Disclaimer: As ever, I do not own Naruto, nor do I own anyone. Hinote is her own fictional person, thank you very much.
Small warning: creepy Orochimaru. Skip past the asterisks to avoid him... though I personally find the scene hilarious.
Chapter 12
I was having a very weird dream. In it, I saw a short-haired young man. He wore an open white shirt and a huge purple obi, with a sword hanging off it. He looked quite familiar… Itachi-nii, I realized. He was much older, maybe fifteen or sixteen, but the similarities were undeniable.
From the floor came a burst of snakes, which receded to reveal Orochimaru-sama. He shuffled to Itachi-nii and draped himself lazily across his shoulders. A long tongue came out of his mouth, and licked Itachi-nii's earlobe.
"Hey… want to come and learn how to summon my snake?"
Now, this would have normally been a nice dream to have–they were both handsome men, and the pun was deliciously terrible–but this was my four year old twin and a creepy shinobi Tom Riddle. Too close to home.
I woke up to a flurry of noise around the house. Drawers were hastily opened and closed, and thirty seconds later a disheveled Auntie was hurrying to the door, accompanied by an owl masked Anbu-san and Uncle, whose hair somehow looked more orderly when he didn't have time to brush it.
"Auntie…?" I asked, blearily.
"Oh shit! She woke up. You go ahead, I'll catch up." Uncle was in my room in a moment, and I could see in his face something terrible had happened. "Go back to sleep, Hinote-chan", he said. "We didn't mean to wake you up." I couldn't help but notice he hadn't told me what was happening. Still, he had one eye on the door, and I couldn't bear to keep him when he was like that.
"Okay, uncle. You can go; I'll be fine."
A few seconds later, the house was empty again. I considered going back to sleep, but this whole situation had put me into high alert, so I decided to consider my dream instead. Where did that come from? I realized, mortified, that it had probably come from some art piece of mine. Thankfully not one of the more risqué ones… I didn't need Orochimaru's "snake" in my mind.
As I was trying to forget that charming perspective, it occurred to me I might have drawn fanart of myself. Depending on how big a part the original Hinote played in the series, I might have drawn more than one piece… maybe explicit ones. Threesome with Orochimaru oh nope nope nope not going there.
That was a very disturbing idea.
I'm not dwelling on that. Nosiree. Let's go study instead. Maybe take a cold shower or ten.
Konoha never really slept. It was the nature of their work that shinobi needed to come and go at all hours, even in the dead of night. ANBU Headquarters, in particular, was more active under cover of night.
Still, tonight was an exceptional occurrence. Some of the highest security protocols in Konoha, accessible only to the Hokage himself, had been activated, turning ANBU Headquarters into a silent flurry of activity, as all the elite shinobi sought to hurry and evade notice at the same time.
It was paradoxical, that the moment which demanded quickest action from Konoha's elite also meant there need to be utter secrecy. This sort of alarm was only raised for S-class secrets, and thus it all had to be done covertly, beyond the notice of anyone outside the Hokage's utmost confidence. Most of the responding ANBU weren't even aware of what they were acting for.
They were all jōnin, and HQ, with its many discreet entrances and high powered security seals, had been designed precisely to allow for such emergencies, but it still made for an almost comical scene. Throughout Konoha, detectors were being checked, enhanced, traps activated, contacts reached, seals replaced.
At the center of it all, in a room deep within the bowels of the Leaf, Takumina Takumi, the dog masked ANBU Commander, stood by Sarutobi Hiruzen and Shimura Danzō, who talked in hushed tones.
"This is an opportunity. Let us extract it and seal it within one of my Root shinobi. The girl is a lost cause, Hiruzen, and we need this power. Iwa and Kiri are readying their kunai as we speak. Do you think Ōnoki will stand by quietly for long? Don't let your emotions cloud your mind."
"I have made my decision, Danzō, and it is final. Konoha does not sacrifice its shinobi in cold blood. How would we be better than the Bloody Mist if we killed one of our own for a weapon? This matter is settled."
"Hiruzen. How many more will die if the war picks up again? This is an opportunity that fate saw fit to hand us, to strengthen our village and take back what the Shodaime squandered. Additionally, while the loss of a shinobi is… regrettable, even should she survive, she will not be combat capable. It would be a mercy."
"Danzō, my decision stands. I know you have only the best interests of the village at heart, and I appreciate all you do to help keep it strong and stable. But we must not just focus on the survival of the village; we must ensure that it stays Konoha. There is no meaning in sacrificing the soul to protect the body."
Takumina stirred, claiming the attention of both men.
"Hokage-sama, I must call to your attention that Kirigakure will certainly claim we have taken their bijū. We must ready countermeasures, especially since both Iwa and Sunagakure will object to what they will see as a power grab."
"Hm… It did take a lot to bring Ōnoki to the discussions table. We can't have him decide to back out of our agreement so soon after we managed to affirm it." The Hokage sighed. "Okay, gentlemen. Let us talk troop distributions."
The Konoha ANBU were in for a lot of work.
It wasn't until the following day that I was told what had happened. Auntie and Uncle had returned exhausted in the evening, so I'd had to hold in my questions. Worried and curious as I was, they weren't so much conscious as sleepwalking.
Calm down, I told myself. If there was any danger, they wouldn't have just returned home to sleep. Didn't keep me from accidentally burning a few sheets of my annotations, though. Damn this chakra of mine.
Uncle woke up looking like he should probably rest for another week or two, but Auntie was already at full revs. Classic Auntie. I wasn't going to get anything out of Zombie!Uncle, I knew, so I immediately turned to our resident Perpetual Motion Shinobi. She must have felt my gaze, because she put on a difficult face.
"…Me and Minato went to see Kakashi and Rin. They've just returned from a mission, and they got hurt."
How hurt?
Auntie was keeping something from me. Shinobi got hurt all the time, especially during a war like the one we had just finished, and there was little point in concealing it. Yes, I was just four, yet I had already begun training to kill people. So why the hesitation?
Please be alive.
And why would they be that exhausted after a simple, if prolonged, hospital visit? Neither of them were iryō-nin, so they hadn't been involved in the treatment, so it had to be psychological. Something that could make two war veterans turn out like that?
Please be alive.
I sobbed.
"Which of them?"
"Hinohino?" Auntie had a panicked streak to her voice.
"Which of them is dead?" I was crying now.
In my mind, I saw Rin-chan, always so kind, always attentive, voluntarily spending her time and risking her own well-being to help find a solution to my chakra defect.
Then there was Kakashi-san. Grumpy, always late, and a tad arrogant, but who always babysat me, helped with my training, and introduced me to Guy-san. What is Guy-san going to feel like?
"What? No, Hinohino, they are alive dattebane! We can go see them as soon as the doctors say they can receive visitors, alright?" Auntie had enveloped me in a hug and started caressing my hair.
They're alive. A small part of me noticed she had said nothing about whether they would be okay, but the rest of me was too relieved to listen. They're alive.
Rin came awake feeling overall terrible. She opened her eyes and harsh light flooded her eyes. She closed them again. The smell of herbs and the infusion of medical chakra, palpable even to non-sensor types, told her she was in the hospital.
It felt comforting, and familiar. Like she had before, when wounded in the war, she let herself bask in the feeling of home, safety and peace. Soon, however, she had to face reality.
What happened? She remembered being attacked. She'd been taken from the meeting point by enemy shinobi. She couldn't recall any details, and the memories were slow to unspool. The torture, or what she had thought was torture, was thankfully hazy. Though she had told no one, she still woke up in fits over her last round.
Then there was the escape.
I asked Kakashi to kill me, she realized. He had refused. Then I made him… Poor Kakashi. He didn't deserve to have killed her; he already blamed himself so much for Kannabi Bridge, when it was really her fault. She'd been the one to get captured. But if she'd succeeded, why was she alive?
She remembered the chidori, coming up bright as she fell; Kakashi's surprised face, when he noticed she was in the way. Then pain in her chest, followed by a tingling all over her body. Then more pain.
What about the bijū? It all made no sense.
She was interrupted by the sound of someone entering the room.
"Rin? I felt you wake up. Do you need anything?" It was Minato-sensei.
"What… happened?" She manage to croak out. Her throat felt raw. She hadn't noticed earlier, but it felt parched.
Minato-sensei walked to the corner of the room and retrieved a cup of water, which he handed her. It was lukewarm, but it felt good to her dry lips.
"Long story short, Kakashi managed to stop the chidori just before it pierced your sternum. I guess all the training paid off, huh?" He gave an uneasy smile, so different from his usual sunny ones. She handed him the cup back. "Still, you were in cardiac arrest when we found you." His face fell.
Then I'm lucky to be alive. A stopped heart, on the field, with no support, was generally a death sentence. What made no sense was why her heart had stopped. If lightning chakra residue could do that, it'd be one of the main assassination techniques employed by shinobi.
Rin was in no shape to consider this, however. She was already feeling tired again.
"Sleep tight," she heard, before drifting off once more.
"Do we still have no idea what that seal on her heart was?" Sarutobi Hiruzen puffed a ring of smoke.
Minato shook his head. "We don't, and I doubt we will. Hinote's chakra did a number on it; there is very little to go on."
"You have some crazy students, Minato-sama. Keeping a blob of that in her chest? It burned her myocardium like acid! The amount of chakra the seal absorbed probably saved her life." It was hard to read the ANBU iryō-nin under the bat mask, but to Minato she looked impressed.
The three sat in a small, warded room inside the Hokage Tower. Any meeting regarding the Sanbi's new host was treated as S-rank secret—need to know only.
This was Konoha's policy on jinchūriki, especially since the kidnapping attempt on Kushina: the fewer people knew, the better for everyone, especially the demon's warden. Never mind that Kushina just spilled the secret to a kid.
"The seal itself is a surprise," she continued. "I have no idea how someone could place a seal on a heart." Seals were vulnerable to the body's natural chakra flow. Any seal that could survive a flux was as strong the heart's must have been very advanced.
Minato thought on it. "That Kiri has a fūinjutsu specialist capable of such a feat is very concerning." It was flabbergasting, in fact. Kirigakure was never known for its sealing arts.
"They must have hired some nukenin. But who, since the purge of Uzushio, has the skill at such level? This bears investigating." The Sandaime's tone had a sort of finality to it; he had come to a decision. "Meet me in my office, Minato. "ANBU-san, thank you for your time. You are dismissed."
"Hai, sir!"
A/N: I know I said I had this one well in hand, but boy was it troublesome. I rewrote the whole thing twice, and I still have a nagging feeling it isn't up to par. But I have been here before, with my writing, and I know that if I let myself obsess over this any longer I will stop writing. So here you go! I hope it's to your liking.
Reviews are very welcome! I would very much like to know your thoughts on this. And yes, I have had the Orochimaru dream scene planned in one form or another since very early in Firebrand's conception. As Hinote says, it is just something delightful to have bouncing around in your head, isn't it? You're welcome!