Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. However, the OCs do belong to me.

"There was a darkness outside reality, they say — a darkness full of things. Hungry, nasty things with no shape or form, not as long as they were out there."

Kurt Busiek, Astro City

Project 001

October 17th, Log 009

Subject's roots' growth continues at an exponential rate – very fast for a hardwood tree. They show similar destructive characteristics of Ficus benjamina's roots – caution for the possibility of the subject's connection to its parent tree through root system; disturbing possibility of clone colony.

Subject's stem's growth is still fairly slow, possibly due to the lack of nutrients.

Subject's taxon remains indeterminate. No flowers, fruits, or seeds have been sighted. Current known characteristics still indicate it to be a dicot, possibly a eucalyptus. Further observations are recommended.

Subject has not shown new peculiar behavior. Its diet remains the same as its parent plant, i.e. blood. Subject has not shown the ability to catch its own prey, currently still relying on daily blood intake from the observer (24 mL/24 hours). Needs another donor.

The full extent of the subject's – and subsequently parent plant's – prowess remains unknown.

P.S. Find iron supplements.

P.P.S. Devise another plan to visit the parent plant.

P.P.P.S. Evolve sharingan for observation purpo–

"Little brother?" A voice called from the door.

The pencil in my hand halted.

I shut my eyes, briefly identifying the person's chakra signature whilst I used my free hand to cover my journal with a plethora of children's books. A big drawing book was placed at the very top. I then switched my pencil for a green crayon, drawing various shapes on the paper.

"Yes?" I answered.

I threw a glance over my shoulder. Itachi was approaching me whilst carrying a plate of dumplings and sweets in his hand. The preteen really liked those, I noticed.

I quickly squashed the irrational – or rational – fear that was always rearing their heads whenever Itachi was nearby. It was unfair to the boy, as he had not done me any wrong, yet – the cynical part of me quickly supplied. I ushered the thought away, it was counterproductive to my effort to have a healthier state of mind. Observing and researching the plant had been a good decision, it gave me purpose – something to occupy my mind with. I did not want a setback on my progress and I certainly did not want to revert to my old shove-the-bad-feelings-down-a-dark-hole habit.

Itachi must have been coming to inspect my eyes again, just like what he had done for the last six days, either out of Fugaku's order or his own volition. So far, he had done nothing but being a good and caring sibling, thus he deserved to be treated with the same respect. It was unfair to treat him like a monster simply because of something that he might or might not do in the future. Hopefully the boy would not be too offended if I still cringe whenever I was within his proximity. God knew I'd tried.

Itachi sat cross-legged, a good respectful distance away from the puzzle pieces and the toy blocks that I had purposely cluttered around my personal space. He put his plate in front of him, his eyes skimmed over my drawing as he stuffed a pink-colored dumpling into his mouth. "What are you drawing?"

I glanced at the vaguely humanoid drawing. It had long, pointy ears, two droopy eyes, along with short malnourished limbs. It could have been Sméagol, if Sméagol was green and frequently smoked weed.

"Yoda," I decided.

Itachi nodded thoughtfully, earnestly indulging my nonsense like a good brother even though the word meant absolutely nothing for him.

"What are those?" He pointed to the small circles that were hovering near the green glob.

"Those are…" I did not know what those were, they resembled cat feces, "...seagulls?"

"Is that so?" Itachi quirked a brow. "What are they doing?"

"Poking Yoda's head."

The corner of the boy's lips twitched into a smile. "Does that make Sasuke a Yoda then?"

Yoda was not a noun, I wanted to say. Yoda and Sasuke were a complete opposite – personality wise, I would have said. However, showing such level of comprehension would raise questions and cause suspicions regarding my actual language capability. Though I did not exactly behave like a proper toddler, people still treated me as if I was a clueless invalid, which was very useful whenever I wanted to eavesdrop on conversations. I'd rather not push my luck, especially since everyone was keeping a closer eye on me. Suspicious ninja was a dangerous ninja, especially one of Itachi's caliber.

On the other hand, I did plan to tell Itachi some things – just enough to nudge him into the right direction – which hopefully could mitigate the casualty to the absolute minimum should the massacre happen. However, to be taken seriously, I needed to act beyond my supposed age, which could backfire and put me in an undesirable position.

My indecisiveness regarding the matter had been eating away at my conscience for the past one week. I might never know my clansmen personally, it might even take me forever to truly see them as anything more than drawings, however ethics dictated that I reduced harm, thus that was precisely what I was going to do – if I could gather the courage to do it first, that is.

I put the crayon down and steeple my fingers together, hoping that I would be taken somewhat more seriously with the gesture. It was now or never.

"Nii-san, I have a question."

Itachi smiled encouragingly. "Go ahead."

"There's something happening in our clan," I started, choosing my diction carefully and being mindful of my intonation. "It's always there, but not… not like this. The..." I racked my brain for the appropriate Japanese word, "atmosphere... and the people just feel… weird. Mother and father – and you – are rarely home," I maintained our eye contact. "What's going on, brother?"

Logically speaking, Itachi would either lie and/or deflect my question under the pretense of protecting my 'innocence', or tell me the honest truth since I was insignificant in the grand scheme of things (it was not like I could report it to anyone) – it might even help him to unwind a bit.

"You've grown so much," Itachi observed.

I forced myself not to tense.

"I do miss a lot of things, don't I?" Itachi smiled wistfully. "I wasn't there when you were born, I wasn't there when you spoke your first word, I wasn't there to cheer you up when you were sad, I wasn't there to help you fight your illness…."

I had half a mind to call Itachi out on his deflection, however the mention of my illness made me pause. The preteen might be able to shed some light regarding what had happened to me after I was born.

Itachi rubbed his eyes, bringing my attention to his pronounced tear-troughs. "You said that you felt our turmoil, correct?"

I cautiously nodded, inwardly wondering if I should have phrased my inquiry differently.

I could feel how uneasy the people around me were starting to become, it was almost like everyone in the clan – barring Sasuke – had been attacked by a plague of despair. On a few occasions I could even feel their emotions without going into what I now dubbed as a 'sensory mode'. I would be lying if I said that it was not disconcerting.

Itachi shuffled closer to me before he continued. "Father once told me this story when I was a child, a story of our ancestors. He said that they used to practice this religion: ninshū, it was called – the peaceful precursor of modern ninjutsu. The teachings of ninshū were meant to give people a better understanding of themselves, as well as others, and lead the world into an era of peace."

Itachi paused to make sure that I was listening to him. I motioned him to go on.

"In this religion they were taught how to connect their spiritual energies with one another, which then would allow them to understand each other without communication and pray for one another's safety."

"Do you think that that's what I am doing, this… ninshū?"

I tried my best to keep the skepticism out of my face, because that would imply that I understood what a spiritual energy was. I admit that I had done some reading with what I suspected was Itachi's old textbooks the other day, and the book that covered the topic of chakra had mentioned that the spiritual energy was derived from the mind's consciousness, which would not make Itachi's story entirely implausible. However, it was not wrong of me to expect a better explanation that was not based on a flimsy legend, was it?

"Well, it's either that, or your… illness… is acting up again."

Now, we're talking, I thought. "What's the disease?"

Itachi pursed his lips. "That's the problem, we don't know."

My brows raised. "What do you mean you don't know?"

Itachi shook his head. "It is exactly like I said. In every human being, both civilians and ninja alike, one's spiritual and physical energies are supposed to rest at a perfectly balanced ratio until one begins to manipulate one's chakra, but yours are already disproportionate from the moment that you are born."

I ignored how Itachi had indirectly stated that I was not a human being and that I was apparently the only one who suffered from such disease. "What's the ratio?"

Itachi seemed like he wanted to ask whether I understood what a ratio was, but thought better of it. "If I'm not mistaken, Father said that when you were born the ratio is roughly 9:1, in favor of your spiritual energy."

It was a huge difference.

If I applied the logic from the book into my case, it would be understandable for my spiritual and physical energies' ratio to be disproportionate, since my mind was that of an adult whilst my body was that of an infant. However, considering how intricately connected the chakra pathway system with the physiological systems of the human body in this world, I had to wonder how my dysfunctional chakra did not lead into, say, a dysfunctional skeletal system or something of the sort.

"Isn't that bad?" I inquired. "Balance is very important, right?"

"Logically, it should. Even the medics are quite baffled when you show no further sign of adverse effect, save for that one time after your birth." Itachi admitted. "I'm not sure how your body regulates the excess spiritual energy, but I do not think that it is possible to expel pure energy. It could be through Yin Release, however subconsciously – since our clan predominantly inherit it – but I'm not sure if it is possible when you are barely more than an infant yourself. Who knows." Itachi shrugged and plucked another dessert from his plate. "I'm just glad that you are okay now. "

"So am I…" I mumbled. I did not think that I would be able to handle the sheer helplessness of being bedridden on top of being an infant. "But… what's a Yin Release, brother?" I remembered that the book had only mentioned it in passing. "Does it represent spiritual energy, or maybe it is spiritual energy, or does it have something to do with the ratio thingy of the energies again? Is it nature trans–"

"Slow down," Itachi chuckled heartily, "I won't go anywhere. I have an afternoon shift today, so we still have some time to spend."

"You better," I jokingly threatened. I did not think that I would dare to truly threaten Itachi even if I were under gunpoint. "Sasuke-nii said that you always bailed on him."

Itachi waved his dango stick at me. "In my defense, Sasuke always approaches me at the wrong time. Our schedules simply no longer match up." Itachi briefly glanced at the panda clock on the wall. "Speaking of schedule, it is time for you to eat."

Itachi's free hand suddenly moved and my self-preservation instinct triggered my sharingan. I saw a burst of chakra from his hand into the tiny matrix on one of the beads on his bracelet. There was a puff of smoke before my sippy cup appeared on Itachi's hand.

"Teach me that," I blurted out. If I could seal my belongings away, then I would not have to fear the possibility of being discovered by busybodies. Hiding my journal every time someone barged into my room unannounced was getting absolutely tedious.

Itachi only smiled. "When you're older, okay?" He handed me the defrosted breast milk. I could not help my disappointed frown. I supposed it meant that Mikoto was away – again. "I have a great story to tell you."

My brows furrowed. "But… aren't you going to answer my questions?"

"I will," Itachi assured, "but I want to tell you about its origin first. That way you will have a deeper and more complete understanding of it – and hopefully, what chakra is as a whole."

"Okay," I relented.

Itachi set his plate aside and sat more comfortably on the fluffy carpet. "Alright, here we go…"

I took a small sip from the cup and deactivated my sharingan with a blink.

"Thousands of years ago," Itachi began, "long before the world was the place that we now know, there was once a wise man that had such a mastery over Yin and Yang that he used Yin to create form from nothing, and then used Yang to breathe life into what he had created. This wise man was known as the Sage…"

"We can't go on like this forever," I told my pet plant.

I was lying on the veranda whilst sipping another cup of milk after feeding the plant with my blood. It had been almost thirty minutes since Itachi had left to attend his ANBU duties. I still had approximately an hour or two to be on my own devices before Sasuke came home.

The fact was, my total blood volume was low, which meant that the amount of blood that I could safely lose in a 24-hour period was also low. I had used Nadler's equation, I'd even adjusted the result with Gilcher's Rule of Five just to make sure; I had calculated the number through correlation between log blood volume with log height and through reference book method, but all methods showed similar results: if I did not find other alternatives, then the plant would suffer from malnutrition, and more than likely – died.

Leaving it in the open was out of the question, who knew what it would do to a random passerby. I could not steal the blood from blood banks either. I doubted that those institutions could exist in a world that was filled with people with bloodline limits and other peculiar traits, I knew that I would not hesitate to raid them in a heartbeat. They left hunting for canon fodders as the only option. The thought made me feel uneasy.

"You could always create them yourself, Meister," echoed the raspy timbre inside my head, a.k.a. the sycophantic tree that would only conveniently appear whenever I was contemplating about its 'child's' meal.

"It's not that simple," I reasoned. "Yes, I can generate plenty of red blood cells using cord blood CD34+ cells as stem cells." My mind riveted into the calculation that I had made in my notebook. "If it were done correctly, the CD34+ cells from one cord blood unit should generate up to 4×10^14 red blood cells, which are equivalent to 500 blood transfusion units in the clinical application. The problem is, how am I supposed to do that when I don't even own an adequate lab, or any of the necessary ingredients and equipment for that matter? I assure you, if I could get it done, I would have done it by now."

"But you created me," it insisted like a broken record.

I sighed.

I was not sure how one should convince a sentient tree that one was not its creator without having a prolonged and futile biology lecture. I had tried to do it on the first few days of our acquaintance, but the blasted thing was quite adamant about it, thus I continued to stray from the subject – until now.

"Right..." I murmured drily. "And how exactly did I create you?"

"The same way that you created all of your creations. I can sense your energy in one, in that strange metal under–"

I choked on my milk and descended into a violent coughing spasm.

"Meister, are you alright? Are you hurt–"

"The bullet," I wheezed, "the bullet is real?!"

"Is that what its name was?–"

I tuned it out and sprinted into my room.

Upon my arrival, I quickly lied face down on the floor and slipped my arm under the wooden dresser. I ignored the disgusting dusts and spider webs that brushed against my skin. I tried to reach further, but my arm was not long enough.

I was beginning to get frustrated, inwardly wishing for the bullet to simply roll into my hand, when I felt something cold brushed against the tip of my finger not a moment later.

Scratch, scratch, scritchy-scratch.

The thing pushed a small, cylindrical metal, rounded on its front, onto my palm. It moved slowly, wriggling like a worm – tapping, tapping, tapping – its uneven nail dragging on my skin.

I immediately pulled my hand out. The metal harshly collided against my glasses in my hastiness, which caused ugly grazes to appear on the right lens. I barely had the time to process the fact that the bullet was real – that my eyes were not playing tricks on me, that I was not hallucinating – let alone the fact that I had actually vomited an intact bullet when I was only a few weeks old. No . . . My whole attention was fixated on the finger in front of me, on the appendage that was clinging to me like how infants would to their mothers' chests.

My eyes bled red, but the illusion did not disappear. For a moment I was paralyzed, unable to tear my gaze away from the pink-white digit.

Just what was the finger attached to? What could it be attached to?

It was an abnormally long finger, extending from the place where it was connected with mine into somewhere beneath the dresser. The nail was neither bitten nor unusually long, the tip was simply jagged from too much friction – from too much scratching. Though its skin looked deceptively human, its touch was as smooth and cold as a porcelain doll.

The chakra that coursed through it, however, was undoubtedly mine.

I jerked my fingers, feeling relieved when I saw that there were still ten of them. For one alarming moment I almost thought that they would detach themselves from my palms and floated away.

"Pretty, isn't it?" the tree remarked, as if it were observing a simple flower. "You always create the most peculiar things, Meister."

The finger wiggled.

I swallowed a bile. "W-why would I create that?"

"Why did you create me?"

"I didn't." I finally snapped.

"Yes, you did!"

I felt my upper lip rising and falling in an unconscious snarl as a sudden rush of rage burnt me. "Why would I create a murderer?! Why would I create an abomination like you?"

"Because you are one."

I flinched at the accusation.

"Why are you so surprised?" it asked, sounding utterly baffled. "You have no love for this place, let alone its inhabitants."

"Shut up."

"Do you still remember that man, the man that you wanted dead?–"

"He's just a drawing."

"–Only his bones remain – but why should it matter when you already have his decomposition rate, yes? So what is next? You can sever someone's hands, switch them around, and then sew them again so that when the hands are positioned palms down, the thumbs will be on the outside while the little fingers will–"

"That's enough!" I growled. "Be quiet before I make you."

It complied.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the horrid pressure in my head increasing. I did not know what was happening anymore. I was completely out of my depth and I despised how helpless it made me feel. Either I was completely deranged, or the world was the one that had truly gone mad.

Reasoning that the strange things that had occurred happened because I suffered from schizophrenia might feel less terrifying. At least if I were mad I would know what I should do, I would know what drugs I should take, and I would know what kind of treatment I had to do to fix myself. However, loath as I was to admit it, what the plant had said did explain how my body could prevent itself from collapsing inward. Yin Release – or at least a bastardized version of it – seemed to be the best method that my body could employ to discard the excess spiritual energy whilst losing the least amount of physical energy as possible.

It was, after all, by definition, based on the spiritual energy that governed imagination and was created by altering the ratio of spiritual and physical energy in favor of the former. It could – at least in the Sage legend that Itachi told me – create form out of nothingness. The legend was probably exaggerated, a complete nonsense even – or perhaps I misinterpreted it – because not only did that violate the principle of matter conservation, in the later part of the story I was sure that Itachi had told me how the wise Sage had defeated the big bad monster by dividing it into nine beasts with anger management issues (his words, not mine).

My take on the technique itself was that the Yin Release converted energy, probably chakra, of one object and/or of the user, to form a different object, instead of merely spitting things into existence to its user's heart content. I doubted that such a simple mechanism was all that there was to it, I would need to conduct further experiments to comprehend how it worked though. Still, amidst of all the uncertainties, there was one thing that I was absolutely sure of:

"You're lying," I accused the tree. "There's no way that I could create you." The tree's massive size and the sheer number of skeletons that were buried underneath it were far too massive for a tree that allegedly only existed for fourteen months at most

The finger, I could understand. If I somehow had unknowingly created something during my stress episode, it would have been something that could compensate for my then useless limbs – it would have been something that could fill the silence when the quietness became a tad bit unbearable. The tree, on the other hand, did not make any sense. If I could create anything to curb my loneliness, I would have created a puppy instead of a grotesque parasite to keep me company.

The tree remained silent.

I sighed.

I eyed the finger on my hand with a grimace. "Shoo, off you go. Please return to your… habitat or whatever." I imagined that it would be a dark and dingy space where Eldritch abominations resided. "Thank you for your help."

The finger detached itself from my hand and dropped onto the floor with a plop. It swiftly retreated under the dresser, squirming and twitching. One moment it was there and the next second it disappeared, as if it had never been there in the first place.

I sat up and blinked, trying to erase the freakish image from my mind. Ah, who was I kidding, I would come to examine its motor skill later.

I deactivated my sharingan and lowered my ruined glasses onto the tip of my nose. I squinted my eyes in order to accommodate my now blurry vision, not that the tree could see me anyway.

"You cannot ignore me forever," I reminded it. "I've been nothing but honest to you, even when things are not going well, so the least that you can do is to show me the same courtesy." My eyes narrowed. "Don't make me regret investing my time in you."

"Very well…" the tree finally relented. "I admit that you did not exactly create me, per se. I came from a seed, just like many of my kind. The atmosphere and the terrain nourish me, allow me to grow stronger, so does the blood of thousands of warriors that saturate the soil.

"But then you… you gave me life. You gifted me with mind, the ability to think beyond my basic instinct. It's a very strange feeling and I am not sure what to do with it. I'm still trying to understand these… emotions.

"I am hungry, I want to eat, but you told me that it is dangerous – that it is wrong. But why is it wrong for me to feed from your kind when yours consume many of mine? Natural energy takes too long to gather, it may take me another thousand years before I can bear a fruit. Warriors' blood, on the other hand, are rich with chakra and will fasten the process."

Although the tree was . . . unconventional, to say the least, even more so than the freakish people that inhabited this biosphere, I understand where it was coming from. Based on the information that it had given me, the tree was only capable of producing one fruit at the time and each fruit took a really long time to be conceived. Fruit contained seed, which was a tool for the tree to propagate itself. If it took the tree a thousand years for one fruit to be produced, then the tree would go extinct in no time – unless, of course, it evolved to consume another source of chakra, which in its case was human blood.

"Alright, I understand your concern, uh–" I paused. "Excuse me, what's your name again?"

"Humans used to refer to my kind as the Shinju."

I frowned.

Did that mean silk-cotton tree? It could also mean newly green tree of early summer, double suicide, pearl, and tree heaven (or was it heaven tree?).

This was exactly why I preferred written Japanese. Although the language had numerous homophones, in its written form I could read the kanji to understand their meaning. Of course, kanji were not available in spoken Japanese. Spoken Japanese had pitch accent instead, which I was not proficient enough to discern, thus I had to break down and interpret sentences based on their context and syntax as the speaker spoke. I would be lucky if the speaker did not include confusing collocation of words and idioms in their speech. It was part of the reason why I liked using sharingan, they slowed everything down, even speech.

I rubbed my temple to alleviate my headache. The neurons in my brain were boiling after translating so much gibberish. I could really use a nap right now.

"Okay…" I murmured. "Let's just– let's skip the introduction. Don't interrupt me until I'm done, okay?" I did not wait for its reply before I began my explanation. "Your main problem is your lack of coverage towards your sources of nutrients. The last time we've met, you've shown tropic movement in response to my blood. I've also seen the roots in the stem that you've given me, their growth rates are exceptional. We can use them to your advantage."

Now, I did not know if the impulse to help the tree was spurred from being a National Geographic fan or if it was simply my inner environmentalist speaking, but I felt obligated to save the tree from the brink of extinction.

What could go wrong anyway? It was just a tree – a strange one, albeit – certainly befitting this equally strange world.

I took a deep breath before I continued, "So here's what I want you to do, I want you to make a pseudo-clonal colony..."

"What happened to your glasses?" Sasuke asked.

It was already late afternoon by the time Sasuke returned from his after school training. The sun was painting the clouds in a splash of orange and red as it slowly dipped below the horizon, about to set.

Sasuke settled comfortably on the tatami mat in the living room, a weapon pouch and a roll of wire strings were placed neatly on the brown coffee table. Droplets of water from the shower dripped from his wet hair into his fresh shirt.

I glanced at the boy's direction. "You notice it too?"

Sasuke regarded me strangely, as if I was a particularly demented dolt. "Of course I do. I'm not blind."

I dug my hand into my pocket and held the bullet between my thumb and forefinger. "What about this?"

Sasuke's gaze flickered to the metal in my hand, he rolled his eyes not a second later. "Exactly which part of 'I'm not blind' that you don't understand?"

I ignored Sasuke's comment and shoved back the bullet into my pocket. The boy could see it too, which meant that what had happened was not just an elaborate hallucination that my brain had conjured. Everything was not just in my head. I was sane.

"For your information, I don't know what has happened. By the time I woke up from my nap, it's already like this."

Sasuke crossed his arms. "Do you think I'm stupid? I know you long enough to know that 'I don't know' is your equivalent of freak accident. Come on, spill. I can't cover for you if you won't tell me what's going on."

I sighed. "You don't have to cover for me."

"Yes, I do," Sasuke insisted. "You covered for me last week, now I want to return the favor. Father would have disowned me if he knew that your eyes were injured while you were in my watch."

I sighed again. "Don't be dramatic, Sasuke, he loves you more than you know it. Also, that incident was on me."

I lifted my glasses by its bridge and observed the now-absent scratches on its right lens. What used to be a horrendous, too-big frame with unfitting bridge (apparently, no infant in Konoha wore glasses) was now replaced with a fitting frame that has a proper bridge that did not slide down my nose, spring hinges, and cable temples.

It was funny how the glasses perfectly matched the one that I had in mind, when less than a few hours ago – before my exhaustion and pounding headache finally claimed me – I had willed (and begged) my glasses to fix itself for more than an hour to no avail. Yin Release truly was tricky. The whole experience was embarrassing, demeaning, and only cemented my belief that I was truly inadequate at doing anything ninja.

"Besides," I continued, "when you help someone, you should do it out of the kindness of your heart, not because you're expecting something in return."

Sasuke made a face. "That doesn't make any sense. It's like doing missions without getting paid, which is stupid. How are you supposed to buy food and clothes if you're not getting paid?" Sasuke asked, affronted. "And your bleeding eyeballs is definitely not on you – unless you poke them with a stick yourself – which once again, is really stupid, which you are not. You may be crazy, but you're not stupid. No brother of mine is stupid."

My brows furrowed. I did not know whether I should be offended or flattered. "Err… thanks?"

Sasuke, the birdbrain, grinned. "No probl–" He cut himself short, his eyes suddenly narrowed. "Hey, what's that?"

I put my glasses on and blinked owlishly at the now-focused calligraphy that adorned the wall on my left. The lenses had been upgraded too, apparently. I then turned back to Sasuke. "What's what?"

"That stain on your T-shirt."

I looked down on the brown stain near my collar. "Oh, that…" I had completely forgotten about it, too preoccupied with contemplating my glasses transmutation. "I had a nosebleed when I was asleep."

Now that I was more enlightened regarding Yin Release, I had come to realize that my moments of 'creation' were always followed by an incident of epistaxis or nosebleed. When I was younger I was frequently hooked into a nasal cannula, which would explain my epistaxis. I had attributed other occurrences to Konoha's dry air, but now I wasn't really sure anymore. I had zero control and an abundance of spiritual energy to spare, so who knew what kind of atrocity I had casually created during my manic episodes.

"Why didn't you tell me?!" Sasuke cried loudly. "You could die!"

I quickly held my hands up in a calming gesture. "Statistically speaking, deaths that are caused from just a nosebleed are very rare, so rare that they are almost unheard-of. Yes, the blood from the nosebleed could cause suffocation, and yes, enough blood loss could cause issues with the heart. But I'm well now, it was probably caused by the dry air, so please don't worry about it. You don't owe me anything."

"That is definitely not helping and completely besides the point!" Sasuke ranted. "You're my little brother, I'll always be worried about you – even if you're crazy and annoying – because that's what big brother does–" The boy's jaw abruptly snapped shut with an audible click.

Sasuke slowly moved to stand whilst throwing a wary glance at every corner of the room. "Have you eaten yet?" he asked out of the blue whilst his hands inched onto his weapons. "You look pale."

I felt a dread knot at the pit of my stomach. "What's wrong?" I asked slowly.

It had only been a week since the last incident, dammit!

The boy pointed his finger to the calligraphy at the entrance, more accurately to the character at the bottom of the poem, where a horizontal strike had appeared in the middle of the other two strokes, changing its meaning.

Three, it now read.

Apprehension quickly dawned into me. Fear and anxiety soon followed, tinged with a hint of paranoia. The word 'intruder' blared over and over inside my brain like the Purge siren.

Would it happen today – tonight? No . . . This was not the massacre, I told myself, not yet. It was too soon. Itachi would not just kill everyone, kill me, when this very morning – one of the very few rare moments where he actually sat and had a decent conversation with me – I had seen him smile and laughed and simply enjoyed himself like his supposed age, would he . . . ?

I dug my nails into my palms and forced myself to breathe. This was not the time to be anxious and wallow in self-pity. Everything was not over yet, I was not over yet. I am not weak, I told myself, I am not helpless. Not anymore.

"No, I haven't," I answered out loud. 'Kitchen?' I mouthed afterwards. That was where the backdoor was located. The last time I checked it was opened.

Sasuke shook his head ever so slightly. 'Not sure,' he mouthed back.

I beckoned the boy to follow me as I creeped into the foyer. Red bled into my Iris as I scanned the center of the ward at the front door.

"It's gone," I breathed. The thing that separated me from the outside world was there no more. "The ward is gone."

"But that's impossible," Sasuke whispered, aghast. "Only father, mother, and big brother can disable the seal, they obviously won't do it. If it's deactivated, then there's nothing that can prevent intruders from getting in anymore."

I massaged my temples. I was sure that Mikoto and Fugaku would not do it, why would they? Itachi, on the other hand . . .

Sasuke gripped his blade tighter. Beads of sweat were starting to trickle down his neck. "What should we do now? We're a sitting duck in here, everyone is at the clan meeting in the Naka Shrine."

"We can run," I quickly suggested. Although the compound was located on the outskirts and isolated from the village, our desperation should more than make up for the lengthy distance. "I don't sense anyone outside."

Sasuke shook his head again. "We can't rely on that. Skilled ninja are able to change their chakra signature and make them seem larger or smaller, some can even suppress their chakra to the point that they become completely undetectable. Sure, they won't be able to use ninjutsu and genjutsu, but they don't exactly need those to eliminate an academy student and a toddler."

It was at that exact moment that I truly realized what my ignorance had cost me. As much as the mere thought of them made my skin crawl, I had to learn more about ninja in order to survive this world. Trial and error would only take me so far, I could not rely on them forever.

"So what do we do now?" I murmured flatly.

"I don't know..." Sasuke whispered. "Someone who can trespass the Military Police' Chief's house is not someone to be trifled with. We won't even stand a chance." The boy released a shuddering breath and squeezed his eyes shut. "Kami… we're going to die."

"Hey, I'm supposed to be the crazy one here, not you! And we're not going to die," I promised him, "not as long as I have any say in it. I mean, think reasonably, Sasuke. The trespasser might not be here to hurt us, so don't lose hope just yet." I twined our hands together, exactly like how Sasuke used to do before I could fully walk on my own, and gave his hand a firm squeeze. "What's the law say about this?"

Sasuke squeezed my hand back, a silent gratitude for the minute distraction, and took a deep, calming breath before he cited the passage that he undoubtedly memorized just to impress Fugaku. "Under the terms of the Defense and the Dwelling Act, property owners or residents are entitled to defend themselves with force, up to and including lethal force. Any individual who uses force against a trespasser is not guilty of an offense if he or she honestly believes they were there to commit a criminal act and a threat to life."

"See," I gave the boy a small, assuring smile, "we're not helpless. We can still defend ourselves. This is our home, we know it better than anyone else. We can lay some traps that will lure them out and make them leave while we hide somewhere safe. We can survive this."

"And if they don't…" Sasuke trailed off, voice barely audible.

I looked at the boy right in the eyes, my answer was resolute.

"Then I'll kill them."

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