Happy New Year! :D


Haku

We are building a religion

We are building it bigger

We are widening the corridors

And adding more lanes…

we are building a religion

We are making a brand

We're the only ones to turn to

When your castles turn to sand.

- Comfort Eagle, Cake

The cosmos roiled and bucked, its depths black but a-riot with color, sensation and every sort of lurid phantasm, and when it finally vomited Haku back up into consciousness again, the experience felt not unlike that of a struggling flush toilet operating in reverse. A recollection of one of the many appalling and vivid dreams he'd experienced lingered significantly in his mind – of himself in a shimmering, rose-hued kimono patterned with flowers, his fingernails polished and brilliant blue, his raven hair long, straight and flowing past his slim, alabaster shoulders the way it used to before Mari had cut it. He'd stood at a counter in Wave Country while the butcher behind it, Toru Yamashite, chopped away with cackling gusto at what was left of a man's carcass. The mist-jonin, in all his imposing girth, separated the nasty bits from the fillets with his cleaver, discarded the former into a plastic-lined trash can then set the rest aside to be packaged into neat, paper-wrapped bundles. From his refrigerated case, glassy-eyed faces peered out, lifeless hands beckoned; steaks, roasts, ribs and assorted organs were all arranged and priced by the pound for sale.

'The future will be your epitaph,' quoth he to the boy significantly, grinning and with forefinger upraised, as he adjusted his thick, black-framed and gore-speckled glasses then wiped a sweaty hand on his apron, leaving a pinkish smear.

'Yeah,' Haku remembered answering the man, a listless frown settling over his girlish features, 'sure.'

The teenager tried to forget this disheartening vision, ascribing it as a product of his fraying sanguinity, then allowed his crusted eyes to creep open. Even before he noted the musty stink of wood and cloth, saw the rows of bare, steel trusses above alternated with lengths of buzzing, flickering fluorescent tubes, he could feel the familiar presences of medical-ninja and the pulse of chakra as they worked their arcane treatments on him.

Haku always felt odd when he came awake this way and found himself yet again in an unfamiliar place surrounded by strangers with little memory of how he'd come to be there. Back when he was Zabuza's disciple it had happened more often than he cared to remember – so many times borne away from punishing training regimens or carnage-strewn battlefields wounded, bloodied and hovering near death. It had never been so frequent as to free him of the unnerving sense of dislocation. Even with all that in mind it seemed different this time, unwelcome, another unwanted intrusion into his new life…maybe only because it felt a little too much like his old one. Yet despite Haku's reflexive misgivings, he could tell that the ninjas' ministrations to the incalculable damage he'd wrought upon his thin body and chakra network were necessary and working and so what else could he do but accept it and be grateful the way he'd always had? Considering that his last memories were of that strange ninja, Kurage, bearing him away like an infant in arms and that his most likely alternatives would have lead either to his masticated remains moving through whatever passed for the 108 Demons' digestive systems or else into Kirigakure's less-than-hospitable custody, things could really have turned out much worse.

Naruto, he remembered suddenly, or thought he did. He came to get me, didn't he? Dimly Haku could recall his friend's voice but it could just as easily be another dream he'd had mistaken for memory. Not being able to tell for sure only added to the young ninja's frustrations.

The teenager's grey eyes slid to the faces of the shinobi at his left and right, finding only zodiac masks.

In the background, close enough to hear but far enough to lie outside Haku's field of vision, Kurage was holding court. "Our lord's disciple has returned to the Mist Village more powerful than ever, greater even than Zabuza himself!" the boy heard him boast. "You saw how he slew the Mizukage's executioner, Krishenay Rahaman like it was nothing, slaughtered the 108 Demons by the score like an angry god before he fell at last. With Haku's strength, leading us, we cannot be defeated!"

Despite the passionate delivery, the significant delay in reply alone told the weary teenager of the other party's doubts.

"It is as you said but just look at him now, Kurage," countered the mist-ninja's confederate in a tepid tone. "Whatever powers he had are spent."

"We have our medical-ninja healing him, the Village's best!" Haku's rescuer was quick to explain. "Within hours Lord Haku will be restored. You saw what he could do alone; now imagine him with an army at his back. The forces of Kirigakure have already been decimated. They're in disarray – hunting throughout the city for the remaining demons."

"And our forces are among them and have suffered the same," a third voice, a woman's, pointed out, "from plague, from Rahaman, from the return of the 108 Demons…and four years of having been rooted out by a vengeful Lord Oku. After so long, how many can we truly count on anymore? How many are even left?"

"We will never have an opportunity like this again," Kurage persisted direly and a touch too anxiously. "The Mizukage is dead. Counselors Hirai and Inoue have fled the city. That ridiculous Terumi woman has assumed power but she is far from having full support. If we strike now, the Mist Village is ours! This is our duty to ourselves, to Kirigakure and to Master Zabuza," he pleaded. "The time to complete the Demon of the Hidden Mist's revolution has come!"

Inwardly, Haku groaned then closed his eyes, did his best to tune his appetent savior out and pretend that he'd gone back to sleep. He'd heard such megalomaniacal visions countless times before and, while they'd been scripture to him for the eight years he'd spent as Zabuza Momochi's apprentice, he now found them appalling. He'd since come to realize that there were far too many people in the world bent towards what they saw as greatness no matter the cost as long as that cost was borne by others: Zabuza and his dream for a society that reflected the 'true shinobi spirit', ruthless and pure; Lady Inoue and her shining world built on the graveyard of the old; even Lord Hirai with all those he'd sacrificed in the name of preserving the existing order – preferable in whatever state of decay or fossilization to what he saw as the unspeakable unknown.

In Haku's mind they were all equally monstrous.

Listening again to Kurage, Haku swore the man was repeating bits of Zabuza's speeches, paraphrasing here and there when he didn't remember exactly how they'd gone. That at least seemed to provide some evidence that the ninja had indeed been there during the Demon of the Hidden Mist's ascendency although Haku still couldn't remember him. The young shinobi marveled at how such rhetoric, flowing from the lips of his late sensei, riveted people, called up something deep and powerful from within them, and inspired them to risk all for the world he conjured with his words while this Kurage fellow seemed to blather on so unconvincingly - a paltry lunatic not even worth the bother to have hauled away.

The teenager couldn't help but wonder if style was really the only difference between a revolutionary and a madman when a shock of pain shot from the center of his body, rocketed down his leg and fanned out along all the nerve endings. Had the medical-ninja working on him not blocked his involuntary responses, he surely would have thrashed. Haku breathed again, tried to quiet his mind and relax as it was bound to make his treatment go better. As the medical ninjas' energies continued to trickle through him, he could tell that his physical wounds had already been attended to. What remained would involve mending his chakra system which was a much more delicate matter and there would be no way to tell if their surgery had been successful or not until well after they'd finished.

Kurage, meanwhile, had successfully worn down his confederates' reservations and was busily sending dispatches off to whatever remained of Zabuza's forces – a clarion call commanding them to gather once more under his banner and Haku's, the Demon's Apprentice's for a second showdown with the forces of the Mist Village.

The very idea of again taking up Zabuza-sensei's cause, that anyone would actually think he would, made the teenager queasy. The whole point of his life for most of it had been to help his master fulfill his dream. Now that he was dead, what did it matter? Lying there, the object of this crew's unwanted attention, the focus of their hopelessly misguided aspirations, crippled and far from home, it occurred then to Haku that he had only himself to blame for his fate as well as Naruto's.

Why had he come here? The question challenged him. Had it really been out of some indefinable sense of devotion to the people of the Mist Village who, for his past crimes, rightly reviled him?

Inoue's plague, the 108 Demons, Lord Tohma, Kurage, Haku listed in his head then had to laugh at himself a little. In one way or another, the Mist Village had brought all of these agents of death or upheaval upon itself. What was it he'd really accomplished if he chased off one doom when dozens more hovered nearby like so many hungry birds around a feeder? Who was he to even think he could save a place that worked so hard towards its own destruction; that it even deserved the effort?

'The future will be your epitaph', Haku repeated to himself and grimaced tiredly. The words his former tormentor and unlikely rescuer had left him with in parting no longer seemed so inspirational, especially in view of what holding true to that passage could cost him.


Sakura

Pacing, her green eyes tracking back and forth over the surrounding rooftops watchful for approaching dangers, Sakura nevertheless listened intently to Kiba's report.

"This is where all the clones came from," the wolfish genin explained to their little group having tracked, with Akamaru and a number of local dogs' assistance, Naruto's clone all the way back to its origin here atop an unremarkable tenement building some blocks away from where Kiba had intercepted it.

The roar of combat between Kirigakure's ninja and the invading demons had quieted down, though it was impossible to tell what that meant or who was winning. Still, the thunder of renewed conflicts flared from time to time, and with it all the accompanying violence, explosions, shouts and otherworldly sounds that had proved impossible to get used to. Above meanwhile, the island's strata of clouds and mist were gradually creeping back, returning the Mist Village to its murky, claustrophobic normal.

"He made a bunch of them," Kiba continued with confidence, happy to be in his element, "a good couple of dozen at least. One of them, and I'm guessing that's the real one, smells different from the rest, like he's been swimming in the ocean or something. I followed that one down into the alley just beside us and the trail starts there, just starts, in the middle of a puddle of salt water like he just," the leaf-ninja made a face then raised his hands and waggled his fingers for dramatic emphasis, "appeared."

Sakura turned toward her team. Though puzzled, considering all she'd seen just in her short career, the kunoichi took the information in stride. "Some kind of jutsu?" she offered, remembering how the Demon Brothers had employed a similar-sounding water technique to get the drop on Team 7 on their very first mission beyond the borders of Konohagakure. If not for Kakashi-sensei they would all have been killed right there and then.

"It looks that way," replied Shikamaru. "Though it doesn't seem like one of Naruto's or even Haku's techniques from what we know about them. Maybe that means they're getting help. It certainly stands to reason that Haku could have some local contacts here from his time with Zabuza, and Naruto, well," the chunin hesitated awkwardly, "you know -."

Sakura continued for him with a knowing smile: "He's good at making friends."

The four looked at each other. No one had ever stated it before so simply. Now that Sakura had, none of them could argue that the crazy blond had indeed a strange way of winning people over. Haku himself was a prime example of that.

"Anyway, that one," Kiba went on, eager to conclude, "the one I'm saying is the real Naruto, headed out in that direction along with all his clones."

Standing there, right in the exact spot where Naruto had been was more than a little maddening – as if they were tracking him through time as well as space. It highlighted the point that the object of their search was not the kind who tended to stay still for very long.

"I wonder what he's up to," mused Sakura absently to herself with a shake of her head as she returned to keeping watch.

Almost the instant she did the kunoichi spied a flicker of color and movement that rippled once and was gone. Sakura blinked, did a double-take then stared hard at a point in the distant sky. The color returned, a twisting ribbon that flashed this time in a strange sequence of hues as it rushed closer. "Team!" the pink-haired kunoichi called to the others. "We've got company."

"A-another demon?" sputtered Chouji as he came to her side.

The girl nodded. "This is a weird one, even weirder than the last one."

The apparition seemed to expand, showing chimeric glimpses of mouths and suckers, then just as quickly twisted and shrank away almost to nothing.

"It's like a sheet of paper," discerned Shikamaru, "big along two directions, almost non-existent along the other."

Twisting again, the creature dropped and glided swiftly sideways then swooped toward the five in a pendulous arc, leading with its almost invisible edge. The leaf-ninjas leaped away as the demon rushed past then soared into the sky once more. A pair of chimneys shifted upon its passage – the top portions slid slightly along an angled line, revealing that they were no longer attached.

"Shit!" cried Kiba in alarm while Akamaru barked.

Shikamaru grimaced then shouted: "Down into the alley! We're easy targets up here."

But the demon, circling around for another pass, refrained and the team from the Leaf Village watched warily as it drifted away, undulating on the wind and passing in and out of sight.

"So what was that all about?" asked an irritated Kiba, hands on hips. "Why'd it stop?"

Chouji gave a relieved sigh. "Just be glad it did and leave it at that."

"Just seems weird is all. What do you think, Shikamaru?"

The chunin shrugged. "No idea. It is a demon or monster or something, so maybe it just doesn't think or act the same way people or animals would.

"Alright," he began again after a moment, shifting focus with renewed optimism, "despite all the obvious complications, it still looks like we're back on track. We should be able to follow to follow Naruto's scent trail just like before. Kiba?"

The teenager nodded seriously then turned to Akamaru. "Go find Naruto, boy," he ordered then looked up at the taller ninja. "I want to make one last circuit around here then I'll catch up."

Shikamaru's expression rose with slight surprise but he nevertheless acquiesced. This seemed to constitute the new equilibrium – Kiba would accept and respect his former classmate's seniority and leadership, Shikamaru would accept and respect the genin's intuitive sense. "Ok, just don't take too long; we have to stick together."

While Shikamaru and Chouji followed the little ninja-hound, bounding from rooftop to rooftop, Sakura fell back slightly to keep Kiba in sight.

"So what was that all about?" she asked once he'd caught up.

Kiba frowned, a deeper concern etched in his unusually troubled eyes. "Naruto and Haku came out of that secret passageway into Kirigakure together but on this fresher trail we're following now, Naruto's alone. So I'm wondering what the hell happened to Haku." The young ninja grimaced slightly. "I was hoping he was just trailing Naruto on a parallel track."

Sakura nodded. "Naruto's always the one going off and doing something crazy. I've haven't really thought that much about Haku I guess because he always seemed so poised and calm, like he knew what he was doing." She looked toward her comrade. "You think he's ok?"

"I'm really, really going to be pissed if he's not."

Sakura blinked, slightly surprised though she knew by now that she shouldn't be. Haku's visit to the Leaf Village earlier that year had very clearly left its mark on Kiba and had maybe even changed him on some level. Exactly how or why, she had no idea of knowing.

But the idea was not so far-fetched when she thought about it. Thinking back, Haku's apparent death at the first battle at the bridge had left them all changed, shaken, even Kakashi-sensei. It had spoken to them, laying it out very clearly that shinobi die in service to their villages, their causes, their masters, and to protect the ones they love. Any one of them could have suffered his fate, would have, had Haku been the soulless killer Zabuza had wanted him to be. To see him alive again, older, taller, so different in that constable's uniform all those weeks ago had taken back the tragedy of that moment and, in a way, had changed them all again. The kunoichi had to admit - for him to die a third and final time here, on this self-appointed mission of his and Naruto's to save the Mist Village, was not something she was ready to accept.

"I'm sure they're ok," replied Sakura, giving her teammate a sympathetic glance.

"No big deal." Kiba grinned, fang showing, and waved his hand in a casual gesture. "It's just my dog-like sense of loyalty," he quipped.

The girl smiled in return then laughed. "Your best feature!"

Below them, the buildings flew by, rooftops of gravel-ballasted tar, tiled with slate or fired clay, some paneled with metal. Between them, winding alleyways dropped down into dimness. So far, she'd seen only a few live civilians, though many more areas were strewn with bodies. With all the peril afflicting the village most of them had undoubtedly been evacuated, leaving the streets all but empty and unnaturally quiet. It was still hard for her to believe they were in Kirigakure: the Village Hidden in the Mist - no safe place for any leaf-ninja to trespass. Very probably it was only a matter of time before someone saw through their transformation jutsus. Even thinking about that made her tense.

"I just hope we find them soon."


The Heir's Attendants

After the initial fury of activity following Kurage's rescue of the Demon's Apprentice, things had quieted down in this warehouse turned safe-house, this particular chamber within it having been thrown up by a quick reconfiguration of the maze of stacked crates and bales of raw cloth that towered up almost to the bottom chord of the roof trusses high above.

A ninja, one of Zabuza's former soldiers, his face hidden behind a zodiac mask, folded his arms and looked toward Haku who lay in a restorative, medically-assisted slumber atop a pallet hastily assembled from the various available materials. Asleep like that, the boy hardly looked the part of a killer or revolutionary, like anyone who'd ever had anything to do with Zabuza Momochi, the Demon of the Hidden Mist and member of the Seven Shinobi Swordsmen. In fact, he looked quite angelic - pure, innocent, vulnerable, an androgynous beauty in the ripest splendor of youth. But there was no doubt that was him…the apprentice, as talented a ninja as there ever was, with eight years of his sensei's training and that witchy power of his kekkei-genkai too. More than that, this unassuming child had defeated Krishenay Rahaman, the late Mizukage's emissary and executioner now known to have been the vessel for the 108 Demons. How Haku had accomplished such a thing, attained that kind of power in the scant two years or so since he and Zabuza had been reported killed by leaf-ninja out in the Land of Waves raised more questions than it answered.

Kurage, the leader of what remained of Zabuza's revolutionaries (as if anyone else would take the job) was in the throes of ecstasy over Haku's arrival, taking it as a sign from all the powers of Heaven and Earth for them to rise up and seize Kirigakure. For his own part the ninja, operating under the nom-de-guerre 'Tapon', couldn't muster much zeal, not without a better reason than this. He had come very, very close to being killed after Zabuza's defeat and had then been forced to go to some lengths he was not proud of to convince the Mizukage and his minions that he had not been involved. The idea of perhaps, if matters proceeded poorly, repeating all that not even four years later held no appeal for him and so he found himself the proverbial 'skunk at the picnic' – one of the few malcontents roaming the camp of the evangelized.

"So where is Kurage now," the ninja inquired of the other two of his company who were similarly masked. He didn't know their real names any more than they did his, but they knew all the passcodes and hand signs and so that was enough.

"Spreading the word, martialing our forces," the one called 'Akaei' answered simply then canted his head upward in contemplation. "Think about it, Tapon," he began in an awed tone, "by the end of the week, the Mist Village will be under our control."

Momone returned then with a pitcher of water, a cup, fruit, rice cakes and other refreshments for when their young champion awoke. Since Haku had returned, the kunoichi had abandoned her mask and any attempt at hiding her identity; that's how confident she was in the boy's abilities. She had held forth in lavish detail how she and her team had encountered the Demon's Apprentice prior to his battle with Rahaman and experienced his powers firsthand. That was what had convinced her. Though she'd flitted about buoyed by a near manic sense of anticipation before, the woman moved now with an odd and uncharacteristic stiffness as she set the tray down on a crate then withdrew to a far corner where she leaned against a wall of bales with her arms hanging at her sides.

Tapon blew out a breath. "While we're under attack by demons and monsters, not to mention the Tsujita Clan?" he responded glumly to his confederate's bold assertion. "We're a long, long way from having anything like 'control' even if we can take over the place."

Akaei was undaunted. "It's part of Lord Haku's plan. Don't you see? What better time to strike than now when the city is in chaos, the Mizukage dead and our two councilors run away like the old cowards they are? Trust him. And trust Lord Kurage; he's wise and clever!"

"If that's how it is then why did all of this come as such a surprise to him?" Tapon grumbled, his mask concealing his scowl. "Something stinks here. If Lord Haku had a plan, WE sure weren't a part of it – not us and not Kurage."

Akaei turned sharply in exasperation, seeking support. "Tell him, Momone. You know!"

The usually chatty kunoichi stayed strangely silent for a moment as if she hadn't heard. "I don't think this Kurage's all that wise or clever," she countered at last quite surprisingly, her voice laden with funereal gravitas.

Under his mask, Tapon's brow knitted. "What do you mean, Momone?" he chuckled with disbelief. "You were frothing at the mouth not five minutes ago about how he and Haku were going to kill Terumi and Ao, throw Hirai and Inoue's decapitated bodies down the steps of the Mizukage's palazzo and restore the honor of the Mist Village? What's different now?"

"Kurage is too careless and has allowed his organization to be infiltrated." The kunoichi, Momone strode to the center of the room, her features shifting horribly as the transformation jutsu faded to reveal a ghastly figure whose gaunt, muscular frame, pale skin and ghoulish, white hair marked him as a blood-gifted scion of the Kaguya clan. "If you flee for your lives," the monster announced to the room as razor-edged scythes of white bone flowered from his body, "no one will think less of you."

Tapon alone did and lived, though he would be forever haunted by the sounds of screaming.


Naruto

Sitting hunched over with one bright, sapphire eye peering just over the table and the tip of his tongue clamped between his teeth, Naruto positioned the shuriken, balancing it upright on the tabletop with the top point just denting the skin of his forefinger. With immense concentration, the boy brought up his other hand and flicked the metal star's left-side point sharply then watched as it spun, dancing in slow, small circles for a few seconds, before it wobbled drunkenly, fell over and rattled to a stop.

Aya, the one-time ANBU hunter-ninja, sat in the far corner of the tower office where she looked out the window and down over her besieged city. Beside her, a dozen or so eels composed entirely of water undulated languidly through the air over the bowl from which she'd conjured them.

After so much going on all at once, it had been hard to settle back even if there was nothing to do just now but wait. Naruto had been reluctant to at first but Mei had assured him that Kurage, if he was indeed one of Zabuza's surviving lieutenants, would never hurt Haku. Being that no one had any idea of where the strange jonin might be holed up, it made no sense whatsoever to wander around a city crawling with demons and cursed with disease in a haphazard effort to find him. Both Mei and her second-in-command, Captain Ao had vowed to use all the resources at their disposal to find Haku and Kurage and promised Naruto that they would inform him when they did.

In hindsight, even Naruto had to admit that their plan made more sense than his, and that a decent meal and a full night's sleep had done him a world of good.

The boy chuckled in mild, distant amusement, glad that he could put aside his preoccupation with his friend's whereabouts, then, feeling eyes upon him, turned toward Chojuro who stared at him as if at some curious beast.

"What?" said Naruto as he was incapable of ignoring this.

The shaggy, blue-haired boy turned slightly, his eyelids lowered in a wary sort of curiosity behind thick-framed glasses. "Are you really from the Leaf Village?"

"Mmm-hmm," the genin confirmed carelessly.

"I've never met a ninja from a different village before," said Chojuro, folding his arms.

Naruto gave a snort then set up his shuriken for another go. "You're not likely to if you never leave Kirigakure. It's not exactly inviting."

"You really don't seem that different to me – I mean, different but not that much."

The blonde's eyes drifted back toward the newly-promoted genin, not quite sure of how to construe his comment. "Well, thanks…I think. What did you expect, horns?"

Chojuro frowned then fell silent for a while. "But are you really friends with Haku?" he blurted pointedly at last, his voice cresting with disbelief while Naruto started his throwing-star spinning again with a metallic 'ping'.

"Yup."

The boy seemed particularly bothered by the teenager's curt and unambiguous reply. "You know he killed a lot of mist-ninjas, right? Him and Zabuza almost killed Lord Oku!"

Naruto's yellow brows furrowed tensely. "I know," the young ninja intoned, set on edge by the question. Of course, he wanted to rise to Haku's defense but he could hardly deny the truth of Chojuro's accusation. That Mei and her stern, one-eyed companion, Ao had refused him a straight answer on what they intended to do with Zabuza's former disciple once they'd found him didn't make talking about it any easier. He simmered silently for a few moments. "Look," the leaf-ninja argued, "Haku did what he did because Zabuza was his master and the only family, the only person in the world who mattered to him for most of his life. Considering what Kirigakure is going through right now and what Haku's done and still trying to do to save it, you might think about giving him a break 'cause it's not just ninjas dying out there, it's civilians too!

"Everything he's doing," he continued with cresting intensity, "everything he's risking, everything he's given up is because he's chosen to; there's no Zabuza anymore." Naruto forced himself to stop, fists balled, lip quivering tensely. Who people were had always mattered much more to him than their history. It had, of course, become apparent to him that not everyone felt the same way. "If you, or anyone else, are still raw about what he did in the past then I guess you should take it up with him."

As Chojuro fell into a brooding, angry silence, obviously unconvinced by his guest's explanation, Naruto watched him for a moment, expecting rebuttal, but nothing came. After another moment, Naruto's blue eyes flicked toward the mist-ninja's weapon which rested against the wall, swathed in protective wrapping. As much as he didn't want to continue conversation with the genin just now, he couldn't help himself. "Just…what IS that?"

Chojuro glanced in the direction of Naruto's pointing finger. "THAT is my double horse cutting sword!" his voice piped proudly. "One day I'm going to be one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist!"

The blond looked at him askance. "You mean like Zabuza," he muttered in surprise, "after everything you just said?"

"NO, not like Zabuza!" Chojuro protested, waving his hands, clearly horrified by the idea.

"Kisame?" Naruto continued, still puzzled.

"Not him either!"

"Raiga?"

"NO!"

The teenager rolled his eyes and threw up his arms in a kind of frustrated surrender. "Well, WHO then? Those are the only ones I know!"

"Those guys don't count anymore." Chojuro glared, his face flushing angrily, and lashed out his arm as if to strike their names from the air. "The original Seven Swordsmen came together to protect Kirigakure! That's what I meant; that's what I'M going to do! Only I'll NEVER turn against my village like they all did!"

"Well you should've just said so in the first place!" said Naruto who settled back and smiled, feeling much more on safer ground. "'Cause I'M gonna protect the Leaf Village when I'm Hokage!"

The boy's eyes went wide with shock at Naruto's announcement. "Y—you?! Hokage?!" he sputtered. Even Aya had looked over.

"That's right. Helping Haku save the Mist Village is just practice for me, like a warm up."

"B-but you -," Chojuro tried to explain, but couldn't quite settle on any one specific thing on which to start, "you're…and you're WAY too -."

"I'm what?" Naruto dared him to answer, bothered not so much by his incredulity as by its depth.

"And you're -!"

Aya, of all people, interrupted them. "Boys!" she cried at which the two junior shinobi turned to see that the disposition of her eels had changed. No longer swimming about unhurriedly they now swarmed and seethed, wriggling furiously. The woman rushed to the door and alerted the awaiting team of mist-ninja. "Tell Lady Terumi and Captain Ao that I've got a hit. Go at once!" A messenger vanished in a burst of speed.

"We can't wait for them!" Naruto insisted as he threw on the rest of his gear. "They'll just have to catch up with us."

"What?" gasped Aya. "Impossible! Naruto, I can't, Lady Terumi said to -."

"Lady!" the boy barked, rushed up and grabbed her arm insistently. "I know about your jutsu. Your Stalking Eels can only find someone if they're bleeding! That means we have to go NOW!"


Konohamaru

Sitting at the edge of the pond, the boy stared across the water, his expression gloomy.

"There you are, Konohamaru," Moegi's piqued voice called to him from the edge of a trail, breaking the arboreal quiet of this out of the way corner of Senju Park. "I've been looking for you everywhere. What are you doing out here?"

His lack of response was response enough.

The girl paced downslope, sat beside him then asked in gentle urgency: "What is it; what's wrong?"

"It's Udon," Konohamaru answered in a tone that was a lid held tightly on a simmering pot.

"What about him? He's still in the hospital. That's what they told us last time." She looked at him again, searching his face for clues, then asked in a tone weighed with concern: "It…it's not worse than that, is it?"

"They got him in something called a 'containment suite'." The boy's temper flashed then. "They got him locked up, Moegi!" he blurted savagely, flailing his arm. "The medical corps think HE'S responsible for people getting sick, like what happened to me a couple of weeks ago when they said it was food poisoning…what happened to us and Iruka-sensei's class a couple of weeks ago when they said it was meningitis."

Meogi gasped. "You mean when we ALL got sick, Iruka and Ebisu-sensei too?" she repeated as if to make it make sense to her. "But that's stupid; how can they blame him for something like that? Is it just 'cause he was the only one there who didn't get sick?"

The boy shrugged morosely.

"How'd you find out? Did Ebisu-sensei tell you?"

"No," Konohamaru growled, picked up nearby stone and whipped it into the water. "The only thing he ever tells me is that he's still there for 'observation,' for some 'tests' and 'just to make sure'. Like I couldn't figure out that something was wrong when they let us and everyone else go DAYS ago but kept him. I had to go find out on my own."

The redhead's eyes narrowed as she pieced it together. "The transformation jutsu?" she guessed. "Konohamaru, you'll really get in trouble if anyone finds out you're using it to spy on people for real."

The boy hissed his lack of concern. "Those who break the rules are scum -," he quoted, not needing to finish the rest of how that highly personal aphorism went or the name of the friend he'd learned it from; 'Those who abandon their friends are worse than scum.'

A soft wind shushed through the trees, rippling the pond's muddy, mirror surface.

"Well?" asked Moegi.

"'Well' what?"

She bumped Konohamaru's arm enough to draw his attention.

"What?"

Moegi gave him an aggravated sigh. "Come ON, Konohamaru. Stop pretending that you're just gonna sit around and be mad about it…that WE'RE just gonna sit around and be mad about it." Her dark eyes settled. "What's the plan?"

Silence settled again as the 'honorable grandson' shifted then sat forward, resting his chin in his hands. At length, Konohamaru's brow rose. His lip twitched. "I've got a couple of ideas."


Haku

When Haku awoke this time it felt as if after a good night's rest. The teenager drew a full, deep breath then let it out. He really was feeling much better and found himself in much higher spirits. For all his misgivings about his former comrades-in-arms among Zabuza's army, their medical ninjutsu wasn't bad at all, especially considering that the Mist Village as a whole had never encouraged that specialty. I should thank them for their treatment, he considered, even if I'm not who they want me to be.

After a time spent luxuriating in the simple pleasure of the relative absence of pain, he propped himself slowly on one elbow and looked around to find, to his surprise, that he'd been moved again – this time to an upper floor of what appeared to be a very well-appointed home. The ninja's cloud-colored eyes traced the edges of the plaster ceiling above him ringed with crown molding and adorned with medallions. What his back and legs rested on now was no longer a lumpy pallet but an enormous, outrageously comfortable bed robed in silk sheets, cashmere blankets and lace-fringed pillows all fit for an emperor.

A faint mutter of conversation drew his gaze to the far end of the spacious room where a tall, smartly-dressed man sat in the muted glow of bay windows. To the side, a pair of wardrobes stood wide open, their contents strewn carelessly across the floor in front of them. Behind him, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, equally pale and lean but pretty, was braiding his long, white hair into a queue. Upon finishing, she swooped around with clear delight as she showed the man her handiwork using a pair of hand mirrors. What he said proved too faint for Haku's ears. In any event, the girl laughed cheerily then danced away, disappearing into another room and leaving silence behind.

The man sat still for long moments, staring straight ahead until he seemed to become aware that he was being watched and turned slowly toward Haku whereupon he rose and approached him in a slow, measured gait. Though younger than he'd first assumed, the drawn, serious, almost haunted features of his host's face coupled with his formal clothing teased the imagination, evoking characters from gothic romance, lonely manses amidst perilous landscapes, ancient lineages harboring unfathomable secrets, 'dark and stormy nights'. Only then did it settle in the bewildered young ninja's sleep-fogged mind that these were not merely new people who attended him now but a new faction entirely that had liberated him from Kurage and his host of insurrectionists…that and that this particular stranger seemed somehow familiar even beyond his obvious Kaguya clan heritage.

"Lord Aramata," the man greeted gravely with the slow awkwardness of someone who considered every word before he spoke then knelt, bowing his head in gravest contrition, "I am honored to have been granted the opportunity to meet you again, this time under better circumstances, and to be of service to you if you will allow me."

'Again'? Haku wondered as his thoughts settled on the word then gasped aloud, flinching in shock as the realization burst across his consciousness. "You!" he croaked with a shudder as he remembered the wild-eyed madman who'd stalked him so pitilessly some weeks ago through the ruins and across the snows of Kaori no Hana Island, felt again the agonies of his bone razors. Though thoroughly transformed in every way across appearance and manner, that man and the one who knelt before him now were one and the same!

"I'm so sorry, my lord, for my behavior. I make no excuse."

Haku swallowed and calmed himself, remembering his conversation with the man's master. "It's alright, Tensai Kaguya," the teenager allowed, remembering that this ninja had vowed suicide over his displeasure. "Lord Tohma has already conveyed your regrets and explained your condition to me. I forgive you and accept your apology."

"Thank you, Lord Aramata. I am very grateful."

The Demon's Apprentice managed a smile, noticing as two others peered in from the adjacent room then cautiously entered. It was the girl from before and a younger boy, rail thin, with wavy lavender-colored hair and striking, rust-colored eyes – features he'd heard of but had never seen before. Like their pale elder, they too were impeccably well-dressed. "Please, call me Haku," he began, as much to the newcomers as to Tensai. "I've never felt much like a 'lord' and still don't."

Tensai rose and gestured to the others as they came forward. "My sister, Sakiko," he announced, "and this is Gennosuke." Both bowed, the girl smiling shyly. The elder brother's introduction had interrupted Sakiko who'd whispered something to the boy – something like 'I told you he didn't have a goat-face' but Haku assumed he'd misheard.

"I see," said Haku as he took in their faces, "representing the Kaguya and Serizawa clans. I suppose we're all 'birds of a feather' then." It took only a moment for his attempted levity to fall flat. "I presume that you all are not a part of Zabuza's insurgents."

"No, Lord…I mean, Haku -."

The girl, Sakiko, continued for her older brother, "We're not with anyone but ourselves. Our sensei, Lord Tohma Nikai is here and still intent on destroying the Mist Village after Lord Tsujita's failure. We've come to get you out before he does. We would have taken you straight to his ship but we weren't sure about your condition so we thought it better to wait here. Almost all the houses are empty now since everyone's been ordered to the bunkers."

Haku shook his head in agitation, the girl's words having hit him like a blow. "Lord Tsujita didn't fail," he clarified, pricklier than he'd intended. "He changed his mind as a matter of conscience. Those are very different things." Zabuza's former disciple waved off his observation. "Never mind. How…how does Lord Nikai plan to accomplish this?"

The younger Kaguya, wounded slightly by his reaction, nevertheless explained how the Mist's Fire-tongue Fleet had attempted to destroy all the remaining clans of the Kaguya, Nikai, Tsujita and Serizawa on their island enclave but that they had failed, been captured and repurposed. Half the ships had delivered the survivors to Wave Country while the other half had sailed to Kirigakure. These were stationed now in the Unagi Canal, poised to rain fiery death upon the Mist Village in two and a half days' time whether they had returned with Haku or not.

Haku rubbed his forehead. Of course he hadn't taken Lord Nikai as the sort of man who gave up easily. He just hadn't expected that the ninja patriarch would have the weapons needed to complete his revenge dropped right into his hands! "Do you think there's any chance your master could be convinced to change his mind as well?"

The three looked at each other in shared concern. Tensai shook his head. "He is quite resolved," he said in a way that made clear his understatement.

"I suppose that would be a long shot. Very well then, I suppose we'd better not keep Lord Nikai waiting."

Tensai frowned, his expression awkward. "You should know, Haku, that Tohma-sensei's powers are considerable…"

"I know," the teenager agreed, remembering the description of the Nikai clan's kekkei-genkai he'd discovered aboard Counselor Inoue's ship, The Sophae, not to mention his appraisal of the man in person. "I've read the file on – oh. No, it's not like that, Tensai."

"Not like what?" blurted Gennosuke, having failed to read his elder's subtle implication.

Not like I'm going to try to kill him, Haku almost told him. Zabuza may have trained him in the arts of assassination but never had succeeded in inculcating in him indifference toward human life. "Nothing," he offered instead with a bland, disarming smile. Still, it remained: Tohma had to be stopped somehow. As Haku tried to formulate some way of making that happen, the teenager had to admit that he hadn't a clue. The impulse to quit the Mist Village and just leave it to its fate swelled inside him as he ached for home. On one level, it would be so easy.

Haku slid his feet to the floor but then stumbled as he tried to rise, disappointed but hardly surprised that he had not quite recovered from the effects of having used the Hirai Clan's Candlelight Gate Jutsu as he'd hoped. Sakiko rushed to steady him.

"Are you alright?" she inquired urgently.

Haku grunted then nodded, noting her awkward expression and then her tasteful yet functional ensemble while he remained in the tatters of what he'd often wore as Zabuza's apprentice. "Since we have some time," he proposed, "did you run across anything in those wardrobes you think would fit me? I'd just as soon not go outside again like this."

While three of the four (Gennosuke curtly declining) sorted through the clothes, both the piles on the floor and what remained hanging or folded away, Haku asked: "By the way, how did you find me so quickly or even know that I was in Kirigakure?"

"You can thank, or blame, Gennosuke for that," Sakiko chimed lightly, "it's the Serizawa's blood-gift. He can project his senses, see things far away. Likewise he can cloud the senses of others."

The boy's face rose at the acknowledgment before it settled back into something of a scowl as if he'd just realized it wasn't cool to gush; that or he really was miffed about something.

Haku nodded, suitably impressed, then straightened. "A marvelous gift," he remarked then pressed on seriously: "Gennosuke, I need to ask a favor. Would you use your kekkei-genkai to discover what's happened to a friend of mine? He came to the Mist Village with me."

"That kid with the yellow hair?"

Haku froze for a moment in wonder realizing from the look on the boy's face that he knew exactly who he meant and what he looked like despite never having seen Naruto in person, or at least, not in the flesh. "That's him," said Haku with a nod. "Please, it's very important to me."

Gennosuke concentrated, focused his internal energies, closed his eyes and when he opened them again it was clear he was looking at something beyond the interior of the room. "He's not far away, up high, in a room in a tower filled with mist-ninja," he reported.

Haku's face fell. "He's a prisoner then? Can you tell?"

The child shook his head. "I don't think so. He's not tied up or anything. He's just sitting at a table arguing with some crazy-looking kid with blue hair. There's some mist-ninjas just outside the room, a lady and a bunch of," his expression shifted, "weird floating snakes."

"Aya," muttered Haku to himself and his eyes brightened in thought.

Gennosuke swayed slightly and Sakiko moved as if to catch him but the boy quickly straightened. "That's all you get," he half-snarled at Haku but it was clear that his blood-gift was a drain on his still developing reserves of chakra.

"Thank you, Gennosuke," said Haku. "And thank you all for coming for me. You've put yourselves in a great deal of danger just on my account."

"There's not many of us left of the five blood-gifted clans so we had to at least try and save you," the younger Kaguya offered with a soft smile. "We weren't sure at first if you wouldn't rather stay with the Demon's Army."

The teenager grimaced. "No," he confirmed happily, "had I stayed I would have had to find some other way of escaping them. Maybe now, with me gone, they'll have to put aside their ideas of overthrowing the Mist Village…if that isn't being too optimistic."

"Hey, Haku," Gennosuke interjected sourly, still worn from his effort. "Why does it matter to you what happens to this place? The Mist Village killed our clans, yours too!"

The young ninja shrugged and let out a breath as he looked over some of the apparel. "I was just asking myself that."

"AND?" the boy persisted.

"And…we all have cause to be angry with Kirigakure. I won't pretend that I haven't felt the loss of my clan, all gone before I ever got to know them. If there was ever a place that had much to answer for, Kirigakure is it. That said," he continued patiently, browsing through more of the selections he, Sakiko and Tensai had gathered, holding some up close to his body to help judge the size, "destroying it or letting it fall again into the chaos of war won't help anything. It won't restore our lost families or replace what's been taken from any of us. In this particular case, the same ethos that once decided to sacrifice our five clans for the good of Kirigakure has now decided to sacrifice Kirigakure itself."

His explanation drew blank stares.

"Sorry," the teenager offered, "it's a bit complicated."

Gennosuke leveled a suspicious glare. "What are you talking about?"

"You don't know? Huh," riposted Haku with a slightly biting edge in his contralto voice. "Well, until you do, maybe you shouldn't be so eager to pass judgment on tens of thousands of people."

"I think I know enough," the lavender-haired boy scoffed with adolescent indifference. "I know Tohma-sensei does."

Taking cover behind the wardrobe door, Haku shed his old clothes as modestly as he could and changed into the new – a midnight-blue half-coat Sakiko had picked out that was loose enough to hide his senbon quivers, collarless white shirt to go under it. "If it makes you feel any better, Gennosuke," he began, "right now, all the citizens of the Mist Village are packed into bunkers or else holed up in their basements, attics or bedrooms, probably paralyzed with fear and wondering if they'll live to see tomorrow. If Lord Nikai has his way," Haku paused to take one last look in the mirror then explained the cold, hard fact as much to his reflection as to his audience, "they won't."

His words and the way he'd said them seemed to drive all the air from the room, forcing even the genetically recalcitrant Gennosuke to silence. "Shall we go?"

As they left the bedroom and then the house to venture again into Kirigakure's dim and forbidding streets, the Demon's Apprentice regretted having alienated his blood-gifted cousins. With as few friends and allies as he had in this world, that was hardly what he wanted, but if his real purpose here was to save the people of Kirigakure there might be no end to those he'd have to contend with.

That was the essence of his problem: this mission had started off as a simple assassination. Now it was many times more complicated. It could still be accomplished, maybe…just not by him alone.

Before he could delve too deeply into any of these matters that all weighed heavily on his mind, there was one thing he felt he had to attend to first. He explained this to his rescuers and gave them the option to either assist him or else wait for him aboard Lord Nikai's flotilla. As the young shinobi predicted, Tensai elected to stay as did Sakiko. Gennosuke favored retreat but was bent by the will of his companions.

With that settled, Haku grinned mirthlessly, hoping that he'd interpreted Gennosuke's clairvoyant intelligence correctly, then stuck himself in the arm with a senbon just enough to draw blood.


Akatsuki

The dim light of the confining alleyway shivered, sending its usual citizenry of rodents scurrying away in their own discreet and privately understood sort of urgency. The shaded recesses darkened by degrees to pitch black then exploded into a storm of flapping wings, shiny beaks and raucous raptorial cries. The ravens crested upward in inky brushstrokes across the grey Kirigakure sky before they fanned out then slowly descended, settling on the eaves and parapets. From the void left in the birds' departure, two men stepped, palpable dread preceding them.

"Home, sweet home," mused Kisame in a low growl, taking in the alleyway and an understanding of all that lay beyond it in a single glance of his glassy, predatory eyes.

His partner frowned then pondered aloud: "It's strange though. Kirigakure's barrier-seals are down. It should not have been this easy to enter. I wonder what would have made them abandon their defenses like this."

As if in answer to the infamous shinobi's query, a spot along the wall of the alleyway behind them rippled softly, radiating in gentle, concentric circles as if that portion of the wall was only a reflection on still water stirred by the passage of a single, thrown pebble. From it, a creature poured, slithering wormlike and half-hidden by the sheath of wreckage that accompanied it – torn clothes, broken weapons, shoes, toys and motley personal possessions that had belonged once to its victims. A thousand eyes opened wide from the darkness of its demonic flesh, fixed then focused on the pair.

Kisame dipped his chin slightly, not at all impressed or amused by the creature's temerity, while Itachi spared the monster a glance with his clan's uniquely terrifying eyes that flashed once to show three blood-red tomoe circling the pupils. The tomoe flared then, widening into three-armed pinwheels.

The monster halted its advance as it seemed to reconsider. Most of its eyes closed and it twined back, passing through itself on its way back through the wall, reappeared through another wall then vanished into the pavement, leaving behind some of its attendant detritus.

Kisame winced derisively then spat. "Piece of shit," he snickered with a bemusement that recognized and made light of his own indignation. "I should've split that fucker in half for bowing up to us!" A horrifying razor-toothed smile widened across the bluish, subaquatic features of his face. "Samehada's about due for a snack."

The sword across the Akatsuki's back rippled agreeably.

"So there are demons about," accessed Itachi. "We mustn't let this development hinder our purpose."

"Right. I gotcha."

The Uchiha scion brought his hand to his chest, the first two fingers upraised. At the gesture, the birds that had heralded his and his partner's arrival responded with raucous caws and calls then went shrieking and flapping into the grey gloom in search of their prey – a yellow-haired jinchuuriki named Naruto Uzumaki.