Well God bless the world, I'm back. Again. Wow, I need to stop going on these breaks from writing. Mainly because...bad things seem to happen to anyone (good or bad) when I'm not distracted. So, let's be distracted from the universe. For the sake of world peace. And for Barack Obama.
Oh, so this one is rather long so that there is plenty for you guys to munch on until I bother to write some more.
Summary: A new girl joins team 7 with a unique bloodline ability to summon dragons. But something is stopping her from using the ability, and she must learn to use it before a war breaks out. Emotions grow between the team, mainly between Sasuke and the new girl. Is it love, hate, or something in between? Read to find out... OC X Sasuke?
Disclaimers: I don't own Naruto, Nabisco Oreos, or anything else you happen to find that is copyrighted. That's right; certain aspects seem to belong to me. I hope. *checks legal books* I'll get back to you on that.
Chapter 6:
Midori's Fading Light
Home isn't always a place you want it to be. Some people (if not most), like Naruto, fight for their homes' safety. They risk everything they have to protect that place with memories, those people, and that feeling of warm safety. Then there are people like Midori, who sacrifice everything they have, or would have had, to destroy and never return to the place they would have called home. But within both of them is an urge, a light that they cling on too. Holding stronger faith and greater than gravity has on the universe in their bodies, knowing and believing that they will either protect or destroy. That light is their spirit, their soul, their laughter, their drive, their sorrow, their tears of joy, their emotions that are attached to so many memories, their choice between destruction and salvation, and their individual glow in their eyes that separates them from anyone else.
Midori's light was fading.
She couldn't hear the trees anymore. She didn't sense anyone around her. She couldn't see anything, except for a few multicolored streamers around her, whizzing left and right, up and down. She felt cold, and the air smelled sweet. Sickly sweet. Like honey, every form of sugar, caramel, the cream from her Oreos, and liquid candy all mixed and floating around her. Did Jaksa succeed? Was she dying? Was this what her parents smelled when they died for her? Did her sisters see anything when they were unconscious and bleeding to death? Was Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura alright? Would Kakashi dare to violate the agreement and bury her with her family?
All sorts of thoughts rushed threw her head, fighting to be the last thought before she died. It seemed like they were all holding on to a crazy NASCAR driver's car, while the driver threw some off at each turn of his wheel. They were flying in every direction of her head, some disappearing, and some crying harder to be heard. She guessed her body was resorting to comfort her. She could hear her mother's voice as clear as a bell, singing a makeshift lullaby. She wasn't sure if it was the same one her mother sung that night so many years ago, be she'll be damned if she was fighting her mother's voice.
Sing me a song for love
Sing me a song for joy
A voice called from deep within her, loud and shrill sound to every sound, making it impossible to figure a gender every second rang out.
Shut up
Her mother continued unnoticing the sound.
Sing me a song for life
Sing me a song for time
Stop! Stop! Stop!
Sing me a song for dance
Sing me a song for you and me
You're not giving up on me yet!
Sing me a song for the daughter of the green
Just don't sing me the song for goodbye….
GOD DAMN IT MIDORI, WAKE UP!
Time to wake up sweetheart……
You can't fall asleep yet without hearing the ending
The white goo had long since evaporated, leaving as quickly as it had come. Naruto relaxed a little and panicked a little when he felt Midori's body stiffen with a deep breath before going back to its limp state. He shook Midori, trying to get another reaction out of her, as Sakura grabbed her shoulders, shaking her also.
"Midori! Midori! Midori!" Naruto shouted at her body "Midori-can! Wake up! You have to wake up! You have to clear your name! You can't die for this!"
"Please just wake up!" Sakura shouted "Please wake up….please…"
Sasuke stood there, staring at her. Another person that was….useful, to say the least….was now dead. Or dying. With every secret she held goes with her, every reason, and every answer she could give was now gone. And he, that Jaksa, was the cause of her death. Whatever he had done to her, what he had done to kill her, for whatever reason he had done it for, he was going to pay for it.
Kakashi could feel his hand gripping tighter over the boy as that emotion of loss hit him for the first time in about 6 years. He never meant for Midori to die at the end of this trip. He knew that she'd find away to runaway. He'd play by the book and not chase her. She would be safe by her own will and wits. She was going to be safe. This was not, by any means, suppose to happen.
Then there were those wings…..to see those things again, at the moment of her undoing might have well slapped him in the face with his dead sister's rotted hand, taken right out of her grave.
"Midori….oh god forgive…" Hamaru whispered as he gave up right there under all the physical and mental pressure.
"You better start asking for forgiveness," Kakashi gritted his teeth as he forced both boys to their knees "No way in hell I'm giving it."
"Well then, hand them over." A voice called from the surroundings. A man appeared as a wind wrapped a tree and a tree morphed into a man. A man covered in blue feathers. "Don't worry; we plan on killing them anyway, after they answer to our boss."
"Who the hell are you?!" Naruto yelled from where he was. "And why the hell are you trying to kill her?!"
"Honestly? I'm just a servant of a psycho woman named Minazaki. Aaaaaaaand...our orders weren't even to touch her. Not that we haven't tried to..." He trailed off smiled evilly at her dying body "obtain her and eliminated the threat in her before. Now." He paused and looked at Kakashi "The boys."
"Please don't give me to him!" Hamaru begged "Please, I don't want to die!"
"She..." Jaksa paused for a brief half a second moment of reflection "She killed a man. Her karma simply caught up with her."
In one moment, Kakashi had let go, never taking his eyes off of the servant, as the servant ran down to snatch both of them, Hamaru had shouted the one thing that had very well saved his life and Midori's in a fraction of a second.
"I can revive her!"
After a rush of wind as everyone looked at see the result, Kakashi, still standing there, eyes transfixed, and Hamaru scared out of his mind, breathing rapidly, but untouched. Jaksa was in the tree over the man's shoulder, glaring evilly at Hamaru as the servant injected something into Jaksa's neck.
"You bring her back from the brink of death, and you're corrupted as she is!" Jaksa choked on what he had been poisoned with, flopped around a little, and laid limp on the savant's shoulder.
"My regards to Midori's poisons, they certainly are useful." The wind around him picked up again. "You can keep him." The servant nodded to Hamaru "He's telling the truth, from what I'm told. We, or more along the lines of Minazaki, also need Midori...alive. After all, you can't torture the past out of a dead body. They don't scream." With that, the man turned back into a tree, and the tree simply exploded.
A silence. Hamaru didn't need to be told even once why he stayed alive as he rushed to Midori's side.
--
Midori soul stood in a dark forested limbo, in the inner core of herself. There were rows of bridges with gates in the middle of them, each one passing over different things. They passed over rocks, gardens, sweets, books, piles of leaves, rivers, and ponds. There were some that lead to homes, temples, huts, shops, deeper passages of the forest, waterfalls, fields, great escape passages of buildings, and offices of Kages. Between the two rows, at the end of the long stretch of land that held the bridges, there was a shining light, her greatest escape out of her mind. She chased it full force as voices of her past called her name tried to stop her.
"Midori!" "Midori-san!" "Emoto (little sister)!" "Midori-sama!" " Midori!"
Crystal clear sounds of their voices became louder and louder until they all came together in single moment of perfect harmony.
"Stop!" All the voices said as a simultaneous finale as a gate ahead of her exploded, spilling splotches of purple acid on the ground and wall of green gas.
She was running so fast and stopped so hard that she landed her arm facing the gate where the gas had flown from. The gate, unlike the others, was now no more than piles of wooden shrapnel. Her goal of a way out of here was so close. Poison thoughts responded with poison. A sick feeling of being poisoned entered her stomach, for the first time in her life. As she held herself on the ground, the ground seemed to have delivered her to the bridge by picking itself up and dropping her barely on the edge.
She sat up and scrambled to sit closer on the bridge as the road sank into itself, or the bridge and the land it was connected to rise off the ground, she wasn't all that sure. She looked deeper into the gas, and saw something unreal staring back at her in a net at the center of a cage.
--
Hamaru's healing was something of a magic show. There was stuff disappearing, there was stuff reappearing, there was stuff being pulled out of pouches, and there was stuff they had never seen before both disappearing and reappearing. Hamaru finally pulled out a metal rod and placed it on her chest, the healing lights of his chakra praying that he was going to make this work.
"What are you doing?"
"Drawing electricity out of her." Hamaru kept his eyes on Midori and never looked up "Jaksa basically turned Midori-sama's chakra into a solid and then electrocuted her."
"Sama." plain, simple, post-fix that left Sasuke's mouth.
"What?" Hamau had more defensive locks in his voice than a Navy fort.
"Why do you call Midori that?" Sakura asked looking at him. "Midori do to earn such a high social rank with you?"
"She didn't do anything." Hamaru said quietly
"Except kill her teacher."
"She didn't….!..." Hamaru gritted his teeth "She couldn't………" He choked on his own words as small sparks of light shocked the metal rod "Kakashi-san…..You tested her power, right? You know, don't you?!"
A quiet silence was only interrupted by the sound of sparks.
"I know you know about Midori-sama!"
Naruto and Sakura stayed silent looking at Kakashi, wondering what he knew about all of this. Kakashi kept watching Midori. Sasuke wondered how Hamaru knew Kakashi's name.
--
The gas got thinner and Midori started to feel better. She felt like throwing up all her bodily fluids, but now she felt like her organs stay inside of her when that would happen.
Come here
The voice was no longer a crude shrill, but the sound of man and woman speaking together. It was commanding, and seeing as she was disconnected from anything else, she hobbled over there weakly.
Come on, come faster
She wondered what it was as two sets of eyes stared at her now, one set hanging from the sky in a net and another at eye level.
"I think we have to talk." A boy's voice said.
"You..." Midori gave her best three steps that she could before falling on the ground, holding her stomach. "You...bastard..."
"It seems Hamaru is doing what he can to save you...Now Midori; we have to set something straight." The boy appeared next to Midori and sat her up against him. "I didn't kill Rikamaru. We didn't kill him."
"But...you're Murasaki...the murderer..." Midori could feel her chest getting lighter.
"The murderer in your head." Murasaki said "Your second personality. Technically....I'm you."
--
"We have to get her to a hospital." Hamaru said pulling the rod off her chest and throwing it into the ground. The ground turned black. "The closest one is in Iwa."
"Where is that?" Naruto asked
"It's the Hidden Village of the Earth Country." Sakura said "We can't take her there. She'll be killed."
"But she's innocent!" Naruto protested "They can't someone who's innocent of their crime!"
"Can't we take her to Sunagakure(Hidden Sand)?" Sakura asked "It's just as close as Iwa."
"We could if there wasn't a huge threat to its own people." Kakashi said (A/N: HAHA...GAARA!!) "Way too dangerous."
"You have to take her to Iwa." Hamaru said pulled the rod back out of the ground and sticking it on her chest. "It's only a few hours, verses the two days it took you to get here."
"She'll be killed!"
"It's been six years." Hamaru said looking at Midori's face. "I'm not sure they would recognize her in person."
--
"I...blacked out...and woke up ...in blood." Midori coughed "I only black out when you're..."
"I know, I know..." Murasaki said "It's been six years since you discovered me, and I know how it works. You blackout and I come in."
"You killed him..."
"Hey! No I didn't." Murasaki said "Yes, you woke up in blood, but that's only because I got knocked around too. I'm not prepared for the only body we are allowed to share become un-useable."
"Whose blood was it?"
"Yours. And Rikamaru's. I don't know what happened." Murasaki repositioned her so that she was a little more comfortable. "We were fighting, he was winning...he was going to kill us...then he just...died..."
"You honestly expect me to believe that?"
--
"They have wanted posters; they know what she looks like." Sakura said at some point had grabbed the poster off the ground and was looking at it.
"It's not that...it's just..." Hamaru reconcentrated on Midori. "It's different when they would see her in person."
"What?"
"You mean her father." Kakashi asked
"Yeah." Hamaru answered
"What about her father?" Naruto asked "Does he know the Kage?! He would definitely save his daughter!"
"Actually, he's been dead for about six years." Naruto groaned. Kakashi continued "...with twenty years of followers and six years of mourners. And, they come from a very long line of healers who have been trained at birth to protect Iwa, heal the sick, keep the shinobi's morals in check, preach about god, and heal the Tsuchikage in times of war."
"In short, Midori is a daughter of a long family line of priests." Sakura asked. Sasuke raised his eyebrow.
"Well respected healing priests. She's the oldest and last daughter, actually." Kakashi sighed "Would you believe that she killed someone?"
--
"You're me, I'm you, therefore you know when one of us in lying." Murasaki said "We have to share a brain too."
"You have to have killed him..." Midori nearly slid off of him as he caught her and pulled her closer.
"I know, right? I was the only one there, minus you, but then we go back to the whole 'you/me' logic. I should have killed him. I tried. But I didn't. "Murasaki concluded "Hamaru better hurry up, you're losing ground here."
"Then who did?" Her eyes were barely open and her stomach took another turn for the worst
"Who knew that the two of you were there?"
--
So they travel deeper into the woods that slowly evolved into dirt and rocks, with Midori breathing lightly on Kakashi's back with Hamaru in tow. Every fifteen minutes or so they would stop for some healing and some interrogation. Apparently Midori was more a mystery to her original team and to Iwa, if Hamaru was to be believed.
"They all just disappeared." Hamaru said healing Midori. "Her mother, her father, sisters, brothers...they all vanished in one day. Including Midori, but she was seen that morning."
"So she has no one?"
"No one the village is allowed to speak of."
"How could a family as praised as Midori's just vanish like that?"
"No one in the village knows. I mean, the Tsuchikage knows, and a few jounin too...but they're not saying a single word, probably on penalty certain death. The Leikomara Compound just closed its doors one day and never reopened. No one was allowed in a hundred feet of the compound's front doors. That property still isn't open, even after six years. No one has seen a single soul of that family, save now Midori."
"So, she was seen later? After the compound closed?"
"The morning that the compound closed everyone was so upset, they look a good load off the hospitals, and Midori was seen walking with a Jounin to the Tsuchikage's office in her pajamas, the rumor goes that they were ripped and bloody too. The most stunning thing was that her neck was bruised all around and that she went into the kage's office and never came out. You can imagine what theories have been floating around the village."
"You must have been excited to see Midori again, huh?"
"It was great to have seen Midori-sama again, alive and well. It wasn't so great to see that she's been alone the last six years."
--
"We were supposed to be alone..." Midori suddenly turned over and threw up. "No one knew where we were going..."
"I know." Murasaki cleaned Midori's face up as he watched her internal discharge sink into the ground and out of sight.
"You know?"
"I see what you see. I hear your thoughts." Murasaki said, slightly annoyed with the question "That little trick you pulled on Sasuke, very clever."
She smirked. "No time for that. Why can't I see what you saw?"
"You won't let yourself."
"What?"
"Regardless of the 'you/me' logic, you are the primary controller of this body. What you say goes when it comes to body and mind functions. I can argue with it and try and fight it, but what you say goes."
"I want to see it." She choked out
"Subconsciously...no you don't. Underneath it all, in the light that controls everything about you; there is something you saw that night that I missed...something you don't want to remember. Something that you saw that I have been trying to find since you decided to block it out. So badly that you erased it from both our memories."
--
There was the eerie crunch of rocks and dirt beneath them as they stopped at the stone gates of Iwa. Two guards jumped down and stopped them, dressed in light brown vests and black shadow pants with the traditional Hidden Rock symbol on their headbands.
"Welcome, and why are you here?" asked one to the left of them
"We need to get in." Naruto said "Our friend is hurt."
"Where is your transit visa?" The right one asked
"We don't have time for that, she's dying!" Naruto protested
"We can't let you in."
"I have a scroll for the Tsuchikage." Kakashi said "I also need to have her treated." Kakashi slouched a bit for Midori to show her head as the eyes in men before them widened to large that they could have used them as hubcaps to a monster truck.
"Midori-sama..." The one to the left whispered. "She should be dead."
"Obviously she's alive." Naruto said "And if you don't let us in, she will be dead."
"I'll get the door." The one on the right ran over to the door and let his chakra pulse threw it once, letting the rocks slide apart.
The team walked toward the opening taking in the incredibly flatness of the landscape. It had one primary color: brown. And it was flat. Even the mountains were flat. It seemed like someone had made a landscape a million years ago, then had taken a knife and cut off the tops of the hills and mountains then used a flattened spoon to carve out the ditches and the small river that ran into the village. Then, finishing that, they had proceeded to replace all plant life with rocks.
"I'll have gate open tonight, if you wish." the man whispered as Kakashi passed him
"Leave it open for next few days."
--
"So what is that thing?" Midori asked looking up.
"That is the reason." Murasaki said looking at the eyes that seemed to roll around in the net, watching them.
"What reason?" Midori wondered. Is possible that one part of her knows and the other doesn't?
"The reason 'why'."
"The reason 'why' to what?" Midori suddenly wondered how much she suppressed in her mind. How big of an oxymoron is it to be irritated with yourself for not telling everything to yourself?
"Absolutely everything."
--
They sat in a hospital room, Kakashi curiously absent. The four of them listening to the beeping of the machine linked into her body and air being pushed into her mask.
The room was meticulously white, and was shared by no one. The nurses whispered and stared threw the window at the side of the room. The one window next them was closed tightly with the curtains shut.
They finally got a good look at Hamaru, a skinny young boy who seemed to have lost a lot of sleep to anxieties. Pale with a straight forward haircut that would be recommended by all mothers everywhere, he seemed unreal to be any kind of shinobi. What was off was that he had an Iwa headband hanging around his neck.
"Will she be alright?" Naruto asked Hamaru, who was sitting to Midori's right.
"She'll be fine." Hamaru whispered. His voice choked on tears that he was holding back.
Sakura took pity on Hamaru and sat next to him. "I'm sure she'll wake up in a few days."
"I hope so."
"How did you meet her?" Sakura asked "You said that the three of you didn't go to a normal shinobi school like most kids."
"It was before I met Jaksa, before the three of us became a team." He choked, wondering how long he could keep this up. "I was traveling with this group of other kids who can't go the normal shinobi school for one reason or another on this field trip to this small village between Konoha and Iwa. I had gotten separated from the group, and started panicking really badly and fell into this hole in the ground...."
--
"How long will it take for her to recover?" Kakashi asked the nurse
"For most people, no one should ever recover. She's in a coma at this point." The nurse said looking at him. "But...unlike other coma patients, she's not deteriorating. Her mind in regenerating for an unknown reason."
"I think that would be good, right?"
"It is. It really really is." She said with more of a spark in her voice "Her body is repairing itself on its own. It'll take some time, but she should wake up in a few days."
A few days, huh? Kakashi looked towards the room that held all of them. So that thing really is awake.
--
"Looks like they found a hospital." Murasaki said as Midori sat up on her own without puking for an entire five minutes. "You'll be walking and talking by the end of the week."
"Are you going to tell me anything?" She asked looking at the huge pair of eyes rolling around above her
"Like what?"
"How the hell am I going to get out of this mess?"
"Which one? Blasting through a hospital wall isn't that hard when you think about it. And all you have to do is wake up to leave this place."
"Not that."
"I know."
--
Kakashi had returned and there was still nothing to be done. They couldn't leave without her and they couldn't end the mission by taking her back to Konoha.
"Sensei," Sakura paused, counting the uncertainty in her heart "Why didn't you stop him?"
"He was on a suicide mission." Kakashi answered stoically "Any mission that Minazaki has that sends someone into the field for any reason, she kills them once they return. If they do it correctly, and please her enough, she'll just leave the person seriously wounded, but she will leave them behind."
"So, that man told us all that and you didn't fight..."
"Because it's no use fighting a dying man. And when people are given death as a reward for following orders, they tend to switch sides at the last minute. I'm sure the information he said was true."
Sasuke looked at Midori's body from straight forward front of her bed. She didn't look angelic or peaceful, but more a twitchy cast of her body. The sheets outlined everything bellow her waist in a mold shape, and her hands or her face occasionally twitched. It was just all wrong. It looked like she was caught somewhere between being asleep and being awake. And even more annoying was that this irked him. Forget being trained to kill and being stuck with Naruto and a dim wit Sakura, THIS irked him.
Hamaru held Midori's hand in his, which he thought was odd considering he had helped electrocuted her with that other guy. Then a sparks came off between the two. The literal, make-a-light bulb-and-clock-function kind, not the cheezy-cliched kind.
"What are you doing?" Surprisingly, Naruto, asked.
"Wha...?" Hamaru was flabbergasted. He let go of Midori and started looking around. His breathing suggested that they had all caught him making a plutonium bomb out of a suitcase on an airplane.
"Her hand." Naruto clarified. He didn't want this kid going off on a tangent on anything else. "There were sparks."
"Dr...awing the...ele..ctricity out..of..her." Hamaru stammered "The jutsu we used on her lodges electric shocks between her chakra and the rest of her, it freezes it in place, after we first over power her with an initial powerful electrical shock." He touched the top of her hand this time. "I can draw the shocks out of her."
"Hamaru has an interesting bloodline ability." Kakashi looked over "He can retain a charge and then disperse it at his will."
Hamaru looked down in almost this weird sense of shame for being just that. Sakura could see that and could feel the old feeling of gentle pity. She placed his hand back on Midori's.
"You can save her, right?" Sakura asked
He nodded and sparks started again.
Naruto touched her emerald necklace that was still lying around her neck, but had slid off her chest and to the side. It was cold and had a rough texture to it, like a hardened sponge. It didn't shine like it had before, in fact, it is dark, coated in a black film, and unpolished. He could have sworn that it was smooth and shiny before.
The sick silence of what to do next was in the air, and all the team heard next was the call to Kakashi that the Tsuchikage wanted to see him.
As Kakashi left, he noticed the necklace that Naruto held. What no one else seemed to have noticed was that there was a sliver of red going from Naruto to the necklace.
Kakashi took a quick glance around the office, and that really was enough to know the layout. It was boxy with a minimal amount of furniture around, no plants or any other decorations, just the brown rock and cave of an office. The Kage, being a rather young, rather similar to Kakashi in age, read the scroll behind is very plain desk in his very plain brown colored robes. His light brown eyes bred spite in Kakashi in their color alone.
"Midori's in a coma, isn't she?" The Tsuchikage asked when he finished the scroll.
"Yeah."
"She was electrocuted, right?" He sat back in his chair "By two boys, one of which is sitting in her hospital room trying to save her while the other one is probably dead? You were told about the compound, the vanishing act, Minazaki, and you forced her here using your sharingan."
There seemed no point in denying it. "How do you know that?" He started to wonder if the Tsuchikage called the hit on Midori before she got here.
"Lenne told me about it."
"She's been dead for six year."
"I know. Who do you think covered up her murder? She told me long before she died, about the time about the time Midori was three."
There was a silence between the two for a moment. "Lenne knew nine years in advance?" There was moment of disbelief, Lenne was a medium level Jounin at best, and her best accomplishment prior to her death was being that she couldn't burn the popcorn in the microwave anymore. He remembered his sister as being as clumsy as he was talented. If he really remembered his sister, she was a clumsy talent that used her lack of coordination and sheer pure luck as her best weapon. He flashed on the day that she became a Jounin as an example to his to his mind as proof that she wasn't anything short of being of what she is: if she hadn't slipped and accidently set off each and every one of her opponents traps (he remembered her cursing every time she set one off and running for her life) then falling off the walls for a poor control of chakra, the nin she was fighting would have never dived into his own trap going after her when really she was dazed and confused at the other end of the field.
"Lenne just knew."
"For Lenne to see the future this far in advance, she needed help. Did you 'help' her?" He remembered the popcorn. In fact, she was looking right at the microwave.
"That's like saying that second personality of Midori's is a hoax. Hard to believe she could have been useful if she didn't develop that personality."
"It's her only defense."
"Against what? Me?" He took slight offence to it with a tad of sinister oversight mixed in. "Don't you mean Midori became a serial killer because her mother didn't try to save her that night?"
"You know as well as I do..." Kakashi's one eye glared straight on at the Tsuchikage. "Midori developed that personality the day her mother..." He trailed off for a moment "My sister...Lenne...died with her husband trying to protect their family. Lenne saved her by unleashing that personality. It's Lenne's very last line of defense to protect Midori."
It was though the story that was being told to them was happening again, a night that was dark lit with street and church lights was once again alive as a little six year old girl with brown hair in pigtails ran down the dirt road/street barefoot that led to the Kage's office. She was weighed down to one side with two little babies inside a picnic basket who sensed the fear from the girl and cried silently inside the basket. Her white pajamas didn't protect her from the chill of the night or the pain in her arm. Her emerald necklace beat against her chest like a drum. The world seemed to have slipped out from under her as she hit the ground with her elbow taking the first blow. She stumbled back to her feet ignoring the second round of pain.
"The Kage's not in right now sweetie." A woman covered in blood splatter stopped her dead in her tracks as Midori looked horrified at the woman. "I bet that basket it heavy for you, huh?"
"Leave me alone!" Midori shouted.
"That's no way to greet a woman."
"Just go away!"
"Come here sweetie, I'll take you somewhere safe." The woman approached Midori
"No you won't." Midori shook her head. "Please let me go..."
"Please come with me." The woman stopped in front of Midori and held out her hand "Your brothers can come too."
"Leave my brothers out of this." Midori was on the verge of tears. "Just leave me alone, you murderer."
In a split second the woman picked Midori up by the neck and slammed her up against the brick walls of the street. Midori started screaming and crying as she tried to rip the woman's hand away.
"Your mother and father wouldn't come with me either." She pushed her hand harder on Midori's throat. "Or your sisters. They were all so desperate to protect a little girl that is the greatest threat to the village. Allow me to correct that mistake."
Midori choked on her last gasp of air and hung lifelessly on the wall.
"That was too easy." She let her grip slowly open up as Midori's hand grabbed sprung up and snatched the woman's hand
"You never should have stopped then." Midori's voice changed into that of a young man's as her eyes glared evilly at the woman, shining bright green eyes. The pendent around her neck pulsed with purple chakra, giving her a glow about her as squeezed tighter on the woman's wrist, effectively breaking it.
The woman backed off as slid to her feet as there was a new sense of power about this little girl.
"You never should try to kill Midori." The boy's voice came across as Midori appeared behind the woman and pushed her hand against her face. Midori's hand suddenly bubbled with acid as she burned and fried the woman's face. The woman dashed in front of the basket of twins holding her face.
"Leave them alone."
"Or what Souku? You'll kill me too?"
"I'm not Souku." Wings sprang from Midori's back as she leapt up in flight with a wind of poison gasses. Midori landed in front of the basket as the woman jumped backwards yet again.
"What are you?"
"My name is Murasaki, I suppose." The gasses Midori made seemed to travel over the basket of twins but still entwined around her "And I was born right now to kill you and protect them and" He glanced at Midori's body "...her."
"I guess this is where I say good-bye."
"To the earth, yes." The woman started running and the chakra started pulsing around Midori, rearing to destroy, until a presence pushed upon itself, one that Midori recognized.
Murasaki's eyes looked behind her to see Kakashi standing there, looking at Midori.
"Kakashi." Murasaki recognized
The chakra instantly vanished and Midori collapsed on the ground. Kakashi walked over and picked her up, he examined the bruises that now showed themselves on her neck. He checked her pulse, which was beating faintly and gaining strength under her black and blue skin. He embraced Midori and held her for a moment before a slight cry came from the basket.
The night was over, the last drop of blood was spilled, and the greatest tragedy of Midori's life had finally come to an end of its beginning.
Still holding Midori, Kakashi picked up the basket and walked in the opposite direction that Midori was heading. He headed from somewhere safer for the night.
At the end of the memory, it was a shock back to reality, of one very angry Kakashi staring at one Kage who had nothing to respond to that. A rivaled silence between the two men was only broken from the sound of a knock on the door.
"Tsuchikage-sama?" A meek voice called from behind the door.
"Come in."
Kakashi straightened up as the nurse stayed close to the door. "It's about Midori-san."
"What is it?"
"She's awake."
There is nothing really all the important to write about as there was only one action made: Kakashi left the room. It was normal, curious, and most importantly, didn't raise any white or red flags to anyone.
"Hey." Midori greeted Kakashi as he entered the room. He sat in the vacated seat of someone who was next her. "Nice of you to join us."
"Don't get cocky."
Midori flashed a slightly amused smile. "Do you remember.......that song that Mom would sing?" Midori asked
"What song?"
"That one song, where she would make up the words and tune, and every line started with 'sing me a song'."
"Yeah, now I remember. She was a terrible singer."
"I know. I wouldn't stop her from singing and making you fall asleep."
"That's only because you were young, and you passed out. Your small body could only handle so much."
Midori smiled and looked at the ceiling. "You going to get me out of this place or what? You actually going to try and save me?"
"Of course we are, Midori-chan!" Naruto said happily "No way you're going to die or get punished for this! We'll clear your name!"
Midori scoffed and rolled her head over to Sasuke.
"Don't be stupid." Sasuke said looking at her "You have to live."
She rolled her eyes over to Sakura. She smiled, clearly faked, but it was the trying that Midori gave her credit for.
A moment later a messenger called them all back to the Kage's office for some reason. The door was open for only a moment, but Midori could hear all the snickering and whatnot on the other side. I guess this was proof that their Tsuchikage wasn't perfect and there really were secrets that were well guarded under his rein.
Midori lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering the best way for her to acid bomb the room without anyone getting hurt. Then again, it is a hospital...instant attention to the wounded.
The door slid open as two young boys dressed in obviously stolen, three times too big healing nin garb.
"Leikomara Midori?"
"Guess there is no reason denying it." Midori sighed "You come to see the executed and scorn me. Do your worst."
"We're not here to scorn." Said one pulling off his mask "Were here to save you."
"Sis."
--
"Tsuchikage-sama! Tsuchikage-sama!" A nurse came screaming into the room as Kakashi and the team discussed their orders "Tsuchikage-sama!"
"Calm down. What is it?"
"It's Leikomara Midori!" She screamed "She's missing!"
"What?" Kakashi asked before all of them rushed to her room. They stormed down the halls with a blizzard of emotions; anger, surprise, frustration, shock.
"Where is she?" Kakashi demanded from the Tsuchikage standing next to a very empty bed "Where is Midori?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Kakashi held his ground for a moment as the two looked at each other with only the knowledge that Kakashi would induce all sorts of ramifications if something bad happened to the Tsuchikage.
"Here's her headband." He pulled her hidden leaf headband out of her pocket and placed it on the table next to Midori's hospital bed. "The healers had to take it off."
Kakashi walked up and grabbed it, gripped it tightly.
"Kakashi-sensei?"
"You can go home now, Team 7." The Tsuchikage commanded, almost with a smile. "Leikomara Midori is no longer your problem."
"What?"
"What do you mean not our problem?! She's our friend!"
"According to the deal the Hokage made, without this headband on, she's not under the protection of the Hokage." Kakashi elaborated. He was almost to the point of shaking.
"Which means she belongs to no one now. And no one is exactly who is going to chase after her."
"Minazaki will find her and kill her!"
"Which is all the more reason for us not to go after her."
Kakashi suddenly had a revelation and focused on the Kage."So that's it..."
"Hm?"
"You'd rather let the daughter of Leikomara Kihoshi, the man healed this village and protected it in times of war, who, at risk of his own life, twice had saved your life. You'd let that man's daughter, you're older brother's youngest daughter, die at a psycho's hands to avoid a war."
The team looked the Tsuchikage in shock. The Tsuchikage simply stood there, trying to gain back his form and avoid his emotions as Kakashi's glare was enough to strike down the building as the room stayed in a funeral's silence.
"One life..." The Tsuchikage said, breaking the silence "...for everyone else's. She'll be treated as a martyr. She'll even have her birthday turned to a holiday."
"If there is anything left to find of her."
"My top priority is the village."
"It's a village filled with shinobi who would fight without question at your command. Some of which fought in the Third Great Shinobi War. The village can handle itself. It's your loyalty to Midori and Kihoshi that's in question."
"How could you let your family be a sacrifice?" Sakura asked under her breath
Tsuchikage was again silent for a moment before eyeballing Sasuke for a moment. His demeanor changed from scattered to methodical as he felt redemption pulse back into his body.
"Uchiha Sasuke, right?" The Tsuchikage asked "How long have you had that rash out your arm?"
Sasuke's defense locks in his personality came up as everyone looked at him, looking for a rash.
"I don't have a rash."
"Yes you do." The Tsuchikage said confidently as he walked over to Sasuke with a sly smile on his face. "Midori is more like her father every day."
"What are you talking about?" Sakura asked as the Tsuchikage grabbed Sasuke's arm.
"Midori's father, Kihoshi, was a trickster on top of a healer, hiding things that people need the most in plain sight and always..." The Tsuchikage pulled the back Sasuke's arm guard to reveal a patch of black and purple skin. "...at arm's reach."
The Tsuchikage let go and let Sasuke, Naruto and Sakura look in shock. Kakashi stood there realizing what he had before him.
"Hard to believe that Midori would anticipate this." Kakashi said looking at the Kage
"I doubt that she did." He took a seat in a nearby chair. "She was more likely looking for a reason not to be killed." The Tsuchikage looked at Sasuke again
"What?" Naruto asked looking at him "How would this not get her killed?"
"She poisoned a ninja from the village that gave her headband to her with a poison only she can make? With limitless unknown ingredients? "The Tsuchikage asked. He was almost joyful about this. "Why not?"
"I don't see what that means." Sakura said being creeped out by his smile as it widened from just Sasuke to the whole team.
"You idiots." Sasuke said looking at the Tsuchikage with frustration "It means an antidote only she can make."
"I knew you were smart."
"But why Sasuke? Why not me, or Naruto? Or Kakashi?"
"She probably couldn't get near Kakashi. He's too smart for her."
"Didn't mean that she didn't try." Kakashi held up his trusty book "She tried the edges for the pages."
"Ahh...well, Naruto has that Kyuubi inside of him, right?" The Tsuchikage looked at Kakashi. He nodded. "I would imagine that she gave it her best shot, but that demon of yours canceled out anything she tried in a matter of minutes."
All of them suddenly had a different view of Midori. She was poisoning them all along, thinking up the best ways to try and poison them all the time they were around her. Was she really ever their friend? Their teammate? Who knew about this?
"And me?" Sakura pointed to herself.
"Not a high enough valued target for both villages to be fighting over." The Tsuchikage explained "I would guess that she didn't even try."
Sakura didn't know whether to feel relieved or insulted.
"High enough valued target..."
"Allow me to explain. In order for me to stall her execution, there has to be a huge reason for her to stay alive. In this case, she poisoned Sasuke with a poison that has unknown effects, but most likely will bring him into an inch of his life in a short enough period of time that no one here can correctly figure out how to cure. After all, necrosis like that you have a matter of days to live, assuming she didn't use snake venom, which case..."
"Isn't there some kind of healing technique?"
"Most, if not all, healing techniques repair physical damage. Poisons are tricky, their like viruses, people need time and information to correctly configure what medicines and jutsus to cure them. Without both of those things, that person can die. Considering Midori deprived us of both time and information...well...she suddenly needs to stay alive. "
"There has to be someone smarter than Midori to cure him!"
"Oh there is. No doubt. I have a building down the road filled with people who are a lot smarter about making antidotes to something like this. This isn't the first time that this has happened. Or that she has pulled a stunt like this. There are even people could probably figure it out before dinner."
"Then what's the problem?"
"Iwa and Konoha haven't been on the best of terms since the Third Great Shinobi War. There are plenty of people here who want a dead Konoha shinobi for the ones they lost in war, after all, Iwa nins never forget anything. I wouldn't be surprised if half the staff at the hospital smuggled Midori out and other half would finish the job on Sasuke. Not to mention, this is the perfect way for me not to sacrifice the last bit of my family, right?"
"How'd she do it?" Sasuke asked "How the hell did she poison me?!"
"Interesting question. Any number of ways, seeing as she's...well..." The Tsuchikage paused for a moment "If I had to guess, orally. There is only four ways of taking poison, you see. You can breathe them in, they can soak threw your skin, they can be injected, or they can be put in your mouth. If Midori is worth her salt and put a great enough poison in you to stop her from being killed, she would have to make it a solid, that way there can't be any physical evidence of what of what she made."
"Midori's not that smart." Kakashi commented
"I know, I'll send a shinobi to the place she was staying at to see if there is anything there."
"So it could be a liquid, right? Or even a gas..."
"You guys would notice a gas, a gas strong enough to kill you at a certain designated time can't be colorless or odorless, only ones that are going to kill you a few minutes would be colorless and odorless. And, not to mention, she's been in a coma for the last few days." He sighed and leaned back in his chair "Did she say anything to you, Kakashi-san? Asked for any help?"
"I corrected her on how to make powders." Kakashi said "She probably used that."
"So she ground up a powder and made him drink it?" Naruto asked
"Nope. That means it lost its killing power for every moment that it was dissolved in water."
"Then how could it have been a powder?"
"I said it lost power in water, never said anything about what it does in other type of liquids, like spit. That is the second most common way." The Tsuchikage looked at Sasuke "In any point in knowing her, did you kiss her?"
"No!" Sasuke snapped back at him. But then it dawned on all three of them at the same time.
"Yeah you did."
"And Midori threw up directly after that."
"So, I guess there it is. How Midori poisoned Sasuke. How she made sure no one noticed all this time and stalled it to go off now is beyond me."
Kakashi sighed. She probably got the idea when she was 'exploring' the village. Not very original.
"Wait...if she gave the poison to Sasuke when she kissed him, doesn't that mean that she is poisoned too?"
"Yes." The Tsuchikage said feeling a bad taste in his own mouth "For anyone who isn't Leikomara Midori."
"What does that mean?"
"A few years ago, when she still traveling and new to jutsus, a group of people trapped Midori and about a hundred others in a small village and turned it into a gas chamber. It filled within its walls in a matter of minutes." The Tsuchikage sighed "After an hour, everyone was either dead, damaged, poisoned, or on the brink of death. Midori...was completely unfazed by it." Tsuchikage took a moment for that to sink in. "Midori is completely immune to every and any kind of poison that this world or the next can create. She can't die from poisons."
"That's why she put it in her mouth..."
"It would never affect her. And, if she got it out of her system in time, no one would know she ever had it."
"Wait...what happens if she does take it?"
"Her certain parts of her eyes and nails turn green. Therefore part of the reason why...a very small part..."
"...her mother named her 'Midori'." Kakashi finished off saying
Next time on Dragon Summoner:
It's time to dive head first into Midori's family. Midori's mother (and brothers) are at the center of this, and now a trip into what Midori's and Kakashi's memory of them will lead them to Midori. How could Lenne have foreseen this whole dilemma nine year prior to itself? How could she have known her youngest daughter would someday poison an Uchiha? How did two heirs of this beloved family go unnoticed in their own village for years? There is something wrong here, and they have to find Midori before she successfully kills Sasuke to get their answers. After all, two little boys can't guard their hunted sister for very long. Neither can orders of protection from a dead mother.
The Story of Hatake Lenne
Okay, for those of you that know about the real Four Tails in the manga, the whole Roshi thing, after the whole time jump thing and the truth and what not... that one doesn't exist in this story, okay? Let's just say, for the name sake of simplicity that Roshi was never born in this version of events, okay? Let's just stay in our nice little pre-Sasuke Gone Wild universe, 'kay? Please, dear god, don't even faintly remind me of anything AFTER that. So.....PLEASE......NO COMMENTS ABOUT HOW THIS DOESN'T MATCH UP.
On a brighter note, have you noticed that I only post in certain times of the year? Almost like clockwork, I come out with a new chapter in winter or summer. Odd. I should investigate this next time my free time is really actually free time.
Have fun, with lots of fangirl love
Ash's Girl