Date written: 15/03/11 – 16/05/11
Posted on FanFiction: 16/05/11
A/N: Finally got this out. April has been a very tiring month for me, mostly due to OJT stressing the hell out of me. If only I had bought a laptop during those slow, idle times of an OJT day, this would've been done sooner. But as it was, I had to do with what I have in hand, which was paper and pen. Meh, that's all behind me now.
And maybe I had come a little too high strung when I said those words in the last afterword. I've reviewed the manga's 504th chapter, and there really was a single speech balloon where the Kyuubi spoke outside the seal—the others were articulated thoughts, not spoken out loud but they were still clear exhibitions of human rationality and logic. But, in the essence of fanfiction, I'm going to just ignore that single speech balloon in favor of the three or four other articulated thoughts of the Kyuubi. "The fox might've exhibited rational thinking, but not verbal speech" is going to be a modified point in this story. Don't like it? Then deal with it. My story, my rules, and the Kyuubi is a secondary character at best anyway; not much development going onto it in any case.
–– CHAPTER 10 ––
The World God Only Knows
Naruto was a man of action. There was rarely a time where he didn't sit down and think things over if action seemed to speak louder than any other choice he could make. With that said, it brought no wonder to anyone who knew him when he jumped headfirst into a situation he had no idea what it would entail to him or his wellbeing . . . again. Crossing the doorway left a sense of parting for Naruto once his two feet exited the orange ambience of the sewer area. It wasn't bad per se, but definitely odd, like a newborn's umbilical cord being cut.
The first thing he felt was the sudden coldness of his surroundings before realizing that he had stumbled into a place that was covered in fathom deep snow. There was howling wind to his left, scattering the surface of the snow and misting the distance into gray. He couldn't see anything farther than ten feet, eyes squinted due to the strong wind, but instinctively understood that if he wanted to find the answers within this place, he had to go straight.
"Should've let Rambo come with me," he mused with a shake of his head as he conjured an orange winter coat out of thin air. "His wool would've made a very warm sweater."
After reflecting over a lost opportunity for a few more moments, he gave one last look at the open door, its presence within all this gray—even the snow looked gray, as if they were more ice cold ash than actual snow—disturbing the natural look of the place. Naruto suddenly received an image of an invisible house with its front door open, showing its interior to whoever was on the front lawn. He couldn't help it; he snorted from abating his laughter.
"I'll be back," he said to the door, to the familiar mindscape he was leaving behind, but most importantly to the family he was leaving behind. "And that's a promise."
The surface of the snow gave under the weight of his feet, immersing both limbs into a feeling of cold Naruto hadn't experienced since his ordeal in Snow Country. The smart thing would've been to transfigure his sandals into winter boots to go along with the coat, but the thought hadn't crossed his mind at all. Suppose that if this were in the outside world and Naruto wasn't essentially a soul trapped inside a boy's head, he could've been feeling the effects of frostbite after his feet were exposed to the bare icy elements in a period of time. But since that this was not the case on both accounts, he had no problems traversing this place. He'd just felt coldness in his feet, nothing more.
Minutes passed him by, and these minutes turned to hours, and these hours turned to probably a half-day, and still Naruto couldn't see a change in this endless field of snow, storm, and gray. His ears were numb, his throat was entering the early stages of laryngitis, his hair was being a nice little home for the lone, gray snowflakes that separated from the main flock, his legs and feet were beyond feeling any kind of pain, and his patience was close to breaking. But even if he wanted to shout every complaint he had inside his head just waiting to burst out like a crack in a dam, it would be fruitless and would just sap his energy. He needed every bit of it to keep on walking.
And as he walked, his mind pondered over many different things, trying to keep the thoughts processes as slow as possible so as not to run out of ideas before he could reach whatever destination he was supposed to arrive in. These topics range from the mediocre to the mysterious, from the friends he made in his life to the enemies he had to kill for the sake of the war and his village. Despite his relatively short life in his old reality, he still did travel the world, going from country to country, learning all that he could, ranging from the habits of the people to the cultures which seem alien to him in some way. Nostalgia radiated from him in waves, and more than once he repeated gestures like the shake of his head, a knowing smile on his face, and even an eye-twitch, which was mostly reserved for when he thought of Ero-Sennin and his many escapades during their two-and-a-half year training trip.
Eventually, his thoughts returned to Kiiro-Naruto and his present condition. It was probably a long stretch to think that the kid had woken up while he was still inside this blizzard, trying to find answers when there didn't seem to be anything to clue into what he should do other than walk, walk, and walk some more. Still, he had hope that the kid would pull through, but not believing the kid to be the same as he had been before the events of the Second Coming. There were just too many emotional scars, either born out of nightmares or his mind inputting fear through his subconscious; another would have to be the fallouts from the Second Coming and the mental instability of the one constant in Kiiro-Naruto's life, Kushina. His whole life had more or less fallen apart, and that in itself could change anyone. Even Naruto had to mature much quicker than he was comfortable with due to the war. Many of his friends suffered the same. Others . . . others never had the chance to, becoming nothing more than casualties in an uphill battle.
His walk through the snowy wasteland was coming to a close when the heavy fog of the snowstorm dwindled a little for him to locate a silhouette in the distance. It was too far to accurately tell what it was, but he was quite certain that it was a tall and wide structure, stretching as far as the fog could let him see. He couldn't tell how far he was to the structure, and when this fleeting thought was completely processed inside a portion of Naruto's mind where it specialized in weighing decisions with cat-nervous caution and hawk-eyed examination, he chanced a look over his shoulder, wanting to wish that his feeling of walking for hours or days was but a mere illusion of his mind going through thousands of mentally worded thoughts in the span of milliseconds, but also wishing that the doorway out of this ash-snow wasteland was far out of reach for him to consider turning back. If he were to see that open doorway—a rectangular shine of light, burning like a bonfire, against the all-gray environment—he feared he might lose his nerve, despite the promises he had to keep, not only to himself but also his child counterpart.
There was a feeling in this place he didn't like. Not one bit. And it was setting him on edge, urging him to fondle the kunai in his winter coat for temporary comfort. There was no danger to be found, but this feeling was more of a sense of forebode than a warning for an immediate threat. In his time in the Fourth Great Shinobi War, this sixth sense for danger saved him and his comrades on many occasions. He never once ignored it whenever the urgency for it to be followed was shouting out like a whole village screaming to the heavens, like now.
The situation was inappropriate for such an action, but Naruto couldn't halt his lips from curving into a smile. He rarely smiled so grimly in the face of . . . of what exactly? Danger? But there was no danger; this is paranoia, pure and simple paranoia brought on by war fatigue.
Naruto liked to believe that was the case. But he didn't, and that just made him edgier.
As he came much closer to the structure, his earlier suspicions of it were confirmed. It was a wall, a towering wall, almost seemed as if it wanted to touch the sky and might likely succeed. While he felt a little better that he could now put a name to the unknown structure, the fact that it was a wall did not ease down his twitchy fingers from wanting to fish out a kunai and expect the worst from beyond the fog. Because walls meant either two things: it was built to keep someone from going in . . . or out.
Whether this could be disputed was probably irrelevant. He came here to seek answers, and he was not about to end this journey because of uncertainty. But still, the ambience of this place was downright peculiar that already half of his mind was begging for his legs to do an about-face and then quicken the pace back to the open doorway. If it was still there, open, maybe.
Naruto kept walking towards the identified structure, and he only stopped when he was a yard away from smacking his body against solid material.
As he placed a hand on the great wall—he vaguely remembered Rambo talking about a great wall in a place he called China or something—he marveled its surface. Smooth and solid; whoever were the masons responsible for such craftsmanship had to be praised and, at the same time, feared. There was just something . . . otherworldly about the surface's perfection, that such perfection, smoothness, and verticality could be constructed from the hands of mortal men. The thought alone seemed implausible, even downright ludicrous. But there it was, in his reach, his forefinger tracing an invisible horizontal line before it reached the end of its tangent. It took a few moments longer for him to consider one obvious aspect about the wall's spotless perfection; he might as well blame that on this being a deeper section of the mindscape, something not normally accessed by any mind walker or even the owner of the mind himself. From what he heard about the human brain from Tsunade—and in some instances, Sakura's simple opinions on the matter—it had plenty of untapped potential, wherein the average human had access to only a third. A sheer waste, according to Tsunade, and while he could agree to that, there was another side to the story, at least to Sakura's opinion. Apparently she liked delving into folklore and legends during her free time, and this hobby often clashed with Tsunade's straightforward and realist views. To what Sakura could surmise from ancient text, history books, and even the ideas of philosophers long dead, humans were once not this 'primitive,' for lack of a better word. An event in history—a time long forgotten and most likely buried in the aftermath—caused the humans to be cursed, whether it was by gods or something else, Sakura did not clarify (perhaps for more generalization until she found evidence to increase credibility to her claim). This was why the human mind did not and could not achieve its full potential, because there was a block that prevented their intelligence from higher thinking and understanding. Naruto was inclined to believe this, mostly because he had wanted a scapegoat for his rather low intelligence in his kid and early teen years. A lot of people would've assumed he agreed because of his unyielding love for her. But whether this was true fact or something else, Sakura never had the chance to find out. Her off-and-on research died along with her.
Naruto looked up at the wall, trying in vain to identify any imperfection in its creation. A dent, a crack, anything. The wall was perfectly straight, perfectly smooth, and free of any contours or designs to get an inkling of a mental picture of the person (or persons) who made this. The more he tried to find out, the more mysteries and questions popped into his head.
Well, he couldn't find answers by staring. His search was not yet over, and this wall was getting in the way. Naruto looked up, spotted the topmost level of the roof, and readied himself for a chakra-supplied wall-run. He applied the necessary chakra into the pathways above the soles of his feet, jumped, and slammed both feet onto the surface. He was about to take the first step upward, but his feet were slipping downward, not at all glued on the wall as they should be. His body followed after.
It was here that Naruto took back every complaint he had of the snow—well, maybe not all of them—because it saved him from a painful fall on his head and back. He recalled a time when he first started the tree-walking exercise and fell on his head like a fool. The pain had flashed like a sun, no other occasion came close to be compared with it at the time, and he had to nurse it on his own—Kakashi was slightly indifferent, knowing that this was a lesson for his cocky ego; Sasuke thought of him as a test product for not applying enough chakra to the soles; and Sakura was probably awaiting praise from their sensei and, most importantly Sasuke-kun, atop a branch of a tree. Flashforward to events with the Akatsuki, the Great Shinobi War, and his battle with Madara Uchiha, that blow to the head was minuscule and better off forgotten. But Naruto didn't forget, and he doubted he ever would.
Lifting himself off the ground, dusting his coat, he examined the wall surface more thoroughly. He had used the proper amount of chakra to his soles, he knew that. There was no way he would blunder such a basic technique after all these years. It had to be the wall.
He walked towards it, channeling chakra to his palms this time, and high-fived it. The result was instantaneous and the chakra he transferred outwards was forcefully pushed back into his system, enough that it even pushed his hand towards his back like one of Lee's over-excited victory high-fives, which he and his whole arm had been victims to plenty of times.
"Whatever this wall's made of," Naruto said, voicing his thoughts out, "it's rejecting chakra. A chakra-proof wall?"
That wasn't a good sign, not even a reasonable sign. A construct designed to reject the administration of chakra was quite unheard of, even in Naruto's world. There were chakra-resistant armor and the like, but there were never enough materials to create a structure that was chakra-proof. The problem about repelling the very life force of every living thing in the planet was the rarity of the sole element capable of this incredible feat, and even then it was merely more resistant than other elements, like the thickest and densest fabric acting as a barrier against water.
Then again, he had to remember that he was inside the realm of dreams, the realm of the mindscape, if the unexplored boundaries of a person's mind, anyway. Such a wall shouldn't be surprising at all, but still, it unnerved him a little. He also had to wonder about the purpose of a chakra-proof wall. Was there something on the other side so terrible that a wall of this nature was erected to keep it in bay . . . or was he thinking this the wrong way, and that who- or whatever that was behind this wall was warding off outside influence?
With questions wanting to be answered posthaste, he picked a direction, turned right, and headed off in search for a way in. He barely made ten steps before an idea came to him, which prompted him to perform the cross-fingered seal for his trademark jutsu.
"Kage Bunshin no jutsu!"
One clone materialized within the technique's theatrical smoke. The clone circled itself, getting a grasp of his surrounding, as if synchronizing with his creator's memories were too surreal to believe until he saw everything with his own eyes, before those eyes landed on the Boss. He gave him a crisp salute, and true to being a fragment of Naruto's self, he knew exactly what he was made to do without the master saying a word. "On it, Boss."
Naruto gave the clone a small nod and watched him dash the opposite direction of where he was headed. How wide this wall went was a complete mystery and it paid to ensure that every part of it was investigated, to be sure that he didn't miss an easy way through the other side. He also thought about creating a second clone to traverse the other direction, but dismissed it immediately. He was not a patient man; waiting for his clones to find an entrance and then dispel, thereby letting him know the whereabouts of this entrance, was not a pleasing agenda, and so he believed it better for him to search for himself while a lone clone did the work on the other end. And if this barrier formed a full circle . . . well, it would put a wrench in his infiltration plan, but not destroy his confidence. As that old song went, there ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no river wide enough, and ain't no valley low enough to keep him from his goals.
While Naruto busied himself in his search for answers in a world outside the realms of physical reality, the Naruto in the realm in question, Kiiro-Naruto, slept a dreamless sleep. The bandages were once more covering his face, giving only ample space for his eyes, nose, and mouth. It was still too early to ensure that he was fit as he could be, and for the time being, his assigned physician, Doctor Yusuke Itou, decided on bed rest until the boy came out of his coma. There would be no specialized mind techniques to jump start his brain activity, more likely to hide his strange metamorphosis into a person praised high and low by the majority, if not every living person, in the village. To further strengthen this move, the legendary medic-nin Tsunade Senju seconded his decision. Of course, no one but a handful of individuals knew who was really sleeping on that bed, covered head to toe in bandages. All the rest knew was that it was a burn victim found in the aftermath of the Second Coming and the only reason he was being treated so attentively by two renowned practitioners of the medical field was due to the victim's very close proximity to the Kyuubi's malevolent chakra; nothing more than a living test subject to help promote a better understanding on the harmful effects of demonic chakra exposure.
So as the world revolved on its axis, complying with the pushes and pulls of time's direction, Naruto let it all pass him by as wounds he was not completely aware of were finally beginning to heal. The slow poison from the demonic chakra filtering through his system was being eradicated to a cellular level, weakening the Kyuubi's influence as the immune system worked its way to reclaiming energy to do its assigned tasks. In time, Naruto would then become a healthy five-year-old child, but with him being bedridden and kept alive through the nutrients from an IV tube and from the sheer will to live in his bloodline, there was little to change as of this moment. The body couldn't morph to become stronger and healthier without anything more than glucose fed to him intravenously. Despite that, the dilatory improvement of Naruto's condition was nothing short of a miracle.
But something else began to happen to Naruto's body. It could be another sign of improvement or probably an omen for future events that could derail fate into a spiral of chaotic endeavors. However it could be interpreted, why this occurred was expected. What the Naruto from the original world missed when he studied the mechanics of the new seal, what he failed to comprehend, was the consequences of blocking every orifice able to transfer demonic chakra out of the Kyuubi's psychological prison, and letting residual demonic chakra outside the seal bypass through the many filters in place and return to its forerunner. The effects of such a phenomenon did more than make Kiiro-Naruto healthy once more (due to his body's low tolerance with demonic chakra in his system), it also reverted some of the odd mutations caused by the mere constant exposure of demonic chakra. The healing factor and insanely large chakra pool remained because this was something of Naruto's body's own doing, adapting to survive, trying to integrate a foreign form of life force. But one particular aspect of Naruto disappeared along with every trace of the Kyuubi's chakra in his system.
His whisker marks.
Maybe if his face hadn't been covered again with bandages, the nurse assigned to watch over him three to four times a day during her shift might've informed Doctor Itou, who would then inform the Hokage, of the event. But such speculation would be left as it was.
As his whisker marks dissipate, like so many of his wounds suddenly closing—a testament of his healing factor—Naruto groaned out loud, and it would be the only audible sound he would utter on that day other than the steady rhythm of his breath exiting his nose. The nurse would check his pulse, temperature, and blood pressure twenty-four minutes after his groan, and throughout the examination he was as quiet as a corpse. She sensed something different with the child patient, but with this being her last stop before the end of her shift, she was exhausted and in a hurry to catch some Z's in her home, so she deflected the feeling with little difficulty. After all this, even as the sun sets and the moon rises from the horizon, what lay beyond those carefully wrapped bandages were clear and unblemished cheeks, still unseen from everyone. Naruto remained in his coma that night. He was dreaming no dreams, and probably a first in a very long time, he was at peace with himself and the darkness of sleep.
Konohagakure no Sato was still in the midst of healing, and while she was duty-bound to stay in the hospital and contribute to the reparation of the damages, she was unfortunately ordered to go home and rest for twelve hours at least. And even though she ascended enough ranks to pull on most, if not all, the doctors and nurses who even think of ordering her to rest when the village was in dire need of every helping hand it could produce, this particular order could not be ignored.
And with a somewhat heavy heart, Tsunade Senju complied with the Hokage's orders and went home to sleep. It was three in the afternoon.
She expected to be the only one home today but she was wrong. After closing the door and in the middle of turning around to the view of the Senju ancestral home's foyer, Tsunade was, more or less, tackled by a person no taller than the height of her waist. There was no actual force behind the tackle, so she was able to retain her balance with ease. She then looked down at the tackler, who let out a giggle.
"Welcome home, Mom," the tackler said, panning her face up, her right eye covered by several strands of vibrant bleach-white hair. The other eye, free of any obstructions, looked up at Tsunade, young chestnut brown eye glistening with unfathomable youth and vigor against dark brown eyes that have already lost their shine and what was left was the hardened mentality of a kunoichi who had lived through two devastating wars over the course of her first fifty decades of life. Two pairs of eyes that portray different ideals, different experiences—one having little, the other having too much—that compared innocence to cynicism and the subtle differences between offspring and parent.
Tsunade gave her daughter a tired smile. "Tadaima (tr. I'm home/back), Chiyome." She returned the hug with enthusiasm, though. It had been days since she last saw her little bundle of joy, what with the chaos spawning left and right inside the hospital. "Shouldn't you be at the Academy at this time?" She remembered that they didn't dismiss until half past four.
Chiyome moved away after the hug and shook her head. "The Academy is closed for the week. Nobody can tell me why, no matter who I ask."
Her stomach did a backflip. How could she have not known this? And in that, did that mean what she thought it meant while she overlooked checking up on the girl during her time at the hospital? "Then you've been here for three whole days, alone?" Please God, don't let it be so.
"Most of the time," she answered with a shrug. "But that's okay. I'm a kunoichi-in-training. We have to be self-sufficient, right?" She brushed the hair covering her right eye to the back of her ear. More than a few strands stubbornly returned to their initial places.
"Hasn't Daddy come by at all?"
"Nope. Daddy never came home." Chiyome looked to the side, sighing. "I heard from Kakashi-san that he was probably off researching—"
A desire to kill Jiraiya for negligence came knocking at the aggressive side of her personality—and she had more than half a mind to go out now, find him, and introduce a transcendent level of pain on the fucking asshole—but it disintegrated immediately after realizing that she was being hypocritical.
"—some seals in the library of the Northern Fire Temple," the daughter continued, unaware of the thought passing through the mother's mind.
And now Tsunade felt worse for jumping to conclusions. She and Jiraiya had been married for over eleven years—going so far as to marry into her clan and retaining Senju as her surname—and he had been nothing short of faithful. Whenever she suspected infidelity, he always had a reason for the misunderstanding. And after every accusation, every heated word spat out from her venomous mouth, he always forgave her, because, in a way, he understood her lack of trust. It was not because of his infamous reputation as a super pervert, a womanizer, and author of a universally acclaimed series of smut books; not even his restriction order from every bathhouse in Konoha (first time the Hokage ever issued a location-to-person restriction order, instead of the standard person-to-person) because the women would never be at ease as long as the pervert could come within ten feet of the property when a ban could only restrict entry. No, her distrust was not born from Jiraiya's rambunctious and promiscuous life as a single bachelor, but from a person she would never have fathomed in all her life. It was all because of her ex-boyfriend, Dan.
"But who's been taking care of you all this time?" she asked, still unwilling to believe that an eight-year-old girl could be as independent as she claimed. Something about this didn't add up.
Looking like an amateur con being caught by the police, Chiyome grimaced ever so slightly, straining hard as she could to keep the poker face intact. It was a subtle change, barely few muscles contracted to the accusation, but Tsunade was a hardened kunoichi; it was easy enough to detect a secret being kept from her when she was close enough to Chiyome's face to observe two, three sweat beads trailing down the sides of both cheeks. Tsunade didn't like what this implied: that this news was probably something she disapproved of.
"I sometimes . . ." Chiyome began, but paused, unsure if she should proceed, but was motivated to continue after the stern look her mother showed her. "I sometimes go to Sasuke-kun's house for lunch and dinner. Mikoto-san didn't seem to mind."
There was still presence of a rivalry going on between the Uchiha and Senju, despite the latter clan consisting of two females and a male who was a Senju by law not blood. The thing was, even though the Senju had dwindled into a number that could no longer be considered itself a clan, Konoha still revered them, the founding clan. In most cases, people believe that the Senju alone were the founders of Konoha, and that the Uchiha had nothing to do in part of it other than splashing in their name as a co-founder. It inflamed many Uchiha during the day, and the deep hatred between the two clans just escalated as generation after generation entered the world of ninja and the village. This time, however, the rivalry became one-sided after most of the Senju clan had been wiped out during the Third Shinobi World War. Tsunade could care less about some obscure squabble between her ancestor and the Uchiha's ancestor; her mind was on more practical priorities, then and now.
So her dislike of the red-eyed copycats didn't stem from her clan. Inside her head, Tsunade let out a sardonic laugh that echoed in the imaginary walls of her mentality. Dan left more scars than she was willing to admit to anyone, not even to her own husband, Jiraiya.
The Uchiha were also suspected of conspiracy against Konoha, what with the recent rumors spreading in the grapevines about how the Sharingan could take control of a bijuu just as easily as her grandfather's rare affinity mutation, Mokuton. It could sure explain how Madara Uchiha had stolen the Kyuubi from her grandfather's control.
Associating with the Uchiha wasn't on her to-do list anytime soon, that much could be ascertain, but the same could not be said to her daughter, who had met Itachi Uchiha in her first year at the Ninja Academy through coincidental means. And as this normal sempai-kouhai relationship continued as if it were a common thing in the school (a lot of ancestors were probably rolling on their graves), Chiyome ultimately met the Uchiha prodigy's little brother. Whatever immeasurable affection Itachi had towards Sasuke seemed to have infected Chiyome; she always made time for Sasuke, whether playing, storytelling, or just hanging out together. Tsunade might not have heard of this at all if she hadn't at least been on speaking terms with the brothers' mother, Mikoto, who was a little carefree and had immediately accepted the buddy-buddy-ness between their offspring. Mikoto had been so easy to talk to and polite and sweet—a sucker punch to the stereotypical Uchiha Tsunade had the misfortune of teaming up with during the span of the second and third wars—that Tsunade had to begrudgingly accept the cultivating bond as well. In the two years since this Senju-Uchiha association began, Chiyome seemed to have realized her mother's cold indifference with Uchiha in general, so she made it a habit not to tell her time spent with Sasuke and Itachi . . . unless she was forced to.
"And you didn't cause trouble, I hope," Tsunade replied, five seconds after Chiyome last spoke.
The girl shook her head, white hair that reached her waist swaying from side-to-side. The strands she had tucked behind her ear untangled and shrouded her right eye once more. This annoyed her.
Noticing this, Tsunade quipped, "Maybe it's time to take you to the barber's again."
"Uh-uh," Chiyome whined.
"Why not?"
"Because—" She paused again, biting her lower lip, but soon gathered the courage to finish the sentence: "Because Sasuke-kun said I look good with long hair."
Tsunade was in the middle of a yawn when he heard that, and her open mouth shut tight, teeth colliding with such force her ears heard the booming CRUNCH! Eyes expressing surprise but not shock—though Tsunade had to admit that her emotions were near to crossing that border—she stared at Chiyome, wanting and demanding that what was just said was a joke. It didn't seem so.
"I asked for his opinion," Chiyome continued. "Itachi-sempai said the same."
She might have had something more to say, but she was still quite exhausted from work, her waking awareness fuelled mainly by self-control and an overabundance of caffeine coursing in her system. For now, she'd have to consider this the end of their talk. That bed was becoming very enticing in her thoughts.
So after releasing a steady sigh through her nose, she said to her daughter, "If you want your hair long, then okay. But next time just say you want it long." A repeat declaration was not a good idea.
"I don't really understand what you mean, but okay." She nodded for emphasis.
"Listen, sweetie, Mommy is really tired from work, so she has to go to bed now."
"But what about dinner?"
Damn. She forgot about that. And Chiyome didn't seem to be in the mood for takeout. The only alternative would be to get homemade food elsewhere, and she knew where her daughter would go to first.
"Okay," she said slowly, "then how about waking me up about . . . seven-thirty and I'll whip us up some katsudon?" It was Chiyome's favorite dish.
As expected, the girl's eyes lit up with excitement and nodded vigorously, which shifted the tucked strands to cover her eye again. Excitement was forced to make room for annoyance as the soft growl escaped her throat.
Tsunade chuckled. "I'll go get a hairclip." And then she bit back another yawn. Sleep would have to wait awhile.
After a two-and-a-half hour nap which was followed by a supper for two and a later tuck-in for her eight-year-old daughter, Tsunade waded back into the master bedroom and slumped onto the soft heavenly mattress of the king-size bed. She didn't fight back the yawn that escaped her mouth; she was too tired.
She didn't even bother changing into her nightwear like what she had done hours before. The only things she changed about her wardrobe were removing the bindings on her breasts (it was uncomfortable to sleep with them on) and stripping off her pants. The two tasks required a bit of tossing and turning and even some legwork, which might've been easier if she didn't do them while lying on the bed. But the strength that kept her standing up instantly disappeared the moment her body hit the bouncy surface of the bed. Now clad only in white panties and a very loose top—one nipple in danger of becoming fully exposed—Tsunade grabbed for one of the pillows and slid it behind her head. She closed her eyes, letting out a sigh of contentment. Then opened one eye to see that she forgot to turn off the lights.
Oh for God's sake!
She grunted and wrapped her body—head and all—with the sheets. Just imagine that she had taken the graveyard shift and had to sleep during the day. It would not be the first time. But sleep eluded her, even after ten whole minutes of inactivity. The glare of the fluorescent lamp on the ceiling greeted her when she peered out of the sheets. It was simpler for sleep to take her when she was as tired as she was four hours ago. The nap returned some numbed functions in her mind and this slight rejuvenation was followed by something she set aside into the backburner while she was still saving lives in the hospital. And now with nothing to put her mind off of contemplating unsettled thoughts—that something included—she was desperate for either action to preoccupy her or sleep to delay the inevitable pondering. It seemed cowardly, but she had reason not wanting to face thinking about this particular subject.
But knowing that sleep was not possible while her mind was somewhat anxious to ease the burden brought on by the unsettled stuff in her head, she had to do something whether she liked it or not. She slipped off the bed, fixed her half-topless state, and waddled to the light switch. A simple tug downward followed by an audible click later, the bedroom was bathed in the blackness of shadows.
The sole window in the room, a rectangular two-glass opening whose right side could be slid to the left, was draped a quarter of the way with curtains in the colors of earth clay. A view of Konoha's nightlife loomed beyond the glass, and the ambient light from the neon signs, yard lights, streetlamps, and lanterns all came together in a jumbled frenzy of kaleidoscope-like mix and invaded the threshold of Tsunade's bedroom, splashing all four sides of the room with watered-down hues of the paint and wallpaper adorning them. She stepped beside the curtain and tugged it, covering the rest of the window, and the room was again apinted with the domineering presence of black.
It only took her eyes ten seconds to adjust to nocturnal sight. Her extrasensory awareness of her body's simple and involuntary changes informed her of the rapid widening of her pupils as the gloom in her sight faded until she was able to distinguish the many objects inside the room. She observed everything, these everyday objects, slowly, deliberately, desperately. Anything to occupy her mind.
But a deep part of her knew that this was an inevitable event, and delaying it indefinitely would probably do nothing to improve the situation. This thing she tried to stop herself from pondering, from accepting, it would need an answer from her sooner or later. Much too soon for her liking.
One hand moved up to her face, cradling it, as she slumped to a squatting position on the floor, her back planted on the curtain-covered wall. Too soon. The plan Hiruzen-sensei cooked up was enacting too soon.
The Sandaime Hokage had approached her earlier that afternoon to discuss with her a matter of great importance. Obedient as she was as a genin as she was now as a kunoichi renowned for her medical achievements and for giving the arrogant chauvinists a good slap in the face for all current and future kunoichi discrimination, there was no will in her to refuse no matter how busy she was. Her sensei made time for them—a trio of six-year-old misfits, a time when the Densetsu no Sannin were nothing more than greenhorns fresh out of the Academy using the olden curriculum—so it seemed only right to extend the same courtesy in the opposite direction.
But what was said when they moved to the privacy of her office was nothing short of heated. Neither escalated to shouts, although she had been tempted more than once, but the searing heat was still present. If not in their words and voices, but in their fiery gazes and glares. Here were two ninjas—master and student once—overloaded with stress accumulated from days of salvaging the damage brought on by the Second Coming through their respective occupations as village leader and head medic-nin; and both were too strong-willed and persistent to back down on each other's argument.
"I can't do what you ask, sensei," she had said, her conviction set, but not believing this conversation could be over after that. Not by a long shot.
"Tsunade," the Hokage said, "please see reason. You're his last living relative in this village."
"I'm only distantly related to him, and even then, we're stretching the family tree a little too far."
"Ah, yes, but you are still his godmother."
Tsunade had nothing to rebuke that.
"I wish there was another choice," the Third admitted, "I really do, but Naruto-kun is in a fragile position. One wrong move and there'd be nothing left I can do to save him."
"But you're asking too much from me!" she hissed, controlling her voice in time when it intended to cry out indignantly. "I can't . . . can't . . ."
"Yes, you can and you will, Tsunade." His eyes narrowed. "Isn't it your duty as godmother to watch over Naruto-kun when Kushina can no longer do so?"
"It is, I know that, but—"
"Then you have to accept this." He sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose. "The nobles were screaming for blood, the blood of a five-year-old child. If they're not appeased, then I fear for the safety of Konoha. Soon, my position as Hokage will be meaningless once the daimyo decides to enter this affair."
"Then why not put Naruto into hiding?"
"He is hiding, Tsunade. And when you agree to the terms I made we'll be able to hide him better. He can start over."
Saying 'when' instead of 'if' aggravated her ire. If she had been a lesser woman, she would've stormed out of that office, defeated but unwilling to agree, duties as godmother be damned! But she owed a lot of things to Kushina, and among the many candidates for her son's godparent, she chose her. Not Kakashi, not Jiraiya (though Minato contemplated it), not even Rin. But her. Her, the drunkard (ex-drunkard anyway), the cynical and broken-spirited hag, the woman who made so many mistakes in her life, shrouded by success stories fit for the history books. She couldn't believe it then, and she still couldn't believe it now, but the decision was clear and her attachment to Naruto's life was set. Tsunade was the person Kushina trusted the most.
But this . . . this plan . . . it—
Hiruzen was asking her to legally adopt Naruto, under a new name, a new identity, while he made the final preparations for the news he would address to the public at a later date. It was not that she didn't want to Naruto, it was just that the method employed was questionable to her beliefs. As godmother, she already the right to take Naruto in, but that status meant nothing but shit if Hiruzen were to enact this foolhardy plan of his: to inform the masses that Naruto Uzumaki was officially dead. In paper, anyway. Naruto's strange transformation brought with it a great advantage, spawning the seed that grew into what Sarutobi and Tsunade had been discussing. To further separate a link between the past and present Narutos, he must have a different background and history. Orphaned at a young age, where the mother entrusted his care into Tsunade's hands a week before the Second Coming. Tsunade was unsure how far her sensei was willing to go to ensure Naruto's safety (what was next? Memory-wiping so that Naruto wouldn't accidentally slipup, saying something compromising, and ruin the entire thing?), but she at least trusted his judgment—to a degree. A legal adoption was a legal adoption. This was all for Naruto's safety and, both hoped, a chance for him to have a childhood without the stigmas and prejudices weighing down on his shoulders. So why hesitate? Why refuse signing the adoption papers?
Because it's like I'm stealing Naruto away from Kushina.
She could accept babysitting indefinitely for the kid, but adoption? It was a step far steeper than the former choice.
Adoption is serious business in the Elemental Nations. It doesn't fall under the same clan laws in Konoha, which is why clans rarely participate in such acts unless there's a worthy benefit. Adoption is semi-permanent, and if the child's parent wants to regain custody to their child, the matter has to be settled in court—even if all parties involved were in agreement. Furthermore, adopted children cannot be disowned and then readopted by another family either; disownment is impossible. If Tsunade were to sign those papers, Naruto could no longer go back to being an Uzumaki. His mother's clan would eventually die with her generation.
Family was everything to Kushina, to Tsunade. And both took pride in their clan and their place in it. To try and remove their association with their clans was nothing short of suicidal. Tsunade knew Kushina wanted to raise Naruto into a proud Uzumaki, and now such a notion seemed almost like an impossible dream. When those papers are signed, he would be a Senju till the die he died.
Back to reality and the dark bedroom in the Senju ancestral home, Tsunade lifted herself from her squat and lay on the bed. Once these memories entered the forefront of her mind, they screamed for recognition, kicked for want of a listening ear, for want of a chance to be acknowledged. And she let them. Running away from the real, from the present, wouldn't solve anything; this she learned and understood thanks to Kushina. There was no use hiding from the truth: she didn't have a choice. To be certain that Naruto would become safe, he had to be adopted as Arashi Senju.
However, there was no rush in signing the papers. She at least persuaded the Hokage to have this bit of leverage. It just didn't feel right to make decisions on a child's life without their consent. And adopting Naruto now would be like stabbing Kushina in the back. She needed consent, if not Kushina then the child at least; his decision had as much weight as his mother. This had to be for the best to all involved, and this couldn't happen if the boy disagreed to their requests. She was half-worried Hiruzen-sensei would try his nifty persuasion technique—it always worked with her and her team, even when they had been trained to be resistant to psychological battles.
But what really had Tsunade worried was breaking this news to Naruto. How exactly could she tell a five-year-old child that he would not be seeing his mother for a long time, that she is sick and seeing him (normal mode or Minato-lookalike mode, neither mattered) would undoubtedly make it worse? How could she tell Naruto that he won't be himself anymore, where a redhead he had been, he is now a blond Namikaze?
Naruto was too young to comprehend the situation's severity, to adapt to the conditions he would be forced to go through. Back to about delaying the adoption, it was selfish—it seemed that way to Tsunade, anyway—but it was a request she made to keep her conscience clean somewhat. It was up to Naruto to decide on what he wanted, but her conscience had other ideas. Her logical mind, partnered with conscience, reiterated that Naruto was still a child, innocent and knew no better, and when the time came for him to understand the long term effects of that decision he made when he was five, it would be too late to do anything to change things, and so only regret awaited him in his future.
This was why she didn't think more than she had to. The guilt might accumulate and she could end up getting cold feet. That mustn't happen. Despite the split in her mind's contradicting opinions, to back down now would be unthinkable. It would be like she presented her godson to the slaughterhouse.
She worked her way under the sheets and her head rested on a pillow. A few sniffs later, she cuddled the pillow, seeking comfort in the scent of her husband. She willed for sleep to claim her, and this time it came easily, like receiving a post-coital caress from a lover, from Jiraiya. Her worries were not yet over, but at least for this night, she was granted a moment of reprieve from her hectic ninja life, where her sleep was as she wanted it, dreamless and steady.
By nine o'clock the next morning, she felt better. She then spent the rest of her morning eating breakfast with Chiyome and catching a few more Z's while her daughter was out looking for her playmate—Sasuke. The adoption papers still lingered in her head somewhere, but they were bumped down from the priority list.
Life has its twists and turns, but on that morning, Tsunade couldn't describe it anything more than normal.
It was a strange sight to see in the lobby of Konoha General Hospital that afternoon, but because the lobby was currently occupied by a myriad of civilians, just a few ninjas here and there, Kakashi was able to pass the room and towards the reception desk as easy as channeling chakra. What made this a strange sight, however, was the bouquet of flowers the one-eyed jounin held in his hands. It was embarrassing enough that the florist was of the gossipy variety—he probably shouldn't wait long before the rumors spread like crazy—and her interrogative gaze toppled the embarrassment with disconcertment. He was at least thankful that the florist had enough tact to not ask a thing (his glare might've had something to do with it, the kind that literally screams "DON'T ASK!"), but it also meant that the story would find itself a lot more twisted than what he tried to imagine.
He didn't even bother keeping her silent; the rumor mill always found ways to squeeze out the juicy bits in every person's affair, and his status as 'single ninja' since the start of his career made his appearance in the hospital lobby, clearly visiting a female patient with that bouquet, a very curious event to investigate.
Once he made it to the center of the lobby, he said to the receptionist, "I'm here to visit Kurenai Yuuhi."
Konoha General Hospital took pride in being a Class-A public service institute, and this was achieved not only from a dedicated staff (most trained under Tsunade Senju), but also from very organized logbooks. Every guest wanting to visit a patient had to first login here at the main lobby, receive a visitor's pass, and must logout when their visitation was over. This might be a little extreme for a hospital, but KGH admitted more ninjas than civilians since its founding. Espionage missions could have assassins entering as a guest and kill their target with close to no difficulty. If the assassin was crafty enough, the death could even be blamed on the illness or condition that put the patient there in the first place. Another type of espionage mission, if the enemy ninjas were willing to take the huge risk involved, was close to what was referred to as "grave digging," only they steal the body before it actually entered its grave. This spells disaster to corpses in the morgue carrying Bloodline Limits. Security had to be enforced. And this might not have been possible if it hadn't been for Tsunade stating these cracks in their defenses two decades before. This got the people talking, but there weren't enough votes to implement it. It was only due to two separate incidents of Kumo trying to steal the Byakugan were her suggestions realized.
Kakashi took the visitor's pass from the receptionist's hands and looped it over his head. He thanked her with a bow and sauntered to the stairs. He had been to her room so many times that he could walk all the way there blindfolded. One time, he tried counting his steps from the entrance to his destination, but he lost count when she met him almost halfway, and by then he forgot all about counting. Each and every time he came to visit, there was always something interesting going on in this hospital. Whether it'd be children playing quietly or a cranky old man being wheeled in the hallway and speaking in rapid succession of words that the meaning in them seemed to have lost understanding—in other, harsher, words, the old guy was talking gibberish with no teeth. Kakashi knew in his mind that today wouldn't be any different.
He reached the third floor and, as always, he peered both left and right before marching forward. A guard stationed near the operating room nodded politely at him as he passed. Kakashi turned right in an intersection and left in the next, and kept going until he reached the door adorned with the number 323 in fake gold plating. A clipboard and the patient's name were hanging on the right side.
Kurenai Yuuhi
The door did not intimidate him. The number did not intimidate him (are you sure about that, Kakashi?). The name plate did not intimidate him. In all likelihood his visitation could go off without a hitch; he only had to turn the knob and push it inward. A typical greeting would pass his lips ("Yo!") along with his trademark eye-smile. They never failed him before. But what was failing him was his confidence. His legs felt rooted to the spot and his free hand stayed at his side, unable to take the thought-out action but remain idle like a dead limb. What was his hesitation? How could a simple visit be this difficult for him to push forward? He had gone to this room plenty of times, ever since the patient had been admitted to the hospital. Why hesitate now?
He looked at the bouquet in his hand, an assorted set of flowers colored in red, yellow, and pink. The set wasn't picked at random, although a florist might have something else to say to that. He picked each and every flower with the thought of how the receiver could react to them being banded together. His fellow nins didn't know this, but Kurenai had this habit of examining miniscule details deemed not so important that one would lose sight of the whole picture. It was an OCD of sorts, the perfectionist kind, where everything was orderly but at the same time chaotic in its own unique way. She had explained this to him once before, but such things went too beyond for his mind to comprehend thoroughly, so he just accepted it as her quirk. Every ninja living long enough had a quirk, some were hindrances, some were helpful, and a quite a few were neutral, neither helping nor hindering. Kurenai's quirk categorized itself in the second, enhancing her eye for detail whenever she tried to make a field-sized genjutsu. This knack for chaotic perfection also helps her with formulating and casting hard-to-break genjutsu. It was in the miniscule details she emphasized, but she never once neglected the general details. Perfection, all right.
That was why he chose these flowers. The rooms in KGH were notoriously bleak and have this profound feeling of purity and isolation. Bleak can mean serenity or peace to others, maybe even perfection, but to Kurenai a lack of color means a wrong sense of perfection. Her compulsions—and in extension, her peace of mind—thrived in bringing a bit of imperfection in the world. She learned from a young age that there was no such thing as perfection; it was a mere word to describe a certain boundary of human comprehension. White cannot always be white. There should be parts—even parts that are atomic in size—in weaker tint or hue, shattering the constant and verifying the illusion. His last visit had included this sermon, so he decided after he left that he'd do something about it. She'd be staying for another three days and he wanted the experience of her stay more bearable for her. They both hated staying in hospitals.
But still, why the hesitation?
Because it's the same room, a part of him whispered in his head, the part who remembered everything clearly, the part who wished to face the memories without fear. That whisper gradually a got louder for every iteration, like the mantra of fanatical cultists. He couldn't ignore this voice because it spoke no bullshit like a cultist, no preaches like a cultist, just the cold and painful truth.
"Rin," he murmured to the door, and in his peripheral vision, the nameplate reverted to the black under white lettering the hospital had used years ago, the printed name morphing the hazy memory into hazy reality. His old teammate, the second friend he had let down, died inside this room, her face—
"Oh! Scarecrow-dude!" a voice to his left exclaimed.
Kakashi closed his eyes, the nameplate and the distorted face banished back into the deep depths of his forbidden memories. He didn't want to think back on that day, more so now than ever before. He never told Kurenai about this room and would like it to stay that way. Memories were just that: memories. Trying to uncover a buried part of one's life never ended happy, because they had been buried with good reason.
While he was thankful for this momentous return to actual reality—lest he lost himself into the sands of time and relive that day where he saw the life in Rin's eyes wilt and disappear and all that remained were the dead eyes of a doll—he could do without the annoying nickname. And he knew only one person who could call him that and get away with it scot-free.
"Mitarashi-san," he greeted, and the girl immediately frowned.
"Didn't I tell you before? Call me Anko already!"
"We're not that close," he retorted.
"Sure we are. You treated me dango last week."
"That was extortion, not treating."
"Don't they mean the same thing?"
"I have to wonder how you could make friends with that kind of attitude."
"So I'm a little socially awkward, big deal." She crossed her arms. "I don't see you having many friends, too."
"I keep to myself most of the time. I was Wolf in ANBU for a reason."
"The lone white wolf in legends, huh," Anko mused. "Incidentally, doesn't the legend often have the wolf partnered with a human girl?" She then smiled seductively. "What do you think, Kakashi-kun?"
"I think you're taking the symbol of my ANBU mask too seriously. Being labeled a lone wolf should be reason enough, thank you."
Knowing that he wouldn't take the bait—as usual—she quickly recovered from the letdown. "If you say so," she said nonchalantly.
"You coming to visit Kurenai?"
"In a bit. I still have two more hours before my shift ends."
"Wait," he interjected, "you're working in the hospital?"
She nodded. "What's with that look?" she asked heatedly.
"Nothing," he answered, "just thinking why you're helping here. It's not your field of expertise, shall we say."
"No doubt," she agreed wholeheartedly.
Then why are you working here in the first place?
"First day on the job?" he asked.
"Tenth."
"Don't lie. I never saw you at all."
"Maybe because you've been coming here about four in the afternoon. I take the morning shift most of the time, and today's a special case because I'm taking another guy's shift."
"Now you're beginning to form a pattern of contradictions. The Mitarashi-san I know is not a morning person and cares little about stuff outside her interest, most especially taking someone else's work shift."
". . . you just insulted me, didn't you?"
"A mere observation. No insult intended."
"Intentionally or not, you still hurt my feelings."
". . . okay, who are you and what did you do to Mitarashi-san?"
"I took her soul and decided to right the many wrongs of her life, starting with volunteer work and tormenting the people who butt into other people's business." She emphasized this with cracking her knuckles. "Care for a demonstration, Scarecrow?"
He waved his left hand dismissively at her, not wanting a repeat performance when she learned a new grappling move from Gai—he'd rather forget that his body could be bent that way. "No need. No need. I'll take your word for it."
"Liar. Well, I gotta go. Tell Kurenai I'll be visiting her later, okay?"
"All right."
She nodded at him once and walked on by. Kakashi didn't watch her once she was out of his field of vision. Anko was a very private person, and the people she trusts in this village could be counted in fingers. That included him and Kurenai, and the trust she placed in him was more out of a strange succession of events that somehow made him earn it. He didn't want to look at a gift horse in the mouth and hurt the girl's feelings at the same time, so he treasured the trust she placed in him. One of these gestures of 'trust me and, in turn, I trust you' was him not looking over his shoulder.
With Anko Mitarashi's reputation slandered by the defection of her upstanding jounin instructor since her genin days, it had been hard to put trust into other people. She had been betrayed in the most grueling way possible, and her search for deception in the faces and actions of people was bordering paranoia. His knowledge on her mental health was nil due to Tsunade's firm and stubborn respect to the privacy of her patients' medical records. He trusted Tsunade enough to let the matter drop. But he went for an alternate source of info: Anko's best friend, Kurenai. The genjutsu mistress was an untapped pool of knowledge about the snake mistress, but even she kept secrets that could only be shared between the two women. As far as Kakashi could discern from Kurenai's own observations, Anko wanted people to trust her without caution. Even a harmless action, neither done by intent or suspicion, could mean a certain level of distrust Anko's little heart might not take.
That was why he kept his stare forward. If he had looked over his shoulder, Anko might take that as a sign of distrust because he had left his back open to her, so therefore, it might look like he was watching for backstab, despite the many flaws in that thought. For one, they were in a hospital hallway, which was guarded by ninjas twenty-four-seven. Anko might have gotten away with hurting him, but she would become vulnerable to other ninjas who could react at the attempted murder in a heartbeat and leave no prisoner in the aftermath. Anko was a woman of logic, even when the bordering paranoia eroded most of her rationality, but when it came to trust, logic found no place in it. Like what Kurenai had opined him, Anko was mentally ill but not enough to procure medical intervention. The best medicine she needed at that moment was time . . . and the people she trusts.
Kakashi knew more than anyone the pain of losing a precious person from becoming a victim in their own delusion.
Unseen from him, because of the form of trust he tried to convey to a woman who had trust issues, Anko looked back at him as she turned the corner, and muttered, "Idiot, I can feel your pity a mile away. I don't need it, but I sure as hell want it." She sighed. "Better than glares, anyway."
Another five minutes passed before Kakashi pooled enough courage and determination to place his hand on the doorknob, turn it, and push it open. He was assaulted with a wide range of dazzling white colors—the white walls, the white ceiling, the white-tiled floor, the white curtains fluttering in the gentle breeze with the window half open. Kurenai was on the bed, a pocket book nestled in her petite, delicate fingers. Her eyes never left the words in the pages as her eyes scanned through the rows in rapid pace. If she had registered that someone had come into the room, she didn't show it.
He knew Kurenai better than that. She was probably in the middle of the novel's climax and couldn't stop reading until she reached the end of a chapter or two. It didn't matter who the visitor was; she was always enraptured into the mystical world of stories lurking within the paragraphs and words and letters of books. He wasn't the least bit offended by having her prioritize a book against him, because he was usually the same way, getting carried away into the mythical land of fantasy and leaving behind the real world, if only for a few dozen or so more pages.
He grabbed the chair positioned at the foot of the bed and lifted it towards the bed's left side. Once he sat himself down, he watched her intently. He could see a cacophony of emotions surfacing in the forefront of her face, observing every wrinkle at the bridge of her nose when she frowned, the tiny dimple on her left cheek when she smiled, the pursing of her lips when she went through a mysterious passage, the widening of her eyes when the plot twist came along at the end of the chapter. He watched them all, barely making a sound or uttering a word. Boredom did not come to him, not when something so entertaining was presented in a face adorned by incomparable beauty and grace. It was her eyes that captured him more than any other physical appeal she had in her arsenal. Whenever he looked in them, they reflected the soul of a kindred spirit, one who understood, one who might not be strong in control but tough in will.
"You could drill holes with your stare, Kakashi," Kurenai said nonchalantly, eyes never leaving the page, never halting from their repetitive right-to-left movement.
Caught red-handed, it seemed. He just hoped that the red didn't also infect his cheeks—oh wait, he was wearing his mask.
He coughed lightly while looking away. He chanced a glance back at the woman from the corner of his eyes, and she was still reading. Two minutes pass in this silence, broken only by the fluttering of the curtains, the flipping of pages, and Kakashi's quiet foot-tapping.
Then Kurenai folded a corner of the page, producing a dog-eared effect, closed the book, and placed it on her right nightstand. "Sorry if I didn't greet you sooner."
"You were busy," he replied. "Didn't want to disturb your reading."
"Still, you could've at least said something to bring my attention. I only realized it was you when you sat down on the chair."
"Might distract you from your reading, regardless. I know how annoying that can be when you're in the middle of reading the climax, the most interesting part of a novel."
"The man writes great thrillers. You should try him sometime."
"I'll stick to my genre of choice, though, but thanks."
Kurenai shook her head, and a curved lip expressed a smile, despite her desire to roll her eyes. "Is there a reason why you revel in smut? Are you compensating for an experience you most obviously lack?"
". . . what experience?" Though he was feeling a bad vibe from her enigmatic smile, he still took the bait and asked.
"Sex."
"Wow, you actually said it."
"You've heard more vulgarity coming from other women's mouths, though they're actually women from your books and not real life."
"You're forgetting about Anko."
"Did you do her?"
Kakashi grimaced. "Please, don't say disgusting things."
Her eyes narrowed. "You find that disgusting, huh?"
"I don't mean to offend or be biased in anyway. I just don't see myself doing"—he coughed—"that with Mitarashi-san, of all people."
"She has a crush on you, you know."
"Don't put guilt into the mix. And besides, I can't answer her puppy love if I already have someone I like." He quickly shut his mouth; he hadn't meant to say that last bit.
"Oh? So . . . you've already have someone you like. I see, I see." She smiled wistfully. "Kakashi, the flowers?"
"Ah, oh, right. Here you go."
"Ahaa~" she gleefully uttered as she hovered her nose on top of each flowers, sniffing them. "A wild assortment of colors. Just what this room needed. I'm surprised you actually listened when I rambled yesterday."
"You sounded really into it. I guess it stuck in my head this time."
"Maybe. You've always been forgetful." She grabbed the empty vase on the bedside table and gently inserted the bouquet into it. "Thanks for the gift and for visiting."
"It's nothing. After what happened, I believe I owe you."
"Kakashi, I just got hit by some flying debris. It's nothing lethal. Actually, I'd be ashamed if I died from something like that."
"You weren't hospitalized because of that, and you know it," he replied vehemently.
And she nodded. The official story for her staying in the hospital was due to injuries from the Second Coming, but unofficially she was detained here for testing. Kakashi was also kept out of the loop until his frequent visits extended to sticking his nose into the backdoors—figuratively, of course. He pieced enough of the puzzle to confirm that Kurenai really was being tested for harmful side effects from overexposure to demonic chakra, and Kurenai deemed it useless to even lie when he confronted her about it.
"Look on the bright side: I'll be leaving in a few more days."
"They haven't done anything—"
"Kakashi, they're not molesters. And the ones who've seen me naked are all women."
". . . they could be lesbians."
"Are you really that worried about me?" she asked with utmost curiosity, before that feeling morphed into the teasing smile she adorned earlier. "Or are you just jealous that they saw me in all my glory and you didn't?"
"Don't be stupid." He sighed. "What's with this sultry attitude all of a sudden? You're beginning to sound a lot like Mitarashi-san."
"I just wanted to see if I can get a reaction out of you somehow." She shrugged. "Your composure is a lot stronger than I give credit. As expected of a masked ninja."
"Can I ask why?"
"Yes, you can, and because you've always come into this room looking all cool and composed like. Too perfect in my eyes."
"I often wonder if your fascination with chaotic perfection is getting worse every day."
"Who knows? It's probably the side effect those men in suits were talking about." A strong gale entered the hospital room, pushing the curtains far inward that they were almost parallel to the floor. The wind spread and managed to blow a few locks of Kurenai's hair to the front of her face, forcing her to peel it back. The whole spectacle left Kakashi a little dazzled at her unintended display of feminine appeal. Asuma once remarked that he, Kakashi, had a thing for black-haired women, and even though he had denied it vehemently to both the chain-smoker and the grinning beast in green spandex, it was actually true.
He averted his eyes. "Why are you looking for chaos in perfection?"
"Huh?"
"You've always gone on about that the world doesn't work on perfection, that it actually revolved in chaos. Perfection is only a word, you said. My question is that why you want to search for chaos. Shouldn't you be satisfied with the way things are?"
"That's not a good way to look at life, Kakashi," she retorted, expressionless. Her eyes were neither benign nor malignant, just two red pools of indifference. Fortunately, that stare wasn't directed at him but the wall in front of her. "The world is filled with mysteries. And I'm just an observer of the universe. Whatever I can do now and later are irrelevant things compared to the many actions of chaos within this universe."
"That doesn't answer my question, though."
"I know it doesn't, but I just don't have any other explanation. It's the same as asking me, 'why were you born?' Do you really think I can have an answer for that?"
"No," he admitted, and said nothing else.
"Maybe it's because I want to see more chaos."
"Huh?"
"'Always, beneath every apparent chaos, order waits to be revealed.' Father used to say that to me when I was little. But I don't really believe it. The world revels in chaos; order is just something to negate chaos."
Kakashi understood little of Kurenai's thought patterns when it involved the logic behind her OCD, but again, he accepted it simply as her quirk. There should be no underlying meaning within her ramblings or whenever she started talking philosophically, and there should be no use overthinking about something that seemed pretty much a way for her to cope with life. Humans are, after all, naturally curious creatures, wanting to learn more and more, from how things work to how the universe came about. In that light, Kurenai wasn't any different from other people who had their own conclusions about the universe's inner workings, as if their word carried more validity than other rambles of other people.
Kakashi spent his afternoon with Kurenai, inside that hospital room, secret smiles and secret looks often done by both parties without the other knowing—at least that was what they told themselves. Still, it seemed too early for either one to be true to what their hearts were telling them, but at least they were progressing. Slowly, but surely.
Maybe that was what they intended in the first place.
Naruto had little time to think over what he was about to do because hesitation was not permitted, lest he ended up being skewered by the pointy end of a creature's spear. After departing with his clone to find an entranceway beyond the chakra-proof wall, it took him a while to find it. His walk was overall uneventful, but at least it wasn't wasted with nothing to ponder about. The dreary, bleak place he was in had been circulating in his mind for some time. It didn't waver after ten minutes, which was more or less the time it took for Naruto to move onto another topic of interest. Rather, it just kept coming back whenever he tried to think of something else.
After an hour of walking through soft, cracking snow, he had found the entranceway he was looking for and, like the man he was known to be, didn't stop to formulate his next step. Caution was pushed aside for recklessness, and Naruto didn't give a damn. He usually winged things and he was still here with all his limbs intact and his head on straight—exempting the fact that he was dead already.
But this time, maybe winging it was his most ill choice to date. The entrance was a large arch, its peak reaching the top of the towering wall, its width from the ground no more than thirty feet. It was also deserted, no guards or security as far as the eye could see, despite the ever-present mist dampening the vision of even the keenest scouts. The whole feel of the arch should've tipped him off, but he had been too eager to get out of the snowstorm to pay attention to his caution and his danger instinct.
It would've been his downfall if Naruto wasn't a war veteran and one of the few who could go toe-to-toe with a teleporter like Madara Uchiha. After years of warfare and stalemates between him and the last Uchiha in existence, Naruto had honed his tracking skills that it'd be difficult (but not impossible) for someone to get the jump on him. It didn't always work because he didn't have enough time to master this newfound skill. Still, it was a quicker response stimulus than his sixth sense in fighting.
But having it trained was more than enough for him to quickly roll on his left before a hulking mass of white descended onto the ground he had been on moments before. There was a thunderous crack as snow and dust flew through the air. And though the soft snow beneath him absorbed most of the tremor caused by the white mass, Naruto quickly inferred that it would've been enough to kill him if he hadn't dodged.
"And here I thought I could get a break from the fighting," he murmured, and then straightened up from his roll. He readied a kunai in each hand, holding the right one in reverse, and took a taijutsu stance.
Two seconds passed. Three. Four. Six. Ten. The dust and snow had come and gone, clearing the obstruction they made on the hole, but nothing was coming out of it.
"Shit!" His realization came a second too late when the white thing emerged behind him, scattering a flurry of snow from its emersion, a perfect camouflage for its mien. Naruto's danger instincts flared and took control the instant something thrust into his head's location. Distracted by the mist and the flying snow, he didn't notice the second thrust after he dodged the first. Luckily, it was not pointy, unlike the previous, which he escaped lethal harm but still came out of it with a graze on the side of his right temple.
The second blow pushed him towards the wall, negating the chakra he generated on his back to soften the impact. His spine felt as if it was on fire, and the back of his head was in no better shape. He shook his head a few times, trying to clear the momentary dizziness. He was most possibly concussed, but he didn't want that to stop him.
He reacquainted himself with caution, maintaining his cool while scanning her surroundings. He had lost his left kunai in the confrontation and so, produced another, this one now in the same reverse grip as his right. In normal instances like this, the best tactic for now would be to defend and wait for an opportunity to strike back, but Naruto could already tell that was a foolhardy notion. With his back to the wall, he at least removed half of the beast's range of surprise attacks. Even then, he still had a hundred-eighty degrees of open field to defend, and with the white thing's impressive speed and sly use of the surrounding mist and snow for camouflage, it'd be futile to try and defend. The best he could hope for was put on an offense the moment the beast decided to attack.
This was why his kunai were in reverse-grip; his taijutsu stance had been through a bit of an overhaul nine months before. The standard kunai grip was mainly used for defense, and the reverse grip for offense. If he wanted to lean more on offense than defense, he'd have his right kunai (the dominant hand) on reverse, the left on standard. He rarely utilized the double reverse grip, which was reserved for quasi-kamikaze tactics.
This suited Naruto just fine, though. What's a battle without taking risks anyway?
He breathed in and out, a cloud of breath whistling out of his mouth. His eyes narrowed, detecting an anomaly in the mist. Trying to discern the creature's location through sound was a bust now that the snowstorm's wind had picked up, howling through his ears and making visibility much worse. He kept alert, sticking his back to the wall but giving enough space to make for a hasty retreat. The cold wind coagulated bits of his blood and lessened the bleeding of his temple wound, but he noted this offhandedly. His main attention was to his surroundings. Something didn't fit.
The monster was not attacking. He couldn't make a counter without it making the first move, and more than a minute had already passed. Surely the monster didn't think that he'd die from a single blunt thrust like that? No, whether or not the monster was underestimating him, it showed enough intelligence to procure a second point of attack when the first one wouldn't connect. It should have enough sense to check on the body before returning to its post and guard this archway again in its post above—
Fuck! Above!
Eyes widening, he panned his view up just in time to see the white mass stalking the inner curve of the arch, closing in on the spot that was right above him. Excellent position for an encore slamming performance, one that Naruto would rather not repeat. He thought of wall-walking and confronting the beast, but that was impossible with the chakra-proof material encompassing the whole structure. It left him to wonder how exactly that white monster was able to stick up there without chakra.
His wandering mind was put on hold when the beast became aware that it had been spotted and had decided to change its mode of attack by diving into the arch. That didn't seem physically possible, but the beast made it look like an everyday occurrence. So what did that make of the monster guardian, an entity created by this chakra-proof structure?
The world was making less sense by the minute. First chakra-repelling walls and now sentient monsters emerging from solid walls. What next?
His danger senses flared once more and he ducked and rolled forward. He twisted his body so that it faced the wall when his roll was done. And his eyes lay witness to three white monsters emerging from the wall's flat surface like zombies digging out of the soil above their graves. His close proximity with them made the sight of them much clearer and grotesque. Naruto was too naïve to think of these creatures as if they were living, breathing organisms subjected to laws of evolution and order. What he was seeing were machines of destruction and chaos. He didn't know why he began to think of them as machines—they were far from inorganic, despite their ghost-like intangibility with the walls—but it seemed most fitting. Better than calling them puppets, anyway.
Their heads were swollen and bulbous, features of a face nowhere to be seen. Four tentacles were each shooting out of their napes, wiggling around like panicking octopi. They had four arms, the bottom pair small and deformed, the top pair thin and sharp, almost like the blades of rapiers—ideal for thrusting. They also had tails, bony and lizard-like (will it still move after being severed from the body?) , and their legs were similar to that of horses. Naruto couldn't tell if these things had hooves or not, but he wasn't about to stick his neck to cater his curiosity. He didn't want to end up like the proverbial cat, after all.
The machines twisted their necks in synchronized movements, cracking and grinding bones together. The one on the left stopped, ground its rapier blades together—sparks forming from the intense force and friction—and immediately charged, both blades lunging. With his kunai still in reverse grips, Naruto faced the monster with no note for defense. This was to be a clear kamikaze moment, but hopefully his luck would pull through and get him out of this unscathed.
It seemed like wishful thinking, but maybe Lady Luck was looking out for him at that very moment.
With arms in the X pattern, the pommels of the kunai touching his shoulders, he ducked as he sprinted with all he got. He channeled chakra to his soles, making sure that a weak spot on the ground didn't suddenly depress and slowed his increasing speed—this had to be perfect, no distractions, no foul-ups. If there were, he'd be dead.
The machine's double thrust was unoriginal and unstylish; it looked like it was putting its arms forward. When Naruto sprinted towards the machine, it didn't react but kept charging like a bull that saw red. They were closing in—eight yards, five, four, three—and just as the rapier blades were about to pierce Naruto's shoulders, he blitzed into action.
The X pattern of his arms swiftly changed position, both arms returning to their side of the body. And midway through their move, Naruto tightened his grip on the kunai. The sides of his twin weapon of choice collided with the sides of the rapier blades in a dazzling ignition of fire sprites dancing in the snowy air, heat and cold fighting a battle within the bigger battle. He didn't stop there; with the momentum still in his arms, he kept pushing them outward, intent on widening the open chest the machine left behind. He couldn't waste precious time with a smile, a thought of victory, or a feeling of satisfaction. He was now in the moment, and in that moment the decisive action that could put an end to this one battle had to be done.
Because the organic's horse legs were thick and muscular, his sandal had a firm foothold when he stepped on one. As he pushed forward, kunai and rapier amplifying the amount of friction sparks in his wake, he brought his knee to the beast's head. Hardened shinobi bone met with the brittle, metallic-feeling of bone. Between the screeches of metal and bony metal, there was a resounding crack coming from where Naruto kneed the bastard. Still no time for distractions or foul-ups. Just one more step and it was time to back away.
He finished off the maneuver with stabbing his right kunai straight into the side of the machine's head. Naruto liked to hope that this would be enough to stop the beast's in their tracks, for no living being could survive a direct blow to the head, but his like had no hold on the strict laws of reality, and he had already faced the fact himself that these abominations didn't have to obey such laws. Death, it seemed to him, was not a problem for these beings. Death comes for every living thing in the world, and these abominations surely are not real living things. They were organic, yes, and moving, yes, but neither translated to life. They were called machines because their creation was unnatural, just artificial constructs from the mind of a deranged guy who liked to play God.
Naruto kicked the beast's head one final time and pushed himself far, far away. He rolled on his back as his feet met with the soft snow. The growing distance dimmed his view of the upcoming spectacle, but that was all right. All of this was, after all, just a distraction. He didn't stay to watch; he turned around and bolted into the inner sanctum lying beyond the other end of the archway.
The white creature didn't know what was coming, but it at least knew that their target was running away. It turned around to warn its brethren when a sizzling noise resonated from the embedded kunai. Naruto's studies of fuinjutsu came with it a few leaps and bounds in shinobi technology. One of them happens to be the use of exploding tags, where he no longer a strip of paper tied to the pommel hole on a kunai. He instead reconstructed the bombing mechanism program of the explosion seals into very hilt of the kunai, therefore camouflaging it among the dozens a shinobi would throw while in battle. Their enemy wouldn't know there was a tagged kunai until it was too late.
His ingenuity saved lives and surprised his foes. And he had once more done the second as the white monster was engulfed in a searing blob of heat, fire, and KABOOM!
Out of all the things he'd see inside those walls, what was there was nowhere near what he had hypothesized. He expected something like a prison of sorts or a tower, where he had to climb a hundred sets of stairs to reach the top. Fantasy had more credibility than reality—to Naruto, at least. But this viewpoint only came about because he was more or less unsatisfied at the results of his hard work. What was really inside these walls was nothing more than a crummy old shack that looked to be in great disrepair, almost falling apart.
He remembered the old fuinjutsu phrase (Never judge a book by its cover), but that didn't mean it had to apply with things outside fuinjutsu. To Naruto, the first impression meant everything and nothing could be more presenting than something quite superficial that it could be sweet, succulent candy for the eyes.
But no, this was not to be. All his eyes could savor was the taste of a crummy shack standing in the middle of a depressing snowstorm.
His afterlife sucked.
"Can't go back now, though." He had gone too far to just give up now. He made the decision to move on, so he was adamant in moving on.
He approached the shack with little caution, tried the doorknob, found it unlocked, and opened it. There was nothing inside. It was dark and cold, and the wood was moist and aged. When he looked close enough, he realized that it wasn't the mist or the snow making this color, but that the wood was tinted with a natural ash gray color.
"A very gray world. What's next, Gray-men?"
He hoped not.
Entering the threshold of the shack, he looked around. The darkness hid nothing as light coming from the doorway illuminated almost every part of the single room. There was really nothing here.
Must look underneath the underneath, he thought determinedly. He searched deeper, checking the floorboards, knocking on the walls, examining every nook and cranny of the place, but he still found nothing. If that wasn't enough, when he decided that this really was just a crummy old shack in the middle of nowhere, the door slammed shut. Enveloped in darkness, Naruto couldn't see, but he didn't panic. He estimated the position of the door and moved towards it.
"Hey!" he shouted. "Who's out there?"
Someone had closed the door; it couldn't be the wind because the door opened inwards not outwards, where the sporadic wind had more chances in pushing the door. His steps sounded loud and hollow inside this enclosed room, and every time he neared the door (or where it should be), his shoulders began to sag and sag. It was too soon for his night vision to come about—everything was still black—but the darkness disconcerted him somewhat. As if it were . . . alive and . . . watching him.
It took a while still for Naruto to realize that he had been walking for too long. The area of the shack was small, and he could easily traverse to the other side within eight steps, but he estimated his steps to exceed twenty. His mind had been preoccupied over the possibility of a white beast trapping him inside this place that he let this simple fact almost evade him. He stopped walking, but kept his hand out in front of him. With a simple surge of chakra concentrating on his open palm, he began spinning and molding it. The result was instantaneous when a majestic sphere of pure spinning chakra floated on his palm. The Rasengan's display was not only magnificent but it also presented a source of light within the dark room. But what illumination it tried to give out never made it past Naruto's arm, it seemed, because the room was still obstructed by the ever-present black. Not even the floor, when he crouched to check how far the Rasengan could illuminate, could be seen. The only explanation would be that the floor suddenly morphed from old, creaky gray wood to old, creaky ebony—an ebony too dark to see contours and gaps, as if nothing else were darker than itself.
"Just what—"
His words died in his throat when his ears picked up the grinding sound. Grinding bone against bone. Steel against steel. Both behind him.
He acted on instinct, letting this basic trait of early human society convey onto him what those who sneak up on a shinobi end up like. With the Rasengan still spinning strong in his hand, he faced the white machine—sparks still flying from its rapier grinding; an excellent target detector—and thrust the sphere into the belly of the beast.
But nothing happened.
Because the creature had emerged from the chakra-proof wall, it too should have the same properties. Naruto realized this seconds after the Rasengan dissipated from his hands and the used chakra retreated back into his coils, but these precious seconds meant sufficient time for a counterattack. He felt nothing other than a stinging sensation on his left chest. Without the Rasengan, his eyes—night vision absent—only saw darkness. But he coughed and something started to push out of his throat and mouth, like vomit. It might be blood; it might be spit. Either way, he knew what this stinging meant and what would happen next.
He didn't give a damn.
He wasn't giving up without a fight.
Naruto pulled away from the monster and the blade pierced into his chest, but the monster proved tenacious when its two arms grabbed ahold of Naruto's and delivered the second rapier into his right chest. He spat out more blood as the stinging enhanced into a terrifying wave of unadulterated pain. Screams never left his mouth as it was too busy with coughing out blood, but the grunts in between the coughs were probably adequate in conveying the level of his pain. He still tried to fight back, but the monster—seemingly aware of the redhead's stubbornness—twisted the rapiers embedded in his chest faster than snapping fingers.
The jolt and the excruciation blacked out his consciousness, which was probably the best mercy he had in a while. However, he didn't know if his entering unconsciousness meant death or just sleep. And for some reason, he found himself not caring. The pain was gone, his efforts were wasted, and his mind was collapsing into the sandman's embrace. His last thoughts were of his counterpart, his mother, and even Rambo. The ones he had left behind. He promised he'd come back. It had been a promise of a lifetime!
So why? Why—
The call of the sandman could no longer be ignored. And whether or not he'd see the light once his eyes closed themselves, it mattered not. He just wanted to say one last thing to the people he loved, even if they could not hear him from where he stood.
I'm sorry.
Chapter Afterword:
If anybody is curious to know, I got the chapter title from a manga title—and that's what I really mean, because I first discovered it over a year before the anime came out, so there! For those uneducated in the world of the 2D-Girl conquest god, watch the anime or read the manga. Elsie will approve. Keima will be indifferent, too busy with his galge.
One thing I need to point out. This chapter was supposed to have another scene after the last one, but because this was becoming as long as it was, I decided to just put it into the next chapter. This way, I could introduce the new canon character without ending it up in another cliffhanger. Expect the unexpected, guys. Hehehe.