Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and the Naruto franchise.
Author's Note: Firstly, thank you so much to KARASU25, Rosebunse and Hot's and Clogs for their continuing support and kind reviews. It is a privilege having you guys on board and I doubt my stamina would have lasted this far without you. Guest, oh mysterious guest, thank you so much for your encouragement. It really does mean a lot to me whenever I get a review. Secondly, thank you to all who have favourited and followed since last time. I hope I can meet your expectations - if you have any at all! - and keep you entertained. We have come now to the climax of the story and, as you can see, I couldn't keep away from writing and I'm back a wee bit earlier than expected. Here is my attempt at action, as the Keepers and Repenters go all out at last. I hope you enjoy this installment! Best, Zen
The day before the Second Repenters' Parade, an advert appeared in all of the Konoha newspapers.
TOMORROW COMES
THE EYE OF THE WORLD SEEKS AN AUDIENCE WITH KONOHA'S FINEST
As soon as the small black and white square was spotted in the back of the Konoha Times, Keepers hurried to the Publications' Office to investigate, but all they found was a building full of editors looking just as puzzled and furious as they were. The editors denied having ever seen the advert before the paper went to print. The Editor-in-Chief went so far as to put his forehead to the ground, in an expression of his deepest regret that the advert had slipped past his scrutiny. The Keepers withdrew, frustrated and more than a little rattled that the Repentance had managed to pull such a public stunt.
Everybody in Konoha knew about the Parade and they anticipated it as they might do a heavy storm.
A day passed. Nara Yoshino finalised plans with Captain Hyuuga, with Shikaku presiding as an advisor. The Keepers went out on one final patrol. They looked for sites being readied for ambush and civilians behaving suspiciously. A confrontation broke out in the market square, when a civilian accused a Keeper of oppressing them with chakra, and what began as an argument quickly degenerated into a short, bloody and messy brawl which didn't stop until Yoshino herself arrived to break it up.
It was a clear windless night. The citizens of Konoha closed their windows, locked their doors, and battened down the hatches. The few shops left on the high street closed early and rolled down the metal shutters. By eight in the evening, the snack bars were closed and their lanterns blown out. By nine, the Runners had already returned to their headquarters, and there was not a man out on the street.
Teuchi took down the shop banner and locked the door to his ramen shop. Once the bicycle was chained up out of sight, he hurried up the stairs to his apartment,washed his hands and slowly lowered himself to his knees before a small shrine set into a cabinet. Looking up at the black and white photo of his old unsmiling wife, he struck a small bronze bell.
"Otsuyu, my dear," he said, closing his eyes and bowing his head, "do me a favour. I understand you keep watch over our daughter, but please, spare some time for our favourite customer and make sure he comes back, safe and sound, to our old shop."
His old arthritic knees ached, but Teuchi stayed praying in front of the shrine for as long as he could stay awake.
"It's looking quiet," muttered Naruto, peering past the blinds of a window in the Keepers' Office. All he could see were empty streets and shuttered shopfronts.
In comparison, the courtyard of the headquarters was bustling with activity. One hundred and fifty Naruto clones were pacing the courtyard, introducing themselves as loudly as possible to the Keeper teams they were bulking out.
An hour earlier, Naruto had a meeting with Shikamaru's mother Yoshino herself to get his orders.
"I want you, the original, with my son," Yoshino had said, her tone accepting neither nonsense nor refusal. The map on her table was being weighted with a large bloodied antler about a metre long and an inch thick. "It's not because you and he are friends. I'm sure your clones would just as likely try to protect my son as you would."
Naruto spluttered, "Try to protect?"
"I need you with him in case the worst happens. If I die, as my son, my men will look to Shikamaru for temporary leadership. You gain the information your clones gathered up until the moment of their disappearance. In this case, the likelihood is that their disappearances will be due to them being killed along with their units." She fixed Naruto with a grim stare. Naruto wondered if this stare was what she had perfected over the years to get her husband and son to become productive citizens of Konoha. Yoshino continued. "With your clones, you will be able to keep my son informed of the outbreaks of violence around the town. If it comes to it, you will also notify him of my death."
What a responsibility to get saddled with, but Naruto swallowed and nodded in agreement without hesitation. It was the same responsibility Kakashi had been burdened with until the day Naruto had come back from the mountains, waiting to tell him about a steadily increasing list of dead of those who were near and dear to him. Naruto had to bear it.
It wasn't death in itself that bothered Naruto. Every time ninjas were hired on anything above a B-class missions it was something they needed to be prepared for. It was an accepted part of Konoha life that not many made it past the age of forty if they remained in full-time service. Ninjas died – frequently, horribly and not always with dignity, but they always hoped to die for something worthwhile. They would die defending Konoha's secrets and protecting their friends and loved ones.
The Plague deaths, and the deaths of the Keepers on the night of the First Parade, however, were different. Those ninjas died for nothing, wasting their lives against enemies without reason. That was why despite their profession as killers for hire, they were all more deeply affected by the Plague and the Sixth Repentance than they cared to admit.
Naruto looked over at Shikamaru poring over a map to memorise their initial patrol route. It wouldn't come to that, of course. Last time the Keepers hadn't known what to expect. They had gone in figuratively blind and come out, well, blinded. This time they were better prepared. They had better numbers and the Marksmen would be joining them and they had their trump card plan of catching out those Bishops.
Shikamaru sighed and folded up the map, slapping it noisily against his desk. He had taken off his sunglasses the previous morning and his eyes were still sensitive to the light.
"Hey, Shikamaru, cold feet?" Naruto teased him.
"Shut up, Naruto. If the Eye of the World's an ex-ANBU officer, we can't afford to underestimate the Repenters," Shikamaru said, glaring at the stack of their flyers on his desk. "We don't what they've been armed with. We don't know what the Eye wants from us or what the point of this Parade is."
Shikamaru had a point but all he was doing was winding himself up, so Naruto shrugged. "The point of the Parade is to mess up the town."
"Then what's the point of messing up the town?" Shikamaru asked, leaning back in his chair to put his feet up on the desk, apparently relaxed but Naruto knew he was far from it. "I'm getting fed up with waiting for the Repentance to tell us what they want us to know only when it suits them."
"Who says we're going to wait?" Naruto looked down into the courtyard again, where his clones were sauntering through the crowd, picking their noses and stretching, trying to keep people relaxed and morale ticking. "We're going to find them, not wait for them to find us, and when we do, we're going to make them spill everything we want. It's all going to end tonight."
Shikamaru looked at him incredulously. Then he smirked. "If only everybody was as much of a fool as you, Naruto."
"Konoha's most unpredictable ninja is a fool and damn proud of it, but, easy on the fool."
"Easy on the fool?" cut in a voice from the side. "So, I take it that stupid, moron, dumbass, blockhead, lummox, dimwit, buffoon, nincompoop, ignoramus and idiot are all still fair game then?"
Naruto and Shikamaru looked up. A young woman in jounin red hazard gear was standing beside them. The red gear was clearly a little too large for her. Safety pins were holding up the folds of the hazard cloak. Her visor had been pinned to the cloak collar to hold it in place. A tatty grey Marksman armband was stitched to her sleeve. The girl in the gear, however, was certainly neither a jounin nor a Marksman.
Naruto exclaimed, "Ino, what are you doing here?"
"I'm here as your Marksman chakra sensor to find the Repentance Bishops. This evening, you've both got to call me Fu."
"But you aren't even a Marksman," Shikamaru pointed out doggedly.
"My cousin Fu is though." Ino pointed at her gear. "This is his hazard gear. He was going to be on your team, but I talked him into swapping. When it comes to chakra sensing I'm almost better than he is anyway, so count yourselves lucky."
When the ANBU had been disbanded, her cousin Yamanaka Fu had, after many years of absence and communication so sparse that his letters were usually just simple confirmations that he was still alive, returned to the Yamanaka family house. He had left for Root a kind and talented boy. He had come back, still kind, immensely powerful, but he was uncomfortable being around so many people again, especially in the loud and straight-talking Yamanaka household.
He joined the Marksman, seeing similarity in the teams of pairs to what he had grown used to in the ANBU, but since his partner had died he had taken to keeping quietly to himself in the Marksmen tent. Nobody spoke to him. His recruitment to Root meant that nobody knew who he was.
It was lonely and difficult adjusting to so-called normal society. It made him reminisce of the close bond he shared with his Root partner. Aburame Torune, however, had departed the town with the rest of his clan. When Ino had approached Fu to demand to take his place, saying that she wanted to go because Shikamaru was an old friend and the only teammate she had left, he had let her take his jounin gear without question. Loyalty to teammates was, in Fu's mind, second only to a ninja's loyalty to Konoha.
"What about the hospital?" Shikamaru asked, staring as she picked at the fraying fabric of grey cloth on her sleeve. "Who's on your shift?"
"Three of Kakashi's dogs," Ino replied breezily. Shikamaru and Naruto looked scandalised. "I was only on night watch duty anyway. They'll probably do a better job than me. Anyway, the point is – if you think my last remaining teammate is going to be heading out against the Repentance, with barely healed eyes, after what happened last time, you've got another thing coming." She slapped her hand down on his desk and Shikamaru started. "Get your head out of the clouds, Shikamaru."
In the Tigers' Den, the lights were on in the kitchen and the kitchen alone. The children were already asleep upstairs, or so Neji hoped. He sat sullenly in the chair, facing Sakura and Lee and going over the same Zero Chakra exercise over and over again, so stiff with boredom he wondered if he had actually died already. He grimaced and Sakura noticed his displeasure.
"Neji-kun, why don't you try a different exercise?" She flicked through the sheets of paper in front of her and pulled out one covered with lots of stick men doing things far too energetic for how Neji was feeling. "Maybe this one? This doesn't look so bad."
"I refuse to do star jumps here," he said mulishly, and he slid another lead weight onto the string tied around his wrist. "It is the kitchen. I will break something. Besides, the children are sleeping."
Sakura and Lee both looked at each other anxiously. Lee had come not long after the Runners had returned to headquarters, sent by Guy-sensei to apparently 'keep Neji company' because 'young'uns left alone and isolated lose the vigour of youth too quickly to be called healthy'. To translate, it meant that Lee and Guy didn't trust Neji to stay put inside in the Tigers' Den whilst Naruto went out to deal with the Repenters.
No doubt Sakura was there for the same reason. She had apparently been given leave from her hospital shift to prepare notes for the next morning, when she would be substituting for Shizune in Neji's Zero Chakra class. Shizune was finding it difficult enough running the hospital in the Hokage's absence. Neji, however, suspected that Naruto had asked her to sit with Neji through the night to keep an eye on him too.
"Oh, brilliant, Neji-kun!" Lee exclaimed, clapping his hands as Neji dropped another weight onto the string around his wrist. "That's already two more weights than earlier and you still – Oh…"
Lee's face fell. The string was turning purple. A small current of chakra, so small Neji couldn't even feel himself moving it, was running down the string. Neji tore the string off his wrist and tossed it onto the table, the weights landing on the surface with a clatter.
"Shhh!" Lee and Sakura both shushed him, fingers to their lips, eyes flickering up to the ceiling.
He scowled and looked to the clock on the wall. It was getting to eleven thirty. "Naruto and Shikamaru should be on patrol by now."
"They will be perfectly fine without us," Sakura said, bending over her notes again. When she saw Neji look sceptical, she sighed. "Don't worry about them so much, Neji-kun. Besides, if the whole of Konoha turned out against the Sixth Repentance it would practically be a civil war. We've got to show some restraint. It's a police issue, not a state one."
Neji wondered who she was trying to convince – him or herself. He kept up a moody silence. Lee began scooping up Neji's lead weights from the table back into their bag.
"Here you go, Neji-kun," Lee said brightly, holding out the little drawstring bag, the weights rattling inside like dice. "Why don't you try that exercise again?"
Snatching the bag out of Lee's hand, Neji glowered and glanced up at the clock. "Perhaps in five minutes."
The fridge hummed. The clock ticked. Water gurgled in a drain and Sakura continued to scribble notes into the margin of Shizune's class plans.
Unable to bear the silence again, Lee pushed back his chair. "Neji-kun, where's the kettle here?"
Neji indicated a cupboard with a jerk of his chin. Pinned to its front was one of the few children's drawings of him. Naruto had joked that it looked like a spider sprouting two huge satellite disks from its back, but apparently the two huge foil circles were supposed to be eyes. Neji decided that he would never be able to understand small children.
"If we're staying up all night, I'm going to make a whole pot," Lee continued to talk to himself, taking out the kettle and putting it on the stove. "Guy-sensei says that caffeine is the lifeblood of every hardworking and high pressured youth of today. We must have tea."
"Neji-kun, where are you going?" said Sakura suddenly, as Neji rose from the table, tucking the bag of lead weights up one of his sleeves.
"I thought I heard something upstairs." When Sakura raised an eyebrow, he asked, "Do you honestly trust those children to stay quiet tonight?"
Sakura got up to follow. "I'll come with you."
Lee continued to watch the kettle boil and Neji and Sakura left the kitchen. They went up the stairs in silence, not a single step creaking and when they got to the landing they were rewarded with the sound of bare feet slapping wooden boards, just as Neji has suspected.
Yae and Shigure, the twin girls, darted out from behind a dresser. At the sight of Neji and Sakura standing tall at the top of the stairs, they screamed and ran in the opposite direction, clinking and clattering with the array of training kunai jammed into their coat pockets. One of them had her trusty slingshot tucked into her trousers.
Sakura was on them in an instant, seizing them by the hoods of their coats. "What are you two up to?"
The twins looked at each other and Neji realised what was going on.
"Ignore them." Neji turned sharply towards the main dormitory. "They're bait."
"Bait?" Sakura repeated.
"They're distracting us from the real escape attempt."
Neji flung open the dormitory door. "Stop where you are!"
Sakura followed with one twin in each hand. She peered over Neji's shoulder, saw shadowy movement inside, and heard a buzz of rapid and alarmed whispers before Neji flicked on the light.
The ten or so children froze and looked up. Some were still in the process of piling spare blankets and pyjamas under the covers of their beds. Others were getting dressed into dark clothes and collecting up their toy weapons. Nagira, the obvious ringleader, and the dark-haired girl they had picked up running the Southern child gang, Tsubame, were both at the window, tying a string of knotted blankets to a training kunai that had been hammered into the floor.
"What do you all think you're doing?" Neji growled, startling even himself with how much he sounded like his own father. He noticed the two twin girls hanging from Sakura's hands flinch.
"What does it look like?" Nagira replied, indicating the rope of blankets with the training knife in his hand. "We're going to help Naruto-niisan. We're going to get back at those Repenters, for every one of us kids they killed - "
"Don't be ridiculous. You think you stand a chance against the Sixth Repentance?"
"We're ninjas," said Tsubame simply. "We can use chakra. Sure we can."
"You don't have the weapons. You don't have the training. You don't have the numbers," breathed Neji, advancing through the futons towards the boy and girl by the window. "You aren't even genins. These Repenters have killed jounins with years of field experience and you think a bunch of Academy students will make a difference? Who came up with this ridiculous plan?"
Tsubame's eyes slid to Nagira and Neji rounded on the boy, raising his eyebrows.
Nagira eyeballed Neji as though the eight or seven year's difference between them was a minor technicality. Neji stared back, matching the boy glare for glare.
"Well?" he prompted.
Nagira spat. "At least we're doing something, rather than sitting around in the kitchen and waiting for something to happen."
Sakura suddenly dropped one of the girls and seized Neji's shoulder as she felt his chakra flare. Neji's balled fists trembled with barely suppressed anger. Even Nagira took an involuntary step back.
In the nervous silence, two of the children went to the window to close it. Nagira shot them a bitter look of betrayal. They ignored him. When the cool pressure of chakra flowing around Neji's eyes, tickling his eyeballs to activate into the byakugan, subsided, he returned to glowering down at the boy who barely reached his navel.
"Do you know what they call officers who lead their men into certain death?" Neji kept his eyes fixed on Nagira and the boy began to squirm. "They call them salesmen, because they sell their men dreams they shouldn't be able to afford but think they can, and salesmen are not fit to be officers. They are merchants, not ninjas. Let me make this clear, Nagira-kun - you are very, very far from being able to call yourself a ninja. Having chakra coils –" he raised his voice as several children looked ready to object "- does not make you a ninja. Understood?"
Nagira flushed beetroot red to the tips of his ears and almost lowered his eyes to the floor in shame, but he wasn't going to go down so easily. He dared to smile. "You're only staying here in the Den to look after us, right?" he said. "If we all went out to help Naruto-niisan, you'd have to follow us, and then you'd be able to help him too."
Neji bent down so that he was face to face with the boy and Nagira could get full benefit of his blank silver eyes that had so often been accused of being cold and uncaring. "Don't try being clever with me. Ninjas bigger and smarter than you have tried that, and I am the one who is still standing and able to talk about it."
The smile disappeared from Nagira's face.
"Now," Neji straightened and looked about the room, "since none of you look as though you plan on getting any sleep, I want you all down in the kitchen where we can see exactly what you're doing. Go on!"
The children started and rushed to the stairs, looking peeved and a couple of the younger ones even frightened. Neji hadn't meant to scare them but a small part of him felt that it served them right. Seeing Nagira preparing to throw a rope out of the window had made him momentarily despair.
Neji brought up the rear with Nagira beside him and the two twin girls in front. When he was about to put his foot down on the top step, a curious thing happened.
Two chimes rang out in the house.
Sakura stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Someone was ringing the doorbell.
Lee came out of the kitchen. His eyebrows bristled. "Neji-kun, were you expecting somebody this evening?"
The children on the stairs turned to Neji with questioning eyes. He shook his head. "Noone apart from the average anti-ninja cultist."
Sakura laughed. "Since when did members of religious cults go around ringing doorbells - ?" She thought for a moment. "Forget I asked that."
Neji took one step back up the stairs and went to the window on the landing, the one from which Naruto liked to greet guests, the one with a clear view of the Den gates. He tugged the blinds. They shot up and moonlight streamed onto the landing and he saw a hundred or so Repenters in ghostly bleached robes and aluminium masks, clustered about the gates. One had his hand outstretched to press the doorbell.
At the movement of the blinds and the appearance of Neji at the window, they turned their blank masked faces towards him like sunflowers to the sun.
"Who is it?" Sakura said from the bottom of the stairs, her nervous whisper carrying through the dark. The children, sensing something was wrong, were silent. "Is it them?"
Before he could reply, he saw one of the Repenters lift something to its face – a megaphone.
"Neji-kun?" Sakura asked again.
Neji ignored her, undid the latch and opened the window so they could all hear.
The Repenter tapped the mouthpiece with a finger to test it, cleared his throat and began: "Good evening, and welcome to the Second Repenters' Parade. Tonight we walk to heal and to bring salvation to the many. May the Eye of the World watch over you, and allow you to see through all illusions."
"Don't say anything back. Just listen, and then we can think things from there," Sakura hissed and Lee nodded in agreement. Neji reluctantly remained silent.
Neji wondered why none of their neighbours were coming to their aid. Surely they could hear the Repenters halfway down the street? The curtains across the road were twitching. People were watching and doing nothing. He gripped the window ledge so tight the edge splintered beneath his fingers.
"We have heard that you have taken in a number of children who were orphaned by the Plague then deemed unfit to remain in the usual orphanages. That was very good of you, but we are sorry to have to point out you made a grave mistake in doing so. These children have already been condemned by the gods. By tending them, feeding them, caring for them as you are doing, you are cheating the gods of deaths that they have already marked as theirs," the Repenter's voice echoed in the street in before the old Hyuuga gatehouse. "We have come to finish their work and correct the course of the gods' grand plan."
"I don't understand what they're saying," one of the twins complained.
"They're saying that we should have died with the rest of our families by the Plague," Nagira said with a brutal bluntness, "and because we didn't, they've come to finish the job."
"But some of our families are dead because of them, not the Plague!" a boy objected, and Neji dimly recognised the voice as Tsuruya Yabane, the little boy Naruto had picked up on his first and only day as a Marksman, now a resident of the Tigers' Den – the boy whose father had been taken in by the Repenters' rhetoric and had tried to force poison on both his sons.
A white light flashed over the East of Konoha, followed by two more flashes like lightning in close succession, over the town centre and a residential area in the North East. Keepers and Marksmen were engaging the Repenters in combat and flash bombs were being detonated. The Repenters ignored the flashing sky.
"We have no particular quarrel with the Konoha Tigers. All we ask is for the children. We ask that you bring them out to us and that they accept their sins. We will then help them on their way to repentance. We seek only mercy for those already marked by the Demon. Please, do not be alarmed."
Neji had once been told by a cousin that the worst killers were the ones who killed in kindness. His cousin had meant it as a warning, that when their roles as a ninjas required them to put a blade to somebody's throat that they didn't delude themselves with empty justifications - that they were right and their victim wrong, that they were good and their opponent evil. A man who killed in the name of kindness, justice, the general good was suffering from terrible delusions of grandeur.
He tapped one of the twins on the shoulder. When she turned around with wide eyes, he lowered his voice and said, "Give me your slingshot."
"Let your children come forth," the Repenter was saying, his voice a whining buzz in Neji's ears. "They will be the first children to be saved. The other orphanage children still have hope for the future, but for these ones, the ones marked by sin, the ones who wrongfully escaped the clutches of the Plague, there is no hope for them – "
A small lead weight whistled through the air and struck him squarely in the centre of his forehead.
The Repenter broke off in mid-sentence. The megaphone slipped from his hands. He crumpled to the ground. The other Repenters turned to look at their fallen comrade then back to the window, from where the silver-eyed ninja in a disposable facemask had shot him down.
Neji pulled another lead weight from the bag up his sleeve. He loaded the slingshot and aimed it out of the window once more.
"We are not interested in anything you have to say!" He felt something catch in his lungs but pushed the feeling aside. Now wasn't the time. "You are not getting the children! You will never have them, and if you want to help them Repent so badly, you'll have to make us Repent first."
At the bottom of the stairs, Sakura and Lee's jaws dropped. For one thing, they had told Neji not to talk to the Repenters and now there he was at the window - shooting them down with his Zero Chakra exercise weights and shouting at them. He couldn't have been more provocative had he stripped to his waist and drummed his chest, shouting, "Come on if you think you're hard enough!"
Sakura buried her face in her hands. "He's been spending far too much time with Naruto lately."
The Repenters swarmed like an angry hive and drew their knives.
Shikamaru's Keeper patrol unit was a group of twelve ninjas. At the front was Shikamaru, flanked on each side by Keepers. Behind the Keepers came the Marksmen, of which there were two in a unit. Ino was to Naruto's right and a Hyuuga man was on the left. Three Keepers finally brought up the back. In effect, they formed a ring of Keepers and Marksmen around a core of Naruto and his three clones.
They were moving down one of the main public thoroughfares when the first flash bomb went off ahead of them, lighting the sky white and bright as day, followed instantly by a second and a third elsewhere.
"That was the town centre," said a Keeper, as they blinked the purple afterglow from their eyes. "What do we do? Do we go closer?"
"Just give me a moment."
Shikamaru staggered towards the side of the road. Doubling over, he pulled off his visor and threw up into the gutter, once, twice, three times until there was nothing more he could bring up and all he could do was dry heave. The Keepers stared.
"Come on, keep it together." Shikamaru felt a supporting hand on his shoulder, turned and found Ino, her face white with concern. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong."
"So says the person trembling at the sight of a flash bomb," Ino said cuttingly, but Shikamaru could feel her hand on his shoulder trembling too. "Was it a flashback?"
"I – " Shikamaru swallowed, the bitter taste of bile as unwelcome as the shocked gazes of his patrol unit, "I don't...Yes, yes, it must have been."
The flash had gone off in the sky, lit up the underside of the clouds, and the next instant he had been assaulted by memories of the First Parade, so vivid he could smell the blood and the wet deer fur, feel the grit being crushed against his forehead and hear the echoes of a cold, reedy voice speaking over his head and into his ears again. His heart was beating so hard it was as though it was trying to leap out of his chest and run away back home on its own. His eyes were streaming with water. The memory had hit him like a sneak blow to the back of the head, catching him unawares. Suddenly he felt vulnerable.
Another hand squeezed his other shoulder, and the pain brought him back to earth. Naruto shook him and spoke in a fierce whisper. "You'll just have to deal with it. Come on, genius. Stop standing there staring at the drain. Your sick isn't that much of an artistic masterpiece."
Ino hooked her arm under Shikamaru's right, and Naruto his arm under Shikamaru's left. After a few staggering steps, Shikamaru took a deep breath and straightened. He nodded at Ino and Naruto to let go. His eyes were aching and there was sweat on his forehead.
"We go to the town centre," he said firmly. "Back into formation."
The Keepers nodded and obeyed. The Hyuuga Marksman still seemed concerned, but said nothing and quietly accepted the orders. As Shikamaru adjusted the visor back over his head, they continued to hurry through the streets.
The night rustled and shadow deer bounded towards them, huge black shadows swirling and leaping along the walls of the houses. They were coming from the town centre. It was the Keeper alarm, sent out by units in danger. If they were encountering shadow deer they were heading in the right direction.
The roads and streets began to feel oddly familiar, as though Naruto had strolled along them or dashed over the shop-front canopies, many, many times before in this very direction.
They began to hear shouts and clashing metal ahead of them. A man in long red robes ran out from a side street - a Hyuuga Marksman. He had seen Shikamaru's unit approaching with his activated byakugan. He dashed towards them and skidded to a stop, bowing his head.
"Reporting the situation," the Marksman panted, blinking blood out of his eye. His visor was torn at the temples. There was a bloody cut under his eyebrow, where a knife had glanced off his forehead protector. "There are about fifty of them, and we number seven. Five of us died in the chaos after the flash bomb. The rest are fighting."
Naruto stiffened as a barrage of images flooded his mind – he felt his arm cover his face to protect his eyes, felt the warmth of the flash bomb light touch his arm, then watched a massive panic of knives unfold as the Repenters used their numbers against the experience of the ninjas, before his clone, defending a Keeper, took a knife under the ear and dispersed.
One of his clones with the unit had just been killed. It wasn't the first that night. He had already detected five other clones vanish – two blinded by flash bombs and had their throats slit, one stabbed in the back with a pitchfork, one with a knife, one set on fire. It made Naruto shiver and rub his throat.
There were now only five fighting ahead of them – two clones and three Keepers. Naruto nodded at the three clones beside him and they ran as a group down the road to enter the battle.
"And," the Marksman continued, wheezing, "we've found out what the Repenters want with the Parade."
Shikamaru stepped closer. The Marksman's voice was dying to a whisper. He could barely hear him over the sound of fighting in the square ahead. The man was weakening. "What do they want?"
"They said they're going to stop ninjas from sinning by abusing chakra, the power of the gods, by using it to fight as a weapon in war, and destroy Konoha's future as a ninja village. They're going to…" the Marksman swallowed thickly and trailed off. "They're going to burn down…"
His knees buckled. He sank to the ground and fell on his side. At last they saw the knife buried up to its hilt in his lower back. The Hyuuga Marksman standing behind Naruto gave a gasp of, "Hisaki!" and pushed past to take up his clansman in his arms, but Shikamaru got their first, and seized the man by the collar of his hazard gear.
"Did you see who the Bishop was?" Shikamaru demanded. "Did you see the chakra link to their leader?"
"Take yours hand off my nephew, Keeper," growled the Hyuuga Marksman. "He needs aid. Let go."
The Marksman, Hisaki, raised a hand to silence his uncle. He looked straight at Shikamaru and nodded weakly. "I saw him, so have the other Marksmen, but," Hisaki seized Shikamaru's sleeve as he straightened, "you can't let him know that you know he's been seen already…not until…not until you've disarmed him…"
Hisaki's hand fell away and he slipped into unconsciousness, his face white with blood loss. The Hyuuga Marksman pulled off his nephew's visor and with a tenderness that surprised Naruto folded it into quarters to tuck under the young man's head.
"I must stay with him," the Marksman told Shikamaru. "He is the son of my sister and if I don't carry out aid immediately he will – "
Shikamaru was already nodding. "Catch up with us as soon as you can. Naruto, do you have enough chakra for another clone?"
He had plenty of chakra. Leaving the two Hyuuga Marksmen under the guard of the clone, they continued onwards.
Feeling increasingly unsettled by the sounds of battle ahead, Naruto drilled his hands through the seals again to make another clone. When it popped into existence and saluted, he whispered, "Go back to the Tigers' Den. Check that they're all okay there."
The clone nodded and leapt away onto the roof.
"So it worked, right? The Marksmen and chakra sensors spotted who the Bishop is. We'll be able to catch him, no problem," Naruto said, grinning with an optimism he didn't really feel.
Ino shook her head. "That guy back there said that we can't let the Bishop know that we know until he's been disarmed. And then he said something about burning – "
"He said 'burn down', so probably a building of some kind." Shikamaru folded his arms gravely. He turned to Ino. "When we get to the fighting, I want you to find out who the Bishop is and relay it to every ninja you can in the area."
Ino nodded. "Long range telepathic broadcast. Got it. I might have to go up to rooftops or the trees then."
With a feeling as though he had been punched in the guts, Naruto felt another clone pop out of existence. He winced, and then…
They were out of the street and into a wooded square that was all too familiar to Naruto, as he finally realised why the roads had filled him with such a heady sense of nostalgia.
The roads led to the Academy.
He had been so caught up in the sights and sounds being sent back to him by the clones, the flashing lights in the sky, the bleeding Hyuuga Marksman and Shikamaru vomiting his dinner all over a roadside that he had hardly taken in their route, but now here he was and there was the Academy and the little square paved with bricks and fat white cobbles was slippery with blood.
Three Keepers and four clones – each ninja was fighting a ring of Repenters, with knives and their wit and their taijutsu skills alone, and not to kill. Nara Yoshino and Captain Hyuuga had been very clear in their orders. They had to minimise civilian deaths, so scattered all about the square were the bodies of unconscious Repenters, knocked out by the blunt ends of kunais and fingers jabbed into pressure points.
"No shadow binding, no flashy chakra use." Shikamaru reminded the Keepers beside him as they assessed the scene from the edge of the square. "We don't want to aggravate them any further."
"Are you kidding, Shikamaru? They're trying to kill us. I don't think you could aggravate them any further," said Ino.
"I have a bad feeling we can," Shikamaru muttered darkly.
There was cry and a yell and suddenly one of the Keepers fell to the ground. He disappeared under an onslaught of kitchen and gardening tools and a thick dark liquid sprayed up into the air.
Shikamaru's unit moved in.
"All of the kids in the kitchen!" Neji shouted down the stairs.
"What? Are you insane?" Nagira screamed at him.
Neji rolled his eyes. He picked the boy up by the scruff of the neck, dangled him over the bannister and dropped him down the stairwell. Sakura rushed to catch him before he could fall. "The kitchen has weapons, barred windows and a door to the old log store, which means an emergency escape route under the house. Do as you are told. You have to take care of everyone else."
The black look dripping with venom Nagira had initially shot Neji dissipated at those final words. He nodded, jumped out of Sakura's arms and ran to the kitchen. Good, Neji thought, turning back to the window. The children were in the safest part of the house. He had borrowed the twins' slingshot and the Zero Chakra exercise weights were tucked up his sleeves. The dead man walking was finally feeling alive again.
Lee dashed round the lowest floor, checking that all windows and back doors were locked and barred, if not with metal security grills like the kitchen, then at least with things that would hinder an intruder, like a fish-tank or a scattering of nails and marbles just beneath a window. He sprinted up the stairs past Neji to set traps on the windows most easily accessible from the ground. Neji looked back out of the window.
The first of the Repenters had climbed to the top of the gatehouse wall. Neji shut one eye, stretched the sling back to his ear until it creaked and let go. The weight hit the Repenter between the eyes. Her mask slipped. The woman tumbled backwards off the wall and into the street.
"Neji-kun, I've checked and set traps on all the windows I can," Lee said, jogging on the spot behind him as he came down from the floor above.
"Good, now – " Neji paused to aim weights at another three Repenters climbing over the wall. With a resounding crack the gates caved in under the weight of twenty or so men leaning against it and the Repenters flooded through in a wave of bleached cloth and gleaming faces. "- Now we go down."
He pulled himself up onto the window ledge and crouched. No wind, he noted. No wind at all. Not even a dry whisper against his ears.
The Repenters were battering at the door. A group budded off to go round the back.
"Konoha Tigers!" he shouted, stopped for a moment, then cleared his throat sheepishly and carried on, hoping that Naruto never got to hear about this: "Hear us roar!"
With an Academy-standard training kunai in one hand and the cloth bag of lead weights swinging in the other, Neji dropped onto the crowd.
Naruto rushed to the aid of the Keeper, snatching the back of a Repenter's bleached hazard gear and pulling him out of the pack. He saw a glint of a metal edge and threw his fist before the man could reverse the grip on the kitchen knife.
Two Repenters took notice of him and pulled away from stabbing at the Keeper on the ground. There was a hungry madness in their eyes, like they had always been waiting, just waiting, for this moment. Which wasn't true, Naruto told himself, as he parried a hammer being aimed at his head then scythed and jabbed so that the Repenter fell back. They had been led to feel that way, by the Eye of the World, exploiting the chakra-less civilians' growing feeling that the ninjas were using them just as the Repenters exploited the weakness of the locked in families.
Another three Repenters came swinging at him with a sickle, a knife, a cloth bag full of stones. He ducked the sickle, felt it stroke the back of his head, dodged the knife stabbing at his eye but he dodged too wide and the bag of stones landed on the side of his chest with a thump and a crack.
Winded, Naruto staggered and fell. His palm squelched against something sticky on the ground. Blood was running between the cracks in the paving.
His clone still fighting alongside a Keeper across the square. It took a pickaxe to the ribs and vanished in a puff of smoke and the information it had gathered came to Naruto in a rush of sensations – the moment the patrol unit had come across the Parade, a Repenter who replied softly and dryly to the questions the Keepers asked him, talking and talking…
The Repenter's words reverberated out of his clone's memories. Naruto froze, not daring to believe his clone's ears, and so it was with a jolt that he noticed the Repenters advancing upon him with their weapons raised.
In a whirl of blue robes, Shikamaru and another Keeper tackled them from the side.
"Get up, Naruto!" Shikamaru yelled at him, pulling him up by his arm. "Ino just messaged me. She's got a lock on. Now she's just confirming that she's right and hasn't grabbed onto bait before she broadcasts."
"Shikamaru, what that Marksman said back there about destroying Konoha's ninja future, I know what he meant."
Shikamaru flipped the kunai round in his hand and rammed the hilt into the back of a Repenter's head. "What did he mean?"
"They're going to stop kids being trained to become ninjas in the first place – that's why they're here at the Academy. They're going to burn it down." Naruto paused, blinked. "I can't believe I'm actually stopping people burning down school."
"Burn down the Academy?" Shikamaru caught the wrist of a Repenter charging towards him and flipped the woman onto her back. He scanned the square with searching eyes then turned back to Naruto with a frown. "The lanterns are out and there's no gasoline. How are they going to - ?"
"Bishop spotted," echoed Ino's voice in their heads, sharp and urgent. Naruto started, nearly fumbled the parry to counter the swing of a Repenter's knife. The blade whistled past his ear. "Man with a sickle fighting Naruto's clone. Reminder from Nara Shikamaru – we can't look as though we're targeting him. Stay discrete. Knock out, don't kill."
There! By the walls of the Academy was a man who looked the same as any of the other Repenters. There was nothing remarkable about him at all. He was swinging a bloody sickle at Naruto's clone, which was circling and looking for an opening. A nearby Keeper head-butted his opponent unconscious and went to help the clone.
Red light shone out overhead and there was a loud, resounding boom. A fierce wind whipped through the streets. Windows rattled. Tiles clattered. The ground rumbled and shook.
"What was that?" a Keeper cried, looking up at the sky in alarm.
"They just blew up the Library!" Naruto shouted, as one of his clones at the site of the explosion, fighting alongside a Keeper unit, was crushed under falling debris.
The Bishop suddenly hefted a second blade into his other hand and roared. He swung blindly with the sickle and the knife and the clone leaped back. He darted sideways, the bleached hazard gear flapping. Naruto's clone and the Keeper gave chase.
"Stop!" Naruto cried, as the Repenter, clone and Keeper approached the Academy gate. "Don't follow him! He's got a – "
Bomb strapped to his chest, he was about to say, but he was too late. The man, the Bishop, hurled himself at the gates of the Academy and, with a crash like thunder that shook the earth and shattered glass, the square was filled with fire.
Thank you for reading!
Next time: Chaos continues in Konoha and the Eye of the World awaits Konoha's finest.