Chapter 13 | Warning Signs
Burdened with guilt, Izuna left the campsite to meet his grandmother at the border of the Waterfall Country.
Eijiro's men stalled where the elder rested, so loyal they swore to mourn his death for as long as seven days and seven nights. No one would leave until the mourning period ended and until then, the clan would remain ignorant to the shift of power. However, Madara and Mio were in the midst of their journey back to the Uchiha compound and he had already sent a hawk to his father, informing him of their loss. He suspected the two might be prudent enough to avoid spreading the word, but Taiga had learned of his grandfather's deadly injury and by the time they reached the compound, he would have already been there three days.
Danger surrounded the compound. How many of the clan's deadliest assassins had gathered? How many of them wanted a clan stricken in chaos? Had Hikaku arrived? Was Hiryuu present? What about Mio's aunt, Konoe? Was she there as well? Did they plan to gather? Were they plotting? Oh, he bet everyone, to some extent, was plotting, but Hiryuu and Konoe scheming brought on a new sense of dread.
And he just let Mio go.
In a fit of foreign rage, he snapped at her for choosing Madara.
But she didn't understand.
His brother didn't understand.
Izuna needed Mio on this journey. He had to have convinced her otherwise. He felt a chilling emotion in his bones that demanded he return to the border, sprint towards them to intercept their paths and drag Mio to the Waterfall Country with or without Madara.
Except, he had done none of the things he needed to do. He forsook them in a spur of anger and now he felt the burn of shame and regret. They were hundreds of miles away, traveling in the opposite direction. Turning around now would cut in his time and the staggering amount of thoughts running through his head had already slowed him down.
He couldn't concentrate. Running back towards the compound proved a weakness he couldn't yet name, so he continued forward, determined.
.
.
Izuna ran headfirst into a Mikazuki trap.
Dozens of Mikazuki shinobi surrounded his squadron, hidden behind thick tangles of vines and under the blackness of shadows. They were without breath, without noise, without need. They were shielded from the power of his eyes, no chakra to be seen. These shinobi were as good as nonexistent under the cover of night.
As he sat in a bed of leaves, burrowed on all sides by tightly packed dirt, holding his bloodied side, he knew that whatever the outcome of this standoff was would be up to fate.
He hated to think that way. Leaving it up to fate? It sounded ridiculous. But he couldn't think.
The situation was impossible to get around. He devised hundreds of ways to confront them, but not without losing his life in the process. Since survival was slim, Izuna started considering escape. He thought of being in someone else's shoes and imagined that it was a necessary sacrifice to retaliate against the shinobi clan that ruptured his apart. But there was not much he could do.
So he stayed silent, observing the men his father entrusted him with several days ago. He gave them silent orders to stay down. If he learned one thing from the ambush, it was that the Mikazuki excelled in the watery terrain. The ground had been slippery from precipitation and the trees surrounding the area were tall with robust branches and wide leaves that tangled overhead into a thick canopy that kept light out. There were boulders covered in moss and deep holes in the ground—forgotten traps—and vines that wrapped around tree trunks and tumbled free above their heads. Animals crept in silence. Insects skittered anxiously across the earth.
Izuna sucked in a breath. He scented water and greenery tainted with stronger smells—of blood and rotting flesh and death. Had it not been for the chill that twined up his spine, he might have never seen the sheen of metal slashing towards him. He evaded it in time to acquire a scratch over his side, deep enough to bleed profusely but not enough to kill him.
How long had he been there? Surrounded by death?
The smells made him want to vomit, but he dimmed them by wrapping a piece of torn cloth over his mouth and nose. He tried not to think of them either because that made it worse, so he relaxed his hidden body self-assured of his position and his ability to sensing oncoming attacks. He had the Sharingan; many of his men had the same advantage. The Mikazuki only had the terrain. He was certain that without it they would be no match for the Uchiha. But then—then he thought of Eijiro, who had practically been immortal until they came around, and of Mio and her parents. Kikyo and Genji, whose names he had never heard of before she spoke them in that quiet voice of hers with an emotion that strung a cord in his. She never talked of them individually; she spoke of them together on the night they were killed, the memory rooted to her brain and it seemed to be the only one she had of them. The only one she thought mattered.
.
"Can you tell me about them?" Izuna asked. She had been comfortable enough to speak freely at that time and seemed more willing to reveal the events that led to her arrival at his home. He never wanted to intrude before, but he was curious then. He wanted to know Mio because it seemed no one else was willing. "I've asked grandma, but she only tells me that they were good at what they did. She said Kikyo was an incredible sensor and Genji was a skilled spy. I heard he infiltrated the warzone far east when he was young with complete ease and supplied our clan with valuable information."
Izuna enjoyed such stories growing up, talks of clansmen doing the impossible and winning battle after battle. Of course, back then, doing that was difficult with an influx of new shinobi clans. The recent years had claimed most, leaving only the strongest clans in play. He heard his grandmother discussing that sort of thing with Taiga all the time, but most of the supremacy wars had been traded for territorial wars. Even the strongest clans were having trouble staying rooted to one spot, most felt safer moving from place to place which had been up for discussion with the Elders in his clan, but Eijiro refused to move the compound elsewhere.
Mio had turned to him then as she carefully organized the contents of her satchel. She traveled light, but always seemed prepared. Still, Izuna noted she was very particular about things. She liked odd numbers and fixed everything around that slight obsession of hers. He had always wondered about that as well, but he didn't want to be too impersonal or insulting. Then again, he was asking about her parents without talking about his own. There wasn't much to tell where his parents were concerned. His mother died early on in his life so he remembered her less than Madara did, but it affected him the same. He thought about all those days he would never get to see her again and they still depressed him. Even if he didn't remember her face or the way she smiled, he did recall the way she used to carry him on her back and talk about the places her long missions had taken her. Then there was that issue with his father where Izuna hadn't inherited enough Uchiha and Madara was the perfect son, who couldn't even stand him longer than a minute. Matching personalities and all. Madara inherited the stupid from their father as Tajima had from his mother, but Izuna would never say that to their faces.
"Mother never sensed him coming," she answered quietly. She idled on the question for several minutes as if she were going over each word for hidden meaning before she started to talk. She picked her words carefully. "She should have. In the end, I think she was sorry. She sounded sorry…or I think she did. Father, he…" She paused. "Father didn't have time to say much of anything. He only gave me a number—seven-four."
"Seventy-four?" he questioned, mildly intrigued. "What does that mean?"
"It was a seven and a four, not seventy-four," she corrected without a hint of exasperation. "It's a code. A secret code."
"Do you know what it means?" he asked excitedly, scrambling to seat himself beside her in case it was a secret she would be parting with.
"No," she replied. "Not yet."
.
Izuna heard a loud rustling overhead and the sound of something cutting through the air sharply followed by a pained cry from his right. He turned in time to see one of his own fall with a jagged piece of metal stabbed in his neck. He gurgled noisily as blood guzzled from the wound and then it was silent once more. As he thought, they were prisoners and the Mikazuki were scattered. He damned the situation, cursed himself for being too concerned with what had happened to realize they were walking into a death trap.
"What should we do?" asked a man to his left. His voice was low and his body was hunched behind the overgrown roots of a drooping tree.
Izuna looked up to him. "We wait until morning, we can't do anything until then," he said quickly, sure to measure the loudness of his tone. "They have an advantage over us, the terrain, weather, night. Stay vigilant."
The man repeated the orders to the rest of their group and silently his squadron crept in the same shadows the Mikazuki hid waiting for the right opportunity when one of them would fall under the stream of moonlight peeking through the branches tangled above their heads.
Izuna shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. The exhaustion beating on his back was starting to weigh heavily. He avoided sleep on various missions, but none as strenuous as this one. This one demanded his full attention whereas others he could simply have a guard posted and find time to rest for at least an hour. He hadn't slept well enough the day before with Eijiro's worsening condition. He was asked to keep his father posted and that was what he did, barely sleeping two hours before the medic struggled to keep him stable. Their current standoff could get boring quickly and that sort of emotion would send him straight to sleep, so he needed to busy himself.
Instantly, his mind went back to the memory of the code Mio's father left with her and remembered the conversations that followed. Somewhere in her observations of that night, in the grisly recollection of her own tragedy he thought he could find a way to counterattack the Mikazuki and escape.
.
"Aren't you ever curious?" asked Izuna, drying his hands clean of the lake water.
Mio glimpsed at him, holding a fishing pole between her hands. "Curious about what?"
She had the patience necessary for fishing, especially in that lake. Anyone else would have given up ages ago, but she was working out a system and it looked important to her. She had been at it for days and Sachiyo thought it was about time she started losing hope. Though it was evident fish inhabited the water, they were of the tricky sort. Madara couldn't catch any by hand and he was notoriously good at catching fish. So was Mio.
"About where he went?" he continued, wondering if she would understand the question since they hadn't brought the subject up since she told him the nightmares had lessened.
"Somewhere dark, I think."
"Why somewhere dark?"
Mio shrugged her shoulders. "It's just something that I know."
"That's not an answer." Izuna frowned.
"I don't have an answer—oh?" The fishing line gave a sudden jerk and she started reeling in her prize. "I think got a bite."
.
The evenings had grown colder with autumn fast approaching and Izuna spent more time committed to a mission than he did at home. He had experienced many adventures since the last time he returned to the countryside home where he was raised and he wanted to get there quickly to tell Mio all about them, though Madara didn't see the point in any of that. Madara had been lucky enough to run an errand for Jouji three months ago that took him straight to Mio, who was recovering from an injury she sustained on a scouting mission. It was more of a burden to him than a stroke of luck for obvious issues. When he had returned to the village where they were staying, Izuna had asked about her and Madara merely shrugged saying that she was alive.
Izuna broke through the clearing first and met with the swaying tall grass behind the house. He heard a hammering sound above when a door slid open to reveal Kana carrying a load of dirty laundry. The cook seemed upset and as if on cue, Taiga emerged from within with the largest grin he had ever seen on the man. Taiga spotted him just as Madara emerged from the woods and pushed past him.
"I didn't think you'd both come home so soon? How long's it been?" asked Taiga waving them over.
Madara looked up to the rooftop. "Not long enough," he grumbled, entering the house before Taiga could address him again.
Izuna glanced up to see Mio hammering away at the rooftop with a stack of wooden planks at her side. Now that he had a second look, he realized there was a gaping hole above as well as below. He approached Taiga as soon as Kana was out of sight. "What's with the holes?"
"Oh that? Mio had trouble landing during our sparring session," he answered teasingly, loud enough for Mio to hear.
The hammering got louder, a sign that she didn't want to listen to him. Although she seemed to be on better terms with Taiga than she ever was with Hiryuu, she definitely didn't like him as a human being.
Taiga clapped his hands together and sauntered down the stairs, turning to face Izuna. "Well, I'll be off, I've got a wife to please and a daughter to raise," he announced, lifting his eyes to Mio. "I'll be seeing you for the meeting next week, Mio."
Izuna bade him farewell and entered the house, peering through the hole in the roof to see Mio's frown. Even in that angle he noticed her hair had been badly cut, falling messily all around her head with a few strands stuck out in odd places. The corner of her forehead was bleeding form a terrible scrape and her hands were messily bandaged. "Wanna talk about it?"
Mio glanced down at him and shook her head.
He left his luggage on the floor, rummaging through it for the emergency medical kit he carried and exited the house to join her on the rooftop. She intended on getting the damage repaired temporarily, but she was bleeding through her bandages and was doing an awful job from the start.
"Stop that for a second," said Izuna, placing a hand on her hand.
She stopped her hammering upon contact, saying nothing and relaxed into a seat as though she were unwilling to fight him on it. She was incredibly tense when he decided to clean the blood off her face and bandage the scrape on her temple.
"I never thought you'd take Taiga up on one of his offers," he said suddenly, taking the hammer from her hand. "I mean, you've seen what he's put me and Madara through these past four and a half years. Sometimes I feel he's really trying to kill us." He shuddered with the reminder, glad he no longer needed to endure the harsh training sessions. He expected Mio to say something by then, but she hadn't and that worried him. He started removing the bandages in her right hand slowly. "Did something happen, Mio?"
"No." Her quiet voice was softer than ever. She sounded like she rather not be speaking at all, as if she had made the effort for him. "Nothing."
"I can tell he said something to you. You always make that face," he stated, poking her cheek.
"What do you expect? It's my face," she countered lowly.
Izuna grinned. "What'd he say?"
"He was just bothering me. I had another nightmare."
"About that night?" he asked knowledgeably.
Mio nodded curtly. "I don't know if it's real or not…I can't tell the difference between all the other things that happened before and this doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit with the other pieces." She touched a palm to her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. "I thought I remembered everything, but I can't stop seeing that mark everywhere."
"What was the dream?" he asked, touching his fingers to the top of her hand. She grabbed his hand instantly, squeezing hard.
"They went outside. The fight happened outside. It wasn't in the house. He brought him back dead—he was dead when I heard that thud on the ground," she whispered. She didn't cry, but she did tremble. "And the mark was everywhere and it was dark. I couldn't see anything—nothing, like there had been an eclipse—"
.
Izuna jolted out of his reverie, reawakened to the death surrounding him and the deep shadows that obscured their enemy. He peered out of the hole where he had burrowed and saw through the tangled, drooping trees the moonlight rolling into a dirt path. There were so many shadows in the wooded area and the man they just killed had stepped into the heavy shade behind moss-covered boulders when the weapon struck him. Reality hit him hard. He himself had called it from the start; they were nonexistent under the cover of night. He cursed himself for not having realized it beforehand.
Hiding where they were wouldn't provide them much protection. In fact, he was certain the Mikazuki could have already killed them if they wanted. Why hadn't was a mystery, one he didn't want to find out at all.
He devised a quick escape, calling on the spy that accompanied him from Eijiro's camp. She was several years older than he was, but she looked just as young as he was with her dark hair pulled from her pale, angular face. He hadn't been against her joining his group, but some of the other men opposed because that would make her the only woman and some were so used to working in male-only groups they had no care for females joining their ranks. She reminded Izuna of Mio and he could use another spy. This one had experience scouting in wooded areas and because of it he decided to cut through the area, not expecting it to be an ambush until he heard the first weapon hit one of his shinobi square in the chest.
"Rainclouds are forming," one shinobi observed, eyes to the dark clouds rolling into the sky.
"How long do you think we have?" asked the female spy.
"An hour or less."
"We need to get out before that happens," Izuna announced lowly. "They already have the upper hand in this terrain; even the lightest of showers could make things worse for us."
"Well do you at least have a plan?" asked the spy.
Izuna glanced down the road flanked by drooping, crooked trees and the light filtering through the closest exist there was in a two-mile radius. "Yeah, but it won't be easy."
The nearest shinobi huddled closer for a short briefing and the few who had listened spread it out to the others. If they had any hope of getting out of there, they were about to undertake a serious risk. Regardless, Izuna predicted it could only get worse if they decided to sit around doing nothing and he wasn't going to let it.
As soon as Izuna gave the signal, his group split and sprang in odd directions. Izuna barreled away from the lighted exit, but he had sent several of his men in that direction sure that it would be the easiest way out. His guard was up and his Sharingan was activated, shuriken clutched between his fingers to counter any surprise attack. He listened as the winds rushed through the vine-covered trees, searching for a trace any discrepancies that may draw him to the various shinobi in the shadows.
A skirmish broke out behind him. Soon the clash of metal, of shadows searching the wide perimeter, of blood hitting the ground and the distinct echo of terrible pain, but he pushed forward following the slim outline of his spy. She expertly avoided the looming branches, dominating the terrain as he would expect of one of the Mikazuki and he had trouble keeping up when his feet were constantly losing traction over the watery ground. The others were the same, but few quickly got the hang of it, following the spy's maneuvering, preferring it to running around blindly.
Izuna ducked under a looming branch and swung from it onto the next tree, landing to the highest branch when he heard a sharp scream fill the area. He recognized the sound of her voice but her name died in his throat as he watched the spy's body fall from a taller tree several feet away.
She hit the ground hard with a strangled cry, a bloodied dying heap under a stream of moonlight. The three shinobi ahead of him rushed the man responsible for the attack, though he had not given them permission to fight he stood rooted to the tree at the sight of the Mikazuki shinobi, a tanned giant marked by the crescent with the jagged line on his upper back.
"What did he look like?" Mio's voice echoed in his head. "Like a giant, tanned with the crescent on his upper back. His eyes were green, very green…I think."
He watched stunned as the Mikazuki shinobi took on the three Uchiha with complete ease, knocking each of them down when another man's voice rang from the darkness. "Was that the girl?"
Izuna saw the tanned man grasp the female spy by the back of the neck raising her face into the moonlight. He dropped her immediately, body thudding on the ground, growling in discontent. "No," he announced. "She's not the one." He jumped back into the tree and caught Izuna staring, green eyes smoldering. "We move. These aren't the targets."
As soon as that was said, the Mikazuki disappeared deep into the watery terrain and Izuna jumped down to aid the three shinobi on the ground. He shot one glance at the girl. She resembled Mio. He thought that from the moment he first saw her because she was small and had wavy brown hair that looked darker at night and she was a spy. She was the only female spy in the group and the Mikazuki were hunting one. The man had his mark over his shoulder blade, upper back as Mio often described, with green eyes, very green.
"Izuna-sama, we need to meet Sachiyo-sama."
Izuna shook his head. "Tell my grandmother I changed my mind, I'm going to the compound to meet with my father," he said quickly, starting in the opposite direction. He turned for a moment, remembering the rest of the group would be waiting at the rendezvous point at the edge of the jungle-like forest. "Take everyone to my grandmother."
"But Izuna-sama—"
"I'll be fine!" he shouted back, sprinting across the path with his hand fisted over his wounded side. He could make it back to the compound quickly if he traveled nonstop, if the open wound let him.
At that point, he couldn't stop himself. Madara and Mio were traveling alone together and while he didn't doubt they were capable of fighting off any enemy, Izuna didn't want them to encounter the Mikazuki who seemed to be looking for a female spy that wasn't the girl that just died but could be Mio. The feeling blooming in his chest was a sinister one because that man could have been the reason Kikyo and Genji died six years ago.
xl: Redesign won the poll again this week, so you'll get another steady update next week. :) This could be awesome since were just building up on the chaos of Eijiro's death and all Mikazuki clan related.
Please continue voting for Redesign before I even the playing field by updating the other stories and telling readers there about the poll!
I think we'll have two POVs next chapter. Sachiyo with the Ito clan and Izuna as he rushes to the compound. That will be the second to last chapter before you get to see what becomes of the Uchiha clan.
Many thanks to the reviewers: Aries01xD, Warrior of Sangre, and WiltingInsanity for the support last chapter.
Thank you for reading!
And, I'm sorry for posting this so late. I was supposed to edit it yesterday night, but instead of doing that I was watching Rihanna videos on YouTube. I was initially ashamed, but it didn't last long. Promise it won't happen again!