"

Ino froze and paled, shaking her head rapidly. "O-Oh," she said in a very small voice, eyes landing on the floor. Then, looking up at me with wide eyes, she asked, "Ren, how have you managed to be so normal and calm knowing what's going to happen to us within the next, like, ten years? I'd be freaking out. I… a-am freaking out. Ren, my father is going to die in the war!" A horrible sob escaped her as though fully understanding this for the first time. "My future sensei is going to die!"

Ah. Sympathetically, I gave her a solemn nod. "And I'm going to change it," I assured. "I promise I'll change it. But I need this to be secret, okay? If we're going to succeed in making a better future for everyone, we need as few people to know about this as possible, and only the most trustworthy. The more people know, the greater the risk of our knowledge getting out to the wrong people."

Ino swallowed, but bit her lip. "Okay," she said in soft agreement. "I won't tell anyone."

Relief flooded through me. "Thank you," I said sincerely. And I had to admit, I felt a little better now that I wasn't alone in my knowledge. When I first realized what I knew, I'd panicked. Honestly, no matter how much I pretended, I hadn't been able to relax. Now it felt like a huge weight had lifted off my shoulders.

Quieting down, we both headed off to Iruka together.

"So are you…" Ino spoke up awkwardly as we made our way through the forest. "Are you a man or a kid? I didn't see very much of your old life, but I saw some. You were in your twenties when you…" She rubbed the back of her head, clearly feeling strange saying this. "When you died, right?"

That question gave me some pause. I frowned, thinking about that. "I don't know," I admitted. "I didn't even remember anything, or at least consciously remember anything, until just recently. So I still feel like a kid, mentally. So I guess I'm a kid? But I also had my past life…" I trailed off, furrowing my brow.

"Well, if you feel like you're a kid, then I'll say you're a kid," she said with a tentative smile. "At least, until you decide otherwise. Plus in your mindscape, you were a kid, so… I'm gonna go with that."

I blinked, then shrugged and smiled at her. "You're taking this better than I thought you would, all things considered."

"I'm really not," she deadpanned. "Give me maybe two weeks, then I'll feel normal again."

"That's fair." Amused, a laugh left my lips as we exited the training field and found the others. Shino was already defeated, nursing some wounds that looked like they'd been created by some of the kunai Naruko had put in trap seals. Ami had been defeated, too, and looked royally pissed off at this fact by the glare she leveled into the forest and the way her teeth ground together. Hinata had been captured and sat in a curled up ball, hands hugging her legs sadly.

Poor Hinata.

On my team, only Naruko, Ino, and I had been defeated, and as such, we were the only ones present alongside Iruka-sensei.

The game didn't last much longer before Iruka-sensei, watching the chaos unfold in a tall tree, blew a whistle and called it. The rest of the class who had still survived up to this point, in various states of ruggedness—with Sasuke's team looking surprisingly worse for the wear—returned to us, and Iruka nodded.

"Shikamaru's team takes the victory," Iruka announced. "Their strategy of using Transformation Jutsu to hide people as weapons, only engaging in direct combat when opponents were alone and only fighting in pairs, getting opponents on their own to take down, and Naruko's traps were what drove the team to take the win. Sasuke, your team was very skilled at fighting and could've overpowered most members of Shikamaru's team in almost any individual battle, but your strategy and skills alone were not a match for Shikamaru's planning."

"Tch," Sasuke grumbled, folding his arms and looking away. "I know that already." He held his arm tenderly and it hung by his side oddly; I wondered if he'd encountered Chouji.

"HA!" Naruko burst out, grinning and pointing at Sasuke. "WE BEAT YOU, BASTARD!"

Sasuke stared flatly at her. "You lost to me."

The blonde deflated a little, but quickly laughed again. "But our team kicked you guys' ass, and that's the only thing that matters!" she retorted, smirking.

Sasuke now looked as annoyed as Ami.

I poked Naruko in the forehead. "Stop antagonizing Sasuke," I said with a raised eyebrow. "It's not very nice, and people don't like to be reminded of their failures." I knew that from personal experience. "Hokages don't get people down when there's no reason to, do they?"

"I guess not…" Naruko, now looking rather ashamed, mumbled.

"Wow, Ren knows exactly how to handle her," Sakura stage-whispered to Ino, mildly impressed.

Ami snorted. "Idiots bond with idiots. They're a perfect match."

"Alright, enough, everyone," Iruka-sensei told us, turning and heading back to the Academy. "Come along, we still have the rest of our scheduled classes." Groans rose up, most noticeably from Shikamaru, but we all followed him back to the Academy anyway.

~o~

When I got home that day, it was unexpectedly quiet. No random flying Fathers tackled me out of nowhere as I walked the path around Lake Tomoe to our nice brick house. I hummed, brows furrowed. Actually, come to think of it, ever since my near-fatal accident, Father had been more solemn. He'd been more careful around me, and it felt weird. I liked him better when he was boisterous and energetic. It somehow didn't feel right for him to be all quiet and thoughtful.

Mother, as normal, sat out on the water, meditating and practicing our clan kekkei genkai. I watched as ripples in the water emanated out from her in perfect, evenly spaced intervals, growing steadily larger in size. It was an advanced technique that was supposed to give us better control over the manipulation of our chakra.

The two types of chakra required for our kekkei genkai were Water chakra and Lightning chakra. With Water chakra in the left hand and Lightning in the right, our ancestors had discovered that it was possible to create a sort of electromagnetism that affected the liquid in our bodies. Thusly, Fluid Release, the ability to manipulate our body fluids at will with the flow of our chakra, and by extension any liquids our body fluids came into contact with, was born.

…Well, I supposed technically we were able to use it with ALL liquids, not just the ones our body fluids came into contact with, but our body fluids, which through meditation we constantly soaked in our chakra, could be controlled far easier than any other liquids, and were more powerful when used as attacks and defenses.

In any case, rambling aside, of all the things I expected to see after opening the door to our house, Father looking at a picture book on the couch was not one of them. He didn't look up as I entered.

I didn't even know we had picture books. My parents weren't terribly sentimental.

"Dad?" I said softly as I walked into the living room towards him. His chakra felt… sad. "Are you okay?" My head peeked around his arm (I was too small to see over his shoulders even while he was sitting down) and frowned when I saw one of the photos he was looking at. His thumb ran over its edges.

The photo had two adults, male and female. The man, who I recognized from his hair color and eye color to be my biological father, and the woman, who must have been my biological mother from the shape of her nose and the way my bio-Father had his arm wrapped around her shoulders and was kissing her on the cheek, held a very girlish young boy in her arms like he was an angel. My eyes stung a little. That boy had to be me. But to my surprise, an older boy, about five years older than Baby Ren, stood behind them, frowning out from behind Dad's leg. He didn't look shy, exactly, but more bored and just done with shit, like he would rather be anywhere else. A necklace hung off his neck, a wood star with the kanji for "water" in the middle written in silver plating. He had green hair and sharp eyes.

"Who's the kid?" I found myself asking. "I had a brother?" I'd had no idea.

Father let out an amused but weak chuckle. "No," he said, lifting up a hand to ruffle my hair. He looked far older than his usual, annoyingly youthful appearance for a forty-year-old man. "You had a sister." My eyebrows shot up in disbelief at that, and I studied the picture closely.

"No way," I deadpanned, staring at Father. "That's a guy."

A louder, stronger chuckle escaped him now. "It's strange," Father mused, shaking his head. "You always looked like a girl despite being a boy, and your sister always looked like a boy despite being a girl. Mother used to joke that Tomoe's and Dansui's DNA must have been drunk."

My eyes fell back on the photo, curiosity brimming. "What was her name?" I asked quietly. "My sister?"

"Nagisa."

Nagisa… Kawase Nagisa. A sister I'd never even known I'd had until now. My heart ached; I'd always wanted to have a sibling. In my past life, I had had an older sibling; an older sister just like Nagisa would have been. "And she was killed during our flee from Kirigakure, like Mother and Father?" I paused and amended. "My biological ones?"

"Indeed," he said quietly. "She was captured by the Kiri nin chasing after us. Tomoe and Dansui… they left you in my arms and told me to make sure you were safe. Then they leaped into battle, as much to save Nagisa as to buy us time. If it wasn't for their bravery, our whole clan would have been wiped out."

Oh.

Not really knowing what to say to that, I bit my lip and squirmed, before at last going over to sit next to him on the couch and hug him.

"I'm sorry," I murmured.

Strong hands wrapped around my tiny body. "It's okay, Ren," Father whispered back, a hand brushing through my silky hair. "It wasn't your fault they died. It wasn't Nagisa's, either."

We quieted down, both looking at the picture for several moments. Then I jumped when Father suddenly snapped the book shut, and grinned at me. "It's been a while since we trained together last, Ren," he said with a grin. "Want to work on your ability to control water and lightning chakra separately? I know you have the most trouble with the water control part."

A shiver ran down my spine at the mention of water, but I nodded, smiling. "Sure, Father. I…" I frowned, thinking about Nagisa, the sister I never got to know, and how distraught Ino had been upon realizing that her Father was a dead man walking; about how earlier today, Sasuke had put me on the defensive without even breaking a sweat, and defeated all THREE of us without much difficulty. "I want to protect the people I care about. I need to get stronger."

Father smiled back proudly, getting up and stretching with a groan. He then carefully placed the book on the couch. "Come on, then. Don't worry. I won't make you meditate near water again."

~o~

"Ichi. Ni. San."

Footsteps echoed across the dark room. Stone walls encompassed the dank, stale air, broken only by the aforementioned footsteps, the ruffle of moving clothing, and the striking of a fist against rock.

"Yon. Go. Roku."

"Still at it, dear?" an amused chuckle, as dark as the cave around them, echoed. A pale faced man walked into the room, smirking at the person in front of him. His eyes were disgusting, snakelike slits, and he wore a cruel smirk as he studied his student. Such an interesting specimen… Truly, one of his proudest works. "That wall didn't do anything to you, you know." He couldn't help it; he still had some snark left in him. Seems Jiraiya's influence couldn't quite be eliminated even after years of VERY purposeful self-isolation from the aggravating idiot.

Blood dripped from the youth's fists, flowing in small streams from the cracked knuckles of her fists. Even as he watched, however, the red liquid started flowing back up and re-entered the wound.

"Don't bother quipping," a quiet, almost dead voice rang out. "It doesn't suit you, and you're not very good at it."

"So young, but so sassy," he said, smirking wider. "You really ought to learn to respect your superiors more. Especially when I'm giving you the strength you so desperately crave, after all."

Turquoise eyes turned on him, glaring sharply. "Shut up. I don't care. Just give me what I need. That's all, Lord Orochimaru."

"Hai, hai." Raising an eyebrow, he chuckled. "I'll give you the strength to defeat those who you seek to. But you still need to train your body more."

"And did you think I was bruising my fists against this wall for fun?"

Orochimaru smirked and nodded curtly. "I was just checking up on my prodigy. It's good to see the speed of your strikes is rapidly increasing." He turned and he left, his amusement with the situation ebbing away.

Those turquoise eyes rested on his back for a minute longer. Then the girl quietly turned back around, falling into a martial arts stance and returning to striking against the wall. "Ichi. Ni. San."

As her upper body twisted with each punch thrown, a necklace that she wore bounced. If the room had been well-lit, it would have been easy to tell the shape. However, thanks to the darkness, it would have been difficult for anyone without good eyesight to see the star outline and kanji for "water" in the center.