Chapter Six
"All right, class. So, in conclusion of this lesson, the element of surprise is very good in these sorts of missions. If you can learn to sneak up on your opponent's blind spot, you can expose them and finish your mission quickly. That way, you can get back to anyone waiting for you here and take a nice hot bath. Those are wonderful after a long, hard mission like this, by the way." Eneko grinned as she turned toward her giggling class.
"Any questions?" She asked. A few hands shot into the air and Eneko looked over them, smiling slightly. "All right, what's your question, Tami-chan?" The brown-haired kunoichi asked the navy-blue-haired girl with bright blue eyes. Tami put her hand down before pointing to the diagram she had drawn on the board.
"Where would be that opponent's blind spot, Eneko-sensei?" She asked quietly. Eneko turned back to the diagram and studied it quickly. She picked up the chalk and drew a Konoha symbol on the opposite side of the board. She then drew a line with a kunai attached to it, pointing to a certain spot.
"Right there. You see, because, if a group of our Konoha ninja were to go this way." She motioned to the line. "They could bypass any security measures in the area because…" She pointed to the buildings she had drawn. "These would be the most guarded areas because they are the treasuries and people love their money. If we wanted to attack, it would have to be in the place that would be least guarded. Understand?" Tami nodded, writing everything down in her notes. Eneko noticed a few other children doing the same thing. She grinned. She had good students for only being six or seven years old.
"Any more questions?" She asked. Another hand shot up. This time, it belonged to a boy with soft black hair and the most doe-like black eyes with little green flecks in them. She smiled. "All right, Tai. Ask away." She told him.
"Eneko-oba-sensei?" He asked shyly. Eneko smiled comfortingly at him and motioned for him to continue. "Well, why couldn't you just attack from the other side? I mean, guards would probably be patrolling that area too because it's the housing part where the villagers sleep, isn't it? Wouldn't they want to guard that part the most?" He asked innocently. Eneko smiled sadly at him before turning and erasing the diagram on the board.
"No, Tai. Because most daimyos, the rulers of small villages like that, don't care about anything the people do. The only thing that the daimyos care about are the taxes given to them by their villagers. Now, our hokage, Naruto-kun, on the other hand, is nothing like those daimyos. Our hokage love the people of his village more than he does the village itself and he would do anything to protect each and every one of us." The class was smiling and Tami looked extremely happy.
"Now, what should we learn about now? I'm going to let you guys choose now." She grinned. Almost at once, requests were being thrown out by many of the students in the classroom and Eneko started writing some of them on the board. She stopped as she wrote down the last request and looked them over. She then turned to the class and smiled.
"I see that some of you want to know about me and my past, do you not?" A large group of students answered with a 'yes' and nobody objected. Eneko sat on her desk and crossed her legs, grinning. "Well, I was born in the Village Hidden In The Twilight, which is a long ways away from here. My mother and father trained me until I was about twelve years old when I was told that I had to come here to be married to a man named Uchiha Itachi. At first, I didn't want to marry him because I didn't know anything about him, but once I got to know him, I fell in love. And then we were going to get married but I had to go on a mission. Those kinds of things happen and you're going to have to learn not to be mad at the hokage, all right?
"Well, on that mission, my whole team died, except for me and it was a close call. Someone had told Itachi that I was dead and he got angry and when I got back, he was gone. So I took care of my soon-to-be younger brother, Sasuke and trained him and he lived with me for a while. Then, as Sasuke was participating in the chuunin exams, we decided that we were going to find Itachi. Naruto, the hokage, came with us because I considered him my younger brother as well. It took us seven months on the road, but we finally found him and brought him home. And then –" She was suddenly cut off as Iruka came into the room.
"Well, hello there, Iruka-kun. How are you doing?" She asked, grinning. The tanned shinobi blinked at her and then looked at the students, who were all glaring at him for interrupting her story.
"Did I miss something, Eneko?" He asked. She smiled and shook her head, motioning for her class to stand down as she talked with Iruka. "Well, anyway, I've asked the head of the police force to come down and talk to the children about shinobi matters if you choose to be on the police force. Do you mind?" Eneko looked at the kids and shook her head.
"Of course I don't mind. Hey, kids, Sasuke-kun's coming to talk to everyone so I want everyone on their best behavior. I'm going to be standing right here and you all know what I'll do if one of you misbehaves." She threatened lightly. The whole class let out a collective gasp before sitting up straight. Iruka stared at them before turning to Eneko and shaking his head.
"I don't know how you do it, Eneko. Anyway, I'm going to get Sasuke. I'll be right back." He said as he left the room. The kids all looked towards Eneko as she popped her neck. Suddenly, she looked back at them with a playful gleam in her eyes.
"Hey, kids, what would you say about showing our police captain the proper way to dispatch of enemies without the use of force or kunai?" She grinned. The kids started giggling and they saluted.
"Hai, sensei!" Was the collective response. Suddenly, the door opened as Iruka and Sasuke stepped through it. The children tensed and Eneko held up her hand for them not to attack just yet. He got farther into the room and still Eneko held up the signal to stand down. Suddenly, as he was standing in the middle of the room with his guard completely down, she moved her hand in a chopping motion. Twenty different children leaped on top of Sasuke, causing him to cry out in surprise and Eneko to fall backwards off of her desk laughing.
"Eneko! Tell them to stand down!" The dark-haired man cried from within the mass of writhing children. Eneko slowly got to her feet and held back her laughs.
"All right, kiddies. Good training exercise. Stand down and sit back in your seats so that we can listen to Sasuke-kun." She ordered. Almost immediately, the attack ceased and the kids were back in their seats, attentive and quiet as if waiting the whole time. Sasuke picked himself off the ground and gave a sharp glare to Eneko, who just laughed.
Sasuke started his long lecture and the kids were still listening intently. Some of them were even taking notes and Eneko smiled, realizing that some of them might actually want to be on the police force when they grew older. She smiled at the peacefulness of it all, before a splitting pain entered her neck and her eyes glazed over. In her own mind she saw a familiar home that she had spent a lot of time in and three people that she had grown to know. In the vision, she saw a man with spiky orange hair slaughter them in cold blood. Suddenly, she was trapped within her own mind and couldn't control her movements. It was as if she was watching everything through a television screen and couldn't control anything. She saw herself cut down Iruka and Sasuke and send them flying out of the room. She cried out for it all to stop when she saw herself turn with a malicious smirk towards her class. She saw herself try and cut down Tami and Tai, and then suddenly felt a pain in her side and saw herself crash into the wall opposite the door. She then saw Itachi standing there and Naruto leaning protectively over the children. She watched herself fight with Itachi and thanked him profusely for keeping her from hurting the children.
Suddenly, the cursed part of herself let go and she felt herself take control again. She blinked open her eyes just as Itachi charged at her with a kunai knife. Her eyes widened as it came into contact with her stomach.
"Itachi…" She choked out. His eyes then widened. "That…hurt." She slumped over him and he caught her. She set to work on healing the gash in her stomach. Naruto helped Iruka and Sasuke take the children to a separate classroom before coming back into the room.
"Eneko. I demand to know what's going on! You nearly killed my daughter!" Naruto demanded, barely keeping his rage in check. Eneko looked up at him apologetically before nodding.
"It was the curse mark, Naruto-sama. I'm sorry…but let me explain everything else that happened on my journey over the last decade." Naruto nodded, trying to calm down and Itachi held her close, upset that he had hurt her.
"After having to fight people in America, the people that put this curse mark on me told me that it was them that was preventing me from coming home. It was two years into my journey and they sent me away from America to a land called China to train with a wise old man. I trained with him for another three years before they made me fight again, but I was quicker than that. I killed them before they could get me to fight again. There was only one left and he pulled down the hood that he always used. I was shocked to say the least, because the man looked exactly like Pein did. He told me that we would meet again, and the next time, I would die. I went back to the old man, realizing a few things. In the otherworld, everyone's got a double that lives here in this world. I had already met Pein's double, his name was Payne, but now I realized that the old man I had been taught under was Sarutobi-sensei's double. He seemed to recognize me, and he told me where I should go next; a country called Japan.
They spoke our tongue, and I got around much faster, but the only thing that I wanted to do was go home. I was tired of journeying, tired of running, tired of dreaming. I just stopped. That was when Taki found me. He was Itachi's double and he had a daughter named Ijin. I became a second mother for Ijin because hers had died in a car accident when Ijin was two. I stayed with them for two years before Taki finally figured out how I could get home. He had started doing research for me and in return, I went out and found Neko, his wife, who had had amnesia before I had found her. She returned home and Taki showed me back to the portal where I shunshined to Suna. I stayed there for another month before beginning my journey home. I was found by my mother and taken in by my Clan again for about three months before they finally deemed me well enough to come home. I then fought Niji at the gate and the rest is history." She explained softly. Itachi hugged her tightly and Naruto had become sobered at her story. Suddenly, her eyes hardened with determination.
"And now, I'm going back to Japan…and saving Neko, Taki, and Ijin."