Date written: 15/07/11 – 27/08/11
Posted on FanFiction: 27/08/11
A/N: I've started working on this chapter a few days after releasing the previous one. But after a month of inactivity and with this chapter half-complete, I found it lacked plenty of stuff, so I scrapped it and remade it into this one. It took me another month to finish it all, not because I was losing inspiration, but because my school life has increased its difficulty tenfold that I was left unprepared for all of it. Seriously, if I had known that your last year in Uni will be this hard, I might've actually given more effort in my earlier years to be more prepared for it. Now I'm a very busy guy and the next update might take me another month or so to complete. Sorry guys. Can't do anything to change that; real life over fanfiction and all that jazz.
By the way, I'VE SET UP A POLL IN MY PROFILE. Check the Chapter Afterword for more info.
–– CHAPTER 13 ––
Bittersweet Escapade
The Senju Residence
2:35 AM
Naruto awoke to a dark room, the silhouettes of the furniture forming faint memories into his rousing brain. He gave it a few more moments to warm up before he put his muddled thoughts into action. Ah, he remembered more clearly now. He was in his room. Weird he didn't recognize it for a second there.
He checked his bedside clock and almost groaned at the time. Instead, he yawned loudly. In instances like this, he would've fallen back to sleep after drinking a glass of water from the bathroom he and his elder sister shared, but tonight didn't seem to want him returning to the embrace of dreams. It was probably because of the open door to Chiyome's bedroom that sparked some of his mind's interest when he entered the bathroom. She might have a bad habit of leaving the door open after taking a long bath and it was his turn to use the bathroom, but she always closed it when going to sleep. His logical mind insisted that he was overthinking things, and that Chiyome must've done the same routine he did earlier—waking up in the middle of the night, going to the bathroom to probably do business or drink water or maybe even both, and then forgetting to close the bathroom door. It seemed that way, but a small part of him wanted to think otherwise.
He filled up his drinking glass, chugged the water down, and returned to his bed. Sleep still eluded him, despite having an ordeal for a day. And he still couldn't get his thoughts away from Chiyome and that damned open door.
"Only one way to find out," he murmured to himself. He climbed out of bed and went to his sister's bedroom, only to find the bed empty of its owner. Surveying the room brought nothing to light—and I didn't mean because it was dark and Naruto didn't bother to turn on the lights—only more questions and a building worry entering his stomach.
The window next to her bed was open, the night breeze swaying the side curtains like skirts on a windy day. His feet pushed forward, coming to the window like they were possessed. He let them do so because they were not the only part of him that was urged to exit the house through the usual shinobi means, though this would be the first time he'd do it in Chiyome's room. One foot out, then came the other. He took a moment to bask in the steady breeze coming his way, cooling his face, his exposed hands and feet, and he let out a breath to halt the shiver awaiting release. It was unreasonably cold out and he was dressed with nothing but his blue pajamas. He idly wondered how Chiyome could handle this cold if she had gone out from here.
He imagined her being kidnapped by some foreign ninjas who had a bone to pick with the Senju. They would've gagged her after knocking her out when she returned from the bathroom. They'd put her in a sack, come out the window, and fled the scene as if they were never there.
It wasn't the most believable scenario at all.
For one thing, the perimeter surrounding the Senju residence was protected by a dome that studies the intentions of everyone who comes across it. The dome itself was keyed to the residents of the home, so if there were kidnapping ninjas, either he or Chiyome should've sensed their presence that a surprise attack would be rendered useless before it could even start.
It cemented his belief that Chiyome decided to stargaze on the roof again. The last time she did that was when she received a failed grade in her World History exam, which followed an earful scolding from their mother, who was the most disappointed out of everyone in the family. Being the eldest and direct heir to the Senju clan, Chiyome was under a lot of pressure, and their mother wished to pass on the clan name without any worry.
Channeling chakra to his feet and silently thanking one of his daydreams for giving him this idea, he walked up the wall and reached the roof. It took days to get this right, but the benefits of sticking onto any surface like all the veterans ninjas seemed to do was well worth the effort. Sitting there, the color pink and white mingling amidst the green-tiled roof, Chiyome Senju lay on her back with her eyes having that faraway look like he often had whenever he entered his daydreams. He noticed that her hair was down. No longer was it tied up by a double ponytail on the right side of her head, and her long fringes were free to terrorize her vision as the wind began to pick up. But this was a small nuisance she automatically fixes whenever it came about. The wind moved her hair, obscuring her eyes, to which she rearranged the annoying snow-white strands in a fluid and practiced motion without batting an eyelash.
"Onee-chan," he called as he sat next to her, grimacing at the slightly wet and excruciatingly cold feeling of the tiles on his bare feet.
She didn't respond right away; her eyes were going from star to star, like a child connecting dots together to form a picture. And he didn't bother calling her again to make sure he was heard the first time. Whenever Chiyome went into her stargazing, she disregarded everything in the outside world, and the only ways for one to bring her back down to earth would be to either cover up her sight of the sky or tickle her armpits (a weakness he exploited at every turn). But then, the disturber would end up facing her wrath for ruining her concentration. Regardless whether or not she believed in astrology, she still took it seriously as if it were her guide to understanding the elusive machinations of fate, so that she could one day defy them. Naruto didn't know when she started turning an interest into astrology and dream interpretations, but he was supportive, if a bit indifferent, to her newfound hobby, unlike their mother, who was as much as a realist as their Hokage.
Chiyome and Tsunade rarely met eye-to-eye these days. It must've all started when the Senju matriarch demanded to know if Chiyome had romantic or platonic attachments to Sasuke. Chiyome's silence was enough of an answer for her. Hatred ran deep between the two opposing clans, and tensions were high all the time (as he often heard in history books and from the stories their mother told about her genin days, back when the Senju had been a much bigger clan than the four-person nuclear family it was now today). The only times that a Senju and an Uchiha actually fell in love and started a family together in Konoha history was two, and in both cases, the new family was disowned by both clans, leaving them with nothing but a fictional family name to fill the gap left behind. Such were clan politics. Naruto just wished that if something did occur between Chiyome and Sasuke, they wouldn't be burdened with the same incident as the previous star-crossed lovers.
Star-crossed lovers, huh? he thought idly, gazing up at the night sky. Maybe that's why she has such a fixation to the stars. The enmity between two families, the forbidden attraction of one heir to the other, it's similar to the situation of Romeo and Juliet.
"The stars are almost unreadable tonight," Chiyome said all of a sudden, reeling in Naruto's thoughts back into the visage of reality. "But whatever I can decipher always spelled 'bad' in the worst ways."
"Like what?" Naruto curiously asked, shifting his legs into a crossed position to alleviate his feet from suffering any more frosty feelings with the roof tiles. They were almost numb already.
"Death," she answered, and the voice she used was neither nonchalant nor frantic. It was an impacting statement if taken out of context, but because she sometimes shared her star-formation predictions with him at breakfast, Naruto processed the info as if someone just said doomsday happened yesterday.
"And?" He also doubted that death was the ultimate prediction for tonight. There was something in her gaze that basically screamed she had more to tell.
"Uncertainty, perhaps," she murmured. Then, in a louder voice: "Chaos, disorder, anarchy. Not a bright and peaceful future I might've hoped for."
He didn't what anarchy meant, but if it was alongside chaos and disorder, it must be bad. "So chaos and death together?" he said. "Probably war." A shiver rolled down his spine. He blamed this cold weather.
"Maybe." She shrugged. There was uncertainty in her face. She lifted her upper body till she sat straight and then ran a hand from her forehead to her nape. With one chestnut eye closed, the other half-closed, she stretched her arms upward as she let out a big yawn.
"Why are you up here at this hour, Onee-chan?"
"I should say the same for you, squirt," she quipped. "I came here to clear my head, I guess."
"I think I had another dream—"
"Was it a continuation to the dream you had last night?"
"I—I can't remember." He stayed silent for a while. "Why did you have to clear your head?"
"I met Itachi after school." Her knees rose to head-level and she rested her chin on them while her arms enclosed her shins. "I don't know why but he seemed so . . . so . . . so quiet. It's as if he had a lot going in his mind that he can't be bothered to answer my questions."
"The guy's an ANBU captain, you know. A position like that is sure to eat up his free time."
"I know Itachi. He got promoted to that position months ago, and he was never this . . . distracted, I guess. Yeah, distracted he was most certainly like, at the time."
"Do you think it's work-related?"
She shrugged again. "He never told me a thing."
"Nothing at all?"
"Like Kiba's World History exam sheet."
He smiled lopsidedly at her choice of analogy. "That's kind of unfair to Kiba," he said. "I'm sure he answered at least one question."
"Which was a stupid answer for a simple question."
"You saw it? He was so embarrassed that he burned the paper before anyone else could see it." The whole class at least knew that Kiba got a zero.
"When I came to the staff room and glanced at Iruka-sensei checking your papers. Kiba only had one answer." She snorted. "He mistook Hashirama Senju with Hoshigama Genjo."
"Hoshi . . . gama?"
"Yeah."
". . . seriously?"
"Yup."
"That Kiba." He chuckled, somehow pitying Kiba for the unbelievably dunce move he had done. To not know of the Shodai Hokage was close to blasphemy within the Konoha ninja ranks and even the Ninja Academy. If anybody else had known of this blunder, Kiba would never have been able to live that down; no one would let him. No one.
He then said, "So what are you going to do about it?"
"Huh?"
"About Itachi."
"Oh." She hummed, one finger on her lip as she gazed back onto the constellations scattered across the galaxy. "I never really gave much thought in doing something, actually."
"But it's bothering you, isn't it? If it is, then you're supposed to do something about it."
"Easier said than done, you know," she shot back. "I don't know where to start. I can't understand Itachi all the time because he never lets me in."
"What do you mean?"
"His heart, Naruto, his heart," she whispered, uttering his real name with such gentle quivers from her vocal cords that he forgot reprimanding her about using it. She rarely called him with his real name (on a happier note, when they're alone, she sometimes calls him "Naru-kun" by either mistake or endearment), and in the times where she did, their conversation was plastered with utmost seriousness.
Chiyome let out a sigh through her nose. "He's hard to predict sometimes," she said. "On one day, he can be open and cheerful. On another day, he can be closed off, acting all emo-like, and almost unresponsive to outside stimuli."
"How so?" He couldn't picture an ANBU captain acting so absent-minded.
"When I flashed him my panties, he didn't even blink." She huffed at the end. "And I was wearing a sexy pair, too."
Onee-chan, Naruto thought, his right cheek twitching like crazy, have you no shame whatsoever?
"My pride as a woman was taken down a peg," she replied, followed by another huff, clearly figuring out his thoughts through the complex expression he wore. "A low-blow like that is not easily forgiven."
"Right," he drawled with a roll of his eyes. He scratched his nape and glanced at Konoha, feeling the wind picking up and brushing away his bangs. "Huh?" He suddenly stood up.
"Arashi?"
"Onee-chan, do you notice something strange in Konoha?"
"Strange?" She looked out into Konoha in the same way Naruto did, but her expression grew more bewildered almost in the same time Naruto's expression grew more agitated. "It's just Konoha at night."
"Without streetlamps and the like?"
Her own expression darkened, returning to the lack of nightlife in the village, feeling a sense of forebode slithering in her stomach. Konoha had itself a rising business community in the night scene, and in the years after the Kyuubi's destruction of almost a third of the village's structures, the need for rebuilding presented a great opportunity for would-be owners of gentlemen's clubs, honky-tonk bars, love hotels, and other such venues of nocturnal entertainment to set up shop in the wake of the natural disaster. Witnessing shakeless darkness was just abnormal, even in the face of power failure, as she first suspected, because a lot of business owners invested in emergency generators. She could understand a failed generator or five, but all of them in one night?
"How did we not notice this sooner?"
She saw Naruto shrug through her peripheral vision. He said, "Whoever's doing this probably did it slowly." He frowned a little, tilting his head ever so slightly to the right. "No, that would be counterproductive. If they intended to shut down Konoha's power, they would've done so simultaneously. So then . . ."
"False light."
"What?"
"A genjutsu used to distract an enemy, make them believe that an extinguished light hasn't been extinguished. It's mainly for espionage missions, where covert-ops trick the enemy into thinking they have light, but once the last source of light is gone, the genjutsu is released and the enemy is forced to fight in darkness . . . the home ground of the Konoha ANBU."
"Then, it was released?"
"No, it hasn't. I can still sense the genjutsu. The only defect of the technique is the constant eye contact with the affected area. If the victim loses sight of the genjutsu—in this case, the streetlamps in Konoha—then the victim breaks out of the illusion."
"But I was inside earlier, and I recall that the lights were on."
"Because you weren't previously afflicted with the genjutsu. It's only after getting afflicted that the defect can be exploited."
"So when we were stargazing . . ."
"We have unknowingly broken out of the illusion."
"But what's happening now?"
"We should go back inside," Chiyome cut in. And there was a glint in her eyes screaming at him that this order must not be denied.
Though Naruto would rather find an answer to the anomaly before them than settle back into the Senju ancestral home, he trusted his sister's judgment, and if she said that they should leave this mystery as it was, then he would follow.
But fate, it seemed, didn't want their late night stargazing to end with the faint brushes of a frightening sight. Once Naruto helped Chiyome stand up, she felt the faint grasp of the genjutsu like water droplets cascading down her goose-pimpled skin. It made her shiver . . . right before the genjutsu lost full control and was intentionally released.
Moments later, as the two stood stock still in the unbroken darkness with nothing to indicate the passage of time except their bated breaths, three separate explosions illuminated the night.
The Hatake Residence
3:00 AM
Kakashi sat up from his bed in a rush, one hand already fishing for the kunai under his pillow. His wife mimicked his movements in close synchronicity to his. Their bedroom was dark and empty of intruders; something else woke them from slumber, something much louder than a bump in the night. Another explosion rattled their floor and their ears, this one closer than the previous.
Danger senses tingling even before the second explosion erupted, their bodies raced to accommodate the new branch of sensations affecting them. Adrenaline was pumping through their veins; their hearts were beating faster and fiercer than normal; their brains and the five senses they control were becoming acute, slowing down time, enhancing the catchment of sound, increasing the sensitivity of the nerves spread across their skins. They were prepping for an upcoming battle.
Kakashi moved like lightning, racing towards the dresser where two supply scrolls contained emergency shinobi equipment: armor, kunai, shuuriken, the works. Kurenai, the more aware and vain of the duo, already picked up the thrown-about clothing they had shed hours before. In his haste, Kakashi had forgotten that he was in his birthday suit, like her.
She threw him a pair of pants, which caught and dangled on his head. Boxers were neglected; there was no time; he would have to suffer going commando.
"Won't be the first time," she murmured, going commando herself, although whether she was speaking of Kakashi's experience or hers was left to speculation.
Kakashi, in turn, threw her half of the emergency equipment, and she wore it hastily.
A third explosion rocked the night. The couple eyed each other in the darkness, broken only by the nightly illumination coming from the curtained window, though the illumination itself had an artificial glow to it as the fires from burning buildings pitched in on creating brightness on the witching hour. A hand signal later, Kakashi had his back beside the wall under the window with Kurenai on his left.
"Shall we?" he asked cordially, as if they were just about to enter a fancy restaurant for their date than to a war that seemed to have bombarded into their village within minutes.
Kurenai—sharing some of the twisted humor her husband suffered from— nodded, tilted her head, and smiled a sweet schoolgirl smile. And such an action made Kakashi's heart swoon.
"We shall," she replied, holding one kunai in the reverse-grip.
They might not know who was attacking the village, they might not know if they would survive another day once this was over, they might not be ready to face the real horror behind that curtained window, to realize that they would be forced to kill their own comrades to save the village—they might not be prepared for this battle . . . but they would still charge forward, ever the protectors of Konoha.
This was their motto.
This was their goal.
This was their life.
The Senju Residence
3:02 AM
Chiyome shoved Naruto into the window before his curious mind formed questions that were better asked within safety. Standing on the roof in their PJs was not in Chiyome's safety list.
It was when she was entering the window herself that her fast-acting mind was formulating the possibilities that led to what they had just seen and heard. The main idea was relevant and constant: Konoha was being attacked. And while she felt compelled to get armed and beat the invading party into submission, she let logic run more of her actions than her instincts. She had to think of Naruto—Arashi, her adopted little brother. Being the big sister meant that she was responsible for his wellbeing, and wanting to charge into a situation half-cocked and unprepared brought unnecessary risk to that responsibility. And she was also not yet an official shinobi. She was weaponless, her brother was defenseless, and the only thing keeping them safe from the attack was this house. And how much safety it could afford depended on the attacker.
"Come on, Arashi." She grabbed for his arm, but he moved away from her.
He stepped towards the window and stared into the village, watching, with unwavering interest, the initial phase of a civil war. Faint but still audible, he could hear the screams of people—civilian and ninjas alike—and the subsequent follow-up explosions, though these were babies compared to the three big bangs. His body was still in the developing stages of a Konoha shinobi, so he was still unable to hear more than faraway sounds that were like whispery voices channeling through a heavy mist. However, his instincts filled up the blanks left behind. Chiyome knew what Naruto was trying to listen to, but she didn't want him to get involved in something that was way out of their league. She, at least, understood the difference between duty and suicide.
"Arashi, don't test me," she growled, wanting to sound intimidating, but her voice sounded more like a dog growling out of fear. "Arashi!"
"Shh!" he said, facing her with a finger positioned in the appropriate gesture. "Do you hear that?"
She quieted and listened.
And then she heard.
Cries. Battle cries, to be precise, and they were getting louder and louder by the second. She turned to the window along with Arashi and cast their sight downwards, to the large gates separating the Senju ancestral home to the rest of Konoha. They couldn't see well due to the darkness, but Chiyome's sharp ears and keen eyesight picked up enough information to make an educated guess. Beyond those gates were more than three dozen armed people, carrying torches and makeshift weapons (from sickles to kitchen knives to lead pipes, they had it, of that Chiyome was sure). They were fast approaching the gates in a rallying frenzy, crying and shouting and yelling all the way, and while they sounded not at all like a group of fans vying for a celebrity's attention, they were sure as crazy as them. Only Chiyome doubted that their intentions were clearer and purer than crazy fans. The alarm connected to the dome-shaped protection of this lot had just set off, and it was skyrocketing the malevolent intent scale.
"Who did you piss off this time, Onee-chan?"
"There's a time for jokes," she said, moving away from the window, "but not right now. Come on, bro, we need to leave."
"Won't the protections in this house be enough to keep us safe?"
"No. Daddy never designed the seals to stay firm against an attack like that. For now, they're merely there to give time for a quick escape."
"But where will we go? Konoha's under attack right now."
"I don't think every district of Konoha was set ablaze. I'm praying we don't have to fight once we leave this house."
"Mom and Dad—"
"Mom's in the hospital . . . no change there," she added under her breath, though Arashi still heard it. "And Dad won't be back to Konoha in a few more hours."
"So we're on our own?"
She winced when the protective dome broke and the mob was given free rein in destroying the wrought-iron gates. "We need to leave," she said to Arashi, "now."
They moved about the house in their pajamas, not even bothering to stop at the foyer to get some footwear. Both knew the whereabouts of the secret escape passage because this was drilled into them by the overprotective Tsunade, who had it installed when Chiyome was less than a week old. If ever the house was being attacked, they were ordered to leave everything behind and hightail it to the basement and enter the wine cellar. Tsunade forbid them from going down here except for when they have to use the secret passage, because kids didn't have a reason to actually be in here. Now they did, although they would've wanted to explore the place a bit more, if not for danger making them look over their shoulder every few times they felt someone—or something—glaring at their backs.
They entered the basement and turned on the lights. Beside the mass of cardboard boxes and dusty shelves stood a wooden mahogany door, varnished in darker colors that accentuated its etherealness in the darkest spot of the illuminated room. Chiyome tried the door, but it was locked.
"Where's the key?" she asked her brother, who was as clueless as she was.
Her ears captured the almost inaudible sound of metal breaking and then thudding on concrete pavement like a dribbling basketball. Minus the wrought-iron gate, at least they still had the front door, which was locked—
"Is the front door locked?" Arashi asked.
"Yeah," she said, though it almost sounded like a lie. Locked or unlocked? Locked or unlocked? Can you be sure Mommy dearest didn't forget to lock the door again? With tall walls surrounding the lot and an iron gate thought to be impenetrable from civilians, with fuinjutsu as added security, locking the door almost seemed borderline paranoia to Tsunade, and it got so common that seven out of ten times, Chiyome didn't bother pulling out her keys before trying the doorknob. But with the situation as it was now . . .
At last, Chiyome recalled that the key to the cellar was in their parents' room, but that would mean going back topside, where the mob was more than likely already trying to bang through the front door and any of the windows in the ground floor. The danger just gradually increased when she theorized and concluded that the mob had more than just a few ninjas in their numbers—otherwise they wouldn't have gotten through that gate at all. Time from going up to their parents' bedroom and returning to the basement was a rough and insufficient estimate, because she didn't take into account the required time to search for the key. Apart from knowing it was in that particular room, she couldn't spark any other memory that could be relevant to learn where her mother hid it. It could be in the drawers, the armoire, the desk, or even some secret compartment she had lying around. As it was, they would have to flip the whole room upside down to find the key.
What good was a secret escape passage when the ones supposed to use it didn't access to the key? What was their mother thinking when she forgot to tell them the location of the key?
There was a loud crash followed by a dozen of breaking glass.
"They're in!" Arashi yelled.
She couldn't think; she couldn't handle this. She was collapsing from the pressure, and it was about to cost their lives. She was just thankful Arashi had closed the basement door behind them. Going topside was no longer an option—along with the chance of finding that key—so they were left with taking refuge in this dark room where a locked door led to their only salvation from this predicament. It was only borrowed time, but maybe they could make use of that small window of opportunity to fortify this basement and make one final stand.
No, she thought, that won't do. I have to protect Arashi at all costs.
She saw him staring at the locked door with a frown, a frown he often used whenever he played Sudoku. That was odd in, and of, itself. There were no numbers on the clean, plain mahogany door, much less a padlock with a number combination. Nothing but a simple key-operated lock separating them from an easy escape from this deathtrap.
"Onee-chan, why can't we just break down the door?"
She shook her head. "Impossible. It's been reinforced along with the lock. And even if we combine our efforts, we'd be lucky to put a small dent on the door."
"But what about—" He stopped what he was saying and returned to frowning.
"Arashi?"
"Onee-chan, how far along are you in Mom's chakra control exercises?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Sixth level already. But how did you know—"
"Sixth might be good enough," he interrupted. He moved closer to the door and lightly beat his fist on it twice. "Combined efforts is a no-go, but a super-charged chakra punch will probably do the trick."
"I . . . I can't do that." Her ears caught the trailing of footsteps echoing above them, dust piles falling from the overhanging supports of the basement and onto her and her brother, but they made no move wipe them off. "Mom said I'm still not able to charge my punches beyond the ultimate strength of a material."
"Should that matter?"
"Yes!" she retorted. "I'd have to repeat the technique about . . . ten more times before I'd be able to breach the door, and you know my limit is just three."
"But you've got to try. We don't have much choice."
"Yes, we do." She pointed to the pile of cardboard boxes in the corner next to the locked door. "We fortify our position while hoping that they don't bother looking for us here."
"And if they do look for us here?"
"We stand our ground and fight them."
"That's suicide, Onee-chan."
"I know!" she shouted. "Don't you think I know that? Don't you think I know that we're so deep in shit that it's not even something to laugh about afterwards?"
She knew she shouldn't be shouting so loudly, not with the presence of a mob seemingly thirsting for their deaths and looking at the upper floors. She caught more sounds from above, this one was crashing plates or brittle ceramics, which could only be the antique vases her grandmother had collected before marrying her grandfather. And then another one, a muffled statement, barely audible: "Check downstairs. I'll go up."
Her hand reached her brother's shoulders and she shoved him towards the boxes. "No time to fortify," she said, moving towards the light switch and flicking it off. "Just hide. Quick!"
Arashi was safely snugged between a box full of their old toys and two boxes containing old and molding manuscripts Jiraiya had scrapped but never had the heart to throw away. Something about sentimentality and life born within each page of the unfinished stories, never to be found, never to be acknowledged, never to be told. But right now, Chiyome could care less about the plight of fictional characters when her own life and her brother's were inches close to living their last hour. When she was sure Arashi was safe and hidden—and she made double sure that he wouldn't move an inch until she told him to—she swiftly moved about the other boxes and chose a spot next to a box filled with previous issues of a now defunct magazine her mother subscribed to in her youth. Hiding beside a collection of articles containing myriads of thoughts, concepts, and biases about fashion, men, and sex left her feeling a little vain for some odd reason—what earthly reason could she have this feeling at a dangerous moment such as now?—but she made sure to keep these things out of the forefront of her mind, where the more crucial development was given priority.
Unfortunately, just as the basement door was opened (Arashi forgot to lock it when he closed it, dammit!), she sat down too fast and it stirred a silent explosion of dust clouds onto her face. Chiyome had to physically cover her nose and mouth before the coughs, the sneezes, and the gags came close to bursting out of her traitorous facial orifices. She glanced at Arashi, but her position and the boxes made it difficult to even glimpse his blond hair hidden in the darkness.
The lights were turned on again, and Chiyome sank deeper into her hiding spot, hoping against hope that the dust clouds she erupted had already dissipated. The creaking stairs announced the arrival of at least two searchers.
"I don't see 'em," one of them, a gruff female voice, said.
"Shush!" her companion, another female, replied.
Chiyome knew that they converted to nonverbal communication for in case they were heard—although that could be scoffed and redirected as a way to salvage their intent on stealth after the first one's earlier blunder—but she was more worried about hiding than trying to find out what they were speaking of. She couldn't risk her presence, not when these two might just do a quick sweep of the basement and climb back up to the ground floor. It was a welcoming thought, one that seemed to calm her do—
Arashi sneezed.
And her blood turned cold. No, no, no, no, no . . .
The room was silent and the creaking in the stairs disappeared. But the overhead lights of the basement were still on. She could think of an optimistic view of this situation, that the two women had already left the basement and hadn't bothered to turn off the lights, so they hadn't heard her little brother's blunder of a sneeze, but her ninja instincts spoke otherwise. It was preparing itself for an inevitable confrontation and was projecting horrifying images of her little brother being found behind those boxes she hid him in. She could even picture how the two women would grin madly and forcefully drag Arashi back to the surface where the rest of the mob will have their share of the fun when they start killing him slowly. Stomping and stabbing and kicking and crushing his innocent little body into a bloody mess. And all Chiyome would do was stay in her hiding spot and wait for the storm to pass.
No, she inwardly said to herself, a statement that needed no other words to convey what she wanted to convey. And though she was still a ninja-in-training, she had at least been through half of the Academy's rigorous body conditioning system that all ninjas go through. At ten years old, she was one of those rare types whose body and chakra system could take the abuse, thereby strengthening both in the process.
She had garnered enough chakra in her system to fire off two A-rank jutsu in succession, but that was only in theory; she knew no A-rank jutsu to use. Like all other students, she was only knowledgeable of the Basic Three (Kawarimi, Henge, and Shunshin) and a few basic medical techniques Tsunade had started her in. The super strength training was just a lucky plus, but it was undoubtedly incomplete as of now. She had the chakra to pull off forty chakra-enhanced punches, at the least, but her unaccustomed body and infantile chakra control—compared to her mother's—made it disadvantageous against more than three targets, because that her current limit.
But she was not backing down. Arashi was family and the only one who stuck to her even when her parents became too busy to spend much time at home. Jiraiya in his hermit-like journeys across the continent, searching for truth and inspiration while maintaining the spy network he built to bring in intel for the village. Tsunade in her daily double-shift duties in the hospital, rarely resting, rarely staying, rarely spending whatever free time she did have with her family. But Arashi—Naruto—while not connected by blood, the bonds they forged more than made up for it. She promised to protect him, and he to her.
And she doesn't break her promises.
It might've been courageous to have such loyalty and love to a brother, but her analytical mind brought her down to earth before she started doing something rash—like coming out of her hiding place and turn all the attention onto her. She didn't have much time before those women came close to Arashi's spot. She could already tell they were close via the way their footsteps brush against the floor. They were civilians; Chiyome was certain of this. Trained ninjas would've been quieter in their approach than these two.
But that still left her with a big blank on her plan. A brash move would be detrimental, not only to her but to Arashi, who would undoubtedly come out of his hiding spot to try and save her from her stupidity, her orders for him to stay and not move be damned. If only she was more akin to her sensing abilities as the chuunin instructors had remarked during her third year. If only she paid more attention to that aspect of her skills, she would've been able to pinpoint the women's positions and gauge their attributes. If only . . .
Fear not, little bud.
Unsure of where this voice was coming from or why she was feeling calmer than she had been before, but the quality of the voice's pitch and tone made it indiscernible if it came from a man or a woman. It was like a disembodied voice echoing in her ears, with the way it spoke in utter command, power, and wisdom. Chiyome felt like she just had to trust this voice.
The two betrayers are four paces away from the little sprout. Act quick.
With no weapon to hold, she could only hope that this disembodied voice knew what it was saying. Dressed in only pajamas and her long fringe constantly blocking her view (how she wished she done her hair up to the usual double ponytail right now), the best option she had was a quick simple attack strong enough to knock both women out before they could even blink.
And she knew just the technique, despite it still unfinished.
She charged both hands with chakra, steadying her breathing as quietly as she could. She needed to time this right. Too far and they'd react before she had a chance to connect her fists to their faces. Too close and she'd barely have time to aim them to the right target. Just right. It had to be just right.
Now, little bud!
Obeying the disembodied voice, she jumped out of her hiding spot, both fists cocked back and ready to fire. Chiyome gritted her teeth, her mind barely registering the shocked looks on the intruders' faces, and sent double haymakers to two cheeks. Her ears caught the sound of bones breaking, her eyes catching the bullet-time speed of the deformation of their faces accompanied by a few teeth disentangling from their gums (and she saw this as if they came from a frame-by-frame replay), her nose sensing the mild scent of the blood bursting from their noses and mouths. And as her adrenaline-induced slow-mo reached its peak, time returned to normal speed and her two opponents raced to the opposite wall like crossbow bolts. She didn't care or felt sorry when she realized she put too much power into those punches that the receivers left large indentations onto the brick wall of their basements. They were no doubt dead before they even slumped on the ground, bleeding like crazy from their equally indented faces.
Chiyome panted from the exertion, trying to reel back the rate of her heartbeat through sheer will, but any attempt to cooldown her body within seconds was as impossible as telling the sun to tone down on the heat. Her hands were already shaking, so she slid them both under her armpits. The side effects of the chakra punches were sinking in a lot faster than normal, most likely because she used two fists at the same time. Her mother always insisted that she take this training slowly due to her age—she wasn't supposed to start until she was thirteen or so.
"Onee-chan?" Arashi's whisper slashed at least three units off her heartbeat rate, but it was still bashing onto her ribs like repeated abuse from a battering ram. "Onee-chan?"
"I'm okay, Arashi, I'm okay." She moved towards him, stealing glances to the two corpses on the floor every step of the way. She knew it was irrational but her mind couldn't let go of the thought that they'd rise back up when her back was turned, intending to bring vengeance beyond the grave. There might be a grain of logic within that irrationality, though; no doubt her attack hadn't gone unnoticed to the rest of the intruders one floor up and a pack of them—this time accompanied by the ninjas in their group—would soon come down here.
"We have to get out of here," she said to Arashi, holding onto his hand and pulling him away from his hiding spot. There was a small window of opportunity for them to escape through the only open door, and every second they waste idling around could be the difference between freedom and capture.
Not that way, little bud.
"Just who the heck are you?"
Arashi took a step back from Chiyome. "Onee-chan?"
She ignored his voice of worry, waited for that disembodied voice to speak again.
All you need is one simple push to open the locked door. One last push.
Her understanding of the voice's slightly cryptic words came within a second, and it was only so because she had been contemplating it while she tried to weigh the possibility of escape through the ground floor.
Her third and last punch. After she did it, her chakra system would be at an all-time low, and any more use of it could result in her collapsing from chakra exhaustion. If she did as the mysterious voice commanded, then they might be able to get out of this house alive and well. On the other hand, getting outside didn't mean they were safe from any other threat there. Konoha was still under attack, so achieving freedom from their own home felt like less than a stepping stone to true freedom. And they had to go out to that war-torn village defenseless, Arashi being a mere seven years old and her in the brink of chakra exhaustion.
They were trading one lethal situation with another that was more lethal.
Must not hesitate, she thought confidently, enclosing her right hand into a fist, channeling the last bits of her chakra into it, and hoping that this would work. Here I am, trusting our lives to a voice I keep hearing from somewhere. It's either I'm going crazy or Mom's stories of guardian angels is actually true. Either way, she was thankful for this impossible help.
She charged forward, her fist raised and over her shoulder, and delivered the final powered punch she could do for the night. Her knuckles collided with the reinforced wood and metal securing the door in place, and for one moment running at the speed of thought, her hopes began to shatter as she realized that her punch hadn't been enough to break through the door's sturdy defense. And in the next moment, hairline cracks started appearing around her fist, growing farther and farther away, their movements sporadic like vines climbing up a thin vertical structure.
She pulled her hand away from the cracked door. She expected it to collapse seconds after the impact, but such a physics-defying notion only happens in the manga she reads. No, the door was still sturdy and standing, but the dent she left behind must've destroyed the reinforcements placed into it. She couldn't pull off any more chakra-enhanced punches—she had to shake her head to swipe away the dizzy spell affecting her—but if the door went through more stress, it might just collapse as she imagined it.
"Help me out here." She relayed what she needed to her brother, who nodded and took position, his small still-developing shoulder braced forward and ahead from the rest of his body. She assumed the same position and prepared for this.
Above them, there were frantic shouts of people calling out two names, and Chiyome was sure they weren't speaking of her and Arashi. A cursory glance to the corpses brought all the answers she needed.
"On three," she said. "One, two . . . three!"
They charged forward together, hoping that the combined forces they create from momentum and strength was sufficient in eradicating the only obstacle halting their advance.
"Tsubaki! Michi!"
"They're not coming out," Kengo Uchiha stated. "No response from either even after all this yelling. The Senju siblings must've gotten to them."
"But they're only kids!" A civilian retorted to the Uchiha ninja. "How could they possibly—"
"You're forgetting that those two kids are ninjas-in-training." Kengo eyed the civilian in disgust. "Your continued ignorance of our capabilities knows no bounds, it seems."
He hated collaborating with these civilians—they knew next to nothing about the careful planning needed in exacting a perfect attack—and even before they were able to bring down the front door, the whole operation had gone astray. The original plan had been to sneak into the mansion undetected and unheard, yet some of the civies put under his command deemed it okay to carry torches and large weapons and to dash towards the Senju's home with battle cries that could awaken a hibernating bear. The torches, he could understand, since civilians didn't have the implanted night vision implanted into ninjas; the cries, he could tolerate, because he didn't really have high hopes of this operation going as smooth as when he was teamed up with his old team; the large weapons, however . . . there was a limit on how much one man could take, and these civies had no doubt already pushed it past the boundaries.
One dared to call his kunai—a weapon that had saved his life more times than he could count in his twenty years of service—a trowel. A freaking trowel! This man decided on a machete over the common, but deeply valued, weapon of ninjas, yet the man added insult to injury by deeming said weapon as a tiny garden tool.
How he hated collaborating with civilians.
But not all was lost in this mission. Even as the rest searched the upper floors of the mansion while he and two others stood next to the open door that leads to the basement, the Uchiha coup was well underway. He had been assigned here to dispose of the heirs of the Senju, swiftly ending the continued existence of the next generation, thus also ending the existence of a dying breed: the Senju, their most hated enemy.
Experiencing two losses was to be expected, although Kengo wished there had been more. How he hated collaborating with civies!
Being the only ninja in this mission, he was naturally assigned as the leader, but that meant little to a randomly selected, armed group of untrained Uchiha who would rather fight to the death than let the ninjas handle everything. They were the perfect liabilities in the war, but Fugaku Uchiha decided to humor them with this mission. And Kengo just happened to be their assigned babysitter. Still, this mission was as important as the other missions Fugaku gave to other veteran shinobi like him. It would've been better, saner, to have Kengo in the frontlines of the war, eradicating the opposition with minimal loss of projectile weapons and bodies. He had not become a tokubetsu jounin for nothing, after all. But Fugaku had already made plans for the coup to become a success, and Kengo's role shifted to this current one, but at least there was a silver lining to it.
He hated the Senju as much as collaborating with civies. That was enough reason for him to give his all to this mission, despite it probably going to waste in a double whammy—wasted on an uncoordinated team, wasted on a couple of ninja trainees. Ah, but the latter did not happen at all. Even if they were just two civilian women, he underestimated the potential of the Senju heirs. It looked like he would have to use his little contingency plan after all.
A disturbing smile tainted his face, halting one of the civies's rant midway when he saw that.
Kengo turned to the stunned Uchiha and said, "Tell the others to get out of the house. Now."
Shaky but brave, the civilian replied, "W—why?"
Kengo looked back into the basement, hearing the distinct cracking of wood down there. "I'll be blowing this place sky-high." He patted his side pouch where inside contained about fifty demolition tags. Well . . . it had contained about fifty demolition tags before they entered the premises. Now, however, the pouch could only provide three. Kengo liked to plan ahead, even if they were just contingencies. That, and he had planned on blowing up the Senju mansion from the get-go.
Going after them served no purpose. It was better to lock them in there, to die within tons of rubble if they survived the initial explosion. It seemed like a fitting end for two innocent children, and he didn't have to sully his hands with their blood.
It was only his patience that kept him from triggering the bombs right now. He hated collaborating with civies—there was no doubt about that—but they were still fellow clansmen.
The hinges gave out and the door lay askew from its designated position, a spider-web crack spreading from its center. The entry to the wine cellar was now open, and Chiyome made her first step into this room with as much grace as a bull in a china shop. Her exhaustion overcame her sense of balance, and if not for Arashi there to catch her fall, she would've landed, headfirst, onto the brick floor.
She was panting heavily, trying to form words with her mouth, but Arashi couldn't understand the gibberish she kept spouting. There was an odd sense of urgency in her tone, something that made him support her up and push forward into the cellar. The door was left as it was; it was too damaged to close behind them.
After turning two corners, she got some of her strength back to stand up and wipe the sweat pouring all over her face. With her back turned, Arashi wiped his right cheek, where most of her sweat had come into contact with. He believed it to have gone unnoticed, but Chiyome knew and didn't say a thing. She tried to remember the many turns they would have to make before reaching their destination. This cellar had been originally created as an underground training facility to work on something her great-great-grandfather, Hashirama Senju, had excelled in. Tsunade never made it clear what exactly he was working on, but revealed that nobody, not even his own brother, knew what this place was for, because he died before the cellar was finished. With no more purpose or need for an underground training facility, Tobirama Senju decided to convert it into a cellar, despite the corridors being too much in length and number for every wine bottle in Konoha to occupy. Not to mention that the whole place was built using chakra-enhanced wood Grandfather Hashirama grew by himself; the only masonry that came to this place was the floor.
In their situation now, Chiyome still had to navigate her little brother through this maze-like room to reach the escape passage. Plenty of rights and lefts to remember, and she just hoped her mnemonic technique came through for her. She hadn't practiced it in a while.
"Will you be okay?" he asked.
She nodded crisply and took a deep breath. Exhaling through her mouth, she looked at her little brother and replied, "For the moment. I'll rest once we get to the passage."
Easier said than done, however. Her legs felt like jelly, her vision was a little blurry, therefore unreliable (even with night vision, because Arashi didn't bother turning on the lights), and her head couldn't stop aching, as if she were being given experimental brain surgery without any anesthetic. But she didn't dare show weakness in front of her brother. If she started acting weak, then he'd worry more for her than himself, and she didn't want that. They were still far from safe; a momentary distraction could be fatal.
"Let's go."
Off they went, taking sharp turns in L- and T-shaped corridors, never bothering to browse through the empty shelves where there should've been bottles upon bottles of rich wine and other such alcoholic beverages. There had been a lot near the entryway, but once they delved deeper into the maze the cellar had become, the only thing occupying the shelves were dust and cobwebs. It didn't leave a lasting impression on Chiyome, but it did let her realize that if they had even one simple mistake in their directions—just one wrong turn—they would be stuck inside this cellar with no light, no food, and no water. They'd die when they came so close to escaping the clutches of the bad people after them.
"Onee-chan, it's the left, not the right," Arashi said.
"No, no, it's left. Left!"
"But I remember Mom showing us that it's to the right."
This argument just accentuated her fear, and as the doubts started to swell, her mnemonic memory of the secret passage's whereabouts were becoming hazy. Was it left, was it right? Which was it? Which was it? One wrong move and it's bye-bye freedom. Arashi continued to insist that it was to the right, and she couldn't take it anymore.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
Arashi was forced into silence and the look in his eyes told Chiyome that he was unsure on how to process this. She rarely shouted at him so heatedly like this, and though she didn't have a mirror to look at herself, she somehow knew her face had contorted into something she'd rather not have Arashi see at all.
When his lips moved to speak, his words never got the chance to come out when a loud explosion rocked the cellar. She tried to regain her balance, but a sequence of explosions followed the first, which tipped her off the edge of her feet. Again, Arashi caught her in time before she landed on the floor, but even he was close to slipping when the next salvo of explosions sounded, and felt, bigger. Another kind of fear wrapped around her heart and it was this fear that propelled her next course of action.
She stood on her two feet again, grabbed Arashi's hand with a powerful grip that made him yelp, and dashed at the right of the T-shaped corridor. Left or right, she didn't give her mind to think which direction to take. All it thought off was run, run, run, get away! Her fear had merit, though, and if she hadn't realized the severity of explosions happening so close to the cellar, they would've ended up buried alive by the collapse of the cellar ceiling and the rocks and soil it was tasked to support.
Another collapse occurred just behind them, and Chiyome almost slipped from a lone rock rolling forward and getting under her heel when it was about to hit the floor. She regained it in time and doubled her pace, Arashi following closely behind without a word to say. Now that she had time to think a bit while getting away from subsequent ceiling collapses, she wished she had thought things better when she could. They were running for their lives inside a maze, and there was no telling if their next turn could be a new set of turns or a dead end. If it were the latter case . . .
She didn't ponder too deeply as much of her brain activities was centered on getting her body pumped up for the exertion she was about to do. The ceiling yards away from them was collapsing, and there were no turns for them to take before they reach that point. She considered backtracking, but immediately discounted when she heard the sounds of wood breaking from behind them. Her hand tightened around her brother's hand.
"Run for it, Arashi!"
There were no other words to indicate her intentions. Arashi took the orders in stride, trusting her completely for what they were about to do: dash straight forward and hope they could make it beyond the collapse before the earth burst through the opening.
They were reaching the safe point itself when the roof gave way and collapsed under them.
Chiyome dove forward and got onto the other side with minimal injuries, but she had to spit the taste of moist soil out of her mouth. She paused for a moment and felt happy knowing she had gotten through.
"Ara—"
Eyes widening, mouth forming a mortified gasp, and legs already backtracking to the mass of earth that blocked the way they came, her words died in her throat when she saw a kid's arm sticking out from under that mass of earth. She dug her hands into the earth, furiously splitting apart the accumulating soil, barely realizing that there were more explosions coming from above and the vibrations resulting from them was disturbing more of the compressed soil. The mass of earth was growing as more soil and rocks filtered in from the small hole, but the hole itself was growing wider and wider, the wood splintering and cracking in places, as more forces were acting on it beyond its ultimate strength. It would not be long before another collapse occurred in the same place.
Chiyome noticed none of this; she was staring at the white little arm, unmoving and unresponsive, no matter how many times she shouted his name and slapped the forearm to receive a sign that he was alive or at least conscious. She didn't check for a pulse (she was panicking; she wasn't thinking straight). All she could do was dig, dig, dig, when her life was in danger as well.
"You won't get to him in time, little bud," a voice behind her whispered. A voice she recognized. She whirled her head around, staring directly into the darkness, where a cloaked individual stood tall and still.
"You . . ." It was all she could say before fatigue overcame her senses, and she fell to the floor with one more word fleeting from her mouth: "No . . ." It was weak, and barely enough vibrations had come from her voice box to fully articulate it to be heard. She didn't believe she was heard, but that mysterious stranger moved forward, and she caught a glimpse of his glowing eyes.
Gray. No whites, just gray. And ripples, like a circle within a circle within a circle, with small dots for the pupils.
Through the shadows of this stranger's hooded cloak, Chiyome also glimpsed a smile on his pale lips. "Sleep now, little bud. Your part here is over."
As if commanded by a genjutsu, Chiyome succumbed to the whispers of the Sandman.
Naruto . . .
Chapter Afterword:
I've set up a poll in my profile about what I will write in Chapter 15 (not 14, because I still have to continue the cliffhanger I made, right?). Let me first explain the reason for the poll. When I first started out the events of the Uchiha coup, I thought I didn't have to write much about it—my estimation was two or three chapters before the next arc comes up—but like any other story in my mind, it grew as it percolated inside there. Today, it was demanding more scenes, more actions, and more individual developments than I first fathomed. I thought of an event course for Kakashi and Kurenai (as you've glimpsed in this chapter, and you might also glimpse some more in the next), another for Tsunade in the hospital, for Jiraiya on his way to the village, for the Sandaime and his forces once they garnered enough people to retaliate, for Danzo and his Root ANBU (yes, I actually made something for him, of all people; go figure), and for Sasuke and what he will do when he realized the treasonous acts of his clansmen. There are still a few more I can mention, but either they're less important than the rest or their roles are too secretive to reveal right now (I'm still pondering whether to include one particular character into the mix earlier than I originally planned).
So you've read what my mind conjured up in my months of absence, but there is still the matter of settling something. I can't possibly write all of this just to satisfy one particular arc. If I did, we'd be in 2012 and my story past the 200k limit and I would still be writing the many viewpoints of the characters affected in the coup. So that's where the poll comes in. Naruto will still play the main part of this arc, no doubt about that, but I also like to see if any of you are interested in hearing the stories of the other characters. Should I write two or three of the other characters' stories or should I just stick to Naruto's viewpoint and slip some of their storylines in nonchalant passing in the chapter breaks? It's for you to decide.