Masked Koi: Chapter 8. "Lovely Lies"

The forests of Konoha were widespread. They spilled out from the inside of the village to the outskirts to the hills and valleys surrounding the village to even where the Daimyo lived. They harbored many flora and fauna, its shade allowing the deer to hide from the sun. Their roots grew mostly straight down, anchoring the tree to the ground. It held onto the soil tightly, gripping the dirt like a vice.

Their branches and leaves spread outwards and higher, trying to catch all of the rain to gasp the CO2 the humans exhaled. Their bright green leaves were brilliant in the sunlight and when the sun disappeared, were as black as night. Their branches grew from thick and sturdy to skinny and forking and dividing as the amount of leaves that grew multiplied.

Except for a select few, the trees were the same type. It was difficult to tell the trees apart unless one was to take extremely meticulous notes. The notes had to be accurate down to the last millimeter and amount of knots and branches and so forth.

The trees were similar to that of an army. They stood stoic, the only proof of their being alive is their continuous growth upwards until they reached the skies. They were like a network of veins. The one thing that Hashirama had puzzled over (and was unable to decipher) was the possibility of being able to use the trees and their long roots and wide branches as a network of communication, like synapses in the brain. Could they be used in lieu of clones? Hashirama had died before that thought could be asked or answered.

The forests of Konoha were the pride of the Land of Fire, especially Konoha. After all, that's what their village was named for. Their green color, the symbol of healthy and strong trees, surrounded the village to create beautiful scenery. Strength surrounded Konoha, giving its shinobi a positive outlook towards their future growth as productive shinobi of the village hidden among the leaves.

Konoha lay more or less in the middle of the denser part of its forests. Konoha was surrounded by its trees, trees of the same type, height, age, and health.

In a certain sense, Hashirama's idea had been realized. Instead of using the trees as synapses, often sending messages out, they could be used to send messages in. Only, there would be no clones and it would be a single message. That message was going to be sent very, very soon.

This is confidential! You are to tell no one!

Rin wondered, in hindsight, if wearing a childish hairstyle and high pink heels had killed any sort of authority she had had in the hospital. She was head of the hospital, for Kami's sake! She'd trust the nurses under her command with her life, but now even that statement turned into a hollow question.

Now, the whole village was buzzing with a mix of fear and excitement. Rin wouldn't call it that: she'd call it simple ignorance. The people who still remembered were keeping very very quiet about it, as if even breathing a name would summon their death with a bright light and their blood splattered all over the Chuunin Exams' ground.

Rin took another swig of sake and began to think about retiring. Maybe I could live a quiet life? Rin ordered a shot of sake and downed it, along with another two shots of sake, chilled down to past freezing. Don't be stupid. You're a ninja, you killed, you hurt, you saw. Guilty. Rin clutched a bottle of expensive sake she'd 'bought' from the bar tender and ran out, an angry bar tender's voice crying out. Rin didn't stop.

Rin didn't want to see anyone. Rin didn't want to talk to anyone. Rin didn't want to see any charts. Rin didn't want to measure out medicines in a syringe by each painfully precise millimeter. Rin didn't want to do anything but sit in a quiet place and drink and drink and drink until she could drink no more.

Of course, as anything and everything can and did, her hopes were dashed. She'd slammed straight into not one, but two people. Hell, it might've been four. Rin didn't want to care. But she did, and had to.

"Rin, what are you doing?" Kakashi asked, his urgent demand to the woman flicked away for a moment by the sheer shock of seeing his normally docile former teammate quite drunk early in the morning.

"Nothing," the woman slurred. With that, she promptly vomited in the ground and passed out, nearly falling face first into her mess. Kakashi hauled her up and carried her to the hospital, not seeing a safer place for the woman.

In the waiting room, thinking it wouldn't take long for Rin to wake up and be administered some sort of painkiller or focus-inducing drug, Kakashi sat leaned forward with his bent arms resting on his knees, a look of pure boredom. Nurses made their way about, talking, comparing charts, and calling patients or family up to be led through the labyrinth that Kakashi had never quite figured out as if they were being issued a death sentence. Their faces paled and they held papers or hats or other items in both hands with wide eyes about to jump out of their sockets with fear.

The nurses began to notice him and giggle amongst themselves as their eyes groped his fit body, something necessary for an Elite Jounin like he. Kakashi ignored them completely until one of them, with unruly silver hair walked up to him with a small smile, as if she were in on a secret he didn't know about. Kakashi didn't really want to know the secret. He was more shocked with the resemblance the woman had to his late sister.

"Hatake…Kakashi, right? Rin-san is this way," the woman said, with eyes that laughed. Kakashi followed numbly, looking for a secluded place to examine her features closer to confirm he wasn't hallucinating. He knew his sister was dead, of course.

Ever since she'd died, and Obito had returned to Konoha a week or so after he'd been crushed, there had been a nagging feeling in the twenty-year-old's head. He'd seen his friend get crushed and so had Rin. Despite Koi's past warnings, Kakashi had underestimated the Uchiha boy. Even now, Kakashi wondered just how Obito had gotten to Konoha with a crushed right side.

After a dizzying amount of hallways the Copy Ninja was led through, the woman stopped. "Wait here a moment." The woman disappeared behind a corner, just two or so feet away from the man. Kakashi waited patiently with his hands in his pockets and felt a soothing aura wash over him.

The woman reappeared, along with two people wearing black shirts and pants with green eyes. Kakashi knew he recognized those eyes from somewhere, but he shrugged to himself and was led down a few more hallways before they stopped in front of an unmarked door. The nurse opened the door and the three people walked in. Kakashi followed the woman with green eyes and hair tied back in a ponytail, who followed the man also clad in black. He looked older than her, but no older than a few years than Sakumo.

Kakashi looked at the woman lying in the sheets with her eyes closed. It wasn't Rin. The nurse closed the door and it clicked. She swiftly walked in her click-click heels and after rifling through a drawer in the corner of the room, found a needle. She pulled out a thin vial and pulled back the plunger and filled the needle with the clear liquid. She winked at Kakashi before injecting the bag with the clear liquid. Kakashi watched as the woman stirred for a moment, her eyes opening to reveal black pits of endless pain and regret. She looked at the nurse and the two black-clad figures with a look that wanted to become fear and the face of a fighter to kill, to see their blood spill all over Konoha, but she quickly fell back asleep until her breath seemed to not even dent the covers that swamped her.

The nurse stepped closer to Kakashi and gave him an apologetic look. "Sorry, Kakashi-san. You won't be seeing Rin today, or anyone else again."

Then, something pricked the young man's neck and arms caught his body before unconsciousness overtook him. It was then that the genjutsu Seiseki had weaved around his younger brother was taken off and he undid the henge and crossed his arms, looking at Shinsai and Jishin with a smug look.

"Let's start."

The picture of Uzumaki Kushina that was placed in a metal frame a few days after Minato had been inaugurated had been put face down for some time now. She was no longer able to watch her husband fill out paperwork or look back at him longingly. Her photo was indefinitely in the darkness, unable to watch the sun rise and the sun set.

The only thing that fell upon the frame and photo now was the sound of her marriage breaking. Even in death, she was unable to rest in peace; her husband, her girly and weak and lonely husband, had decided that the mere fact he'd been married to her (her! The strongest woman to have ever lived, ttebane!) wasn't enough to fill the hole in his heart. He'd had to look for something, someone, to fill the hole with.

Namikaze Minato is the Hokage of Konoha. He was still attractive and there were still many secretly hoping he'd start looking for a new wife.

For now, she was simply a mistress.

"Minato, you'd be able to be more productive if you got more sleep," she said.

Minato sighed. He looked up at her. "Yori, I know. But…I can't go home. They'll just keep asking about my ANBU and other messy matters. I wanted to be Hokage, but I didn't want this burden."

Kushina knew that if she were alive, Minato would deal with any problem the village had, whether it be Koi and her spy network or the Uchiha's coup, with determination and without complaint because he had someone at home to cheer him on: Kushina. Should she be alive, she would've shed tears.

Yori got closer to Minato. Very close. Minato felt his cheeks heat up and he clenched his fists. Her orange eyes were only an inch away from his and she smiled. "We should—"

The door of the office of the man who dared betray Uzumaki Kushina opened. Minato looked up, slightly irritated. He'd expected a quiet and intimate moment with his mistress. The Nara man disregarded the woman entirely, not wanting to get anywhere near being involved with the troublesome matters that involved Uzumaki Kushina, a splendid yet much, much too troublesome woman, and her husband. Shikaku sighed. Though by the looks of this, I doubt she'll be married for much longer.

"Hokage-sama, I've received some urgent news."

"What?" Minato's icy look tried to pierce the thick I-can't-be-bothered skin of the Nara man.

Shikaku looked at Minato, hard. There was no laziness in his eyes then, no doubt in his mind that he could do what he needed to do within some vague time frame, even if it were just a moment. Minato felt a pang of unease, seeing his comrade's look only once before: in war.

"Our border patrol has been entirely slaughtered and our protective barriers taken down. The hospital claims to be missing a patient and many Hyuuga and Uchiha claim to be seeing a huge wave of chakra heading directly for Konoha," Shikaku said, almost angrily. Still, the man couldn't be bothered quite enough to be something as tiresome as angry. That's what Minato thought.

"W-what?" Minato asked. His heart cried out for Kushina, his pillar, the glue that held his mind together, but his brain did not understand. Instead, he gripped Yori's hand. She offered no glue, no strength. Only the orange flaming eyes and a useless busty figure. "Which patient is missing? Where are the other ANBU who are guarding the gates? Why have our barriers been taken down? How long has this been going on?!"

"Your ANBU. It seems Konoha is under attack and according to hospital monitors she's been gone for two hours now. The border patrol's bodies are still slightly warm; perhaps they've only been dead for an hour. As for your other questions—"

A huge tremor shook Konoha. Shikaku's angry eyes looked out through the window of the man who dared betray Kushina and saw black-clad figures wielding fire and quickly fanning out into Konoha. Minato stood to grab a Hiraishin kunai from the other side of his office when a huge boulder lit on fire crashed down on top of the Hokage tower, destroying it.

Night had fallen. It covered every leaf and every shadow that did not exist because the moon was gone. It covered everyone's voices, making them sink to the ground never to rise and reach another's ears. It held back the will to rise until the sun rose, until the sun burned off the sticky night that covered everything.

But nighttime was cool. It soothed the trees that had all burned, all the synapses that were invaded to carry one message: we are alive. We are alive. It did its best to soothe the burns of people who lay dying in Konoha's hospital, their skin charred, or their bodies broken with small earthen pellets or their bodies hurting from having been injected through the mouth with so much water for what felt like an eternity. Typical torture practices for war, although the attack had only lasted for a few hours instead of days or weeks like a war did.

Nighttime, however, did not soothe the nerves of three Konoha males. Dawn was coming soon and it would only serve to burn up their will not to cry out of fear or anger and would only serve to whittle away at their patience.

Dawn was coming. Her rosy fingers, soft and delicate, would rip away the sticky night that swamped everything in darkness, crushing darkness. Her light fingers would become gold and then would be outshined by another brilliant light, something that instilled more terror in mortal shinobi than the destruction of their village. But they didn't know that yet.

Shisui's legs felt like giving out. After becoming Minato's ANBU, he hadn't had to run so much in a long time. The last time he'd run so much for so long so quickly was during the war. Everything seemed to remind him of war. He hated it. His lungs were on fire, as if the fires that had engulfed the synapses of his clan's ancient (only a 100 years though) enemy's leader still lived in, still scorched on, in his lungs. Air seemed to only fan the flames. But that's what air did. There was no way around it.

Next to him was his former teammate. The man was quiet and reserved, but that was because that's what war did. That was because she did. That was because caring for Hiashi's first born, a girl trying to make a name for herself in her vicious clan besides useless (she was getting there, slowly), was a lot of work out of his mind. The man had hardly a word to say to his Uchiha teammate, harboring a secret jealousy he knew was stupid because he could see the love in Koi's eyes for the Uchiha boy, and because she was dead.

Veins appeared around Hyuuga Ko's eyes, looking out at the figures that seemed to run forever like mice on a wheel with infinite energy. He took careful note of chakra levels and relied on Shisui for chakra signatures. Ko could never quite understand why the Hyugua elders despised the Uchiha. Sure, they were stuck-up but so were the Hyuuga. Perhaps even more so. With a Hyuuga and Uchiha working together, they could become the best tracking unit, or reconnaissance. Clan ties and politics made team placements difficult for Minato and his advisors to create. Hiashi and Fugaku would probably kill each other before they would agree to have another team like Team Kushina. They'd only allowed it because Kushina would be their sensei. She'd probably scared the living daylights out of both of them and threatened to do something horrible. Like dyeing their clothes bright red or orange and their hair red or blue or yellow. The woman was a capable Jounin after all, rivaling Minato and Fugaku in shinobi arts with her ninjutsu and fuuinjutsu.

"That's…" Ko trailed off, not believing his white eyes.

Shisui clenched his jaw, guilt and anger somehow bubbling up after eight years. He didn't comment on the chakra levels of one of them. Ko was smart; he'd figure out the truth soon. Then Ko would hate. Hate and despise and so many other things Shisui didn't want for her.

"Shisui, could you tell me who the female being carried is? She's a Konoha shinobi, right? It might be a bit of a stretch asking something like that, but—"

"It's Koi," Shisui said simply. "The one who Hinata and Neji talk about incessantly is Koi. The one who serves the Hokage personally as his ANBU guard is Koi. The one who caused a huge wave of chakra to sweep through Konoha a few days ago was Koi. I-I'm sorry, Ko."

"Sorry?" Ko asked. "It's not you who should apologize. It's her. If you know this much, I'd assume that you know the full story. How is she alive? Why did she make everyone believe she was dead? Why did she let Kushina-sensei die?!"

Anger trailed all across Ko's face, anger that only came with love. Shisui's heart felt heavy. He'd had an inkling he wasn't able to confirm in their Genin days as Team Kushina but he knew now, 100% sure that Ko loved her perhaps even more than he loved her.

"You loved her, didn't you?" Shisui asked, his sharingan fading to black.

"Loved? I still do, helplessly," Ko said. "I'll forgive her when she answers my questions. For now, she might as well be a stranger that betrayed a whole village. But, please, answer my questions."

"I don't know how she survived being crushed. She won't tell me. I can only speculate as to why she had everyone believe she was dead: something truly horrible could've happened to her, and that her 'death' would seal away what would happen and that donning a new name, a new identity, a new life, would push the past away. As for Kushina-sensei…I don't know. She only came back to Konoha when she heard about Naruto. She cares for that kid like he's her own. I guess she feels guilty," Shisui said.

The air was beginning to feel less sticky. Slightly.

Ahead, Shinsai looked at Jishin almost murderously. She scowled back. "It's not my fault. You were the one who didn't want to pass through the gates. You underestimate me, don't you? I'm not weak!"

"Then why couldn't you gather information on the Uchiha without me? If you were truly a strong Tsugi worthy of leading the clan after I die, then you would've been able to do so! I might as well pass on the clan to Seiseki," Shinsai spat.

Earlier

"We'll meet you at the rendezvous point. Jishin and I have some work to do. Make sure Koi-chan doesn't wake up," Shinsai said to the eldest Hatake sibling on the hospital rooftop. Seiseki nodded and disappeared.

Jishin darted off towards the Uchiha compound while Shinsai darted off towards the Hokage's office, noting the man's apparent absence and strong smell of coffee, yet lack of such substance in sight, in the room. He pushed the window in and slipped inside on light feet. After rifling through many drawers, he found what he was looking for: confidential paperwork on the Uchiha and a handwritten note about the Uchiha and their coup and plans to extinguish such a thing.

Just as Shinsai was slipping the paperwork in his pockets, he saw a burst of flames come from the other side of the village, where the Uchiha compound was. Shinsai groaned and dashed back out. He raced to the compound and grabbed Jishin, who had jumped away from the black smoke backwards and was glaring down at the Uchiha who had caught her red-handed, a teen with baleful eyes.

"What are you doing?!" Shinsai demanded.

"Getting information!" Jishin said. "That kid, he looks like nothing but he's a monster."

Shinsai didn't look back. Instead, he landed on a rooftop and slapped her so hard she lost her footing and fell onto the ground.

"Let's go," Shinsai said angrily. The woman followed silently towards where Seiseki was waiting: the bamboo forest.

"Why did you want to go through here again?" Seiseki asked Shinsai, readjusting the weights of his siblings on his shoulders.

"To avoid detection and being spotted. Jishin and I had to kill a few teams of ANBU to get in here. Someone in Konoha knew we were coming, or knew you were coming. Cover your tracks better next time," he warned. Seiseki rolled his eyes.

As they went through the forest, Seiseki weaved a genjutsu around them to distort their presence and faces. It was good he did; there were other people in the forest. Two Jounin were talking while watching three children spar. Seiseki recognized one of them bitterly as the one who stole Koi's heart and attention and the other Jounin as the one who followed her as an Academy student in the shadows like a stalker. The Hatake remembered whacking the boy on the head multiple times for being a 'creepy stalker' and 'don't follow my sister unless you want to die'.

The Uchiha Jounin seemed to pick up on their presences. Seiseki was beginning to feel cornered when he felt eyes watching him. He turned around and saw the glimpse of a small animal scurrying away to another place to watch him.

"Run," Seiseki muttered and the two Tsugi followed him. Two of the children were being escorted by a clone away from them and towards Konoha while the red-haired boy panted a little. The two Jounin, suspiciously, began to follow them. The boy noticed and before Seiseki knew it, they were all running; Tsugi being followed by Konoha.

Present Time

"Please don't. I can't manage a clan. Nor do I want to," Seiseki said, grinning at his faux-politeness. "These two are awfully heavy. We should stop."

Shinsai looked at Seiseki as if he had three heads. "We're not stopping. We're almost there."

"There? Where exactly are we going?" Seiseki asked, his shoulders aching.

"We're meeting up with the rest of the clan for a special meeting and ceremony. It's the kind of ceremony everyone dies to be a part of," Shinsai said, a gleam in his eye. Seiseki gave him a blank look and continued on, putting more and more chakra in his shoulders so it would lessen the pain and subsequent swelling and bruising to come. Neither of his two siblings were fat, not long a long shot, but after a while with two Jounin on each shoulder while running at full speed, one would expect exhaustion and physical pain.

Dawn's rosy fingers had finally clawed away the sticky blanket, filling up the stitches with a light shade of pink and orange. Soon, it would be red and then orange again and then yellow and then blue for hours and hours until the sun would set again. It was a funny thing; people claimed to not see a rainbow often but in reality, a rainbow happened everyday because the sun rose, set, rose, set, and rose. To be completely honest, people are liars, ignorant liars. Sometimes they don't mean to lie because they think what they think is the truth. Sometimes they don't mean to lie because they've been told lies that people think is the truth and they simply shrug and believe it to be the truth forever and ever.

They don't mean to lie.

But they lie nonetheless. Liars are liars and in a shinobi world, if you lie you would kill so, so many people. You could scare them, you could awe them, you could manipulate them like putty in your hands. Lies are simply weapons. They're like kunai, sharp and bitter and shiny and monochrome and oh so useful. They're the shiniest metal to make for the perfect kunai, the strongest metal, the metal no one knows is the greatest because it can blend in, it can look like perfectly weak metal like most kunai—or do they? If lies can reproduce because of ignorance, because you trust someone, doesn't that mean that what you think is true could be a lie? From children, you're told that to be a shinobi means you have to have teamwork, strength, taijutsu, ninjutsu, and genjutsu skills, and knowledge of the world. They say there are five lands and so much more, like exterminations, or cleansing as they tell the small children as to not scare them away from being soldiers of their nation they would put their life down protecting.

It's okay, though. Loyalty is important. If you want to live in a bubble, that's okay. You are not alone. You live in a bubble, within a larger bubble called a village, within a larger one called a land, or nation, within the one everyone shares: world.

But it could be true. Everything could be true. Lies have to be based upon some truth, after all. Why not just base it off the entire truth? Now, that's the world. Our world. The shinobi world. In the shinobi world, nothing is a 100% true, but the same goes with lies. Nothing is perfectly true and nothing is completely false. When you accept a sweet lie, you taste the bitterness of the truth, but it doesn't happen right after. It could take an entire lifetime. Some would call that regret, or a gut feeling of something they can't quite but their finger on, something at the tip of their tongue. At the tip of their tongue is the bitterness that they did not initially taste. It is bitter and cold and dark and slimy and it is better if you simply left it alone. Everyone likes sweets, even just a little. Everything you eat has at least one molecule of sugar, but not everything is bitter.

You see, it is all right to accept lies; it is truly okay to accept lies. After all, wouldn't you want to die with your mouth so stuffed with bitter regret; you'd want it stuffed with sweet nothing. That way you won't choke and you'll die happy with a pasty smile on your face and you'll die without any bitter aftertaste of the life you've consumed day by day until you look down at your plate and see nothing but crumbs and you'll die happy and fat with sweet sugary taste and you will die with ease and your muscles can relax for the last time and your casket won't feel so heavy when people are laying you down to rest.