Note: This might be my favorite chapter so far. It's so intense. And longer than usual. I'm so proud. Beware some gore. And remember to review!
22
Unlike the fierce wasp
One sting is enough to end
The life of a bee
After that, Inazuma didn't see him for several more years. She and her team made chuunin, and she finally perfected her Shadow Strike. She even powered it up, packing more chakra into the lightning ball than her father (or anyone else, for that matter) would have deemed safe, and made the jutsu powerful enough to crumble stone. The boulder she practiced on eventually transformed into a pile of blackened gravel.
The first time she blew an oponent into charred chunks with a stab of crackling lightning, she hardly batted an eyelash, though she broke down in graceless tears once the the battle had ended, barely before it'd begun. It was on a B-rank mission, and her teammates were less congratulatory and more horrified when they witnessed her jutsu in battle for the first time.
That very same day Shin finally shut his trap about her gender.
Even their jonin instructor (who'd continued to lead their group even after they all made chuunin - Cloud believed in tightly-knitted teamwork) was more than a little disturbed. She had been in the right, and would possibly have suffered severe injury or death if she hadn't torched the enemy ninja that had been been holding her hostage; she was the smallest, weakest-looking of their team, after all. But the sight of a thirteen-year-old girl blasting another human being into pieces was plenty enough to send shivers down his spine.
But because Inazuma cried, her teammates internally forgave her.
She wasn't sure what emotion had triggered her tears.
She wasn't sure if she enjoyed being a tool of war.
The world of ninja is harsh and merciless.
There is no room for hesitancy.
And certainly not purity.
There is blood.
Blood.
Blood...
Inazuma stood in front of the slightly spotted, cracked mirror of the hotel, with the door locked to prevent her teammates from coming in and comforting her. She gripped the sink in her hands and stared glassy-eyed at the mirror, her lower lip twitching with unspent hysteria.
The memories of the fight flooded her mind's eye...
She twisted her hands painfully and locked her fingers together:
Bird-
"Come on, just drop your weapons and this little girl will be fine, don't you worry." The ninja's hand was large enough to grip Inazuma's two smaller ones behind her back with ease, twisting them painfully until she gasped out loud.
"Ina!"
-Dragon-
"Don't move!" shouted Goren, "We'll help you. Shin, Kamomi, get cover in the trees." Her team darted out of sight.
The enemy ninjas' cackle sent a freezing shiver up her spine, and suddenly she was falling to her knees, falling facefirst to the dirt where the pebbles and twigs dug painfully into her cheekbone. She felt the cold point of a kunai kiss the base of her skull and trail slowly back and forth along her spine.
Suddenly, she felt the knife slash across her nape, where her shoulders and back merged with her neck. The cut wasn't deep enough to cause permanent damage, but instantly unleashed a wave of fresh pain and blood. Inazuma screamed loudly, before a boot smashed her face into the earth, cutting her off.
She heard Kamomi's hawk, Taki, shriek with anger from where he was circling above, but the bird didn't swoop down on the ninja.
-Boar-
"Come on out, you dirty Cloud-nin," called the shinobi that had pinned her down and cut her, "or I'll do much worse than this, I can assure you."
"Kill her already, she's just going to get in the way," his teammate snapped impatiently.
-Snake-
Inazuma heard a grunt of assent and felt the the man raise the knife into the air. The ninja leaned over her, chuckling, his grip on her hands loosening. She twisted them into the final hand sign.
-RAT
She poured an enormous rush of chakra into her cupped hands - more than she'd dared to use ever before - focusing it into a searing point, and just as the knife swooped down towards her neck, she jerked her palms wide open.
BOOOOOOOM.
The man's weight was suddenly gone, replaced by a flash of heat and light and Inazuma rolled away from and got to her knees, the smell of burning flesh and smoke in her nostrils, dust coating her face and tongue. She coughed, she raised her freed hands, and she focused her chakra once more.
Her hands flashed through the signs: Bird-Dragon-Boar-Snake-Rat.
She built up two separate Strikes, one in each palm, as the remaining two ninja leaped toward her of of the clearing smoke, their weapons drawn and poised and their faces contorted with fury. She put her cupped hands up in front of her, staring into their eyes as their shadows fell onto her face and they came flying down from the sky, kunai and katana raised, blood on one man's jacket, a dirt-smudged snarl on the other's face... Her curled fingers snapped open, splayed wide, launching her jutsu at the ninja.
BA-BOOOOOM.
Her crackling chakra flew from her palms and speared directly into their chests. She saw their eyes go wide, saw them bulge, just before a jagged hole tore through their bodies and sprayed little droplets of blood into the sunny, blue sky.
The two ninja thudded to the ground, dead.
Inazuma stood up. She brushed off her knees. She watched them lie there and seep blood into the dust. She stared for a whole minute to make sure that they were really dead.
Were they really dead?
No way. No way. No way. (No way.)
She looked up, and saw the body parts of man that had had pinned her down, strewn across the clearing in bloody chunks. His head laid several meters away from his arm, his eyes blank and blind and his jaw slack and twisted with an expression of surprise.
Her teammates jumped out of the trees. Kamomi's eyes were wide with fright and shock; she held her trembling hands up to her mouth. Shin just stared at her, his green eyes boring into her soul.
...Inazuma's clutched the sink so hard that her knuckles showed through her dark skin. She swore to herself that she couldn't have killed them (there was just no way), but the always-truthful voice at the back of her mind whispered that she had.
She stared into the mirror, eyes wide.
Her hair had come out of its braid, falling all around her shoulders and drenched reddish-brown from the cut at the nape of her neck. Her enemy's blood was drying on her shirt, and mingling with her own in the masses of her once cloud-white strands of hair.
The blood must've been dried and brown, but in her reflection, in this light, in her eyes, all she could see was a thick, dripping, blood-red color that started by her ears and soaked all the way down to the tips that rested against her chest. A fresh droplet, kept in liquid form inside a thick clump of hair, dripped into the white sink.
That was the color red his hair was. Like blood on kitchen tiles.
Within seconds, every strand of her blood-soaked hair was slashed cleanly away with a kunai.
Kamomi hammered at the door of the bathroom. "Ina!"
"Inazuma! Are you alright?" It was Shin's voice, tinged with a concern that he never used to show her.
Inazuma turned on the bathtub tap to drown out the sound of their worry. She soon slid under the water, listening to the roar of the tap like thunder in her ears, and ignoring the slight pink tinge the bathwater took on.