I used four OCs for this chapter, and one of them has a name. "Arashi" shall refer to Yondaime (due to the lack of originality, I got it from another fanfic, I don't exactly know who the author is, so kindly inform me for a disclaimer next chapter). By the way, it should be noted how there are two timelines... which should merge any chapter now. Anyway, enjoy.
He tries to be faithful to himself, looking farther at his side as his eyes gaze those molten ashes from afar. With a curse reeking of death. "Hokage shit,"
Fragments of dusts are tinged with dim crimsonness as they fall from the all-too-razed backdrop, becoming embellishment in the oeuvre that Sandaime is engrossed with: the art of war against two Iwagakure ninjas are beautified with ruined households and dead bodies; whilst everything seemed to reverberate distress. Wherefore at the same time, as both jounins perform their trump cards, Sarutobi's mind meanders on a thought, his vow to uphold Konoha's subsistence in the social order. An adversary merges with the terrains and creates his safeguard against the Professor's attacks; the other absorbs the earth element, forming luminous orbs and they rise from the ground, orbiting him.
Sarutobi is a gentle wind of spring, a placid creature and always in the mindset of good nature whose kindness overflows with maturity. Never the less, he is a soldier whose desire for Konoha's peace wound up calling forth Enma as he flexes his body upward and sealing the earth element next. Despite such inattention in the fight he also was able to summon the fire element. The terrains turn murky and the monkey elder breaks the jounin's rock shield, grabbing his neck with easy movements and snaps it at the tip of his fingers, too immediate of a happenstance that the ninja was not even able to savor his death.
"Oi Sarutobi..."
"Eh?"
"Keep up with me," the monkey elder declares at the sight of his comrade struggling with the elemental spheres of the Iwagakure shinobi.
"Don't mind me, I'm–"
"The academy shall be fine," the familiar assures him, but his grumpy voice didn't budge any ounce of anxiety for the Hokage.
The other found it ironic to comfort his familiar.
"I... know!" he says forcibly and seals the orbs, spitting mud which rises next to take the elemental energy, putting them back to nature the way the Iwagakure shinobi got in the first place. The ninja hurls upward, avoiding the hungry earth as it rushes forward, devouring anything on its path. Of course he cannot stand up against the God of Shinobi, but there he goes playing with fortune, obliging himself to believe he can get lucky – just this time.
It was then his realization that the seemingly breathing filth has already reached his hands. "What the–"
"This jutsu directs its movement the way I want to," Sarutobi simply remarks as he watches the gravels and sands guzzling the enemy. "Enma... take the Eastern part with the chuunins... they may be in danger,"
"Eh? You're always uptight Sarutobi."
"I've... I've got to see how everyone is doing,"
"Whatever," he whispers, walking unperturbed like he always used to. The Third looks up, trying to see daylight – a sign of hope perhaps, a signification of anything but negativity. It was only mid-afternoon but darkness seems to devour them. And the ashes still keep on falling.
At the other side of Leaf, at a certain place surrounded by amassed granite and toxic shrubs, an area of darkness fought with dim candle lights – Orochimaru toils at the weight, carrying four unconscious ninjas with mid-level snakes coiling around his right arm, dragging them and himself to that exact place whose sole purpose of erection was for experimentation.
The unconscious ones presumed they were going to die.
He perspires with each heavy step but smiles however, knowing all too well the ends of such burden; he reached a dead end of nailed wooden planks and boulders, managing to open it with his free hand.
"This war is too troublesome," he tells the comatose fiends like he knew them.
"And your Kage's too ambitious. But oh well... at least I got the four of you," he utters in tune of his snakes' release and they slither to the darkest parts of the cave.
"Well then... let's start,"
"That's... everything you've just said's just preposterous y'know," barks the Inuzuka youngster, trying to empathize with the heiress' tragedy and even found it like a fairy tale of sorts. Team Eight walks the fields with the trees as company, and the chirping of birds reminded Hinata of her cousin's comfort. With a troubled mind she thought of opting for the branch family member as company.
"I... it's true, Kiba-kun… I don't know…" she stutters in her whispers, and the Aburame genius can only offer silence for protestation.
"There's... there shall be an upward field some meters away... a dangerous man–"
"No need to worry Hinata, I'm here to protect you!" Kiba's boisterousness is followed by the barking wolf.
"There is one way to find out," says Shino. "I will send reconnaissance bugs in that place you're telling us. They shall come back, and report any suspicious activities," and raising his right arm a group of buzzing miniatures of war flies ahead from his sleeve, while Hinata tries to rekindle the safety she found from the resolved cousin.
"Neji by the way died from a mission."
"Died... from a mission?"
Hinata's hands shake by themselves like automatons, a gesture of agitation even Akamaru assumed the role of comfort. The silence is short-lived as Shino discloses more information Hinata not necessarily needed to know, but each word that escaped his mouth are tormenting wedges, piercing through every part of Hinata she almost fell on her knees.
First was confusion and death. Second was disbelief, and death. She can feel the numbers as infinity. "He was assigned as one of the leaders who delegated forces over the Eastern territory when half of Iwagakure's army entered it,"
"...he sacrificed his life to suppress the forces, and was successful in his mission. A shinobi who was never afraid of death," it was Kiba who whispered, as if talking to the ground.
"I... this is not happening–"
"That is why I cannot believe what you've told us. My father was there."
"But I was with him! I... the man killed him..." she almost bellows, commanding the other minds as if thoughts are universal. Akamaru licked her face, yet again as comfort.
But what about her source of emotional strength? "Naruto... he died protecting our village. The legendary fox who brought Akatsuki down,"
Kiba throws the heiress a quizzical look next. "...don't you remember?"
By the time Tsunade was able to finally obtain sensibility like she got it in a Pachinko, she opens her eyes and found the wounded shinobis staring at her. But why was she too furious for her own good? A complex of seals, a room which smelt of disinfectant, a touch of life and green hues surrounded the left thigh of a Leaf jounin; her temples are sweating, and her cheeks are rouge from smears of blood. Of course, healing people is a feat she is boisterous about; but with more people greeting demise and fewer men going to war, Tsunade thinks that she was supposed to fight, too.
Maybe from the envious eyes she has when Jiraiya boasts of his noble exploits. She sighs, frustrated yet again, and the patient whimpered in pain. "Oh shut it will you? I'm healing,"
"Tsunade-sama..."
She swivels her head. "Arashi. What the hell are you doing here?"
The blond, infamous more for his buoying smile than his adventures; he offers a cordial self and was rejoined with an exasperated hiss. "Jiraiya-sensei wanted me to give this to you," he says, and his hands reach for his vest's pocket and held a vial.
"Get lost," she says to the healed solider as the latter waved a gesture of gratitude. She takes the glass canister with an intent look under the white light. "It's poison,"
"He got it from an enemy. They've been using it against us. Sensei wanted you to make an antidote,"
"You're fighting, too?"
Arashi smiles with a shift of his body and kunais dangled on his waist. Tsunade pushes sensibility out of her mind and welcomed the susceptibility to another burst of anger and envy; so much so that the blond had to flee immediately or he would be her next patient.
She can also be relied on; what the hell are the superiors thinking? She keeps telling herself she should fight, too.
Hinata congregates her memories like puzzle pieces, despite the fact that never were all these some riddle at the outset. She remembered of passing as chuunin, down by the almost ruined arena after motivated genins tried their luck and failed the exam miserably. She also remembered the blond fox's smile as he greeted her across Ichikaru, one of the moments she carved on a stone of a memory, she remembered how his way of the ninja became hers, and she remembered the physicality which made him more seductive to the eyes of a psychedelic soul such as her, who only embraced him in her dreams. She remembered them quite deeply; but there was a void that even a genius cannot translate into intelligible visions.
"I... I don't... when?"
She fears herself. Was the world a time too quick to spiral away from her? The hazy whispers of her teammates, the blossoming need to shelter herself from the jabbing words. Words that doesn't even touch her, words that cannot even be translated into knives themselves. By the fields, her angst.
You cradled him as he died. Hinata wished to inquire if the surreal reality made her tell him her need to be cradled by him.
Some minutes after and Hinata tried to keep up with the haste that her teammates has. She rides Akamaru's back, and heeding the heiress' request they treaded another route for Suna. Kiba was walking ahead of the Aburame youngster, complaining yet again as he determines the leader of the team, assigning the other one as mere facilitator while Shino counts the many happenstances he saved the lad of instinct. Hinata smiled for the first time, acknowledging into memory how some things remain as they are; lingering within themselves because they are exactly what characterize the depth of one's self.
They sat down over a crescent of a small mountain as they rest upon a dying tree, overseeing the vast lands ahead, covered with green hues that the all-seeing lass was almost convinced the terrains are exactly green as she saw it. With enough time to summon the brutes she previously called memories; stooping her head down and her blue-black tresses hid her crying eyes.
A too softened voice for a breath and her teammates knew she was crying.
Shino never spoke a word and decided to let Hinata indulge on her emotional misfortunes. Hinata has known him, an all-too-human who understood pain and bargained it with silence; something which she was thankful for. His silence earns emotional safety for her, times for which her sorrows, rowdy for release, are thereupon calmed by the nothingness which silence creates within her.
"Hinata... don't worry, we're here... I'll make sure you won't even be scratched." Inuzuka Kiba is antagonistic of Shino's silence. An embodiment of boisterousness, taking pride of his words; acting on them for he had always meant them. While Shino is nothingness, Kiba on the other hand is a promise; someone who never hesitated to offer himself for expediency's sake, someone who liked making assurances to others than to himself. Backed with a brute force and Akamaru's loyalty, Hinata depended on him (and both of them) like a long-lost brother.
Shino coughs, a signal for them all. "It's going to be a long journey to Sand. We should rest, seeing you don't feel well Hinata,"
Her tresses move velvety. She has nothing to be afraid of; from injury of any kind, even death. She has her teammates for safety – of any kind.
One timid eye searched for any plausibility to escape while the other one, exhausted and drugged, tried too hard to avert itself from the one thing he hated most. The Iwagakure didn't mind getting his head slashed off, nor did he mind his heart punctured many times as long as death came to him in such time that he won't be able to tell if it was just a needle pricking him. His body is fastened with iron straps, afloat as chains endure his weight, and with a swaying sight he realizes company – two others are chained from toes to neck, two other timid eyes watching the beautiful scene of grotesque below them.
He realizes his team's mistake; to think they were going to die in an instant.
"Let us out of here you fucking freak!"
"Ah... you're awake. Now don't be profane, low-class ninja, you're next after I'm done with him," he licks his lips, coating the blood on his lips away.
"Mitsuri! Scream if you're alive!" Yes, he is alive, but his voice has long been dead.
An iron stratum held his body, and more chains are tight against him as the metals suppress any other resistance the weak physicality can muster, a hospital bed that exactly defied the laws of healing. Layers of cloth are a pillow to his head, grazing his cheek as Mitsuri sees only the jagged walls, the last thing he will see after Orochimaru endeavors to make him into an uber-shinobi. Their screaming leader above them reckoned he sported a length of a hair; and seeing the locks wasted on the ground, he assumed himself to be a seer. "You're going to kill him!"
The dim lights of the candles have made their shadows into dancing monsters. "Do you know trephination?"
His subordinate on his right faints while the other weakens more from the drugs.
"In ancient times, even before villages were founded... they used to bore a hole in the skull to cure the patient of possession. Some more time and they considered it a medical operation for the retarded," Orochimaru talks to himself, his earshot long dead from the leader's protests, as frail as they are.
"On the mid-section of the right side of the skull..." He positions the steel bolt. The fast reflexes of the fingers and they connected to the helm as he secures the miniature chains in place.
"But I don't plan to exorcise you all. And I recall you're all sane enough." His left fingers secure the screw; the other hand turns the valve. A drip of blood and his other subordinate closes his eyes. Running down like a stream of river by the spring fields and it flows on Matsuri's forehead, down to his eyes. Blood against the iron bed and the patient felt he was crying blood.
"I've wanted to create my own subordinate... someone stronger than me but more loyal than a shinobi is to his village," he says as it echoes on the cave.
Metal against the hard flesh and it never felt too good for the Konoha shinobi. "Then I will be a force and Konoha will be the only village. We shall thrive as you all suffer,"
He takes the bone out. His left hand dons a scalpel while the other seizes his own concoction of supposed strength, bathing the dainty knife with the golden fluid after it soaks itself in the emerald of a brew he's made for the sole purpose of amassing the best traits for a warrior.
Mitsuri's brackish tears mixes with his blood as agony percolated his entire universe he previously owned as his body, while the muffled cries from the drugs beforehand furthered not only his agony, but also the trepidation that swept his leader he can almost feel it himself.
Orochimaru smiles. "...and then there shall be peace."
tbc.