Chapter 17 | The Quiet Hum of Danger
The meager township sat hidden among the ruins of a raided village. Homes were built underneath the destruction and shared between many. Provisions were equally divided; most of the supplies that had been gathered were taken from what was left behind in the Ishiki clan's vicious wake. The land was a wasteland. The soil too damaged to grow crops. There were plenty of fish in the sea and enough anglers to take fishing boats out into the water to catch them.
That was how they lived—the survivors. The stories shared contained so many common elements that they all blended in together.
These small, hidden towns were under the Mikazuki clan's protection, as such, the clan was responsible for providing them with the bare necessities. However, demands within the clan and their distraction due to their war against the Ishiki clan, halted their agreements with the survivors, leaving many to die, more doing so from starvation than as a casualty of war. Several Mikazuki preferred keeping their resources to themselves, despite Mio's knowledge of their stock being vast after the last shipment arrived with Eishirou.
Mio would later admit that the blatant instability within the clan annoyed her, particularly Mahiro's dismissal of his clansmen's insistence in allowing innocent people to starve to death. Although, when she had voiced her issues with him, Madara did not miss a beat in reminding her that she despised him, thus was being biased.
That was a given, and it truly made no difference.
Mio ventured into the town carrying supplies she gathered from the Mikazuki's stores. She arrived too wary, watchful eyes all around her from the scattered citizens of the Sun Country. It was to be expected that numerous people from within this survivors' dwellings were from towns and villages across the country.
Their prudence was an expected reaction they shared in common with the last few areas they had visited. It would take a bit of coaxing to inspire trust. As such, she and the two accompanying her traveled without weapons, which put them in vulnerable position, given that she was a target.
Mio set the crate of vegetables and fruit she carried with her on the ground in the middle of what used to be a dirt road. Keigo knelt down as he set down bags of rice, catching his breath. Yuzuru relieved himself of the crate he carried as well and surveyed their surroundings.
"You didn't have to carry a thing," reminded Mio, petting the top of Keigo's head. "You're supposed to be the bodyguard. Your only duty is to watch our backs."
"I just wanted to help."
"Thank—"
"Are you Kuronuma Mio?"
The voice startled her. She turned towards it and her chest filled with the sudden relief of seeing a familiar face. The old, wrinkled woman that had offered her shelter three years past stood wrapped up in a tattered dress and ripped shawl. She appeared smaller than Mio last remembered her, though seeing her made Mio release the breath she had been keeping holed up inside, especially because Kiyo appeared strong despite the conditions.
Kiyo smiled quite joyously.
"Kiyo-san," called Mio, mirroring the old woman's smile.
Kiyo helped them establish a link with the rest of the survivors with better ease than they had encountered before since they had started to search for these tiny dwellings of people. It had taken others quite some time to trust them, believing that their aid would come at the expense of their lives. There had been occasions where they had found a cluster of people that had been too afraid to meet them and so, Mio had simply left their supplies where they could reach them without having to make contact with them.
Having an acquaintance within the survivors favored them greatly. By mid-afternoon, Yuzuru had gathered all the sick and the wounded in one large building where he worked with Kiyo's expertise in medicinal herbs. Keigo helped Kiyo's granddaughter, Tsuruko, prepare meals for everyone in the town. Mio took Tsuruko's place in watching the children. Tsuruko had gathered all the children orphaned by the country's strife and had taken care of them with many of them looking up to her as a motherly figure.
Being around them, these children of varying ages, made Mio miss Yuuka and Noe. Since she had returned from searching the country for the Kuronuma Temple, she had promised the two girls that if she were ever to leave, she'd return before they missed her. She understood it was a useless promise to make, but she made it assuming that Takuto would be with them in her stead if she ever had to leave. They were both away now, so they had to rely on everyone else and hope, at the end of the day, that at least one of them returned.
Mio smiled down at the small boy mesmerized by her Time Sphere. There were others around him whispering about the mist inside the glass orb moving along its surface. The boy curiously reached out to touch it, looking up at her for permission to do so. She nodded.
He giggled when he took it into his hands and turned it. The black cord holding it up began to twist upward. His attention to it drew others to it as well and soon she was surrounded by a small group of wide-eyed children touching the sphere or the cord and asking questions.
"The mist inside! It's moving!" exclaimed a girl. "How is it moving?"
Mio gently took the sphere from the hands of the small boy holding it. "It's an illusion," she told them, turning it in her hand to exemplify her words. "When the sun hits the glass, the mist looks as if it is moving."
The younglings were wowed by her show of it and were quick to come up with more questions to ask of her. She happily answered them with made-up stories or explanations to satisfy their overactive imaginations. She ran around with them, through the ruins of their town, and played all of the games that they requested of her.
Tsuruko even spared enough time to play hanafuda with her using the opportunity as one to teach the children a new game.
By sundown, Kiyo had invited Mio to stay with them and she had agreed in order to offer Yuzuru enough time to administer aid to all of the people. Although, there were few, a number of them required a medical specialist to be certain that they were healing well enough that they could move onto the next location, of which they had gathered sufficient information to find.
Kiyo welcomed them in her home. Yuzuru stayed with his patients, preferring to keep his eye on the more critically injured.
Keigo fell asleep with his head on Mio's lap. The day was long, but the mission that they were dealing with was much harder than the young boy anticipated. The worst he ever endured was the trip that she had taken to find the temple. No matter how highly skill he was or how independent he wished to be, the conditions were different. He missed the peaceful life he left behind where war and its consequences were a game. The amount of death he had seen, the number of behaviors he had been told to commit to memory, and the people he had been asked not to trust were new experiences for them. He was exhausted. He wanted his mother, his father, the samurai, his siblings, and his grandparents.
Kiyo brought her tea in a chipped cup and sat across her at a table standing on three legs and a stack of books. Mio brought the liquid up to her nose after catching a whiff of several scents.
"That tea will be good for your condition," said Kiyo.
Mio blinked, surprised. "M-My condition?"
"You don't have much energy in you and you are looking very pale. I wondered if you were ill or if there was some other reason for this…?"
"I admit, I have been sick, but it isn't serious."
"I think that you have been more than sick," said Kiyo, her light eyes were shining. "This doesn't seem like a common illness."
"Well, it isn't, but it isn't something you should worry yourself over."
Kiyo smiled softly, as if she knew that she wouldn't get anything out of her. "You should take better care of yourself." She lowered her gaze to Keigo. "You have a lot of people that are relying on you."
"I'll do my best for them." Mio ran her fingers through the side of Keigo's head, tucking the dark strands of hair behind his ear. He was a child, as she was when the artifacts came into her life. She wished she had been older and known the things that she did, understood all the knowledge that she had, and redo everything that led up to the Artifact War.
Mio drank deep of her tea and thought about Madara out in the battlefield searching for the Ishiki clan's core location.
"We are grateful to your efforts," said Kiyo solemnly.
She assured her own worries that Madara would be well and turned her full attention to Kiyo, processing her words in her mind. "How long have you gone without food?"
"Not quite as long as you would think," evaded Kiyo. "People my age tend to be all bone and skin, hardly any meat left. We've eaten what we could. We've survived on fish for so long, but…"
"Did something happen?"
Kiyo leaned forward. "I know not how much of this is conjecture, but many of our fishermen claim there's a beast in the sea that's been spooking a lot of our catch away."
"A beast?" she queried, thinking that if it was a beast, it'd be a tailed one of legend. She knew Madara released it from Ayuka's control when he was in the Sun Country.
"Taller than the castle tower, they said," added Kiyo. "As big as this island, others claim. The stories are all different. I heard some fishermen from another village went missing after the beast was spotted two days ago."
Mio rested her hand on Keigo's shoulder, careful not to wake him. "Would you be able to see the beast from the shore here?"
"I do think that would be possible," said Kiyo. "Some of the children have claimed to have seen it. At least it's wide back as its swimming in the distance."
"Is this the first time you've heard of this beast?"
Kiyo shook her head. "Rikuto-sama warned us about a great beast with three tails before the incident."
"The incident?"
"When the Ishiki clan attacked Rikuto-sama."
Mio's interest piqued, she took a casual sip of her tea. "Do you know anything about his disappearance?"
"Disappearance?" queried Kiyo, staring at her strangely, as if she had just said the most ridiculous thing. "Mio, Rikuto-sama is dead."
"What?"
"He was slain during that attack."
Mio's heart accelerated, but as she tried to make sense of this revelation, Mio heard a soft whisper ring in her ear before her eyes instinctively dropped to her sphere. The mist inside spun more restlessly and its clear coloring took on a red tinge that gave her a split second to react to the surge of chakra she sensed coming towards her.
She flipped the table out of the way and grabbed hold of Kiyo, pushing her down to the ground beside Keigo. She covered both of them as best as she could with her body and fueled her sphere enough to activate its shield. She felt the impact of the blow rattling her bones as the house around them was blown away by the force of the explosion.
Mio's arms trembled under the weight of her own body and her ears flooded with screams. She dispelled the shield protecting them from the light rain of debris. Keigo jumped onto his feet, immediately alert, as Mio wrapped her arm around Kiyo's upper arm, helping her up.
Kiyo surveyed the wreckage, her pale eyes wide with panic. She muttered a stream of words that sounded more like gibberish than a coherent observation.
Mio's legs were weak, barely able to keep her body upright. She spent too much chakra in raising the shield and fortifying it against the suddenness of the attack. Despite her exhaustion, she searched her surroundings alongside Keigo, looking for the shinobi responsible. She had sensed them earlier.
"Mio, watch out!"
Keigo grabbed hold of her and pushed her head down. Metal cut through the air above them. She heard Kiyo scream and fall backward onto a patch of dirt.
Mio knew that they were after her. She had known coming to the Sun Country would put her in the center of danger. She had been warned against it. Don't go to the country at war. You won't leave it unharmed.
She had dismissed the warnings with excuses. She had been too self-confident.
You will die.
Mio straightened up the instant she heard the projectiles stab into the ground and placed a hand on Keigo's shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly. The boy noted her distraction, but she vowed not to let it shake her a second time.
She heard the steel slice through the air a second time and spotted the projectiles headed directly at her face. She caught one of the kunai in midair and struck the others down with it. She flipped the kunai in her hand and hurled it back in the direction that it came from. The instant she saw it deflected, she sprang forward, attacking the Ishiki shinobi.
She clocked him in the face with enough force to break the bone and sent him hurling with his nose bleeding profusely. Another shinobi came at her left, but Keigo swept in with a broken stick and struck his shoulder, forcing him to his knees. He smacked the man across the face before he had a chance to recover from the first blow.
They were swarmed by a small army of shinobi in an instant. There were at the least fifteen, but she'd hardly been given the time to count when a horde of them launched an attack on her.
Among them, the leader of their squad, a woman wearing a high ponytail, shouted one repeated order to everyone. "Pin her down."
She hated those words. She chanted them in her mind as she fought against her attackers with Keigo maneuvering his way into the fray to offer her the support she needed to push them back.
The Ishiki shinobi tried to employ a series of different tactics to see through to their leader's orders, but she admitted as she analyzed them mid-fight that they weren't different from the strategies she learned were employed during the battle on Mt. Hyōga, which cost many lives. Kuronuma were hard to capture and difficult to kill. They needed to be swarmed in order to be overpowered and outsmarted. They weren't impervious to wounds. Cut their necks and they would bleed out, stab their hearts and they would die. Being pinned down meant that their strength was accounted for, enough people could immobilize even the strongest—neurotoxins worked wonders as well, but that was a specialty for which the Ishiki clan was not known. She would not ignore the potential for it; doing so would be amateurish. She couldn't be making those mistakes.
Too much pressed down on her shoulders—responsibility, hers to all of those that entrusted their lives to her.
Mio was challenged all at once by the small army, but Keigo's presence was a hindrance to their tactics. He protected all of her, as well as the Time Sphere's shield. Their enemies never came close to her when she was on the defensive because Keigo swept in to take them all on, smacking them down with the wooden stick he turned into his blade.
She and Keigo moved in synch. Months on a difficult journey that tested them both mentally and physically solidified a friendship between them and unbreakable trust on the battlefield. He understood her abilities, her strengths, and her weaknesses, he had seen her at her absolute worst, and carried her at her weakest. She did the same for him. Fighting together, they would have no weaknesses for enemies to exploit. Together, though often solitary fighters, they achieved a level of near-perfect teamwork.
Ishiki shinobi jumped high into the air to shower them with projectiles, but Mio activated her shield, infused it with enough chakra to extend its protection to Keigo and watched the shuriken and kunai bounce off it uselessly. The instant, she dropped it, Keigo lunged forward several feet at the crowd as they landed and attacked them swiftly.
Mio used him as a cover, following his movements step by step, until she sidestepped out of his shadow, revealing herself only a split second before she went after the leader.
The Ishiki woman bent herself back in time not to have her entire face cut across horizontally, but a bright red line exploded with blood across her upper lip. She staggered backward, attempting to reach for her weapon, a short dagger, but Mio jumped up and kicked her square in the chest with both of her feet, knocking her down where she pinned her down, two kunai digging deep into her palms. The woman made a sound of pain, but growled.
"Who sent you?" demanded Mio, aware that Keigo had made quick work of the others.
The woman furiously spat blood at Mio. "Go die, you—"
She punched her across the face hard enough to render her unconscious and relaxed, surveying the area for signs of any others.
"I don't sense anyone," said Keigo, tossing aside the broken wooden bar he used to defeat the shinobi. He stopped beside her and looked down at the unconscious woman. "What are you going to do with her?"
"Information," she answered, bending forward to pick up the limp woman and threw her over her shoulder. "I'm starting to have a bad feeling about this place. Go find Yuzuru."
"Yes."
Mio went to make certain that Kiyo wasn't hurt too badly in the surprise attack before she bid farewell to the old woman, apologizing that her presence led to more destruction. Kiyo, though shaken up, took her hand in her wrinkled ones and peered up at her with a dirty, slightly bruised face.
"You have a lot more to live for now in your state, you should not be on the battlefield," said Kiyo.
Mio smiled. "I appreciate the worry, but as you said, there are many people relying on our success here and I can't disappoint them."
"Understandable, I suppose, but do take better care of yourself," said Kiyo. "You can, at the very least, remain in top condition."
"That I can do," said Mio. "Thank you, Kiyo-san."
"Very well then, it's a promise." Kiyo laughed softly.
"I will do everything I can to make this place inhabitable again," said Mio, surprising the old woman. "You will be at peace. The Kuronuma and Uchiha clans will not allow the Ishiki clan to continue their torment. I vow to you as Shugosha of the Kuronuma clan and as Mistress of the Uchiha clan that peace will return to this place."
Mio, Keigo, and Yuzuru didn't return to the castle that night. Instead, Mio asked Keigo to scout on ahead and find a place where they could isolate their captive and question her until she spilled all of the information that she was worth. Keigo found an adequate area in another abandoned village about an hour away from the township they had just left. There were plenty of houses, not in peak condition after have sustained significant damage from excessive jutsu usage. A few were still standing, their foundation strong, but the walls were falling apart, and among them a couple, they found, contained basement areas.
Upon making the discovery, they set out to find other basements among the wreckage that survived the implosion that others appeared to have suffered and settled in a small dwelling that was easily accessible to them.
Keigo tied their prisoner in a sitting position and set her up against the wall, arms and legs bound tightly with the same rope. They had unearthed plenty of rope in some of the other places the scoured for a place like this. It was equally affected by the wreckage, but had a sturdy enough ceiling that it didn't cave under the weight piled on above it. Some debris spilled into the basement, providing enough coverage (of wooden planks, stone, and earth piled high) between the hole they used to enter the basement and the dark corner they were using to interrogate their captive.
Yuzuru and Keigo found areas atop fragments of the wreckage to sit while they waited for the woman to regain consciousness. Mio couldn't stand to sit. She didn't think she'd be able to relax. Her mind was overactive with the horror of Kiyo's revelation. Her initial thought upon hearing it was to reject it until there was more information on it, but she couldn't do that. Why would Kiyo lie to her?
She believed the old woman's word. There was no doubt about it that if she said Rikuto was dead, there was a likely chance that he was. In that case, why would the Mikazuki clan go to great lengths to pretend he was alive?
Do not go to the country at war. You will not leave it unharmed.
It was a trap.
You will die.
The unconscious woman moved, a pained groaned escaped her as her dark eyes opened slowly. She tried to lift her head, but it seemed too heavy for her and it dropped back down, lolling. Another small movement made her immediately aware of her situation, the binds on her wrists and ankles. She finally looked up and focused on Mio.
"You're better off killing me," the woman announced. "I'm not going to betray my clan."
Mio reached behind her back to remove the dagger from the sheath she carried tucked in the back of her sash. "Understood," she said, approaching her slowly, "I will enjoy the challenge."
xl: It has been 8 months since I last updated the series. I apologize for that. I have not been in top form when it comes to this story and somewhere along the way, I lost a bit of my motivation to write as consistently as I was used to - that and a lot of personal problems came in to stir up some chaos. Admittedly, I'm still stuck in limbo, so updates for this story are going to be extremely slow. I hate to do this to my readers, but it simply has to be done for the sake of the rest of the story.
I made the effort of finishing this chapter to make this announcement. I want to write as many chapters as I can before returning so that I can post new updates on a weekly basis, so until I manage that, the story will remain on what I hope will not be too long of a hiatus.
Suffice to say, writing the rest of this arc and the one that follow is something that I am looking forward to, so hopefully that will motivate me enough to get things done.
Thank you for reading! For those that reviewed the previous chapter and added this to their favorites or alerts pages (or both), thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I do hope that you enjoyed this chapter even a little bit. (I might come back to leave you on a better chapter, not a transitional one).
Do speculate, though.
Bye.
