You see plenty of strange things while on patrol in Konoha, especially along the rooftop routes. Those who frequently hang out on the rooftops tend to form their own little community where the line between ANBU and Military Police tends to get blurred and each will go to the defense of the other if the situation calls for it. In the course of my duties for the KMPF which include a wide variety of tasks that range from crime scene investigation to foot patrols, I've been semi-regularly patrolling these rooftops for nearly three years, and I have come to know any number of people during that time.
When I told Itachi yesterday that he wasn't the only Uchiha with ANBU connections, it wasn't merely an idle boast. Over the time I've spent policing the upper levels of Konoha where pretty much only shinobi go, I've known members of both sides of ANBU, official and Root, as well as any number of couriers, insomniac shinobi, and roof rats. I've dodged everything from Exploding tags to banana cream pies during my patrols, and have avoided any number of traps and pranks that have been set up by the Uzumaki in order to catch the unwary.
Tonight's domestic disturbance which involves flying kunai doesn't even faze me. I've seen it all a hundred times before, and from the same couple no less. For us, it's the typical Saturday night in which they blow off some steam, and I bring them down to the station for a few hours until they cool down so they don't accidentally kill an innocent bystander with a stray kunai.
I am Uchiha Tekka, and this is my story.
Considering how much time I spend up here, I can honestly tell you that life on Konoha's rooftops isn't all fun and games. Any number of tragedies have played out amongst the eaves and around the chimneys and air conditioners including a few I've personally witnessed, but there are times when I prefer the rooftops to the ground where I am both loved and hated, but now mostly hated for being a Uchiha. Up here where lines blur and manners often fall by the wayside in an easy camaraderie amongst those who spend most of their time above Konoha which currently sleeps below, I'm Tekka, as in "Hey Tekka!", "Hi Tekka", "Another long night again Tekka?".
In the winter when it's freezing out and the rain is pouring down, you don't turn down an offer to share a warm cloak or a bit of shelter from the elements. This closeness that the denizens of the rooftop highway share as they wait for the inclement weather to pass often creates an intimacy that the societal standards of Below doesn't really allow, especially for one such as I who must always be mindful of my actions because they reflect on my clan as a whole. Up here, in rain or shine, we all belong to Konoha, no matter who we are.
This closeness between those who spend most of their time above the streets sometimes has its consequences however, such as what had happened to one child that I had befriended. It had been on a cold and rainy night during my first year with the KMPF that I had met a Root recruit who hadn't been much older than the Uzumaki boy is now, and I can tell you that either Shimura Danzo's operating budget is strapped for cash or the man is a skinflint. Unlike I who had been properly attired for the weather and had a rather nice warm cloak which had a waterproofing seal that actually worked, the kid who'd been standing on a roof I'd been walking along to complete my second circuit of Green Route 3 had been dressed in in standard ANBU attire. Standard ANBU summer attire that was.
It was understandable that the kid had been a bit skittish when I'd decided that that rooftop was a good a place as any to wait out the storm and that my cloak had enough room to accommodate a little brat who had been soaked to the bone as well as myself, considering the fact that I was a strange man who, in offering the boy shelter, could also very easily be trying to lure the child within arm's reach for other purposes. Eventually, as hypothermia began to set in, the boy who was probably either studying the movements of the normal ANBU so he could better pass himself off as one of them or had been sent outside for some sort of sadistic cold weather survival training finally took me up on my offer.
The furtive glance that the kid gave me as he looked at the cloak I had offered to shelter him under showed that he clearly knew he wasn't supposed to even be thinking about it but, I wouldn't have told on the boy were I asked point blank by his master since I was breaking the rules then myself. I was supposed to be on patrol right then, not standing there next to a vent from an apartment complex's furnace which was providing me with some extra warmth that I hadn't realized I'd needed until my hands had started to thaw out. But, it was one of those nights when even the criminals knew to stay indoors.
Practically without warning, the boy who had been giving me cautious glances from behind his mask scurried over to me and planted himself next to me beneath my cloak, getting me damp in the process. The kid was skinny, but had the wiry strength that was common amongst recent Academy graduates, and easily fit beneath my cloak with me. We stood there until my patrol ended, but fortunately, the rain had let up and the kid had pretty much warmed up and dried off by then.
That had been the beginning of a friendship that had ended in tragedy, which was pretty much the only way a friendship with someone in Root could end. Despite being completely loyal to Konoha, and training his recruits to be unswervingly loyal to the village as well, Shimura is a mean bastard who only allows his recruits to be grateful to him and only him since he believed anything else would compromise their training, if it could be called that. Anyone who didn't meet his standards or follow his rules to the letter was cast out of Root.
The thing is, nobody makes it out of Root alive.
If I'd known what was going to happen, I would have given the kid a few pointers on surviving a night such as that one had been and gone on my way instead. It hadn't been my intention to get the kid killed, and I learned my lesson afterward. Nowadays, I tend to keep a bit of an aloof distance from the others in Root rather than risk them getting killed for being more than mere acquaintances who greet each-other when we run into each-other. I will not be the cause of another child suffering the fate of that nameless boy if I can help it.
The destruction of Root is my price for participating in the coup when the time comes.
The time for the coup is not now however, and therefore I continue to patrol the rooftops as I likely will after the coup takes place. I'm not particularly highly placed in the clan, and while I'll be amongst the village elite like I should be since I'm Uchiha rather than spat on for my supposed role in the summoning of the Kyuubi, I'll also still be a shinobi the day after the dust clears and our victory is announced, and it will still be my duty to serve Konoha in whatever capacity I am asked. Since I know all of the rooftop byways like the back of my hand, I will likely be asked to continue patrolling them like before.
Though it is my preferred route, I don't always stick to the rooftops. In the course of my duties for Konoha and the KMPF, I've been down on the ground dealing with crime scenes, and I've been in the office taking reports and filing paperwork, but for the most part, the rooftops are the domain of myself and a few others in the clan who run these routes at different points of the day. It will likely remain that way until the day I either retire or die, whichever comes first. While I want to retire and live long enough to see the kids I plan on having grow up and meet my grandkids, I understand that as a shinobi my life is unpredictable, and death will probably come first, even though I spend most of my time in the village patrolling above its streets.
I shouldn't keep thinking about the coup or my possible demise however, that is the future, and now is now. It is a clear and beautiful night, the moon is nearly full, and the stars are shining, and I need to bring a certain couple in before their bout of playfulness turns deadly. Even though I've caught them dozens of times before and could practically do it in my sleep these days, I shouldn't let my mind wander. There is a chance that I'll end up getting myself killed doing so. The kunai that are flying about at the moment are live, and they are being flung by fellow Chunin after all.
I smile as I look up at the night sky and breathe the night air, happy to be back on patrol. It's been several days since the usual Saturday Night Domestic, and after playing office drone for a while, I'm back on the rooftops where I belong. While being in the office is nominally a good thing since it places me under my Chief and Clan Head's eye, giving me a better chance at promotion if I do well, I hate it. I prefer to be outside breathing the night air as I make sure that the village I was born into, the village I serve is secure. The summertime rhythm of run, leap, run, leap is soothing on this night when the very air feels wrong.
I'm not the only one who feels that something is seriously off. The roof rats are hiding in their nests, and the greetings of my fellow rooftop travelers are subdued. They can all see like I can that moon is full tonight even though it shouldn't be. I've been watching the phases with half an eye, and I know for a fact that the moon should be three-quarters full at the most. Whatever it is, it can't be Genjutsu, because my Sharingan which I've held active my entire shift, even though it's inadvisable, and I'll end up dropping from Chakra Exhaustion the minute my shift is over can't pierce it.
Like the silent roof rats who are hiding on a night when they'd usually be active, visiting their neighbors and calling out the occasional greeting as I pass, the wrongness of this anomalous full moon fills me with an inexplicable dread. The silence from the roof rats who are usually a rowdy bunch in the warmer months frightens me as well. Thanks to the ominous moon that seems to be staring down at the world waiting to strike, they're all hiding tonight, and there aren't any of the normal sounds of greetings, laughter, and squabbles over food or choice sleeping spaces in the places they usually haunt.
As I near the half-way mark of my route, a passing courier makes a superstitious sign from a foreign religion that has caught on in some of the more remote areas of the country as he looks at the sky. He shivers as he does so. I find myself copying the gesture, hoping to ward off whatever evil is lurking in the darkness seemingly waiting to devour me. The Root brat who is standing guard over the entrance to their little bunker over near the market gives me a strange look as I pass, a look that isn't the usual unemotional neutrality that is standard amongst their ranks. It chills me more than the oddly ominous full moon, and the unnatural feeling in the air.
As I near the end of my patrol happy to be heading into the station for once, there is a keening noise from the seal at my collar. It is the General Alert calling back all who are out in the field. Based on the modulation of the tone, I am to make my way back to the compound rather than the station I'd been headed towards posthaste. One of my cousins who has received the alert as well races by my side after he nearly running into me on the way back. Like me, he often patrols above the streets but, he has the counterclockwise patrol on the other side of the village.
Every once in a while when we both have the same night patrol shift, we would both meet in the middle where our routes overlapped and trade greetings that are as old as the clan. It is a comforting ritual that we do not have time to observe on this night as we frantically race towards the place we've called home since the Kyuubi destroyed the houses we had grown up in.
As we near the compound, I can hear screams. They're muffled at first, as if that strange bone white moon above has swallowed them whole, and as I look up at the moon, I find myself believing the old story about how it is the body of a dead demon who had been far more fearsome than the Kyuubi for the first time since I heard it as a child. The instant I vault over the wall, which is something only a Uchiha or someone who's feeling particularly suicidal can do, the screams become louder, unbearable even. People are dying all around me, and it is the Clan Head's eldest who is doing the killing, or at the very least, someone who has made themselves look like him even under the Sharingan somehow.
I stare at the scene around me in shock.
This can't be happening. This can't be happ...
Wondering why they had been closed in the first place, I open my eyes. The compound with its screams and dead bodies is gone, as is the unnatural moon that had so frightened me. I'm standing at the beginning of my patrol. As I round the first circuit of my usual route, the rhythm of run, leap, run, leap is soothing as I push away what had undoubtedly been a nightmare. Based on the sounds of the village below, it's Saturday Night. Going by the position of the stars above, I've started my shift later than usual thanks to that horrific nightmare and I will have to hurry if I want to break up the usual Saturday Domestic.
After running flat out for nearly seven minutes, I find myself at a position near the fighting couple who have obviously been at it for a while.
"Hey, hey, break it up!" I yell as I dodge a kunai.
They usually know better than to throw one in my direction since I tend to add to the fine they're charged the next morning if they do so. The usual fines for the Public Intoxication and the Drunk and Disorderly charges were exorbitant enough without tacking on a charge of Assaulting an Officer.
Rather than stopping with the kunai throwing and going into the usual He said, She said with me like they almost always did at this point, the couple completely ignore my presence and the kunai continue to fly. She slips, and a kunai that would have missed her goes straight into her, stabbing into something vital. The death that I'd been half afraid would happen, and had always gotten there in time to prevent was now seemed to be a certainty. Neither he nor she seemed to notice when I raced to her aid, and no-one answered when I called for help. Things only started moving when a patrolling ANBU came by five minutes later to find the male half of the duo clutching his dead wife and sobbing.
I blink. The scene is gone, and I'm at the start of my patrol. Based on the sounds coming from Below, it's Saturday night. Based on the position of the stars above, I'm late, very late. I run to where the usual fight is, hoping to prevent the disaster I undoubtedly dreamed like I had dreamed the full moon under which Death had stalked the clan compound. The couple isn't in their usual spot however, and there are no sounds of fighting nearby.
Perhaps one or both of them had a mission tonight.
Thrown, I continue with the usual patrol. The Uzumaki child is on the roof of an apartment building setting up a rather ingenious prank that's undoubtedly meant for Monkey with whom the boy has a particularly antagonistic relationship. For some strange reason the boy looks larger than I remember him being. Smiling since Monkey would be owing me one, I sneak over to sabotage a critical component of the boy's trap. The boy frowns as the ninja wire goes slack and turns to look at me.
There is terror in the boy's eyes. Not the "Oh crap I've been caught by the cops!" terror that most people who are in the wrong tend to exhibit, but true, unadulterated, start screaming your head off before curling up in a ball in the corner terror.
I blink. I find myself standing at the beginning of my patrol route. Based on the sounds below me, it is Saturday night.
My name is Uchiha Tekka, and I think I might be dead.
Edited 12-9-12
Among The Eaves Parts 1-3 Combined into one June 1, 2017.