Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and the Naruto franchise.
Author's Note: And after the long break, hello all! Apologies for the late upload. I was visiting relatives in a place that has neither internet nor computers except in the local primary school, and I'd be damned if I tried breaking in there. Anyhow, first things first, Happy New Year to you all. This year, it's the year of the horse, so may the horse be with you! (I'm sorry, I couldn't resist)
A massive thank you to RainDove, Rosebunse, and yume18, who are still reviewing and somehow still reading this story. Without you guys this story might not still be happening. A belated happy birthday to reader fox tamer 113 - I'm so sorry this couldn't make it for your big day, but I hope you enjoy at least one of the sections of this chapter. A special mention must also be given to Ser Serendipity (whose story Not Sick is looking very interesting) who went on a marathon run and reviewed...well...almost every chapter here. What could I possibly say to that? Thank you, Ser. I doff my cap to you.
In short, to every reader who has favourited and followed this story, thank you, and it's lovely to hear from you. All the best for 2014! Best, Zen :D
Shikamaru had never liked presentations. Far too often they were for ninjas with too much mouth and not enough head, to blow their hot air onto others. Anybody with any sense, in Shikamaru's books, kept their thoughts to themselves. There was constancy in keeping to the shadows. As soon as something was brought out into the light, then they were just as likely to flash, dim, bang and fade as the lights were, which was, well, troublesomely unpredictable.
Yes, lights flashed, which was the more pressing reason he was hoping for this presentation to end soon. The Konoha Publications Offices had brought cameras and they flashed throughout the conference with bright, white lights. He rubbed his eyes against the headache and waited for his turn to speak, although there were plenty of other reasons for his headache.
As usual in the morning, the daily report of suspicious individuals who had been captured or sighted around the town walls had come in from the Quarantine Guard. That was the first that Shikamaru heard of Uchiha Sasuke's return to Konoha.
Deeply disturbed had not covered the extent of his feelings. His first thought was that Sasuke was up to something. Perhaps whoever Sasuke was working for had wanted to take advantage of the amnesty for rogues and sent him into Konoha as a spy, but after the initial shock had worn off, his deep unease was replaced with worry. If Sasuke had come back, only to betray them all over again, Shikamaru didn't want to think how much pain that would cause Naruto and Sakura a second time round.
He had never been able to say it to Naruto's face, but sometimes Shikamaru felt that everybody would be better off if Uchiha Sasuke simply disappeared. Yes, even Uchiha Sasuke himself, on his blinkered quest for revenge, would be better off if he ceased to exist. If there was any sense in the world, the Plague should have killed him in the wilderness and put Sasuke out of his misery and forever beyond Naruto's hopes.
But Shikamaru's idea of how the world should be run clearly wasn't the same as that of the gods, or fate, or whatever presiding cosmic force people believed in. No names had been formally put forward, but it wasn't difficult to hazard a guess as to who the rumoured Plague-immune ninja was. Kakashi had been recently dispatched, by the Hokage no less, to bring back Sasuke (again), a mission that ultimately failed (again), but, not long after Kakashi's return, Konoha had seen the release of special orders that Sasuke be found and brought in alive – with an unusually marked emphasis on alive.
According to the Guards' report, Tsunade and Sasuke had met and held a significantly long conversation with each other upon his arrival, the ending of which they had not been privy to. Shikamaru couldn't help feeling unsettled. No other returning rogue had had such a privilege. He recalled that Sasuke had then been transferred to the Konoha Hospital instead of the prison. Perhaps the Hokage had made some kind of deal with Sasuke, which needed Tsunade to keep a close eye on him.
Whatever the case, the return of Uchiha Sasuke was causing ripples.
There was a smattering of applause and another barrage of flashing lights. Shikamaru blinked and covered his eyes with his hands again. Nara Yoshino had finished her speech outlining the Keepers' new targets for their Second Parade Night crime investigations. She sat down and Tsunade readied her notes.
As soon as the Hokage pulled back her chair and leaned forward to the microphone, the hall died down to silence.
"The Keepers have come to a unanimous decision concerning the identity of the Eye of the World. In light of the significance that this conclusion will have for not just Konoha, but the Land of Fire's future, it was decided that I, Senju Tsunade, the Fifth Hokage, should reveal the results of the investigation."
Tsunade's voice rang out sharp and clear over the excited murmur of the crowd. "Considering the significant number of individuals influenced by a powerful doujutsu, the symbolic use of the sharingan, and obvious malicious intent towards Konoha, the Eye of the World has been identified as Uchiha Madara, a possessor of a sharingan eye, leader of the Akatsuki, and the terrorist who recently disrupted the Hihoutou Conference."
Naruto and Lee had said they would be watching from the public gallery. Shikamaru stared resolutely down at the desk, shielded his eyes from the flashing cameras and wondered if they were ashamed of him.
I have to go along with this, he wanted to say, so don't call me out on the lie.
Shikamaru hoped they could read it in his face, even though it was probably wearing the same resigned look of boredom with the general state of the world as it always did. As Ino would probably have said to him then, Alas, the woes of a resting bitch-face.
"We have found that Madara had a lair in active use not more than a three days walk from Konoha, a prime position from which to target our citizens. He was looking to use Konoha citizens as subjects for illegal clinical trials and we believe that one way he was going to obtain these was by encouraging followers of his Sixth Repentance cult to capture weakened ninja subjects," Tsunade read out from the notes in front of her. "The First Repenters' Parade was a test to determine how much influence he had over cult members, as well as begin his activities of terror. The Second Repenters' Parade, held during my absence, we can consider a show of his power in an attempt to pressurise myself and the other Kages into making an unacceptable deal with him."
"A question!" cried a man in chuunin blue in the front row, thrusting a quivering hand up into the air.
"Accepted," Tsunade said without faltering and Shikamaru admired her apparent conviction, but was deeper down appalled. How often in the past had Konoha leaders forced through lies as convincingly as this?
"Hokage-sama, is this man really the Uchiha Madara of legends, or is he another man merely using a famous name?" asked the journalist, his pen poised on a pad.
"We believe that this is a new man. From what I saw of his movements at the conference, I would predict that he is a young man, possibly in his early thirties. We also have no record of the original Uchiha Madara using a teleportation jutsu such as the one observed at the Hihoutou Conference."
"Did Madara then use this teleportation jutsu to transport himself out of the special ANBU holding cell?" the journalist asked loudly.
Tsunade nodded to Shikamaru, indicating his turn to stand and deliver according to the script. He tried not to look too reluctant as he rose and cleared his throat. The casual gesture that had become taboo over the course of the Plague made the journalist flinch.
"When I and my unit came to the special ANBU cell, using the byakugan, we clearly detected the Eye of the World's chakra signature within the cell, separate and distinct to that of Shimura Danzo's. Shimura Danzo and the Eye of the World were both in the cell." He couldn't stop his eyes flickering up to the public gallery as he spoke. "When the cell opened, however, we found Shimura Danzo alone and the Eye of the World gone. The only way such an escape would have been possible… would have been through an exceptionally powerful teleportation jutsu."
His brief statement complete, Shikamaru dipped his head towards the journalists and dropped back into his seat. Tsunade gave him a nod of approval and once again took the lead.
In the public gallery Naruto and Lee were fuming. Lee's face was a radiant red of indignation. Naruto would have pointed out that he looked as constipated as an iwa ninja coming to terms with a diet of rocks, but he knew that the only thing that would spring out of his mouth was a massive roar of "Bullshit!"
Naruto, Lee, Sakura and Ino had been summoned to Tsunade's office not long before the conference. She explained to them the story they were going to have to support, shouted down their cries of indignation then revealed to them a document that swore them to secrecy on the pain of death. Lee hadn't even gone down into the ANBU base, but, between his five friends who had, he had heard a detailed enough account of the operation to be considered trouble as well. None of them had wanted to take up the pen, but when told that Shikamaru and Hyuuga Hiashi, on behalf of Neji, had already done so, they swallowed down their disgust and put down their names.
They had been a team when they had faced the Eye of the World. The burden of secrecy needed to be shared.
Sakura had said it was a sign as to how much Tsunade trusted them that all she wanted was their word and not to brand them with a selectively silencing seal. Naruto remembered Sai and the ugly black bars on his tongue. It was a small comfort, but she was right. Sai and that seal were part of the same ugly underside of Konoha that was now demanding their silence.
An image of Sai flicking through An Idiot's Guide to Making Friends rose unbidden in Naruto's mind. The feeling of outrage he had directed at Tsunade and Shikamaru subsided and was replaced by a dull, feathery-edged sadness, the one that accompanied the memory of everybody who had vanished whilst he was away.
Perhaps it was because Naruto had never seen them wilt from the Plague himself, gone to the funerals, or lit the incense, but their deaths still seemed to him about as real as a dream.
The last he had seen of Sai, he had been buying A Genius's Guide to Making Friends. Sai had decided that And Idiot's Guide had been failing because, quite obviously, Sai wasn't an idiot. Quite obviously, Naruto had disagreed. Quite obviously, it had then been up to Sakura to settle the entire incident, by buying both boys An Idiot's Guide to Friends.
"Because you've made friends already," she had said, as she handed each of them a copy, "and you're both two of the biggest idiots I know."
Naruto came out of his reverie as Tsunade began to speak. He swallowed the lump in his throat and listened.
"I'm sure many of you here are curious as to Shimura Danzo's involvement with the Sixth Repentance." The hall began to rustle with eager muttering and the journalists leaned forward with their pens and cameras held ready. "Shimura Danzo was blackmailed into aiding Madara. He was made to divulge information on ANBU warehouses and bases and to bring Madara in contact with high-profile individuals in the media to help spread his propaganda and plant his adverts. In the ANBU cell, Danzo tried to resist Madara when he heard Nara Shikamaru's Keeper unit arrive and was mutilated for his efforts. Madara cut off his arm and gouged out his eye."
"Isn't it scaring you had much this kind of makes sense?" Naruto whispered to Lee out of the corner of his mouth, but Lee only scowled and knitted his eyebrows together into a disconcerting monobrow.
"As Danzo was acting against his will and was a much of a victim of Madara's machinations as the Bishops held under the influence of Madara's doujutsu, we will not be charging him for crimes relating to the Sixth Repentance – " there was an uproar from the stalls as ninjas and civilians alike leapt to their feet "- but unfortunately for Danzo, investigating how Madara was blackmailing him has brought Keeper attention to activities from his past that cannot go unnoticed."
From the side of the auditorium, a hide screen scrawled over with an array of seals was wheeled onto the stage. It was stretched taut across a metal frame. As one ninja adjusted the height and tension in the hide, a second ran his hands over the seals as though smoothing over creases in a sheet. When he was done, he signaled to Tsunade.
"Shimura Danzo will now make a public confession," she announced.
The second ninja ran his hands through a series of complicated seals too fast for Naruto to even see, let alone comprehend. The sooty symbols dissolved. The ink flowed together. Black tendrils crawled, stretched and wriggled like worms, tracing spidery lines across the screen. Eventually, they formed a black and white moving image of a one-armed old man with an eye-patch.
"Good morning." Danzo settled into his chair in the isolation cubicle. He looked fiercely out of the screen, all black and white moving lines. "I have a few things I would like to say."
Danzo confessed to exactly the crimes as Yoshino and Tsunade had thought he would: Illegal organ harvesting, illegal body modification, grievous bodily harm, inciting hatred, funding the activities of an enemy of the state, and more besides. They had expected his admission that the total annihilation of a clan of born human weapons was a gross error of judgement concerning the future security of the village. Danzo then took a quiet moment to comment on turning one of Konoha's most talented and loyal subjects into a wanted criminal at the age of thirteen and sending him out to be a mole in a terrorist organisation. Considering the impressionable nature of young ninjas, it was not perhaps the wisest of strategies. That too was a gross error of judgement.
He finished by lowering his head to his knees in a deep bow from the waist, and stunned all who were watching.
When the transmission from the isolation cubicle ended, there was an expectant thickness in the air, hanging as heavily as a thunder cloud.
Tsunade glanced across to the far right-hand corner of the stalls where two figures were standing close to the exit, one in jounin red and the other in medic-nin black, sticking to the shadows.
She licked her drying lips and broke the silence.
"Konoha's strength lies in her people and in the bonds we forge," she began, startling a number of journalists out of their scribbling on Danzo's public confession. "Her foundations were built upon a great friendship. That friendship, as many unfortunately do, may have become difficult later, but the town's continued strength is a testament to that initial spirit of brotherhood, between two men who could not have been more different, but who found commonality in a town they both loved.
"Konoha values therefore rest on the same values as friendship – acceptance, trust, forgiveness in times of weakness, reprimand in times of doubt, and unity in the face of adversity. As Hokage, I therefore call upon citizens, civilian and ninja alike, to look through Madara's manipulations to destroy us through civil war. He brought the Sixth Repentance upon us to divide us." She tried to smile, but it probably came out more bitter than she hoped. "Let this attack upon everything that keeps Konoha strong be that which unites us instead."
"Trying to bring everybody together on the back of a lie is not youthful," Lee remarked as the public hearing finished and the audience shuffled to their feet, readjusting hazard gear and overcoats. "It is dishonourable. Eventually the truth will out, bursting out of the moist earth like a glorious crocus in springtime."
"A crocus…Sure…" Naruto muttered indistinctly. He peered over the gallery rails. "Let's go down and find the others, Bushybrows."
They joined the stream of people going to the stairs. Around him Naruto could hear low whispers, cries of, "Danzo! Who would have thought?", retaliations that some had thought he was fishy all along with his right arm tucked away in a sling and his eye under a bandage, and mutters that his stony gaze had given them to chills. The name Uchiha Madara bobbed on the angry chattering like a body in a river - passed slowly along and noted with disgust and horror.
Pushed and shoved by the human current, it didn't take long for Naruto and Lee to reach the bottom. The stairs spilled out into a corridor and the crowd dispersed.
Naruto and Lee followed the large majority of people moving purposefully towards the auditorium and the main entrance. Naruto was hoping Tsunade and Shikamaru would still be in the hall. These days, where Tsunade was, he would also find Sakura and Ino. It wasn't that he wanted to vent his fury exactly, but venting was so much better when it was done legally, in other words, verbally with a person and not a beaten up wall. And given the show they had just witnessed, when simple words lined together had rewritten and dismissed the past and the truth as they knew it in less time than it would take to make a pancake, Naruto was beginning to appreciate words quite a lot.
He happened then to look up and saw two figures coming down the corridor, walking against the flow of the crowd. One was a jounin in red. The other was a ninja in medic-nin black. The jounin appeared to be trying to talk to the medic-nin, but whatever he was saying wasn't getting any kind of response. The crowd was parting to let them through.
The jounin sighed and raised his head. Naruto caught sight of an eye covered by a forehead protector, and before the jounin and his medic-nin companion could move past without apparently noticing him, he called out, "Kakashi-sensei!"
It didn't escape Naruto's notice that Kakashi snatched at the arm of his accompanying medic-nin as though to not only stop him from walking on but to restrain him. Naruto narrowed his eyes and stared at Kakashi's companion.
There was something about the very way the medic-nin carried himself, like he owned the corridor but didn't care what happened to the people in it so long as they knew that he owned them, that rubbed him up the wrong way. In other words, the medic-nin couldn't have better calculated his body language to piss Naruto off.
Naruto, however, knew exactly how to piss off people like that back. Challenge accepted.
"Naruto. Lee-kun." The single visible eye curved up in a nervous smile as Naruto and Lee approached. "I'm in a bit of a hurry today, so I can't talk now, but maybe later – ?"
Naruto peered into the medic-nin's visor. Instead of eyes, all he saw was a band of grey cloth, embroidered with intricate seals in bright red stitching. For some reason or other, this ninja had his eyes sealed. "Sensei," he whined as loudly as possible, "who's this guy?"
Kakashi raised an eyebrow. He glanced down at the medic-nin and looked back at Naruto, his expression unreadable. "He's an old friend."
Figures, Naruto thought. This medic-nin had his eyes covered. He was probably another mask-wearing pervert, but if he was an old friend of Kakashi's Naruto probably shouldn't be trying to annoy him.
Reluctantly, Naruto extended his hand. "I guess any friend of my sensei's a friend of mine. I'm Uzumaki Naruto, the best student Kakashi's ever had, future Hokage, by the way."
It struck him a moment later that a blindfolded ninja obviously couldn't see his hand, but Naruto couldn't dislodge the suspicion that this medic-nin was ignoring his hand on purpose.
Bastard.
Naruto kept his hand in front of him and lowered his voice, "This is the part where you reply and introduce yourself, unless you know, you're actually miming your name, in which case, if your name is 'Bastard' you're doing a pretty decent job."
"Dinner at Ichiraku's! All you can eat!" Kakashi cut in loudly, as the temperature around them plummeted.
Naruto's ears twitched. He turned away from the medic-nin. "Are you serious?"
"I will pay for every goddam extra bowl and extra topping you order," Kakashi continued breathlessly. "And you can come too, Lee. In fact, just bring everybody. Everybody's been working so hard. Let's have a party. To celebrate…er…Pakkun's birthday."
"I am so up for this!" Naruto punched the air. "A party at Ichiraku's! Yeah!"
"So, since I'll be seeing you all later, I'll be hurrying off now," Kakashi finished hastily, planting his hands on the medic-nin's shoulders. "We'll talk then, Naruto."
"Yeah, alright! Thanks, Kakashi-sensei. We'll see you later!" He could see it now as though upon a far off horizon - that wonderful promise of a bowl of Ichiraku tonkotsu special, extra pork, extra menma, extra bamboo shoots, extra spring onions, extra egg, with a side order of gyoza dumplings…
The medic-nin brushed past him and, as he went, snorted. It was a half-amused, half-derisive sound, as though Naruto wasn't worth even the air to complain about. Naruto scowled but said nothing, because this guy was Kakashi's 'old friend'. Maybe he was only a bastard on first encounter and got better with time. Naruto had known plenty of idiots like that. All the same, that attitude could do with some straightening out.
He glared at the retreating figures until they rounded a corner and both disappeared from sight.
"Come on, Lee, let's go," Naruto said, and they continued on their way to the auditorium.
The corridor was nearly empty of people. Naruto muttered under his breath, "Weirdoes."
Lee knew exactly who he meant and nodded in agreement. "Hipsters."
"Bastards," Naruto amended, but then he remembered that one of those bastards had just invited him to his dog's birthday party, so said, "I mean, just one of them is a bastard. Just the new guy."
And then he froze in his tracks, so suddenly that Lee who was hurrying on was nearly at the doors of the auditorium before he realised that Naruto had stopped.
"What's wrong, Naruto-kun?"
The blindfold over the eyes, the way he had managed to tick off Naruto just by standing there, Kakashi's strange behaviour, and that goddam taunting snort…
Naruto looked back over his shoulder, down the length of the corridor, with eyes wide. "No way."
"What are you thinking about?" Kakashi asked Sasuke, as the cart taking them back to the hospital rattled and shook along the road. He didn't know why he bothered. With Sasuke, it was usually a waste of time to ask such a probing question.
In all honesty, Sasuke didn't know. The most accurate description of what was currently going through his head was probably 'everything and nothing'.
Sasuke stared into the darkness of the blindfold. Admitting ignorance was weakness, and silence might be taken for confusion, so he settled for three words that had swam up out of his thoughts: "A slow death."
It wasn't quite the answer Kakashi had been looking for.
Ino whipped open a tap and shoved her hands into the jet of water. "I'm furious with Shikamaru. Why didn't he tell us all that Sasuke was back sooner?"
"He was probably pushed for time this morning," Sakura said, trying to sound reasonable. She smiled into the mirror after washing her face. It came out wobbly and she gritted her teeth.
"Bet he just thought it was too much of a bother. Well, the next time I'm off duty, I'm going to find him, switch my mind into his body and then make it dance the Grumpy Chicken in the Keeper forecourt where everybody can see it."
They laughed quietly in the hospital cloakroom and helped each other into their surgical scrubs.
Sakura watched Ino trying to pin up her fringe. "Maybe we shouldn't be too hard on him, Ino."
Ino arched her eyebrow. "Says the girl who slapped Shikamaru in the auditorium for not telling us all the moment he found out."
"Fair point, but he deserved it at the time." Sakura passed Ino a hairnet and sat back, already prepared for whatever it was Tsunade had summoned them to do. "In the end, I guess, it all worked out for the best. Could you imagine what would have happened if Naruto had known Sasuke was back and realised it was him in the corridor?"
"Naruto would have cried," Ino scoffed. "Cried and drowned the rest of us in his tears. And set off Lee too. Then between the two of them, the whole world's water crisis would have been solved. Cheer up, Sakura. You should be happy. I don't see what's wrong. Sasuke's come home. Isn't that a good thing?"
When Naruto had stormed into the auditorium like a great orange hurricane, Sakura and Ino had been collecting up Tsunade's notes from the table. To their annoyance, Naruto's spiking chakra had sent sheets of paper whirling across the room.
"Guys!" he had shouted, wild-eyed and pale. "You'd never believe it, but...Kakashi's gone and cloned Sasuke!"
"Naruto, you utter idiot," Shikamaru had sighed. "Has nobody told you that Sasuke's back yet?"
All activity in the auditorium had stopped and, five minutes of explanation later, there was a glowing red handprint throbbing on the side of Shikamaru's face and Sakura was shaking out her hand.
If only Sakura could see into the future, divine the course of how things would go, and then make judgement upon what Sasuke's return meant to her, perhaps she would be better able to pick apart the writhing mass of fear, joy and unease twisting in her stomach.
The cloakroom door opened and Shizune put her head around the frame. "Are you two ready?"
In nervous silence, Ino and Sakura followed Shizune to an operating theatre they had never set foot in before, but knew its purpose well enough. This was one of the theatres where Konoha carried out its vivisections. Times had changed since the facilities had been established, of course. Now the subjects were usually anaesthetised and housed as the patients were, and careful emphasis was placed on minimising any suffering, and vivisections in general had become rarer.
All the same, it made both Ino and Sakura's skin crawl just standing outside of the door. If it hadn't been for Tsunade's urgent insistence that they attend, both would rather have been doing their rounds in the Isolation Wards, which was saying something.
As medic-nins, however, there was without a doubt a very high chance in their careers that they would be called to perform some kind of vivisection at least once.
"Tsunade-sama, your apprentices are here," Shizune said in a hushed voice, as she opened the door. The sharp lemony smell of disinfectant rose up from the floor to catch at Sakura's nose.
Inside the theatre, Tsunade was a finishing adjusting a breathing tube.
"Good. Then we're all set." She covered the face of the figure on the table. "Before we begin, Ino, Sakura, I want you two to take a good look at 'our friend' and be sure that you will be alright doing this. We can't afford any slip ups."
Of all of Sakura's imagined reunions with Sasuke, as a medic-nin vivisecting a subject for research had not been one of them.
She had read the file. The briefing notes had been clear. Before Sakura and Ino had gone to the cloakrooms to change into their scrubs, Shizune had taken them through every possible risk they knew about and made it clear to them what they needed to do to remain professional. Sakura had told herself that she would be fine. All she needed to do was maintain routine procedures, but what had seemed so easy on paper was very different from the reality that confronted her now.
Thick, familiar, black hair drifted out from under the green sheet on his face. An electrocardiogram described his heartbeats with a thin orange trace. Air flowing down the tube made each drawn breath a rasping hiss.
Sakura looked from the figure on the table to the jar of gleaming scalpels ready on the trolley.
"I would've asked others with less emotional baggage to assist me," Tsunade said grimly, glancing between Ino and Sakura as she waited for a response, "but this work is so very important, and I wanted the best and my most trusted."
Sakura took in a deep, shuddering breath and exhaled slowly. She picked up a scalpel. She saw Ino do the same beside her.
Tsunade nodded. "Then let's get to work."
It was three days after his public confession that Danzo was tried in front of a jury, declared unanimously guilty and was sentenced to death at a time and place as decided by his executioner.
At this point, Tsunade handed a sealed scroll to the old judge and the judge, although somewhat peeved that the decision as to Danzo's exact fate had been made by somebody who wasn't even present in Court, unsealed the scroll and squinted at the writing.
"Shimura Danzo," he read out from the neat black symbols, "is to be refused any treatment utilised and generated for easing the suffering of the Plague, and will remain isolated in hospital until the Plague takes him. This execution by the Plague, by slow wasting and illness, has been deemed by his designated executioner as the most suitable form of death for his crimes in relation to the Uchihas."
When the judge returned the scroll to Tsunade, he dabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief, and left for a drinking house as soon as court was dismissed.
Danzo received the news from Tsunade and couldn't help the black and bitter smile that rose to his lips.
Danzo's death would be one of a multitude, forgettable in the vast statistics of how many had died from the Plague. It would be also be undignified and, when the blood began to flood into his mouth and his organs failed, disgusting. Worst of all, he would be terrified. Who wouldn't be when their body was under such an aggressive attack? It was human instinct, and with the stages of the Plague so well documented, he would be able to tell exactly what awful things were going on in his body at which particular time.
It was like reading a map to Hell, every stepping stone marked out with a bloody, phlegmy star.
Danzo knew he had spoken too soon when he had said he would prefer a fast death by a blade.
Hinata blinked her eyes in the dark. Something had woken her up, noises, voices, unusual at this time of the night, so quiet she could hear the water running in the gutters. She listened, unsure of herself, then pushed off the bedcovers and tiptoed to the door. Raised voices were coming from her father's study.
Shivering in the night air, she looked out onto the landing and saw the orange light of an oil lamp still burning in Hiashi's room.
The door was shoved sideways and Aunt Hikage stepped out. Her face was pale and her jowls were quivering. Muttering and twitching, she started to shuffle back to her quarters, crab-like and ancient, with her hands dyed red and blue from the flowers in the dyeing house.
"Defilement," Aunt Hikage was spitting, as she wrapped her shawl about her against the cold. "Wanton. Greedy. Sacrilegious."
Hiashi appeared in the doorway and watched his old aunt go, looking bemused and irritated. He drummed his fingers on the shouji frame of the door with his lips set in a thin line. As he was about to slide the door shut, he chanced to look up and met Hinata's eyes.
He opened his mouth in surprise, closed it, and then beckoned imperceptibly with his hand. Hinata closed the door of her room and went to him.
"Did you hear all that, Hinata?" he whispered as she came into earshot. "How long have you been eavesdropping?"
"I heard nothing, father," Hinata answered truthfully. "Ju-just your voice, and Aunt Hikage's. Y-you were quite loud. And I haven't been eavesdropping. I only just woke up."
"Ah." His humourless face softened into a rare smile. "For that I am sorry, Hinata, though, since you are now awake, perhaps you can help me on the final decision."
Hiashi made it sound like a request, but Hinata knew an order from a clan head when she heard one. She nodded without hesitation, despite how tired she was feeling from making futons all day.
Hiashi turned on his heel and went back to his writing table, kneeling on the square cushion beside it. Hinata did the same and folded her hands on her lap. To her displeasure, the cushion was still warm from where Aunt Hikage had been sitting on it.
"I'm in two minds as to what to do with Neji. You knew him, Hinata, better than many of us adults knew him, so I would like to hear what you have to say on this matter."
Hiashi took up a sheet of folded paper from his desk and handed it across to Hinata. She stammered, "What's this?"
Hiashi didn't answer but sat back and tucked his hands up his robes. Hinata looked at the clean paper and the Hokage's seal stamped in red on its side and unfolded it as delicately as she might uncurl a leaf.
It was a letter from the Hokage herself, Tsunade, the big blonde woman with the big voice, who looked as though she could stand in the middle of a street and halt speeding punks on motorcycles with a single finger. Hinata liked her. She didn't want to be Tsunade, as Tenten once had, but she admired Tsunade's strength.
Below the usual greetings was a line that had been underlined twice.
RE: Permission for Hyuuga Neji to participate in trial therapeutic procedure requiring significant invasive surgery.
Neji had gone into intensive care. Lee had told Hinata in the morning, when he had come to the communication hatch and babbled everything important that he could possibly remember, but she had barely listened to the rest of his stories.
Now in intensive care, decisions concerning Neji's therapy rested with his family. Hiashi had signed sixteen separate forms for Lee to take back to Tsunade, granting permission for those treating him to use various pieces of equipment and all sorts of antibiotics.
'Invasive surgery', however, was something entirely new and as Hinata read the letter she found herself oscillating between a thrill of fear and of elation with every crisp little bullet point.
"Chakra System Immune Memory," Hiashi said suddenly, making her start and look up from her reading. "It's a treatment they've come up with from studying Uchiha Sasuke's Plague immunity. It involves physically manipulating the chakra system to align with parts of the body that are key to the immune system. If it's successful, it will dispel latency and make the ninja immune to this kind of chakra bacteria forever."
Hinata chewed on her tongue. "What-what will happen if the treatment fails?"
"Nothing, as such," Hiashi said lightly, but he furrowed his brow and the muscles on his jaw tightened. "According to the Hokage, the hard part is getting the ninja through the treatment in the first place."
"Neji will get through."
"Are you sure? On what basis can you be so certain?"
Hinata folded the letter and handed it back to her father. She found that she couldn't reply, even though she felt as though the answer was at the tip of her tongue.
The lamp was beginning to run low on oil and the dim light in the room changed colour from pale gold to dark honey.
Hiashi took up the Hyuuga seal in one hand and a pot of red stamping paste in the other.
"Aunt Hikage is very much against me signing this permission form."
She would be, thought Hinata, and Hiashi's long-suffering poker-face said much the same thing.
"She believes that it will give the Hokage chance to scavenge for Hyuuga bloodline secrets and pillage Neji's body. I suppose we must sympathise with Aunt Hikage. Such a thing wasn't uncommon in her youth. On top of that, we are all afraid of that which we don't understand and the idea of invasive surgery clearly frightens her."
"I think Neji would want you to sign the form," Hinata asserted quietly. "Either he dies trying not to die, or he'd just die anway. He'd want to fight. I know it."
"I'm sure he would, but, bear in mind, to fight does not mean to win."
Nevertheless, Hiashi took his seal and pressed its base into the tub of red paste. With a light thud, he stamped the seal down onto the end of the letter and wished that the sound of the thud had been somewhat louder, because the faint, fearful, hollow thud of the seal only seemed too honest to his feelings.
Hisashi, he prayed, as he sent away Hinata and tidied his writing desk, if you are watching over our household now despite what we asked of you, lend strength to your son.
The flame of the oil lamp flickered and died. A light breeze stirred up the hairs on the back of Hiashi's neck, as though somebody beside him was laughing, as if to say, That, brother, goes without saying.
Thank you for reading!
Next time: Naruto goes to see Sasuke, Sasuke goes to see Danzo. See you soon!