Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and the Naruto franchise
Author's note: Thank you to Rosebunse and Hot's and Clogs for their reviews again - it's encouraging to know if I've done something right (and educational when I've done something wrong of course). Thank you again to everybody who has continued to read this through all thirteen chapters so far. It's wonderful to have you guys sticking with me through this and I hope I can keep entertaining you yet. :) Thank you also to all those have favourited and followed since last time. This installment, we're back in Konoha to get ready for some action, but never fear! The next two chapters after this, I've been dying to write since Chapter 1, and we'll be back in the laboratory. Apologies for Neji going somewhat OOC, but I reckon with enough stress and pressure, anybody would crack eventually. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this installment, please let me know what you think and hopefully I'll see you again next time. Best, Zen
The new member Neji's Zero Chakra class was a young man, lithe and well-muscled, who would have been at the prime of his ninja career had it not been for the Plague.
New adults joined Neji's seminar group almost every day. Mostly they were in their late twenties or thirties, the age group hit hardest by the chakra bacteria, but their age tended to range from anything between late teens to early fifties. The balding man sitting at the front of the room was from the Publications Office and was probably around fifty years old. A seventeen year old girl had been in Neji's first session, but her infection had turned active that very evening and she had since been taken into isolation. Neji, at the back of the classroom, was now the youngest there.
The young man joining the class didn't look much older than Neji. He slunk to the back and quietly pulled out his chair, looking as though he was trying to blend in with the shadows. Neji had seen the same look on the face of every new member to his Zero Chakra class. They looked like sleepwalkers, waiting to be woken up from a bad dream they couldn't stop.
The man cast nervous, darting looks about the room. Neji adjusted his face mask. It was almost comical. The Plague had reduced a Konoha jounin-level ninja to a twitching nervous boy.
"Good morning, all," Shizune called out, standing at the front with a giant notepad on a stand. "Thank you for attending this meeting today, and a particularly warm welcome to all our new members. I look forward to speaking to each and every one of you individually at some point during the next two hours. Today, we'll be continuing on from what we were doing yesterday." She held up a piece of string identical to the one on Neji's table. "We will be checking weight reactions. You will be working in pairs. I would like you to tie this string to your hand, like so. Your partner will add these lead weights, one at a time, to your string and then record the weight at which you first start augmenting your strength with chakra. Now since most of you are already well practised in this exercise, I'll be going round class to discuss with each of you your most recent RAMK blood test results as you do it. Is that clear?"
There was a chorus of grunts and replies and the day's Zero Chakra class began.
"Neji-kun." Sakura appeared beside his desk. She was sitting in on Shizune's class again. On the face of it, she was there to learn how they were run in case Shizune ever needed a substitute, but Neji knew better. Sakura was there to keep an eye on the latently infected in case they showed signs of active infection, just like all the other nurses and apprentices walking around the room. The thought made Neji resent Sakura a little, even though he knew that was unfair.
"Do you want me to pair up with the new man?" he asked Sakura.
Neji had been going to Shizune's Zero Chakra classes since the very first one had been held. From that first seminar group of seven ninjas, there was only him and a forty year old woman left. The rest were in isolation. These days Neji often got paired with the younger new members to help them learn the exercises, whilst the woman took the older.
Sakura breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Neji-kun."
She left to collect a stack of sheets off Shizune. Neji picked up the bag of weights and the piece of string from his desk and made his way to the young man, who was still shuffling nervously in his seat.
At the sound of Neji pulling up a chair, the man looked up and whispered, "Please don't come any closer."
Neji dropped the weights on the man's desk. "That's going to make things difficult for the exercise, you know."
"I don't need to do any exercises," the man shot back, sounding desperate. "I'm not supposed to be here. There's been some kind of mistake. The nurses forced me to come here, but I'm not infected. I'm not."
"As much as we would all like that to be true, it's highly unlikely," Neji sighed, hating himself as he said it. He noticed that the man's disposable face mask was still in its packet on his desk. Neji picked it up and held it out to him. "I suggest you put on your mask and get used to it."
"I don't need no goddam mask!" The man slapped the mask out of Neji's hand. "Didn't you hear what I said? I'm not infected. Are you that desperate to have everybody dragged down to your level? I'm only sitting here because the goddam nurses won't let me out!"
Cold anger stirred in Neji's veins. His arms began to move instinctively into a familiar stance, before he realised what he was doing and he lowered his arms to his sides. "In which case," he said carefully, chewing on his tongue, "just, do me a favour and put on the mask. It'll lessen your risk of becoming infected - "
"There seems to be a lot of noise coming from over here," said Shizune, approaching them through the tables with a look of concern. "Are you having problems?"
"Listen," the man breathed, drawing himself up to his full height as he rounded on her, "you've got to take me off the register. There's been a mistake. There must have been a mistake! It's nonsense to rely on diagnoses from dogs. It's hardly scienti – what's this?"
Shizune was holding out a sheet of paper. "Your initial RAMK blood concentration, Hakuda-san. I'm sorry, but there hasn't been any mistake. Please keep it for your own personal records, so that you can monitor your progress through the course."
The man took the sheet with shaking hands. He ran his eyes over the table of figures, then made a small, wretched noise at the back of his throat and sank into his seat. He hid his face behind the sheet of paper, sobbed.
Shizune began to gesture discreetly to a couple of medic-nins who had been watching the exchange from the sides.
"Wait, Shizune-san," Neji said, putting out a hand to stop her. "Let him have some space for a moment."
The man sobbed quietly into his sheet of paper. The other members of the seminar continued their tasks, looking somewhat awkward as they pretended not to notice a grown man crying in the corner.
"One more thing, Neji-kun," Shizune said softly, putting a sheet of paper in Neji's hands, "please be honest with me when I ask you this. Have you been using chakra at any point during the last few days?"
Neji avoided her gaze. "I – "
Shizune closed her eyes. "You have, haven't you?"
"Only a couple of times, and only for a few seconds!" he added hastily. "It's my byakugan, it's a kekkei genkai - I can't just stop using it. It's like instinct. I don't even realise -"
Shizune raised her hands and Neji closed his mouth. "I can't say I didn't expect you to have trouble. You're not alone in this, Neji-kun. The other ninjas with kekkei genkais have all said the same thing, but there is a ban on chakra use for the infected for a reason."
"I know," Neji muttered bleakly. "If I'm seen using chakra I'll get taken into isolation for being a hazard to those around me. I know."
At his frustrated tone, Shizune raised her eyebrows. She tapped the sheet of paper in his hand and he looked down at his blood test results. The tests were carried out every two days. Between the last test and this one, there was a clear, stark and obvious rise in the average RAMK count detected from his white blood cells. Words stuck in his throat. He took a deep breath.
"This is a terrible thing to say," Shizune began gently, "but it might help that whenever you are in a situation where you find yourself tempted to activate the byakugan that you think about this little piece of paper."
Neji felt numb. He swallowed. "I will try."
"Also, Neji-kun, make sure you keep coming to these classes. If ever somebody reports you for using chakra, you can use your record of good attendance here to show you've been making an effort to suppress its use. Is that clear?"
He nodded without really listening. Shizune smiled and went to console the new member of the seminar class, who had put his head into his hands and was still shaking it, in total denial.
Every three days, Shikamaru made it his business to visit Yuuhi Kurenai to check on her and her baby. They were both locked in, of course. She hadn't liked the idea, but ultimately persuaded by the council's demands that she thought for the safety of the child, Kurenai had put in a hatch at the bottom of her door and declared her small family locked in.
Shikamaru had had quite a shock the previous week. At the sight of a great grey white cross on a door, his knees had almost given away, before he realised his mistake and noticed that the marked door was Kurenai's neighbour's and not hers.
He rang the doorbell and waited. Not long later, he heard footsteps, a pause as Kurenai looked through the spyhole, and then the intercom crackled. "I still can't get used to you in sunglasses. You look just like Shino-kun."
Shikamaru smiled and pushed the glasses up his nose. "How are you holding up, Kurenai-san?"
"I'm fine, Shikamaru-kun, although the baby's getting livelier." She laughed on the other side of the door. "I thought she had my eyes, but they're beginning to look a lot more like her father's."
"If there's anything I can do for you, just tell me, or tell Lee when he comes Running," Shikamaru told her earnestly, wondering if it was a small mercy that Asuma-sensei wasn't around to see the Plague. He wouldn't have taken being locked in well at all.
There was a pause and then Kurenai said, "Actually, there's one thing you might be able to do. I'm getting a lot of rubbish mail through the hatch. It would be good if you could put a stop to it."
The hatch at the bottom of the door opened. Kurenai's hand briefly appeared, pushing four or so small pieces of paper out. Shikamaru bent down to pick them up. He recognised what they were instantly.
COME ONE, COME ALL TO THE SECOND REPENTERS' PARADE
WE WALK TO HEAL – YOUR CRIES WILL NOT GO UNANSWERED
"Somebody's been putting one through the hatch every day," Kurenai explained.
Shikamaru shuffled the leaflets. He noted that each sheet had a small red number inked into corner. They counted down from six to three, counting down to the date of the next Repenters' Parade. Shikamaru cursed and gritted his teeth.
Kurenai lowered her voice. "Will you be alright, Shikamaru-kun?"
"Probably not," Shikamaru admitted. "The Repentance sent a notice about the Parade to my mum three days ago. They've given us time to prepare, but -"
"That means the Repenters will be preparing too," Kurenai concluded anxiously. The baby burbled in the background of the intercom. "Shikamaru-kun, you said that most of the Keepers you knew had either been killed or temporarily blinded. Doesn't that mean you're short of men?"
"I've got a plan of sorts." It frustrated him that Kurenai could see him through the spyhole in the door, even though he couldn't see her. "Don't worry, Kurenai-san."
She sighed, suddenly sounding far wearier than a young mother ought to be.
"You know, when men say that," - the baby began to cry - "that's when I really do worry."
Danzo cancelled all of his appointments that he had scheduled - a meeting with the head of Publications, a tea with the Third Officer of the Quarantine Guard, he moved them all to a later date – and retreated to his room, telling the civilian guards that under no circumstance were they to enter.
Danzo closed the curtains and switched on the light. His thoughts were seething. What should he do? What could he do? In the end, he settled for meditating, in silence, at his desk, in his chair. He was at a loss as to what else to do. He wasn't an especially religious man either, but as he turned back through his memories, he found his hand reaching for the juzu beads in the bottom draw. The last time he had taken them out had been for Sarutobi Hiruzen's funeral.
Rain was falling in the courtyard garden. He could hear the drops as they landed in the empty fishpond.
"Why can't I remember?" Danzo ran the beads of the juzu through the fingers of his left hand.
On close examination, his memory of the past week was dotted with blanks. There were mornings and evenings where minutes had been shaved out of his day. And all since the day he had taken off his arm braces, although the very moment he had taken them off was completely excised from his memory as neatly as had it been done with a scalpel.
Perhaps it was some kind of mind infiltration jutsu. There were plenty capable of it. The Yamanaka clan made a particular speciality of it. Had he given any member of the clan reason to hold a grudge against him recently? Danzo ran the beads through his hands again. No, this didn't feel like anything the Yamanakas' work. Until the Plague, a Yamanaka had been one of his closest subordinates and he had asked to be put under the Yamanaka jutsus many a time so as to learn how to throw them off. No Yamanaka was going to be getting inside his head any time soon.
More importantly, this attack didn't feel like a matter of politics. The malicious, teasing nature in which the shadow left traces of its passing was undeniably personal. It wanted him to be afraid and it was taking great pleasure in exercising its power over him.
It seemed to have a particularly worrying agenda with his right arm and right eye.
Danzo transferred his juzu beads to his right hand. With his left, he pressed a panel under his desk and pulled out a knife. His reflection in the blade was grey and haggard. He was an old, sickly-looking man.
Still staring at his face, Danzo reached up for the bandages around his forehead. They looked new. He fumbled with the bandages, wondering when he had changed them.
Then suddenly his right hand twitched, jumped, jerked of its own accord, and the fingers flew across his temples. They tore off the bandages with an almost childish glee.
The glowing red eye stared up at Danzo from his reflection – baleful, malevolent as a curse, bright and alive. He saw it then, staring out from the depths of the stolen eye. There was the shadow itself.
The shadow was in his eye.
He cried out a moment later, flinging the dagger across the room so that it landed point first, embedded deep in the wall and surrounded by cracking plaster. The eye throbbed in Danzo's head and his head span…
When Danzo next came to, the knife had been removed from the wall. It had been cleaned and put back into its secret panel. His juzu had been torn apart and the brown beads were strewn across his desk and rolling on the floor. Everywhere around him, the trace of the shadow hung thick like fog.
Breathing deeply, Danzo reached up to touch his right eye. The bandage was back in place.
"Of course, I'll help. You want a hundred shadow clones? You've got them." Naruto grinned and leaned across the table to clap hands with Shikamaru.
"I knew we could count on you and your stupidly high reserves of chakra." Shikamaru sighed with relief. "Thanks, Naruto. I owe you one."
"What's the plan then?" Naruto asked and Neji looked up with interest.
Shikamaru had come to looking for Naruto in the Tigers' Den kitchen. He had wanted Naruto's shadow clones to bulk out Keeper numbers, in preparation for the Repenters' Parade in two nights' time. Shizune had arranged a trip for the Plague orphans to spend the afternoon in the Konoha messenger bird aviary, so the Tigers' Den was quiet. Neji was taking advantage of the lull in activity to fill in some reports.
"The main plan is to intercept the Repenters, kettle them and arrest as many as possible."
"You don't sound too pleased about that," said Neji, noting the disapproval in Shikamaru's tone.
"Kettling and arresting doesn't achieve anything," Shikamaru tapped the tabletop with his fingers and ground his teeth. "And the likelihood of being able to disarm all the Repenters safely is slim, especially now that we've been ordered to avoid using shadow binding against the civilians. Mum says she doesn't want civilian-ninja relations to be strained any further than they already are. Politics is as troublesome as hell."
"But you say that's the main plan," Naruto pointed out excitedly, "so you've got something else in mind, right?"
Shikamaru nodded. "I'm thinking we find their leader."
Neji raised his eyebrows. "The Eye of the World?"
"I've finally looked at the reports from the units that met Repenters on the night of the first Parade," Shikamaru's face darkened, "and there's no doubt about it. There's some ninja manipulating them. They started chanting their rubbish about repentances in four different places in Konoha all at the same time. Word for word the same speech at the exact same moment. It was programmed into the Repenters who were speaking."
"The woman I met in the park mentioned something about Bishops," Neji said, as Naruto grimaced at Shikamaru's words. "They sounded as though they had more power in the cult than the other Repenters. They must have been the speakers in the crowd."
"That's it then," Naruto planted his fist on the table, "we'll just find these Bishops, turn them upside down and shake the information out of them about where their leader is."
"I've got a better idea." Neji set down his pen. "The Bishops are being manipulated at a long distance from their leader. There's a chance that there will be a chakra link connecting them. If there's a link, the byakugan would be able to see it."
Shikamaru put his thumb and forefingers together in thought. He nodded. "My mum's already talking the Captain of the Marksmen to send men, so we'll have some Hyuugas and chakra sensors on patrol. Good. We can use them."
"You know that's not what I meant," Neji snapped, his mouth set in a thin line.
"You are not going out against the Parade using chakra, Neji," said Shikamaru firmly. He closed his eyes as Neji stared at him in disbelief. Those silver-white eyes were still intimidating. Shikamaru shook his head. "I'm sorry, but, you're latently infect – "
"I've cleaned up three houses of mass suicides. I've rescued a good friend from having his throat cut like a pig in the street. I've had a woman offer to help me commit suicide, before trying to feed poison to children right under my very nose," Neji surged to his feet and raised his voice, "You can't make me stand by and watch these madmen do what they like with our town, Shikamaru. All I'll need is a couple of seconds for one look. If there's one last thing I want to do with my chakra, I want to do something to help take the Repentance down – "
"New generation dynamic entry!" came a shout from the doorway, and in a blur of chuunin blue canvas, Rock Lee soared into the kitchen with his fist outstretched. "Apologies in advance to all innocent bystanders!"
His fist smacked Neji on the jaw with a crack. Neji spun round from the table, tripped over the chair and landed on his knees on the tiles.
"Bushybrows! What are you doing here?" Naruto exclaimed.
"A moment please, Naruto-kun!" Lee landed in a crouch on the table, his eyes burning with fury.
Neji picked himself up from the floor. He gingerly touched his jaw, breathing heavily, then glared up at Lee standing above him. "Rock Lee, how dare you - "
"No, Neji-kun, how dare you!" Lee stared down, quivering from head to toe with indignation. "How dare you even think about using chakra! You know what that means for you! You will be condemning yourself to death! To snuffing out your youthful spark!"
"What does that matter? I'm already as good as dead anyway," Neji hissed, balling his hands into fists. "Why can't I choose how I last use my chakra? The Zero Chakra course is only a delaying the inevitable. Everybody knows that the latents on it are just dead men walking and it isn't a life - "
"So you're going to throw your life away like that freak of a Repenter woman wanted?" Naruto snapped angrily.
Neji stopped, looking as stunned as had he been slapped. "No, I just want – "
"To choose the way you're going to go?" Shikamaru supplied with a mirthless smile. "Hah. Funny, because the Repenters gave me a whole menu to pick from."
"That's not what I – "
"Neji-kun, if you get put into isolation, as a Runner and the last member of our team," Lee scrunched up his eyes, but the tears still flowed down his face, "it will be me going to Guy-sensei and Hinata-san to deliver the news. I'd even have to go to Tenten's father. He still asks me how you are! I don't want to tell them you've been taken in to hospital. I don't think I could."
"Neji, we know you want to help, but Bushybrow's right," Naruto cut in, as guilt and misery began to flit across Neji's face. "You might be fine going after the Repenters and dying off afterwards, which, by the way, is one of the stupidest things I've heard since I last spoke to Sas…since I last spoke to an old idiot friend of mine, but the rest of us are definitely not cool with you dying. Got it? Not one bit. We are not cool with having to go to another funeral wake. You say it's inevitable that you're going to die. That's rubbish. Tsunade-bacchan's gone to a conference and, I bet you, she's going to get all the countries working together to make a cure, so you can't give up!"
There was a silence as Neji absorbed his words, his face impassive.
Shikamaru spoke up. "You've already helped us out with the idea on how to find the leader. Besides, there are plenty of things you'll have to do here." He looked around the kitchen of the Tigers' Den. Naruto had pinned up some of the kids' pictures. Mostly they were crayon sketches of children beating up Naruto in creative ways, but there were a couple of Sakura in fearsome shades of pink and, unmistakeably, a few shyly drawn ones of Neji. "Somebody's going to have to make sure the kids don't go out into the streets on the night of the Parade. We don't want any ninja kids getting caught up in the riots."
"Trust us, Neji," Naruto added when Neji seemed about to argue. "We'll find the leader, we'll catch him, and we'll get him back for all of us - for every ninja and civilian in Konoha. Now, shake hands with Lee and say you won't use your chakra until Tsunade-bacchan's gets you cured, and snap of the self-pity. It's boring."
Neji sighed. He relaxed his fists as Naruto spoke. "You're right. You're all right. I shouldn't be so stupid," he muttered, embarrassed that they had seen him in so much despair. The new member in class that morning had got to him more than he had realised. He rubbed his jaw one more time then raised a hand up to Lee. "I'm sorry, Lee-kun. Thank you. I…maybe I needed that. I'll take as much care of my chakra use as I can."
Lee, still sobbing and sniffling, took Neji's offered hand and shook it fervently. "Always a pleasure."
Naruto cleared his throat: "By the way, great timing with the punch and all, but, why are you here, Bushybrows?"
"Oh! I'm here to deliver a map from Guy-sensei," Lee replied quickly and he jumped off the kitchen table to rummage in the basket on his back. He came up with a scroll. He unrolled it and weighted down the corners with some tea cups, then stood back to let the others cluster round. "He thought the Keepers might be interested in this, so he sent me out to inform as many Keepers as I knew, at once, and as quickly as possible! Keeper HQ said Shikamaru had been planning to visit Naruto, so I came here."
"These are the places where Keepers were ambushed by Repenters," said Shikamaru, looking over the map, where there were four large crosses over Konoha. "What about it?"
"May I borrow this pen?" Lee asked Neji, picking up the pen with which he had been filling in his paperwork. Neji nodded.
Lee began to draw on the map. They watched as he drew a curved arc between two of the crosses, then extended the curve to the third, before returning the line to the point at which he had started – a circle appeared and at the centre of the circle was the fourth cross.
For Naruto it was a shape that was very hard to forget. He gasped, "It's a giant sharingan."
"Why would the Repentance do this?" Shikamaru asked, staring at the map. "This, the flyers, the Parades? It's so flashy, it's like they want to be caught."
Neji frowned, glanced momentarily at Naruto, before turning to Shikamaru and lowering his voice. "Do you think the Repentance have something to do with the Uchiha clan?"
"Who knows?" Shikamaru adjusted his sunglasses against the glare of the kitchen light. "One thing's for sure, this whole issue with the Repentance is getting – "
"Troublesome?" Naruto suggested with a sly grin.
Shikamaru paused to narrow his eyes at Naruto. "Yes," Shikamaru relented, when he realised that Naruto couldn't see him glaring because of the sunglasses anyway, "it's getting very troublesome. And it's also getting old."
Thank you for reading!
Next time: Madara makes his offer and Sasuke dreams. What was that about hands in the dark, Kabuto?