Disclaimer/ I do not own Naruto in any way shape or form. I do not own Princess AI or it's song Daughter of death, though it is awesome.
Please read, enjoy, and review.
Chapter Four
Daughter of Death
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I was
born through the blood of angels
Born through the veil of a storm
born without love inside me
born with a need to preform
Born out of vengeance
born out of scorn
Born out of hatred
Out of love torn
Born with a mission
Born with a drive
Born with a need
With a will to survive
Now I'm going to show you
What I'm really all about
No more pretensions:
No more frothing at the mouth
There's no use hiding
All my fears deep inside
I'll wear them on my shoulder
like a badge of pride
Cuz I'm a daughter of death
From my very first breath
I'm a daughter of death
Blood red as Macbeth
I'm a daughter of death
living a filthy mess
I'm a daughter of death
Just a daughter of death
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"I know you may find this unsettling, but a deal is a deal."
Tsunade looked up from her warmed sake and glared at the man. "I don't really car anymore since it's over with, but I would like it if you would stop rubbing in my face every time we meet. I am the ruler of this village, I should not be see with the likes of you too often, people will talk of this."
"And yes. And then they'll ask question, and then they'll start snooping into your business, and then they'll find out what kind of person you truly are, and find out about all those nasty little secrets you have been hiding these many years, princess," he snickered, taking a sip from his sake as well.
"There you go again, rubbing it in my face, over and over and over again. That is so annoying. You know it wasn't the easiest thing for me to do, but I did it and in the end I kept my word, so what more do you want."
"I come here to share a friendly conversation and I get snapped at and with such nasty words too. I'm hurt, princess."
"Nothing between us is friendly and you can stop calling me that, I find it to be annoying coming from someone like you," Tsunade hissed with narrowed eyes, filled with venom.
"Heh. You really are a cruel person, I'm glad I choose to do business with you. How many people can you find now a days that are willing to sell their own adopted daughter to the devil just to square off some old debts and help her little village?"
"You make me sound so evil."
"You did the right thing. Our research has never been better and now you can have a sample of the finished work to try out on your own shinobi. It's a win, win situation here."
"Not for everyone."
"Oh yes, your apprentice. Someone had to take the fall for the good of the village. Isn't it right to sacrifice one life to save a hundred? You were completely in the green with your decision. You did the right thing giving her to us. I know she may have been close to you, but aside from you, there is no one else in the entire world with perfect chakra control before the age of eighteen. We needed her and you needed money."
"Whatever, I only have a little longer until my break is over and I have to go back to paper duty. Just hand over this month's payment and the documents you promised and you can be on your way."
A folder was slid across the table alongside and envelope that was fattened with the many bills that cost the freedom for one unfortunate soul.
Tsunade looked inside the envelope and counted the money.
"This will do for the month, you may go now."
"Getting rid of me already. You truly are a col woman, Tsunade hime. I though I could stay with you a little longer and tell you about how our little bird is doing in her new surroundings."
"Like I said earlier, I don't care. That girl is dead to me. I don't want to hear about her anymore than I have to. It's like bringing up a conversation about a dead person."
The man sitting across the table from Tsunade chuckled and took another slip from his warm drink. "Do you regret what you did? Selling a human being into the hands of those who would treat her badly with the full knowledge of what would happen to her. She was only fifteen, sixteen now."
"I regret nothing, and like I said a thousand and one times, I do not care what happens to that girl. What is important is what happens to me. I've lost enough to become numb to the effects. From the beginning I was never really fond of the girl. She was too much like myself. Surpassing me was in her future is she stayed around," she replied with a sour tone in her voice that could have been because of the Sake or her displeasure with the man she was sitting with.
"You are almost as cruel as I."
"Almost. I doubt anyone will ever be as evil or as cruel as you."
"Then you should know by now that compassion only leads to misery. It is better if you do not attach yourself to anything of this world. Live as you and I do, devils in the skins of humans, for in the end, that is whom the world will belong to," he chuckled with much delight in his voice.
"I'll drink to that," Tsunade mumbled, holding out her small round cup.
The young man before her lifted his own and gulped down the rest of it's contents. "Well now, I must be getting back. I was told before I left that my men were planning on installing a formula we like to call the Raven. It's a very dangerous test but I have confidence in my men, they will not blunder this up when our little bird has been acting so well for so long. I am looking forward to seeing the final results of all my time and research in this one beauty."
"I suggest you take car, it's a week of traveling to get where you're heading and if I know you, you'll turn it into a month with all your pointless detours that leas you nowhere."
"You never know. One day one may pay off for me."
"I hope so, take care."
"I will. May your house be blessed, Tsunade hime." And with a bow and a wave of his hand, the young man stood up and exited the expensive tea house that was reserved for the Hokage on this day.
"I hope you fall in a shallow grave, Mandara Uchiha."
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In the beginning, the number of children that Sakura had rescued was exceedingly large. But after finding a village that had lost over thirty eight kids a raid connected to her imprisonment, Sakura was able to find homes for thirty eight plus forty seven who had found adopted homes. Now the number of children was less than a dozen. Eleven lovely children to be exact.
Sakura ran her sharpened nails through her long two toned colored hair trying to keep it out of her striking green orbs. All the younger children were out in the halls playing hide and go seek or tag...or maybe both. She took this opportunity to 'hide' in the records room and do some digging on who these people were and what they were up to. So far, no luck. There were thousands upon thousands of documents piled up high and stored in files marked in a code she did not know. It was frustrating having to go through so many.
So far all she really knew was that this organization was called the Yura no Nori, meaning beginning of the government and that it was what looked like a side project to something much greater and something a whole lot bigger. Thoughts of Orochimaru entered her mind, when she found a few projects on snakes, but there wasn't enough evidence to prove that theory.
She picked up one file that had a design for a pair of skeleton like wings with snakes wrapped around, slithering and coiling. It looked a lot like something that snake obsessed pysco would dream up, but then, the rest of the experiments didn't look it. If anything, it looked like many people.
"So maybe Orochimaru is the chief behind all this and everyone that was working here were just...minions. Those two brothers looked like they were running most of the show here, though. Somehow this doesn't feel like Orochimaru, but at the same time..." her words hung in the air as she dropped the paper on to a table and picked up another two.
"It's all so confusing." Her eyes closed and then reopened, adjusting to the dimming light after another light bulb fizzled out on her. It didn't make that much of a difference, but after studying little words and notes in handwriting that looks like chicken scratch on sand dunes, anything will get to you. The lighting, the easiest.
Setting down the papers in her hands, Sakura moved on to another table, knocking her hit bone into the side of another table. Due to her lack of food, that bone had been sticking out more than it should have. "Ow," she hissed, backing up.
When she had bumped the table, a pyramid of scrolls that had been neatly stacked had fallen over, spilling out onto the floor in a small mess. Cursing her clumsy ways, she bent down to pick up a few, tossing them carelessly onto a different table. As you could guess, there were a lot of tables in the room, all with documents of some kind.
"Matte, what's this?" the green eyed girl whispered in question, holding a up faded black scroll with what looked like, a red cloud acting as a seal.
The seal was broken.
"Akatsuki!" Sakura breathed with surprise.
Didn't Orochimaru use to work for the Akatsuki at one point, before he was kicked out for an attempt at stealing the eyes of Itachi. Sakura had studied this in great detail since it applied to Sasuke and why the snake sannin would want with her former teammate. Not that she was into Sasuke anymore. Truth was, she really didn't care if he ever came back.
This scroll looked old, it could be from the time when Orochimaru was working with the Akatsuki. Judging by the coloring on the outside, she would place it around four or five years, maybe more. It was hard to tell with so much dust covering the thing. She had never been really good at that sort of thing, judging the age by appearance, but had taken a small training session on the art, just in case something like this happened on a solo mission.
Pushing her thoughts aside, she opened the scroll, surprised that there was no trap or spell preventing herself from doing so. Her eyes widened at the first words before the paper turned to dust in her hands, completely dissolving out of it's original form.
"I should have known. That was too easy," Sakura scolded, looking down at the pile of dust in her hands. Thankfully Sakura had a photographic memory, and those few seconds that it took the old trap to kick in were all she needed to get the first half memorized.
Rolling the image around in her head, she began to decode it. The first part was instructions to meet someone at some place at a certain time. That date went back...seven years, longer than she though. Rushing past a large gap that was irrelevant, Sakura began looking for names she could recognize. Nothing...nothing...nothing, there at the end...all it was were the initials U and M.
U and M? Who would have a last name that started with a U? H and U were initials you didn't see ofter, since the Hyuga and the Uchiha clan didn't like other clans sharing the same initials or something of that matter. The clans were powerful and the were prideful, what more could you expect from someone like that? Itachi was and Uchiha from the Akatsuki, but his initial would be I, not M.
"At least I know that the Akatsuki were involved in the experiments that went on with me. I'll have to thank them sometime soon," she hissed darkly to herself, remembering the faces of so many tortured children who had been dragged from their homes and loved ones.
Sure, she herself took a beating one time too many, but it wasn't that much of a deal for someone who grew up, training to become a ninja. She was sixteen and an jonin now. She was used to things like this happening in battle. But these kids, who were five, six, seven, up to eight and nine, were not used to this kind of pain and torture. It was alien to them, and rightly so.
Growing up, Sakura never spent much time enjoying her childhood. All of a sudden she was forced the grow up when she saw what was happening all around her. And then when she had grown up, she had realized what she had lost, and just how precious it truly was. These kids lost their childhood, and if they couldn't fight to get it back than she would!
"Sakura nee chan, I could you."
Sakura whirled around to see young Ryuu standing in the doorway with a smug grin on his lips and a cocky air that surrounded him. He was most likely proud at finding the biggest member of their little family, he being oldest next to her.
"Oh darn, you found me, and I thought no one would bother to look all the way back here for me. You really are good at this. I'll have to steep up my game next time," Sakura laughed, tossing the dust off her hands. "I didn't even feel you coming, you little sneak."
"Hah, I'm going to be a spy one day. That's what they had planned for me. No one can feel, hear, or smell me coming. I'm going to be the best of the best one day," he boasted.
Sakura smiled and stepped over most of the books and table, landing next to the young boy. "Oh really? If you're going to be the best of the best, you're going to have to be better than me. You think you have the guts to go toe to toe with me?"
The young boy blushed deeply at how closely Sakura was to him, leaning in her face to his. He could clearly see her curved lips grinning at him with a slyness that was special to her. And her eyes were opened wide and seemed to be glimmering down towards him. Oh he wished they were. "M-m-may-maybe...maybe one day..."
Sakura laughed at how cute he looked. "Yeah maybe one day, you never know what the future has planned for you. So, have you found anyone else aside from me?"
"Y-you were the last one. Everyone else is in the kitchen eating snacks from the village trip we took. I've been looking for you ever since I found Aoi. She was hard too, but I found her after a while. I found everyone."
"What! They're eating Pocky without me?! That stuff is going to be gone by the time I get there! Don't worry Pocky, I'll save you!" Sakura screamed dramatically, jumping over another table in the direction of the doorway, leaving a slightly red Ryuu behind the watch with a hidden smile as the slim angel like figure jumped away. No matter how funny she acted, she always looked beautiful to him.
It was quite obvious to everyone around him, that he had a small crush on Sakura. Even though he was only nine and she was sixteen, to him there was hardly a difference. She was tall (to him anyway) thin, graceful, funny, and easy to talk to. Most of the people he met in the holding cells were other children who were scared of everyone and everything. It was hard for him to talk to anyone without working for a long time to win their trust. With Sakura, she was like magic. She was just, there, ready to talk, ready to listen, ready to help. He had never met anyone like that before.
"Hey, Dragon chan, you coming?" She even gave him his very own nickname. It was the first one he ever had and so it was a special thing to him even more so if it was from her.
"H-hai Sakura nee chan. Wait for me."
"Hurry up, the almond covered Pocky are always the first to go," she called, standing in the doorway with her big black wings spread and ready to carry her to her destination, though he knew she would not use them in such a small hallway. She couldn't.
That was another thing, she had these big black angel wings. this would normally be something that scars people, but for him, growing up where he did, they only added to her radiance. He remembered touching them when he first met her, during the liberation. They were so soft and fluffy underneath his hands, it was like touching a cloud. And on top of that she looked so cool when she flew with them. She could fly far, since she was still getting used to them, but when she did go the short distance that she did, she was like a real live angel.
"I'm here, don't leave without me," he stated, grabbing onto her hand, even though he felt childish for doing so. He didn't mind feeling childish around her as long as he was around her. Holding onto her hand was a bonus in and of it's self.
"Okay, then, come on, Dragon chan."
He felt his cheeks burst aflame with pink and red and she dragged him along, calling his name. "Hai, hai, Sakura chan!" She never noticed how he left out the nee chan in her name.
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Sakura pulled out another stick of almond covered Pocky, sucking on it in pure delight as she toweled her hair dry.
Now that most of the children were gone, everyone had their own room and bathroom, including Sakura. However, most of the children opted for sharing a room since no one really liked being alone. And funny thing was, the all choose room surrounding her own. All she had to do was take a few steeps outside and she was at someone's door.
She preferred it that way. It was easier to get to anyone if there was ever an emergency or s urgent need with one of her kids. Yes, they were her kids, at least she thought of them in that way. They were all close to her heart, possessing it a bit too much for it to be healthy. And with in the past two weeks, she had only come to love them more.
She was still very wet from her shower, dripping a small puddle around her as she walked across the room in nothing more than a short ivory robe that was sticking to her like a second skin. There were two deep holes that allowed her wings to slip out, but she kept them neatly folded againts her back so that you could scarcly see them through her hair of black and pink.
It was hard for her to find anything very feminine for her to wear to bed, so she normall opted for an over sized shirt and her panties. Hey, it worked. She was about to exchange her robe for a shirt, but was waiting till she dried off a bit more before she did anything. If Ino were with her now, the blond would tell Sakura that she was damn sexy. And it wouldn't be a lie.
A long piece of hair fell down in front of Sakura's face, blocking part of her vision. Without giving it much though she flicked the dawn colored lock back, mildly abused at how soft it felt after a shower. Once she started fighting again, she would cut her hair, but for now she wanted to be a mother to these kids, so she choose to keep her hair long, no matter how inconvenient it was to brush and comb everyday. The little girls loved braiding it fo her, even if they didn't always come out straight.
Yawning, Sakura climbed the small steeps up to the elevated part of her bedroom where there was really a window that led outside. Her room used to belong to someone important, since this was an underground base without any windows, except for those caved through the rock. So yeah, a window was a big deal in a place like this. Aside from the window, the furnishings were extraordinary and elegant in every way, with their detailed carvings and polished surfaces, Sakura felt like a princess. No, a princess had to take orders from a king, she was a freaking queen!
Drawing closer to the opening her calm smile seemed to slip away. Her eyes hardened and seemed to melt into a hazel that in turn, shifted to a striking gold, slid down the middle by black. It was the raven half of her taking over her appearance. Already her nails were growing into claws and feathers were starting to grow out of her hair in the black parts.
There was a chakra signature outside her window. And it felt like and old ripened one. Whoever it was outside her window was either really bad at hiding so much of a signature, or was so powerful that he/she couldn't. That last though scared her a little since this place did have connections to the Akatsuki. She knew for a fact, they were all very powerful. Duh.
Slowly opening the window, Sakura appeared to be doing nothing more than enjoying a cool breeze the night had to offer. Stepping away from the window she position herself a good three yards away and waited for a few moments, hoping for her captor to let his guard down at the lack of her sightings. It was an old ninja trick she picked up from Kakashi.
'Now or never.'
Running forward, Sakura quickly flickered out the window and rolled onto the ground, holding the kuni she had picked up from her nightstand. Her hair whipped wildly around her as she stood up and punched a form in front of her with her empty fist.
Someone dodged. There was someone out there.
Pouring chakra, bother her own and that of the raven inside her, Sakura swung again, kicking this time as well, hoping that one of her attacks would land on the shadowed target. She could have sworn she hit him once, bit it was dark and it was hard to tell.
Feeling him close by she swung her weapon around and pinned him to at rock wall. He easily pusher her off and rolled around so he was the one bearing down on her. He was much bigger and stronger than thin little Sakura. Taller too. She wouldn't have an easy time getting him off of her with all the power in his arm.
Sakura hissed and glared up at the man holding her down, only to gasp in shock at the sight that was last in her mind. It was blood red with three little spinning dots around the iris. An bloodline that only belonged to those of the Uchiha clan.
"Sharingan," Sakura gasped right before the commas began to spin.
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I was raised from burning ashes
Raised on tragic crimes
Raised from the cries of chaos
Raised on borrowed time
Raised by the darkness
raised by the night
Raised by the vultures
By the claws of fright
Raised to be hated
Raised to be love
Raised to be doomed
By the powers above.
Now I'm going to show you
What I'm really all about
No more pretensions:
No more frothing at the mouth
There's no use hiding
All my fears deep inside
I'll wear them on my shoulder
like a badge of pride
Cuz I'm a daughter of death
From my very first breath
I'm a daughter of death
Blood red as Macbeth
I'm a daughter of death
living a filthy mess
I'm a daughter of death
Just a daughter of death
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Author's Note:I am so sorry to all of you who waited so long for this to be updated. Some more than others (you know who you are, you wonderful people!). Um, yeah, been busy with school and work and after school activities and such. If I had more time this would have been up a while ago, but you know how it is. anyway, here is your chapter and I hope you all enjoy it.
An another note, who else aside from me loves the 3/4 and 1/2 view. The whole page thing was killing my mostly-dead eyes. I like it and I'm happy that they added it. But that's not really important...um review, yes, that's important. Very, very important.
Review!
Ja ne
-Vesper chan
Submit Review Report Possible Abuse Add Story to Favorites Add Story to Story Alert Add Author to Favorites Add Author to Author Alert Add Story to C2 Archive 1. Prologue2. This Heart That's Healing3. Birth by Broken Wings4. Whisper Sweetly To Me5. Daughter of Death