Chapter I: Arrival
Neji had seen many things; he was a shinobi, and he was used to strange jutsu with weird and terrible effects. But by all rights, he should not have felt the need to use a concealment jutsu, create bunshins, and survey the town from a mile away by use of the Byakugan. It was just a standard contact mission, after all, there was very little danger from enemy shinobi, and he was easily the most talented Hyuuga to come out of the clan since the Beginning. Neji was more than capable of defending himself from just about anything. And all the reports and correspondence between Tsunade and the team had been copied over and given to him to study before he reached the town, so he had had a chance to study up on the conditions prior to arrival.
But an inexplicable dark feeling; lethargy, discontent, even outright anger, had come over him when he'd camped last night, within the official boundaries of the township. Neji would have continued on into the town that night, but he'd wanted an extra night to go over the more interesting and vague of the reports. More disturbing and unsettling than any strange feelings, anything he had read even, had been the signs of conflict around the area; splashes of blood on the ground and trees; scorch marks from exploding tags; and most disturbing of all, an upright post in the middle of a circle of still-smoking ashes. There were no bones, but Neji had no illusions about what had occurred there.
The question he kept coming back to was the why; why would the people of this town want to burn their own neighbors at the stake? Why had the team sent from Konoha that had obviously been present for this permitted it? The correspondence copies that had the most information about this were by now much creased and dog-eared from reading. In places, Neji had scribbled notes or thoughts. One line in particular had attracted his attention. It had been scribbled hastily as a postscript to a completely normal and rational report, and in a different handwriting:
They come when we sleep, most of the time, like some kind of dream.
There was no indication of who 'they' were, no hints in the report, which by now Neji knew had covered for the existence of 'them.' It was purposefully vague and roundabout in answering the usual questions, written by someone practiced at covering up the truth.
…The records of these proceedings shall be sealed until such time as all the parties involved have died and a period of fifty years thereafter has passed…
Yes, shinobi were good at hiding the truth, he thought bitterly. Better than they should be. He turned his gaze back onto the town.
Through the black and white of the Byakugan, Neji surveyed the town and the surrounding area. Outside the walls, he could see more signs of struggle in the form of weaponry and burned earth; inside the town, he could see only the brightly glowing chakra systems of the team of Konoha-nin sent to stabilize the town. He could tell because the systems were distinct and developed, not atrophied from disuse. There were only three, he counted, instead of the four sent out.
Frowning, Neji descented into Toki, Byakugan activated still even though it drained his chakra too fast for his own comfort. In a deserted town like this one, though, anything could have taken up residence in the rotten and abandoned buildings. He kept one ear out for any sound other than his own strained breath. His footsteps were silent on the cobblestone streets, not making so much as a whisper as he entered the town. Using chakra to hasten his steps would have attracted too much attention, with his white robes.
Dropping into the city center, he glanced down a side street and saw, yards away, the lip of the cliff Toki sat on. At the foot of the cliff was a shelf above the level of the water, and all maritime activities had once taken place there. Toki sat on the edge of a gorge carved out over thousands of years.
The town of Toki had once been a major trading route, situated at the edge of a river on the way from Konoha and the eastern countries to the western sea. It linked the two sides of the continent, and short of sending goods with traveling shinobi (the most elite of whom would not deign to take the job and left it instead to the bumbling genin who more often than not dropped it down ravines), it was the fastest route to what was, to most people, the other side of the world. Very few people ever left the continent to see what lay beyond it, and very few people from the other parts of the world took any interest at all in what happened on the Shinobi Continent. They regarded its people as backwards-living freaks, without their own advanced technology, and it was with difficulty that they accepted the few shinobi who ventured past the borders of the Shinobi Continent. Most of the time they did not at all.
As inter-country trade became more and more common, the town of Toki grew in wealth and prestige. People flocked to live there, and it swelled past the humble sailors' huts that it had once been. At the zenith of its time, Toki boasted all but an attached Hidden Village, although it split its allegiance between Rock, the nearest but most warmongering Village; and Leaf, the one with prestige at least equal to their own. The First Hokage had established an outpost here, before the border wars began and he lost the land to the newly-formed Grass.
One night, a great storm covered the land. The inhabitants of Toki huddled in their homes, fearing for their lives. When the storm was reaching its climax of winds and rain and lightning, a great crash of thunder and the whole port shook and was swamped by a huge wave, the likes of which had never been seen before. When the storm passed, the people investigated up and down the river and found that a huge rockfall between the two cliffs of the gorge below the town had blocked the river's flow. Over the next fifty years, the valley below filled up and became a lake, submerging the original port. As trade dried up, so did the town, until the special properties of the lake were discovered.
Dropping into the city center, Neji encountered more telltale scorch marks, and even places where the stones of the streets themselves were overturned in great piles, surrounding rank, reeking holes. He remembered that Kiba was sent out on this mission as well; it was either him and his dog, or one of Kakashi's dogs. Neji wasn't familiar with the woman and the medic-nin who had gone on the team. Anko had been a proctor for his second chuunin exam; he very quickly remembered her story when he found the blasted and slashed carcass of one a snake-summon in one of the streets. It had been there some time; the flesh was beginning to decay and give off a terrible stench, and the great golden eyes were hazed in death. Shizune, the medic-nin, was Tsunade's assistant. This was one of the few missions she had taken in the year, just to keep in practice.
The house the Konoha-nin had been given was right off the main square. He crossed the empty grass of the plaza, shuddering to see it so deserted. That eerie silence, the absence of life where it ought to be, unsettled him even more. And most of all, it was the pervasive feeling of being watched, even though he hadn't seen one living thing since the day before.
Neji's knocks on the front door went unanswered and when he tried picking the lock, it broke his pick off. A locking jutsu, then, he thought, taking a breath and bringing chakra to his palms. With a strike to the door, it shattered—and so did the heavy oak chest of drawers behind it. The chakra had sliced through it like a knife. Coughing, Neji scrambled over the splinters and got his bearings inside the house, creeping into the open formal room to get out of the cloud of dust he'd raised. All the blinds had been drawn; all that remained of the natural light that would have filled the room was a dim and lurid yellow glow. It irritated Neji for some reason, possibly because it temporarily confused his eyes. So it wasn't surprising that he didn't see the female form in the dusty armchair.
At first, it seemed she didn't see him either. She certainly hadn't reacted to the crashing; she remained in place, a faraway expression obscuring any thoughts she might be having. One hand rubbed insistently at a spot on her neck, like there was a knot of bunched muscle there. Neji recognized her from the profiles he'd been given to study on the trip here; Mitarashi Anko, special jounin and ANBU member, sat before him. Neji cleared his throat and she jumped, staring at him wide-eyed.
"Mitarashi-san," he began respectfully. "I am—"
"I don't know you," she said suddenly. "Why are you here?"
"I am Hyuuga N—"
"Hizashi?" Anko said suddenly. "Why would it send him?" she mused, half to herself. Seeming to come back to reality, she put her hands up to form a seal and Neji rapidly backpedaled, his Byakugan picking up the subtle glow of the chakra increasing in her hands. Her hands blurred and then there were snakes flying at him. He dropped, rolled across the floor and took cover behind another chair. Peering out, he spied a bottle by the chair Anko had been in.
Has she been drinking?
"I don't know why it sent you," Anko was saying as she brought up more chakra—she was dangerously low already, but the alcohol had dulled her senses and she wasn't aware. "But I'm going to end you like I ended all the others."
"Anko-san, it's me, Hyuuga Neji," he said desperately, darting back as she tossed the chair out of the way like it was nothing but a toy. Pushing chakra to his hands again, ready to attack, Neji straightened so she could see him. "Tsunade-sama sent me from Konoha." He couldn't understand why she was so scared, what could have unsettled a battle-hardened veteran like Anko so much that she would attack someone obviously from her own village. "I am a friend." He pointed to his hitae-ate. "See, Mitarashi-san? I think you've had enough to drink…"
She was staring at him now. "You're worried," she breathed. "You worry. So it's come up with some new way to torment us, oh, that's rich—"
"Where is Kakashi-san?"
"You want Kakashi now?" Anko doubled over with insane laughter. "Poor Kakashi! Don't you know, though?"
"How can I know?" Neji shouted at her, temper flaring up. "I've only just arrived!"
Anko paused at that. "From Konoha?"
"Yes! Mitarashi-san!"
She looked confused a moment, then her brow cleared and she smiled. "Hyuuga Neji, right?"
"Not that anyone would ever guess I am a Hyuuga," Neji said waspishly.
"Yeah, well, things have been a little…strange…around here. Had to take precautions, yannow."
"I must speak with Kakashi," Neji insisted, putting out a hand. She flinched away from it, and looked up at him. "Is he here? Is he out on patrol?"
"No, and no. He won't be doing either of those again…"
Neji caught on fast. "An accident?"
"Yesterday morning."
"Tell me what happened. I have to make a report to Tsunade—"
"No!" Anko looked almost terrified. "Or if you do, just tell her we're all peachy keen and there's nothing wrong—"
"No communication for a month and everything's fine?" Neji smirked. "If she buys that I've got a bridge to sell her…"
"You know how she is, half-drunk all the time—"
"You are too, Mitarashi-san. You should go sleep."
It was startling how fast her demeanor changed. One moment she was laughing with him and the next she was snarling, her eyes snapping burgundy sparks across the room. "What do you think you're doing?" she snapped. "Are you trying to pull something? Are you really one of them?"
Neji was too taken aback to reply at first. "No, Mitarashi-san, I merely suggested rest."
She slowly relaxed, but her eyes were wary. "I'm de facto leader," she said. "Shizune spends most of her time in the laboratory on the second floor, she's locked it up tight and rarely comes out…Kiba is out and about near the pier…and if you see anyone else, you'll know…"
"I'll know what, Mitarashi-san?" Neji was getting tired of these vague answers.
"You think I'm insane," she said, laughing softly again. "You think I've lost it, that the old bastard's finally worked his way in. Well, I haven't and he hasn't, not just yet…not yet…"
"Who would I meet?" he pressed on.
"It depends on you. Go on, and if you see anyone else…you'll know. Bedrooms are toward the back of the house, past the kitchen. Meet me back down here in an hour."
And with that she vanished.
Neji walked with a purpose as always, his head held high and his steps relaxed as he made his way through the large house. It had once been a beautiful place, he thought; through open doors, he could see gardens gone to seed and a fountain, full of green algae, listlessly spouting turgid water.
The bedrooms, past the kitchen and the dining room (the heavy wooden table he glimpsed was covered in scrolls and various papers), all had tags attached to them. Hatake Kakashi; Mitarashi Anko, Shizune, Inuzuka Kiba. The fifth was blank.
He reached out and took the knob in his hand. There came an inexplicable feeling of someone watching him, a tingle on his spine that had his Byakugan activated once more. But the feeling was gone as fleetingly as it had registered, and he saw nobody in the room. Turning the knob, he pushed the door open, closed it, and after a moment's thought bolted it shut. As he began to strip off the white robes he wore, Neji was gripped by a feeling that he would be left defenseless, bare to whatever unseen force prowled the streets of this town. Peeling his shoes off first, he made sure the door was secure and in a rare bout of paranoia, blocked it with a dresser, and only then did he remove his clothing. And then a sudden madness came over him, and he flew across the room toward the bathroom. Turning on the water full blast, he jumped under the scalding spray and gasped, the needle-sharp jets sending calm and control back into his body.
First priority: ascertain what had happened to Kakashi. That would be the first thing he put in his report to Tsunade, about the conditions he found the team and the town in. The second would be to interview each team member about the events, and mark any differences, which there would be; rarely did any two eyewitness accounts coincide. He would get four different stories, but the gist of the incident would be there. He also had to perform a test upon each remaining member, and if necessary, take them along when he returned to Konoha. He was to be in the field, truly doing mission work, for a week only.
Running his hands through soaked, coffee-brown hair, Neji sighed, using a bottle already in the shower to suds up and work the shampoo into his scalp. He would be more composed after his shower, and things would make so much more sense. There would be no scares from half-drunk jounin, no dead jounin. Everything would be normal.
Normal…no, it wouldn't be. Not without him, no matter how hard he tried.
Leaning his head against the tile, Neji felt an old familiar wound come to mind. His all-seeing eyes saw the skin around the scabby hurt was red and irritated, but still Neji's mental hands went forward, fingernails curled to pick and pull at the scab and make it bleed freshly.
It's been years, Neji. It is time you move on.
Grinding his teeth, Neji's hand on the tile curled into a fist. The damn Elders, with their plots of intrigue and inbreeding. They wanted to keep it in the family, and they were worried that because of his…preferences, he would not produce any talented Hyuuga children that could possibly be adopted 'for the greater good' into the main house. They wanted to breed him like a prize stallion, as though he was something to pamper and gloss up. They forgot that the horse was capable of breaking through walls with the tap of a hoof.
Although, they were Hyuuga too. They knew the power of a gentle touch.
How long has it been? He wondered. Five…six years. He swallowed, and the mental hands dug a little harder, a little deeper into the scab. A shot of pain jolted through his body. It bled.
There's a harvest festival tonight. The fireworks will close it at midnight. Will you stay with me?
A pleading, pale hand, one only displayed to him. Neji had never before let down his walls, but with this man each and every one of them had been breached.
I will stay with you.
Careful. That sounds like a promise.
It was one, Neji thought. Although it wouldn't have been the first promise he'd broken.
For the outstanding crimes of murder—
No, you're all—
--and of manipulation under genjutsu of a Konoha jounin, we hereby sentence you to death, unanimously agreed upon by the council.
Neji pounded his fist into the tile so hard that one cracked. It bled a little, and he cursed, washed the last of the shampoo from his hair, and wrapped a towel around his waist as he got out of the shower. Examining his knuckle, he went to his backpack and pulled out a little medic kit, spreading an ointment on it that was supposed to aid in healing. Leaving the wound open to the air, ignoring the slight sting as the ointment began its work, Neji dressed again in cleaner, functional clothes. Checking the clock on the wall, he saw he still had forty-five minutes until he was to meet Anko, and finally was able to take a look around his room.
It was purely functional, and had the appearance of having been recently torn apart and put back together and tidied hastily, as though someone had been trying to hide their mess; some of the instruments that had been included in initial shipments of supplies to the team were stored here. Opening a tray, Neji raised an eyebrow; all the instruments, the medical tools, were destroyed. Even the porcelain handles had been melted, and not even an Uchiha's powerful Katon jutsu could manage that.
There was a bed on one side, near the windows where the shutters were open enough to let in the golden light, a table and chairs, and a bookshelf overflowing with books that, upon closer inspection, were all histories of the town of Toki, the lake, and the surrounding area, and pulled a chair over to sit. Pulling down one of the volumes, he read the cover—Shinobi and the Lake of Opportunity—and began to read.
The work was by a Mist shinobi by the name of Kana Kaida, some years earlier. Thumbing through the contents, Neji opened to the section on the history of the interest in Toki, and began to read.
The first sign that the remaining inhabitants of Toki had that the lake was more than they thought it was, was that the tides, the ebb and flow of nature as controlled by the moon, did not occur. Many people, specialists in the motions of the waters, were called in to examine this phenomenon; none could come up with an explanation. According to every calculation, the lake ought to follow a specific pattern of ebb and flux, but it defied all this, instead surging forward and receding back almost to the level of the previous port on the lake as it saw fit.
Naturally, this caused quite a stir. People were drawn to the lake, some bottling its water and claiming it to have restorative powers, some bathing in it to 'experience enlightenment,' some coming for purely scientific reasons. At that time, the villages were just beginning to have their first few classes of Academy students go out into the field; the town of Toki once more swelled as these new teams came and stayed for a few weeks to a few months to make their own examinations. Theories about the nature of the lake were widespread, covering everything from it being a sentient being in and of itself, despite having no membrane-bound organs or even a nervous center to speak of. Theories that it was a giant prokaryotic cell were loudly dismissed, although a school of thought still existed to this day.
Almost immediately the area of Tokiean studies split into factions; one based on the idea that a lake was just a lake; and the other on the idea that the lake had a consciousness of its own. Fights broke out, slanderous words were thrown, and the two official schools of thought began.
Eventually though, it was discovered that the lake reacted to various stimuli it was presented with in ways inconsistent with either line of thought. No two reactions were alike; sometimes the lake responded by swamping the boat with a freak wave, other times it did nothing. It showed no pattern in the position of where different reactions were more likely, no homologous interactions, nothing. The lake was both sentient and not; it was both water and at the same time it was something more.
All that occurred before Neji was born, however. By the time he was born, it had been proven over and over that the lake was merely water, albeit water with properties nobody had ever seen before. It was forbidden to drink or swim in the lake, or boat on it, as nobody knew what it was really. Hydrogen and oxygen had no hold over this place.
As the main source of trade was now off-limits, the town slowly became a ghost town. Until Konoha had sent a team in, investigating the disappearance of a trader caravan in the area; they'd last been seen watering their beasts and horses at the river above the lake. The trader was prominent in Konoha, and his loss would be keenly felt. Against better judgment, the team had been using Toki as a base of operations. After the trader had turned up under an assumed name, hiding from debtors, the team had stayed on to conduct by-now routine research on the lake. Every so often interest was taken in it again, and apparently the lake had been reported to have exhibited some of its more interesting habits.
Neji finished leafing through this and set it on the bookshelf again, pulling out maps from a case instead and setting them out on a small table nearby. Topographical, geopolitical, geographical. He pored over them all, until again he felt that tingle up and down his spine, the feeling that brought his head up. Scanning the room, even moving to check the bathroom, he found nobody however.
What's wrong with me? He wondered, straightening his clothes and tying his hair back in a ponytail. I'm on edge because of the words of a drunk woman? Neji, you're losing your touch.
It was time to go meet with Anko, anyway, and after first checking up and down the hallway he set out for the front of the house but paused outside Kakashi's door. After a moment's consideration, he turned the knob and went inside.
No personal touches save a picture frame. It was laying face-down on the ground, and when Neji picked it up the glass fell out in pieces. There was no photo in it, but there was a folded bit of scroll-paper. Neji pocketed this, and sifted through the rest of the things. The room was in disarray, the closet open and its contents torn apart. Looking through the papers, Neji discovered some of them were regarding some kind of experiment the team had been planning to perform on the ocean some weeks prior, while they were still in regular communication with Tsunade. Looking over the plans, he bet that they hadn't been approved by the Hokage.
Suddenly, he snapped his head around. Footsteps, coming up the hallway? Lightly moving next to the door, he watched the knob carefully, listening. The footsteps stopped outside his door, and he saw the glint as the light (golden, from the fantastic sunset) changed when the person or thing outside began to turn the knob. Without thinking Neji grabbed the handle, using a simple locking jutsu on it. The pressure on the knob did not go away, but it did not increase either, and after a second it did release and he heard footsteps going away down the corridor.
"Aw comon Hinata-chan. Don't look so sad! Neji'll be back!"
Hinata smiled at her exuberant guard. Naruto had always been a little ball of sunshine even in ANBU gear; he always had a smile on his face, and while he'd forgone the distinct uniform of the Leaf's covert operations unit, he wore the black, blue, and green of the jounin.
"He's tough, Neji. I remember when we fought in the chuunin exams, the year that Orochimaru invaded—remember?—Hey, Sasuke, where you going?"
For Sasuke had slammed his hand on the table, making their cups of coffee and plate of dango (which he hadn't touched) jump up in the air, and stomped off. Naruto frowned, but smiled just as quickly as she could register he'd made a face. "Anyway, you remember that, Hinata-chan? He carried all that anger for so long. How's he been since—you know?"
"Quiet," she replied. "He's been very quiet."
Outside, Sasuke leaned against the wall of the building, in the alley that separated it and the next building. His heart was pounding, his breath short.
He doesn't have any hold over you any more, Sasuke told himself firmly. You killed him yourself. You saw the life leave those damned monstrous eyes and subdued his mind in your own.
Ah, said a nasty little voice inside Sasuke's head. But you always doubted that Tsunade had sealed him away entirely. And doubt weakens seals as surely as acid erodes marble.
Trying to catch his breath, Sasuke gripped the seal on his shoulder. It would be a long afternoon.