Me: Naruto does not belong to me!
Naruto: Why would I belong to you?
Me: Everything belongs to Kishimoto-sama!
Naruto: Wait, who's he?
Me: Review replies are on the bottom! Please take a look at my blog - link is on my profile - and enjoy~
Naruto: OI! STOP IGNORING ME!
Me: *runs off into the sunset* Lalalalala, I can't hear you!
Blood
"Run!" Okaa-san screamed to her. She sounded desperate, so desperate. "Run!"
Kasumi gasped for air, her short legs burning with exertion. She could barely draw breath; her lungs felt like they were on fire. Her teeth darted out to worry her bottom lip, and she almost tripped over a root. Branches groped for her, hitting her face and stinging her cheeks. She ignored the pain. Not important, not important...
Shadows blurred in the mist and oh God, she could feel them breathing down her neck. Their gelid exhalations ran shivers down her spine, chilled her to the bone.
Run. Run. Run. Faster. Faster. Always faster. Can't stop, won't stop.
Kasumi ran and ran until she didn't know where she was. Valiantly fighting back tears, the child that was she spun around in circles, but couldn't see anything, boxed as she was by fog and blood. Her small body was shaking, and she could have sworn that she heard the sorrowful wail of damned souls; the cry of death itself.
She sucked in a shuddering breath, her heart beating so hard that it felt like it would burst from her chest. She resisted the growing urge to call out for her loving parents and her protective brothers. "You can't make a sound." Otou-san had whispered to her and so she tried to be quiet, so quiet.
Footsteps - distant - sounded behind her. Despite herself, she stopped breathing for a short, painful second.
Whirling around automatically, she tried to peer through the fog with no success.
The footsteps were getting closer. They were close, too close.
Just barely managing to wrench her breathing and heart rate under control, Kasumi tried to decide on what to do. She was supposed to wait for her family to come find her, she knew that, but if she stayed, the bad men would catch her!
Closer and closer - they were right behind her - what was she supposed to DO?! -
She twisted around and met the blank mask of a Kirigakure Hunter-Nin.
"Kasumi!"
Gasping, she wrenched her eyes open and shot upright. Darkness greeted her, darkness and cautious black eyes. Freezing completely, Kasumi rapidly scanned her surroundings as instinct and danger had taught her through crimson and smoke.
She was... in a small, relatively simple room. It was night - that explained the darkness -, the only illumination the dim moonlight that shone through the half-open window. She was sitting on a small cot and... Naruto was snoring a few feet away, blonde hair bright in the shadows like a living metaphor of his status in the blood-stained world of ninjas. Sasuke knelt next to her, face blank but a trace of concern in his dark, dark eyes.
Kasumi stared monotonously at her teammate, not saying a word. She pursed her lips, unconsciously wiping her face clean of emotion while she was at it. She wasn't telling him anything, if that was what he expected. It wasn't happening, especially not now, when she was feeling so very vulnerable.
It was Sasuke who broke the silence. "You were having a nightmare." He said it slowly, a statement, an explanation, and a question all in one, as probably only he could.
She kept her face vacant, unreadable. "Thank you, Sasuke-san."
They were many ways he could have taken that, but he just nodded in response. Rising to his feet, he paused and glanced at her. "...we wouldn't reveal your secrets." It was as much of a reassurement as the Uchiha could give.
Kasumi let a ghost of a smile touch her lips. It was sweet of him to try, but she knew better than to give others her secrets. Promises were broken, vows forgotten, bonds cut. Nothing, but nothing lasted forever and the ones who tried to hold on were the ones that eventually dangled over the edge of steep cliff with no ground in sight. "Go to sleep, Sasuke-san. Morning will come soon enough."
He knew better than to push and settled down on his own mattress, silent. It wasn't as if he didn't have his own secrets.
Training
"Alright!" Kakashi said a day later, held up by crutches. "Time to get you three ready for Zabuza!"
"Yeah!" Naruto cheered, but his normally enthusiastic cry was half-hearted. Sasuke simply gave him a thoroughly unimpressed look and Kasumi was indecipherable as ever.
Kakashi resisted the urge to sigh. Since the conversation after he had woken up, things had been tense between his students. Naruto didn't know how to treat Kasumi anymore, Sasuke was aggravated, but over what, no one knew, and Kasumi seemed to have retreated so deep into herself that she didn't contribute anymore than necessary. It was almost as bad as when they had first been made a team.
"Well, you all know tree-climbing and water-walking right?" He asked, deciding to be as cheerful and nonchalant as ever in hopes of things working out between the three of them. Kakashi wasn't fully aware of all the training his cute students had been doing, but he was aware of some of the things as suited an experienced jounin... who was not so experienced with teaching.
"Yosh! Me and the teme mastered water-walking a week ago!" Naruto informed him, perking up a bit. Sasuke grunted in agreement and Kasumi maintained her silence, merely nodding assent.
"Hmm..." Rubbing his chin thoughtfully - which was difficult what with the crutches and all, but Kakashi managed because he was just that awesome - he pondered over what would most likely cheer his students up. It wouldn't do for their teamwork to remain as awkward as it was; the only reason they had managed to 'win' was because of their cooperation last time.
"Okay!" Reaching into his shinobi pouch, Kakashi smirked. This would certainly do the trick! "You guys are going to be learning some new jutsu!" And he whipped out four pieces of paper.
"That?!" Naruto deadpanned, staring at the sheets of paper in a disbelieving manner. "Those are just pieces of paper!"
Sasuke raised an eyebrow, looking equally skeptical.
Kasumi blinked, a whisper of surprise touching her eyes. Out of the three of them, she seemed to be the only one who knew what the 'pieces of paper' were.
Kakashi shook his head at his male genin. "These aren't 'just' regular sheets of paper. These are sheets of chakra paper."
"Chakra paper?!" Naruto repeated, brow furrowing but visibly more excited. The mere mention of chakra was enough to interest him. Sasuke and Kasumi, however, were much harder to impress.
"Hai. This was made from a special kind of tree and it reacts to even the slightest touch of chakra." Kakashi said. "For example..."
He took one piece of paper in between his fingers and channeled a bit of chakra through it. It wrinkled instantly and he smiled in satisfaction at the look of awe on Naruto's face. Sasuke looked intrigued, eyeing the crumpled paper with interest. Kasumi's face remained blank, to his concealed frustration.
"My chakra affinity is lightning." He went on. "With lightning, the paper will wrinkle, as you can see. With fire, it will ignite and turn to ash. Wind; the paper will split in two. Earth; the paper will turn to dust and crumple away. And with water, the paper will become wet and damp."
Naruto frowned, brow furrowing, scratching his head. "Eeeh? But, Kakashi-sensei, you've used jutsus that aren't lightning based!"
Kakashi inwardly raised an eyebrow. Either Naruto really was improving in the intellect department or he had been more ignorant than he thought. He took in the faintly visible satisfaction in Kasumi's eyes and Sasuke's smirk and decided that the former was probably correct.
"You aren't bound by your chakra affinity, Naruto." He explained patiently. "Certainly, your element will be easier to use, but you can use other jutsus as well."
"Oh." Naruto digested that before sticking his hand out, fingers outstretched expectantly. "Come on then! Give the super, duper, special paper to us!"
Kakashi sweatdropped. 'Super, duper, special paper...?' Maybe the blonde needed a little more work on his maturity. Or, at least, on his vocabulary.
Obligingly, Kakashi handed out the chakra papers and watched Naruto turn eagerly to his teammates.
"Ready?" He asked, cerulean blue eyes bright.
Sasuke raised an eyebrow, coolly amused. "Are you sure you're ready, dobe?"
"Shut up, teme!" Naruto shouted.
"Boys." Kasumi intercepted smoothly. When they turned to her, Naruto in indignation and Sasuke in arrogance, she gave them a calmly composed look. "Are we going to do this or not?"
Naruto grumbled, Sasuke grunted, and Kasumi sighed, but they closed their eyes and channeled their chakra through the paper carefully.
A moment later, Naruto's paper split and the edges of the two pieces crumbled to dust, Sasuke's paper wrinkled and burst into small flames, and Kasumi's paper turned damp and split halfway across.
They stared at each other in consideration. Kasumi, in particular, looked like she was already analyzing them, taking in the information and storing it in her brain for later.
"Well!" Kakashi said merrily. "It looks like Naruto's major affinity is wind with a minor one for earth, Sasuke's is lightning and fire, and Kasumi's is water and wind."
"Now that we know your affinities..." He eye-smiled at them. "We can get to the jutsu!"
"How are you going to do that?" Sasuke asked bluntly, wasting absolutely no time in beating around the bush. "There's only one of you."
Kakashi chuckled and waved his hand dismissively, almost dropping his crutch. "You forget, Sasuke, that I'm also a ninja."
Bringing up his hands into a familiar seal, he quickly created two shadow clones. "Now, off with you all!"
Lightning
"Alright, Sasuke." The Kakashi bunshin said, stopping the dark-haired boy in a clearing away from the others. "I'm going to be teaching you the Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Murder."
Sasuke raised a single, telling brow and the bunshin rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.
"Yeah, yeah, I know the name sounds silly. But, nonetheless! This technique allows the user to release a wave of electricity from their hands. It's ideal for it to be used in conjunction with water." The Kakashi clone gave him a significant look.
Oh. Sasuke got it. "With Kasumi's water jutsu and all of this water surrounding us..."
"Yes. These are very ideal conditions." Kakashi confirmed. "Listen carefully, now. You won't be able to completely master it in the time we have, but you'll probably be able to produce a small current capable enough of paralyzing your opponent. It's boar, ram, snake, horse, and dragon."
Sasuke nodded, quiet determination replacing the bored light in his eyes.
The Kakashi clone eye-smiled. "Excellent!" And then he disappeared in a poof of smoke.
Sasuke's eye visibly twitched. "Kakashi..." He growled under his breath. "You lazy bastard."
Wind
"Okay, Naruto!" The Kakashi clone led the blonde to a tree. "Are you ready?"
"Of course I am!" Naruto shouted, pumping his fist in the air, looking fiercely determined to master whichever jutsu his teacher threw at him. "Believe it!"
The jounin eye-smiled, wistfully reminded of a red-headed woman with that same passion in her heart, not that he let it show. "Good!"
"I'm going to be teaching you the Wind Release: Gale Palm." The clone announced. "This technique actually doesn't have any hand-seals."
"Eeeh?" Naruto furrowed his brow. "How am I supposed to use it then?"
"You clap your hands together, compress wind, and transform it into a large gale." He said. "I would demonstrate... but as you can see, I can't use my hands right now!"
"Than how am I supposed to do it?" Naruto screamed in frustration.
The minion clone sweatdropped. "Maa, maa, patience, little grasshopper. Patience."
The Uzumaki glared. From the looks of it, Sasuke had taught the blonde his signature death glare sometime ago. The malignancy in his gaze could kill.
"Okay, okay!" He raised his hands, as much as he could, from his crutches. "Think of it like this. You're gathering wind chakra to your hands, compressing the wind around you, and then releasing it at your opponent."
Naruto blinked, frowned.
"Well." The Kakashi clone raised a hand. "Good luck. Ja ne." And poof he went.
Naruto stared dumbly at the space the clone had occupied, his eyes bulging out of his head. And then:
"KAKASHI-SENSEI!"
Water
"Alright, now, Kasumi-chan! I will be teaching you a water ninjutsu today." Kakashi said to Kasumi, back in the original clearing.
She nodded, tensing slightly. "Which one?"
He politely pretended he hadn't noticed her reaction, although he certainly had. "I'm going to be teaching you the Water Release: Black Rain Technique."
Kasumi paused, her brown eyes sparkling with a hint of interest. "I've heard of that jutsu. It's a supplementary jutsu with fire, right?"
Kakashi eye-smiled at her; it seemed like his cute student was recovering from her melancholy. Maybe. Hopefully she would open up completely... in good time. "Yup! Do you know why?"
She considered that, unconsciously tilting her head to the side. "If that hunter-nin truly was Zabuza's accomplice, he is most likely from Bloody Mist, as well." She said slowly. "And that means he is most likely well versed in water jutsu. With the wind jutsu you are teaching Naruto, as well as my own, this may be able to supplement Sasuke's fire jutsu enough that we will be able to combat any water techniques that are thrown at us."
"Very good analysis," Kakashi praised. It looked like she was on her way to becoming a member of the Intelligence Division, already. She had an extraordinary mind and eye for detail. "This jutsu will create a flammable black mist that forms a small cloud. You can, then, maneuver it above your opponent and disperse it, covering the target in flammable oil. Ignite it with either a fire jutsu or an exploding tag, and you're set."
"I see." Kasumi thought that through carefully. Strategizing. Planning. "The hand seals?"
"Ram, snake, tiger." He listed rapidly.
She pinned him with a steady gaze, brown eyes narrowing ever-so-slightly. "I suppose you'll run away now, Sensei?"
Kakashi laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. "Ahh... about that..."
Kasumi simply shook her head and went for her first attempt at the new jutsu. She knew better than to think she would be able to master it easily.
Rain
Sasuke grunted in annoyance and shoved his wet hair out of his eyes.
As the sun had fallen beyond the horizon, the heavens had opened up and poured cold, relentless rain on the bleak earth, thoroughly soaking the exhausted genin.
Pressing his lips together in annoyance, Sasuke decided that enough was enough. He wanted to master the jutsu badly, hadn't managed to create more than a few sparks, but getting sick wasn't worth it.
Running a hand through his spiky hair, he set off towards the bridge-builder's house, quick eyes rapidly taking in his surroundings. There didn't seem to be anything abnormal... but for three days, before this mission, Kasumi had decided it was a good idea to have stealth and traps training.
Naruto, of all people, had so thoroughly beaten their asses, that Sasuke remained profoundly paranoid, and considering their current situation, that was probably a good state to be in.
A few minutes of walking later, he came upon the clearing they had originally gathered in and froze, leaning against a nearby tree.
Kasumi stood in the center, completely wet and absolutely still. She had her face turned up towards the skies, apparently ignoring the water droplets splashing onto her skin. The clearing around her looked exactly the same, with the exception of a few black drops of what looked strangely like oil, making it clear that she hadn't gotten very far in mastering her new jutsu either.
But, it was her expression that caught Sasuke's attention and held it. Gone was the unconcerned, serene mask that she had worn since they had arrived at Tazuna's house and something much more different had replaced it. There, in the rain, Kasumi looked... lost. That was the best word he could come up with to describe that look on her face.
She looked like someone lost in the darkness, with no one to cling on to, and without anyone to light her way.
"Did you know," Kasumi said conversationally, almost casually, "that our pasts are not so different, after all, Sasuke-san?"
Sasuke's hand on the tree bark clenched. He wasn't surprised she had known he was there; she was the most observant and intelligent one of their team. Her question, though...
He didn't know what to say to her question. For the longest time, he had believed that no one had gone through what he had, that no one could possibly understand. To some extent, he still believed that. But, he remembered what Kakashi had said, too, that day after Inari's outburst.
"Is that so?" He replied at last, keeping his onyx eyes on female teammate.
Her lips quirked vaguely, but she didn't turn to face him. Instead, she reached up with her hand towards the crying skies, palm open as if she could catch the raindrops. The teardrops kissed her fingers, ran down her palm.
Strands of her soft hair had fallen out of her bun to frame her face, her simple green shirt and black pants slicked over her petite frame. The remaining dusk light shone over her face, highlighting her pale skin and bringing her brown eyes to swirling lagoons of deep chocolate.
It was a... striking scene, Sasuke admitted reluctantly. Any artist would be overjoyed to paint such a display.
Yet, he couldn't help but find it almost unbearably sorrowful.
"Yes." Kasumi whispered into the quiet. Her eyes, bittersweet chocolate, melancholy, wistful, said everything her voice did not. "This world is a cruel place, no?"
Next time:
Sasuke stepped closer, his body heat touching her back intimately. She did her best not to flinch. She hadn't realized how cold she was until now.
Kyaa! So many review! Thank you everyone!
starrat: Thank you for reviewing, hun! Hope you enjoyed!
Miss Luny: Er... no, I don't think so. Thanks for the review, though!
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m: Thank you! I'll do my best~
Hinata18809: Thank you, thank you! Hope you enjoyed this chapter!
animemangaobsessed: Good to know! Thanks for reviewing, hun!
OrchidWonderland: Wonderful! I will do my best!
Thoroughly Misguided: Lolz. Kakashi will figure things out sooner or later, ne? Thanks for the review, dear!
vvheng0628: Aww! Thank you!
Bella-swan11: Ah, it'll probably take some more time for Sasuke to put aside his pride. We all know how stubborn he is! Thanks for the review!
lifethroughanotherseyes: Oh, I'm sorry! OST is official soundtrack. You're right, I haven't thought up to the Chunin Exams, yet. Thank you so much for the offer though! If I do need a character like that, you'll be the first place I ask. :3 Thanks for the review, hun!
DocAmburgey: You got it! Thanks for the review!
michi-nin: Oh, thank you! Hope you enjoyed~
Yuri Tora: And the folding continues... but at least, Sasuke's noticing! Thanks for the review, hun!
Randomness-sama: I love Wind! And Immortals! You have awesome music taste! Thanks for the review!
ArtRat: Thank you! :) I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Thanks for the review, dear!
SilverNeira: Lolz, I'm trying to keep away from that plotline and the classic Mary Sue. Thanks for the review!
1XxKiraXx1: Thank you, thank you, thank you! You're making me blush! I am doing my best to keep Team 7 in character, but Kasumi is messing the interactions a bit, isn't she? Lolz, thanks for the wonderful review, hun!
Question: Ideas about Kasumi's past, anyone?
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