So I realized that there was no way that I would be posting decent chapters by the deadline. So I decided that since I'm not going to make the deadline anyway, I'll write my chapters as best as I can and post them up ASAP. I'm sorrryyyy . this week has been so exhausting that I'm falling asleep as I write this AN. I hope you enjoyed chapter two. Chapter three will be up shortly and not the rushed version that I managed to put together either.
CHAPTER TWO
Pale eyes watched the sleeping form on the bed. They took in the ashen face of Hyuuga Neji, as he lay recovering from an encounter with a particularly nasty main house member. There was a handful of main house members who made a sport of activating the cursed caged bird seal that all the branch members wore on their brow.
She herself had never experienced the pain from having the seal activated, but after caring for her cousin night after night she imagined that it was excruciating.
Hyuuga Hinata let out a sad sigh.
It shouldn't have to be like this, she thought as she took a cool damp cloth and brushed her cousin's brow. She did her best to ignore the glowing green seal that marred the porcelain complexion of her kinsman's flesh.
The caged bird seal.
The name described it perfectly. It caged human beings into a life of servitude and she absolutely hated it.
A person's life was that person's right
She studied her reflection in the mirror. Her small pale hands pulled her bangs back to bare her own flawless forehead. There was no ink staining her skin. They were in the same family, but why was it that he bore the seal but she did not?
What right did she have to dictate another life?
Angry tears began to well up; she knew the answer all too well.
Her clan was a travesty of what a family was supposed to be. She longed for a family where her cousins didn't kneel at the door while she and her main house family members ate to their hearts content. She wished that every time she walked down one of the hallways of her home that she could look into the eyes of the people she passed instead of acknowledging the tops of their heads as they bowed to her.
She hated her status as the heir and first born because it meant that her younger sister, Hanabi would be branded if she kept her position.
She didn't want that life for her.
"Hinata-sama," Neji's groggy voice called.
Hinata would have kicked herself in the head if she could. She was training to be a ninja and she was so absorbed in her thoughts she hadn't noticed Neji waking up. A better ninja would have noticed the change in respiratory rate.
"Ni-san, are you hungry?" She asked, she hovered over him like a mother-hen. "I can prepare you some soup if you would like."
"I should be getting back to the Branch house." Neji sat up slowly as he fought off waves of nausea. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead as he struggled.
Hinata was immediately at his side, easing him back down to the bed.
"Please rest some more. I'll be right back with some food." Without waiting for a response, Hinata fled the room. There was no point in waiting around to hear him argue, especially when she was going to do it anyway.
She quietly made her way to the kitchen and began looking through the refrigerator for food. Though cooking was servants work, she found that she rather enjoyed it. In fact, the only time she felt at home was when she was in the kitchen, it was a shame that those times were few and far in between. She didn't have nearly enough practice to confidently prepare a meal for anyone. So she wouldn't bother.
Instead she busied herself with preparing a tray to bring into her room.
"Heiress," a stern voice called out. Hinata flinched at the sudden noise and dropped the bowl in her hands. She quietly activated her Byakugan and found the stern face of Hyuuga Takeshi, a council Elder, standing behind her, arms crossed over his chest. "A better ninja would have sensed my presence."
"I apologize elder. I'll train harder."
"A useless shinobi will still be useless no matter how hard she tries." The pale eyes of her heritage had never seemed so cold. The caustic words were to motivate her to become stronger she knew, but she couldn't help but feel them stabbing into her chest every time they were spoken. Their cruel words were supposed to motivate her.
Hinata bowed her head and fought the tears that welled up in her eyes. She knew she wasn't the most conventional of shinobi. She would rather heal than kill. Her hands were soft, her eyes too expressive. The enemy could read her intentions a mile away.
But her family was a shinobi family, tradition dictated that she be a shinobi as well.
It was hard work, but she was trying. She was determined to make her family proud.
"A worthless heiress will always be worthless," Elder Takeshi continued. "especially if she's wasting her time doing peasant's work."
Hinata kept her head bowed, afraid that if she looked him in the face he would see the hurt in her eyes.
"Return to your room heiress, dedicate your time to something more suiting of your strengths." He looked his nose down at her as he glared. "Perhaps peasant work really is suited for you."
The heiress bowed her head again. "Thank you elder for your advice." She waited for Elder Takeshi to leave before she grabbed the tray of food that she had laid out and hurried to her room.
When she got back, the room was empty
The window was open, her white curtains fluttered as the wind blew but there was no other movement.
She felt right then, just how alone she was.
.
.
.
Itachi stared at the blood that marred what used to be a pristine ivory floor. The red had turned black and viscous after the day had passed. His father's body had been taken to prepare for travel to the afterlife, soon after a neighbor found his mother with the body cradled in her arms.
Itachi needed to prepare for his father's funeral and the last thing he wanted was for Sasuke to stumble upon the macabre scene when his back was turned.
He sighed as he thought of his baby brother tucked safely into bed. Sasuke had been too preoccupied by the sudden attention Itachi was showering him with. Not once had he asked about their father's whereabouts and Itachi found that a small blessing.
He wanted to maintain his brother's innocence for as long as possible. It was unreasonable considering that Sasuke wanted to be a ninja just like his big brother, but Itachi couldn't help it. His childhood had ended prematurely and he would rather die than let the same happen to Sasuke.
His eyes never left the dark stain as he soaked a sponge in water and began to scrub at the floor, mechanically. He squeezed the bloody water into an empty basin and repeated the process until his back hurt and the metallic scent of blood permeated the room.
He couldn't let this get to him, he had a clan to run.
He was now the clan head, responsible for his family, and he felt the burden of responsibility weigh heavily on his shoulders.
Itachi picked up the basin of bloody water for the last time and discarded the contents. He took his time washing his hands, taking care to clean under his nails and between his fingers. For the first time since he got the news, he wondered if this was maybe a blessing in disguise. He would be taken off active duty and would no longer be sent on missions. He would no longer have to kill.
After all these years, this would be the last time anyone's blood would stain his hands.
.
.
.
The sky had turned a beautiful azure by the time Itachi swiped a bit of his blood to the last of the scrolls that his father had left him. He pinched the bridge of his nose and did his best to fight off his headache. He lost count of the scrolls he had read to familiarize himself with the goings of the clan. There were just so many. It almost made him wonder why it was required of the clan head to reach jounin rank before being inaugurated when the majority of the clan head's obligations was paperwork.
His red eyes glowed as he started to skim the document, black commas swirling as he committed everything he read to memory.
…The Hyuuga are weak; their heiress, a sad excuse for a shinobi. The time to eliminate the clan will be soon. Itachi is getting more skilled as the days go by, he would have no trouble upstaging them, then if need be, eradicating them. They have not changed since the days when they enslaved the Uchiha. No human should be declared another's property, but they persist in their ways.
Itachi stopped reading.
His father had been contemplating genocide.
Why? Because the Uchiha had been enslaved by the Hyuuga almost eighty years ago?
A long time ago, back when Konoha was merely a budding ninja village with a handful of citizens, the Hyuuga and Uchiha were of one clan. The line had been drawn when the first Hyuuga with black eyes had been born, a sharp contrast to the pale opalescent eyes considered the Hyuuga trademark. No one knew how the Uchiha started, though it was suspected that a Hyuuga woman had been unfaithful and as punishment from Kami-sama himself, bore a child with eyes as dark as night. He was considered a second-class citizen in his own home. The mutation set him aside as inferior and cast him as a Hyuuga servant. The child grew, started a family of his own, and resentment stained his heart as more children with black eyes were born and they too were enslaved. That was the start of the Uchiha clan.
While the Hyuuga eyes had their own ability called the Byakugan, which allowed them to see chakra pathways and see great distances, the Uchiha soon discovered an ability of their own called the Sharingan. Like their forefathers, they were able to see chakra pathways, but the Sharingan also gave them clarity of perception as well as photographic memory. After a century and a half of living in servitude, the Uchiha had decided that they had had enough. With the secrets of their eyes unlocked, the Uchiha revolted and broke free.
Unfortunately, the Hyuuga found that they rather enjoyed being catered to and continued to enslave their family members but took precautions the next time around. With the Uchiha gone, the Hyuuga divided its members into a main and branch family, the firstborn into the main and the ones that came after into the branch. Having learned from the Uchiha revolt, they implemented the cage bird seal which allowed any member of the main family to assert his or her dominance over the branch members with a simple hand seal.
Itachi closed his eyes to think.
Genocide was wrong. Killing at all when one did not have to, was wrong.
But his father was right, the Hyuuga would never change their ways. Something had to be done
He felt like he was suffocating and he needed to leave the room.
He remembered a hidden grove his father used to take him to train. As a child, that grove became a place of quiet contemplation, as well as a place to hone his skills before he got access to the ANBU training grounds.
He calmly got up and left the room. That was where he needed to go.
Itachi retraced the steps he took what must have been a life time ago. There was new growth and what used to be sapling trees all those years ago had grown tall. The forest had changed, but he saw the things he needed to see to get to where he was going.
"Bishounen!" A frail voice called out. "Oy, bishounen!"
Itachi stopped where he was and began to look around. Though he was not attempting to be stealthy, his footfalls were soundless. Who would be out in the woods at this time of night and how did they know he was nearby? He activated his sharingan, one could never be too careful, and scanned the forest surrounding him.
He spotted a cluster of tightly contained chakra just twenty feet away from him. The chakra seemed to slither in its host, much like a snake and he wondered what such a powerful person was doing out in the woods this far from civilization.
Or better yet, he wondered what such a powerful person was doing in the disguise of an elderly woman in distress.
"Do you think you can take the time to help an old woman?" The shinobi called. The woman's gnarled fist thumped against her lower back as the other held steadfastly to a cane.
Red eyes shifted as he glanced at the old woman. His eyes took in even the minutest details but found nothing physically wrong with her, just that she had too much chakra to be a normal geriatric. His eyes spotted faint swirls of chakra coming from the bricked structure beside her, further inspection revealed it to be a well.
He deactivated his bloodline limit and jumped down, performing a simple henge on his clothes to hide his identity. It would not do for this stranger to discover his heritage only to use it against him.
"Hai, oba-san. I apologize I had trouble finding you in the dark." Itachi bowed his head low. "What can I do to help you?"
"Down there, I dropped my scroll," the elderly woman with her strange glowing amber eyes, she pointed down the well with a knobby twisted finger. "I need my scroll back, otherwise terrible things will happen."
Itachi peered down the well to find it dried and dirty. The muggy bottom was illuminated by a brilliant blue light, but its rays never reached past the ledge. It almost seemed as though it did not want to attract attention, like it had a mind of its own.
He did not miss the fact that this person needed his help when she was brimming with chakra. A simple ninjutsu would have done the trick, but she needed him.
She needed someone to get the scroll for her.
"How did it get down there?" Itachi asked carefully.
The woman gave him a smile that crinkled her eyes, but that did nothing to hide the hard intelligent gleam in them. "The kids were energetic and I lost hold. I've spent the whole night looking for it."
"It must be very important for you to spend so much time looking for it." He put on a smile that felt unusual on his face. But he learned as a child warrior that his smiles were disarming and he used it to his advantage whenever he needed to.
"It's very important." She replied. She thumped her twisted hand against her back again as she looked around for some place to rest her heavy behind. "Please bishounen, I'm afraid my bones can't handle the cold as well as they used to."
"Of course oba-san," Itachi made a quick hand seal to summon water from the humid air. A torrent came rushing down from the sky and swirled rapidly along the walls of the well. It disappeared just as fast as it appeared.
Ninjutsu would not work.
"Ninjutsu won't work." The woman pointed to the bottom of the well with the end of her cane. "You have to go down there bishounen."
He took a step away from the brick ledge to take one last look at his surroundings in the beginnings of the sunrise. He needed an alternative escape route. He would not be able to perform any ninjutsu and he had to assume that the woman would be no help.
He felt killer intent shoot through him and knew that if he did not make up his mind soon, he would have a fight on his hands.
"Hurry!"
Itachi used kunai as wedges to jump on to and leapt deeper and deeper into the well. He felt his chakra reserves draining at an alarming rate. He was beginning to feel light headed and fatigued. The world tilted at a weird angle and he for the life of him could not get it straight again. He felt something leaking from his nose and raised a hand to it.
It came away red with his blood.
He wondered if staying up on the ground with the suspicious old woman was a better idea after all.
"Hurry child! Tie the rope around the scroll!" The woman called, her voice had an almost feral edge to it as the rope swung back and forth in front of him.
He stumbled as he tried to regain his balance, the lady was shouting something at him but he could not make out what she was saying. There was a wind in his ears, and its howling got louder and louder with every heartbeat.
He stumbled again, but this time he misjudged the distance between himself and the wall and fell to the ground.
As Itachi struggled to his knees, his finger brushed the parchment of the scroll and suddenly, everything was calm.
"Hurry Itachi-kun," Itachi thought he was seeing things for a moment when the face of the woman narrowed into a pale face of a man with sinister amber eyes. When he shook his head clear and looked again, she was as he first saw her.
"Just give it to me child!" When he made no move to pick up the scroll, the woman leaned over the ledge and reached out her hand, only to scream in agony when the blue light touched her skin. Her shriveled form started to stretch as she grew and her back straightened. Her short brittle grey hair grew longer and the face of the man that he saw before, took the place of the wrinkly façade of the woman.
Though he had never met him, he recognized that face.
The pieces of the puzzle had come together long before this scene unraveled before him. The first glimpse of the man's face was what gave him away.
Orochimaru was a powerful ninja who was hell bent on two things immortality and the destruction of Konoha.
The scroll must have been important if he wanted it. Someone had put a protective seal on the scroll that reacted whenever Orochimaru touched its blue light. The chakra drainage was a failsafe mechanism in case he was able to bypass the first security measure.
"If you know what's good for you boy, give me that scroll!"
Itachi picked up the scroll and made sure to smear his blood across the seal.
"No you fool! You have no idea what you've done!" Orochimaru yelled, the blue light pulsed and with every beat it grew. Wind came out of nowhere and whipped around him. It tore at his clothes and flung mud onto the well walls. All breath was ripped from his lungs and it only got worse. The gusts got stronger and he worried that the well would collapse onto him. Then just like before, it stopped just as abruptly as it started.
Itachi opened his eyes when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He hadn't even realized that he closed them. He looked up at the ledge where Orochimaru was last seen but found him gone.
"Whatcha looking for?"
Itachi looked behind him and found a giant blue bird. The bird looked like a crested auklet dipped into shimmering blue paint. The blue feathers on its body glittered and glowed as though there were an internal light. The bird had brilliant cerulean eyes that matched the light its scroll emitted and a goofy smile that immediately endeared it to Itachi. It did not seem possible for a bird of its size to fit in the confines of the old well, but it did.
"Hi!" The bird chirped. Its blue feathers ruffled as it gave a cheerful yelp. Then to Itachi's surprise, the bird spread his wings and gave them a powerful flap. He covered his eyes with a forearm expecting gust, but when he found none he looked over at the bird. Its wings glided through the walls as though it had no substance like smoke through a screen. "I'm Aoi!"
"Hello." Itachi greeted. He eyed the remnants of a summoning array that was slowly dissolving from the well bottom.
The bird was a summon.
"Whatcha want me to do for ya?" Aoi whistled. He preened his feathers and pecked at the floor behind Itachi, His thick neck glided through Itachi's body as his head bobbed.
"Excuse me?"
"How should I say this? Your wish is my command!"
Itachi did not know how to react. When he was a child, he read a story book about a summon that granted wishes; a lot like the Arabian myth about the genie of the lamp. But he believed it to be a myth.
"So, ya gonna tell me whatcha want?"
He thought about it for a moment and nodded up the well. The kunais that he had used as a makeshift staircase had been unhinged by the winds from the scroll. He wanted to keep the weapons he had left in case he needed them later. He would not put it past Orochimaru to attack him once he was on solid ground.
"Would you mind getting me out of here?" The words had barely left his lips when he felt a tugging at his stomach and a disorienting pull. He found himself falling from the sky into a canopy of leaves. He barely managed a kawarimi in time to switch out before he got a face full of fiber.
Perhaps he should have requested for something just a little bit safer as his first request.
He flipped neatly onto a tree branch and took a moment to quickly put Aoi's scroll into a storage seal and thought about his next request for Aoi as he waited for the bird to appear.
"I'm sorry!" Aoi cried. He appeared out of thin air beside him and the branch they were both resting on gave a mysterious shake. "That didn't come out like I wanted." tears leaked from the bird's eyes. "I have trouble controlling my chakra."
"It's okay Aoi. Thank you for your help," Itachi gave a small bow of his head.
"Master! You're so kind!" the avian creature dried his eyes right away and gave the Uchiha a big smile. "Is there anything else I can do for ya?"
"Please get me down from this tree now, safely and gently." Itachi worded carefully.
Aoi gave a cheerful smile. "I can do that!"
It felt like he blinked, but he knew he had not his eyes had been wide open the entire time. One moment he was perched comfortably on a tree and the next, he found himself crouching on the grass not too far from the well. The pastels of the sunrise were beginning to color the sky, and the morning dew made the grass slippery. Aoi had gotten him down from the tree just as he had asked.
He hadn't even slipped on the slippery grass
He would have to word his requests carefully from now on.
"As for my next request, please eliminate Orochimaru as a threat to Konoha. Have him decapitated and his body burned to ashes before he can realize what is happening to him."
Aoi nodded.
Itachi barely stepped aside in time to avoid the bloody head that fell from the sky.
"Was that okay?" Big hopeful eyes watched Itachi, and he nodded in response.
"Thank you Aoi, you did well."
"Is there anything else Master?"
Itachi shook his head. "No that will be all, thank you." He sealed Orochimaru's head into another storage scroll and made his way home. The sun was up now and he wanted to get some rest before his father's otsuya.