Disclaimer: All characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and the Naruto franchise
Author's Note: KARASU25 and Rosebunse, I count my lucky stars to have you two on board. Thank you so much for reviewing and commenting again and again and again! To all who have favourited and followed this story, I hope it's living up to expectations (if you had any) and that you're enjoying the ride. On another note, thank you very much to TheUchiha'sLegacy for providing me with some interesting feedback.
Now for some apologies: I am truly sorry to all parties involved in the spams clogging my review box. I hope those get cleared out by admin soon. I also apologise to Rosebunse for the rising death toll (please forgive me) and for being a wee bit late this week - I hit an exam crisis, but I hope to make it up to you. Finally, I apologise for partially lying. No Naruto this chapter, but he will be back next time! - Best, Zen
"We don't how many they are, or where they will be coming from, or what they look like, but that won't matter," Nara Yoshino told the Keepers assembled outside their headquarters from the back of her big russet-furred stag. "The Repentance will make themselves known to us. That they have promised. Keep your heads and do nothing that will provoke an attack. If there is trouble, send the signal. Remember, we keep calm and keep the peace. We meet back here at sunrise. Mounted Unit One, with me!"
She dug her heels into the sides of the stag and it took off into the dusk, snorting thick white smoke from its nose. Eight Keepers followed at a fast trot in a cacophony of jangling bits and clicking cloven hooves.
Shikamaru found it difficult not to sigh whenever the Keepers rode out into the streets on the Nara-bred deer. Deer kept a hundred years for precious medicine had been strapped under saddles and bridles. Instead of roaming the Nara forest, they were kept in the Keeper barns. He sighed too when he noticed ninjas adapting to the habits of mounted soldiers. What had happened to the shadowy light-footed assassins who had leapt from tree to tree, leaving barely a whisper of their passing behind them? Konoha ninjutsu was fading in more ways than one.
He took up his reins. "Come on, Kohibari." Shikamaru nudged the buck beneath him into a trot. Three Keepers followed behind him and together they set off due west. The other Keepers dispersed into the streets.
Yellow lights had been turned on in the eaves of houses and outside shop fronts. Shikamaru was pleased to see that the Keepers were casting long shadows in their light. It was one of the reasons they had taken to riding deer. A human on a deer cast a bigger shadow than a single man and it helped them save energy when binding the shadows of a mob.
"Not a man on the streets," said one Keeper riding up to trot alongside Shikamaru.
"I haven't even seen a cat, let alone a person," said another, the voice sounding like one of Shikamaru's distant cousins.
A window open on the second floor of a house, releasing steam, snapped shut as they passed and suddenly Shikamaru was all too aware of eyes – eyes peering out from behind curtains, through blinds, between shutters, watching the Keepers going by.
"News must have got out about the Parade," Shikamaru muttered, and the unseen eyes of the villagers tracked their progress.
Deer harness leather creaked. The saddle cloth rustled. Their breathing sounded loud and heavy in the silent streets.
"Hey, Kaneda," said one of the other Keepers suddenly, "don't stop in the middle of the street. I nearly rode into you."
The young woman jolted in her saddle. "Sorry. My mind just went black for a bit."
She glanced once more over her shoulder. Shikamaru followed her gaze, until it reached a small, neat-looking house, with a pale grey cross splashed across its front door.
"Did you know the family?" he asked, facing forward.
"My old teammate's little sister lived there with her daughter." Kaneda's voice took on a quiver of emotion. "I promised him I'd look out for her."
Shikamaru's grip on tightened on the reins. "Focus on the task. Don't give up on them until the Cross have checked inside."
They went on through the darkening streets, listening and watching, but the night closed in without a single trace of the Parade. The air grew cool. The Keeper walking alongside Shikamaru began to shiver. No Keeper troop elsewhere had sent up a signal. This wasn't the only district being eerily quiet.
Shikamaru stared forward between his buck's ears, at the buck's bobbing head as it walked, on and on without complaint, puffing steam from its nostrils. He wasn't going to make it Kiba's wake. By now, the main rituals would have finished and the guests would have started to go home.
The moon was climbing the sky. He was just considering whether it would be wise to visit the Inuzuka house in the morning when a strange figure walked out across the end of the road.
Shikamaru pulled on the reins and brought his buck to a halt. "Did you see that?"
The other three Keepers nodded. They stopped at a distance to watch. The first figure was closely followed by a second and then a third. A column of people were walking past the end of the road, dressed head to toe in hazard gear and swinging pale blue lanterns. Their hazard cloaks were white. The jounin red, genin yellow, chuunin blue and medic-nin black dyes had been bleached out of them, leaving blotches and ugly smears of the old colour behind, but on the whole they were pale as ghosts. They walked with slow purposeful steps and their heads held high, their faces covered in masks of silvery foil.
"If we take the next road, we could intercept them," Shikamaru whispered. "The moon will be behind us. We'll have plenty of shadow to freeze them."
The Keepers turned their deer into the side alley and moved along it, staying parallel to the main road where the figures in white were walking. Past a flower shop and a newsagent, they found an opening, and they turned out into the road, just in front of the head of the long white column.
With the Keepers on deerback, their black shadows stretched out before them in the moonlight like a herd of strange shadow centaurs. Shikamaru fumbled for the Keeper's horn at his waist, but before he could announce who they were and demand the Parade to stop, a clear, commanding voice sounded out from amongst the walkers.
"Welcome all," said the voice, ringing out in the street, "to the first Repenters' Parade."
Shikamaru nodded at the Keepers beside him and soon their shadows were lengthening, stretching into whip-thin tendrils of darkness that rushed down over the surface of the road, to cling to the shadows of the walkers and wrap about their ankles. The column froze as one less than five metres away.
"Are you the leader of the Repenters?" Shikamaru shouted, searching the crowd for the speaker. He wasn't the best of chakra sensors, but as soon as his shadow touched the Parade he had felt something that had driven an icy wedge of shock through his chest. The Repenters were all civilians. It was essentially an anti-ninja rally.
"See, my friends, those who use their ill-gotten chakra to suppress the innocent," the voice rang out once more. "See the hubris of the ninjas who dare to defy the peaceful gods by corrupting their powers for war. With chakra, the magic of creation, these most sinful of our kind pit man against man, use their gifts for oppression and domination. They bully those who do not partake in their sin."
The silver faces stared back at the Keepers, apparently unmoved, but through the interlacing shadows Shikamaru felt a strong ripple of feeling from the crowd - pity. They pitied the Keepers.
The voice continued before Shikamaru could speak. "The sinful bully the righteous. You are experiencing it for yourselves. At this very moment, our very shadows are being invaded and used against us. There is little hope for these children of sin and war. Now, however, at the end of days, the gods are on our side. The gods have sent us their Demon to smite these men and punish them, through the very chakra they cling to. Now is the time that we help our brothers. The gods have made it so."
"Do we have to listen to this?" the Keeper next to Shikamaru muttered. "What do we do? They're not even giving us a chance to reason with them."
"We will not fight the children of the sin," the voice resounded from somewhere in the column, but damn those masks! Shikamaru couldn't see where. "We will help them repent. If they themselves cannot see what they need to do, then we will guide them towards it. The first repentance is the Word, the second is the Earth – "
"- the third is the Fire, the fourth is the Iron, the fifth is the Spirit and the Sixth is the Cry," chanted the Repenters, men and women, their silver faces turned towards the Keepers.
"Yes," said the voice, sounding satisfied, "yes, that is right. Keepers! The gods have decreed that the world is ending. Do you repent the sin of your chakra? Do you vow to take your life as acceptance of your sin?"
"Don't say anything," Shikamaru muttered to the three Keepers around him and they pursed their lips in silence, bristling with anger. "We don't want to provoke them."
"The first repentance of the Word has been forsaken," the unseen speaker declared.
A flash of white lit up the sky over the Eastern part of the town, followed by another to the North, and another to the North East. There was a rush of rustling darkness and the walls of the street were suddenly swarming with huge leaping shadows, shaped like deer.
Kaneda cried out, "Shadow deer! It's the signal! A Unit's been attacked – "
There was a sizzle and a pop and the street went white.
Shikamaru yelled. The Keepers reeled. The deer reared and bellowed at the flash bomb set off in their eyes. Bright white light seared away the darkness. It burned away the Keepers' binding shadows holding the Parade and all of a sudden there were hands all over him, tugging at his robes and his arms, ripping him out of his saddle, pulling him to the hard stone of the road.
"The second repentance is the Earth," said a thin, reedy voice in his ear. Shikamaru was blind. He knew that his eyes were open. They were throbbing and weeping tears. They had pulled off his visor and there was a hand at the back of his head, pushing his forehead to the ground. They rubbed his face into it. They had his hands, they had his legs. His eyes! His eyes saw only streaks of red and white and flashing black spots.
"He has bowed to the gods and been reminded of their power in the Fire of Light. Now he may choose to repent by the Iron, the Spirit or the Cry. Which will it be, child of the sin?"
The shadows had all gone, dispersed and broken by the flash bomb, or turned into shadow deer and sent across the city to find a unit of Keepers for back-up. Shikamaru was helpless. He heard screams, gasps, and the thuds of heavy objects hitting the ground. A warm liquid flowed around his knees and seeped into the cloth of his trousers. It was blood. He was sitting in a puddle of blood.
"If the gods have struck him dumb then may it be Iron – "
There was a clang of metal on metal and a burst of warm liquid splattered across his face. The hands holding Shikamaru to the ground sprang away. New hands clasped his shoulders and pulled him up to his feet. Shikamaru blinked, the water cleared from his eyes, but he still saw nothing. He could hear running though, the sound of fleeing feet, and his flailing hand touched smooth clear film – a visor. His saviour was wearing a visor, not a tin foil mask.
"Who is it?" he spluttered. "Who is it? I can't see!"
"It's me. Calm down," came Neji's voice from beside him as the quiet of night returned to the street. "They're gone. I saw them off. What happened? I saw a light like lightning and when I came they had a kitchen knife to your throat."
"The other Keepers, Neji – look at them. Are they dead?" Shikamaru said, breathing in deep and instantly regretting it as his nose filled with the smell of blood. "They killed the deer too, didn't they?"
"Slit their throats."
"The Keepers or the deer?" Shikamaru persisted. Neji didn't reply. "Why are you here anyway? Shouldn't you have gone back to Cross HQ after Kiba's wake?"
"I was taking a walk," said Neji and there was something fragile in his tone that made Shikamaru narrow his eyes. Neji hummed and clicked his tongue, as though considering what to say next. "They turned me away at the door."
Shikamaru knew what that meant without needing to ask, so instead, he raised an eyebrow. "And you were walking around the streets the whole time afterwards, knowing a bunch of anti-ninja religious fanatics were going to be out en masse?"
"Lucky for you I was," Neji snapped, propping up Shikamaru with his shoulder, "or else you'd have been stretched out repenting on the ground like your friends. Now come on, where can I take you? Where's the nearest Keeper safehouse?"
Shikamaru gave him directions and let Neji pull him away, away from the smell of blood, and the wet warmth of steam smoking off the deer carcasses. His eyes ached like they were swollen in their sockets. It hurt to weep, but as he thought of the shock, the failure, the dead Keepers and those dreadful silver faces, he couldn't stop.
The spread of the Plague in the towns surrounding Konoha had been a surprise to all the physicians who lived in them, but when the doctor of Ageha came to think of it, there should never have been any surprise at all.
True - Konoha was the only town that based its entire economy and income on providing specialist chakra services, through training ninjas. There was no town in the Land of Fire with a higher density of chakra users, but where all ninjas of Konoha were chakra users, not all chakra users of Konoha became ninjas. Many failed the preliminary exams to enter the ninja hierarchy in the first place and, when that happened, it wasn't uncommon for that person to leave Konoha and settle elsewhere.
After generations of migration, there were whole families of chakra users in almost every town in the Land of Fire, each plying their trades. In Kareha there was a famous family of window cleaners, who exercised what chakra they had to walk up walls, instead of using ladders, as they washed the windows. Jutsus were beyond them, of course, but the chakra control in their feet was extraordinary! In the medical academy in Ageha, there was a special course for chakra-based medical techniques for those who came from chakra-rich families. The doctor of Ageha's family had been chakra-using doctors for generations and the day he watched his daughter practice the family techniques for the first time he had never been prouder.
The doctor wasn't a fool. He readily admitted that there was something very different about ninjas and artisan chakra-hands like himself and the window cleaners. Ninjas often passed through Ageha on their missions. They were steely like the blades their kept up their sleeves and as dangerous and captivating as fire. It was always fascinating when they came to his door, to buy medicines or seek emergency aid, but, generally speaking, the doctor preferred them to keep their distance, because fire up close tended to burn.
Then in the space of a week he had been visited by two. The first had been a wild, red-eyed, vicious young thing; half-mad and feral – the worst kind of ninja, the doctor remembered with a shudder. No doubt what Konoha called a 'rogue'. That one had dropped down from a tavern roof to press a knife into the small of the doctor's back, before herding him into the forest.
The second arrived two days after the doctor had been found unconscious at a crossroad, and although the second ninja had been civil, the doctor of Ageha took it as a principle not to trust men who hid their faces behind masks. There had been a light knock at the door. The doctor had thought it was another Plague victim coming for antibiotics – after his night in the young rogue's cave he had reopened for business, much to his daughter's delight – and so when he opened the door and seen a masked , one-eyed ninja, sleek and conditioned for battle, on his doorstep, words had failed him.
"Oh dear," the ninja had said with a chuckle, "that must have been a truly terrifying experience you had with Sasuke. I apologise on his behalf."
And then there had been questions, lots of questions – about the young feral ninja and his companions, about how the doctor of Ageha had been treated, about the state of mind of the group, about what direction they were heading and how fast he thought they would be able to travel.
The doctor had answered truthfully and efficiently, as his profession as a medic demanded, and the ninja had left soon after.
He poured himself a cup of tea and readied himself for another long night. Patients came at all hours and from all parts of the town. Death and disease didn't have schedules. The tea helped steady his nerves and disguise the tickling of the Plague in his throat. He found himself clearing his throat more frequently these days. No doubt his daughter already knew about his condition.
There was a brisk knock at his door. The first of his evening's patients, the doctor of Ageha thought wearily, before he was struck by a curious sense of déjà vu. Again his daughter and wife were busy nursing a patient in the other room, again he was going to the door with a cup of tea in his hand, and again he pushed it open to find a masked and one-eyed ninja standing tall on his doorstep.
Again he was stunned into fearful silence and the ninja seemed to find that amusing.
"Ah," said the ninja, a different masked man from the last, "seems as though the governor was right. Sasuke must have given you a pretty rough time. For that, I am sorry, I really am. Now I was wondering if you could help me by answering a few questions."
When the sun slipped below the horizon, one of Hinata's many cousins rang a bell, and the whole Hyuuga house went to bed, to wake up in the early hours with the rising sun.
The locked in Hyuugas lived by a strict routine. In the morning, they gathered for an assembly, where they prayed to the Hyuuga ancestors for the passing of the Plague. Prayer was followed by meditation - quiet contemplation of one's mortality, or, as Hanabi cynically called it, 'preparation for the worst'. Lunch came after sparring, which they did only to keep fit and flexible, and in the afternoon they did whatever chores and tasks they had been allocated to do by the older members of the clan. That particular afternoon, Hinata and Hanabi had finished repapering the shouji walls and doors in the East wing of the house. Their mother and other Hyuuga matrons had been in the North wing, stitching and dyeing newly made hazard cloaks red, blue, yellow and black, to pass through the hatch to the Runner who came in the evening.
As far as Hinata was concerned, there was no better Runner who came to the Hyuuga house than Rock Lee. Lee not only brought food and toothpaste and tissues, but he also liked to spend fifteen hilarious minutes going red in the face shouting the week's news through the thick wooden door. It was fun to watch and it was the only time the locked in Hyuugas got to hear what was happening beyond the house walls. Many of the Hyuugas muttered that he was only doing it under obligation because Neji had been his teammate, but they were thankful nonetheless.
Hinata was curled up in bed, a little light-headed from the glue vapour she had been inhaling all afternoon but not exhausted enough to sleep, when the door of her room crept open. Hinata looked over her shoulder. There was a small shape standing with an oil-lamp in the doorway.
"What's wrong, Hanabi?"
"Nothing's wrong," Hanabi shot back quickly, squaring her jaw. "I was just checking on you, to see if you were scared, that's all."
Hinata sat up in the bed. "Why should I be scared?"
"Didn't you see the white lights?"
"What white lights?"
Hanabi's eyes darted to the window with its thick black blinds and then back to Hinata. "Can I come in?"
Hinata nodded and patted the spot beside her on the mattress. Hanabi rushed across the room, set the oil-lamp on Hinata's desk, and leapt onto the bed.
"I thought it was a thunderstorm, but I didn't hear any thunder," Hanabi whispered, as Hinata wrapped the covers about Hanabi against the chill of the night. "But it was just like lightning. This huge white light kept on flashing outside. It flashed four times, all over Konoha."
Hinata went to the cupboard and took out another pillow, another blanket, and then another extra thick blanket for good measure, and brought them back to the bed. "And you weren't scared?" she asked, as she sat down beside Hanabi again.
"I wasn't. Not one bit," Hanabi spluttered indignantly, but she pulled the blankets tighter around herself and lowered her voice, "Do you know when Lee-san's coming next with the news?"
Hinata thought hard to come up with an answer, but with the monotony of routine and the unchanging flow of daily life, every day could just as easily have been the other. The days of the week and the dates of the month had all blurred into one grey stream of time.
When she didn't reply, Hanabi lowered her head into her arms and muttered, "A war might have started out there and we're just sitting around the house, stitching and papering and not knowing any better."
The oil-lamp flickered on Hinata's desk, its soft yellow flame wavering and small. The daily life of prayers and chores was a forced peace as forced as the loyalty ensured by the Caged Bird seal. A small voice at the back of Hinata's mind muttered insidiously that such a peace was too fragile to last for long.
The sound of delicate breathing touched Hinata's ears and woke her from her thoughts. Hanabi had fallen asleep on Hinata's bed, with her head still in her arms. Hinata smiled. She tucked the covers around her little sister and blew out the light.
"Sasuke," Suigetsu called out, stopping and wheezing, "can we take a break now?"
Sasuke continued on, walking ahead without any change of pace or posture.
Sasuke hadn't spoken a word since the morning when they had risen a little before dawn. He had insisted on moving onwards in silence, pushing forwards, but Suigetsu was beginning to doubt if Sasuke actually had any idea where they were going or where they were trying to get to any more.
"Sasuke," Suigetsu tried again, shuffling after him, "come on, man, let's take a break!"
Suigetsu rubbed his hands together, breathed puffs of air hot with fever onto his fingers, and jammed them up the sleeves of his cloak. He couldn't feel them. He couldn't feel his toes. Every limb ached. Every joint screeched as he moved and his lungs - he didn't want to know what was going on in there.
"Right," Suigetsu said at last. His blade slipped from his hands and landed point first in the mud. He crossed his arms. "I'm going on strike. I'm stopping right here, right now. You hear me, Sasuke? I'm on strike!"
Sasuke halted in his stride. A tremor ran through him from head to toe and for a dangerous moment Suigetsu wondered if he had stepped too far. Sasuke didn't look round. He said, "You can do what you like."
"Fine," Suigetsu grinned at him toothily, even though that final bitter taste of iron was crouching at the back of his mouth, "fine then. Well then, here and now, I'm on strike."
"See if I care." Sasuke took three steps forward, hesitated, and then took another three, planting each step firmly into the mud. He listened for footsteps behind him, or a weary sigh, or a resigned cough, but when Suigetsu made no sign of following, he bristled and spun round with a glare.
Rippling fingers made of water were stretching out towards him. Suigetsu's hand was reaching out to tap Sasuke on the back. His arm was a colourless bar of flowing water, his body a wavering column, the outline of his eyes and the bridge of his nose had been reduced to pale lines of shimmering light and his hair had turned to fine white foam.
Sasuke didn't dare breathe. The fingers quivered before his nose. The mass of water droplets held Suigetsu's shape for a heartbeat. Then a breath of wind rushed through the trees and Suigetsu dissolved in a burst of spray.
Drops splashed across his forehead. Sasuke's eyes widened, then widened some more, and in the suddenly lonely silence of the forest the whine in his ears reached a fever pitch, the string grew taut. He focused on the pile of empty clothes and the empty air before his eyes where moments earlier a man had turned to water for one last time. Sasuke couldn't bring himself to move, and yet he could feel the hands coming for him, the hands in the shadows that he had been running from, reaching out to seize his head and force him to look back over his shoulder towards everything he had been trying to leave behind. He hovered on the balls of his feet, poised to flee but unable to do so.
A figure, light-footed as a cat, dropped down from the trees to land on the path beside him.
Sasuke looked up and the string snapped at last.
Perhaps worth a thank you to Fullmetal Alchemist for the flash bomb lesson on how to beat shadows.
Next time: Naruto goes hunting for Plague orphans, but meanwhile, which one-eyed masked man reached the doctor of Ageha first, and which has just found Sasuke?
Thanks for reading! - Best, Zen