Hello-hello
How's it going? How's 2023 treating you?
I appreciate everyone that's read to this point of the story. I can't be any more grateful for you sticking with me on this journey. One of my resolutions for this year is to be more grateful, and I'm truly grateful for everything. Believe me when I say that I've learnt so much from all of your critical or encouraging reviews and private messages through the years, and I'd like to think that I'm a better writer because of you guys.
So, thank you :)
Alright, I know what I said in the first chapter about overt/implied twincest. But c'mon, I had to take this chance.
Enjoy…
CHAPTER 13
Konoha General Hospital
Konoha
Some hours ago, Rin had crawled into Naruto's hospital bed.
They were playing one of their little games.
"I'd like to take you to the movies, but they won't let you bring in your own snacks," Rin smirked, stroking her chin and flicking a smouldering look up to her brother.
Naruto whistled, "That one was good. Better than that last one." Rin scoffed at that, shrugging. Naruto laid back on the hospital bed and looked at the ceiling, before he tilted his head down to Rin and gave her a half smile, lowering his eyes and flirting, "Are you from Iwa? Because you rock my world."
Rin spat out a surprised, nasally laugh, throwing her head into Naruto's chest. "Did you just think of that? That is so corny!"
Naruto beamed, "Do I win?"
The rules of their pick-up line game was muddled, so neither twin bothered to keep track.
The bed was a bit too small for two people, but somehow the twins were able to comfortably wedge together on it. They were facing each other, with Rin's hands on Naruto's chest and the boy, groggy from sleep and the anaesthesia gradually leaving his system, was idling his fingers in his sister's sunny yellow hair, softly rubbing his thumb on her cheek. Their legs were tangled, barefoot except for a pair of black socks the girl wore, and the twins didn't feel too keen on unlacing their legs from the other.
Rin had brought her brother a light change of clothes, comprising of a pair of boxers, a simple t-shirt, and black pants.
Naruto's other hand, the one not running smooth, airy touches at Rin's hair, helped prop his head up, leaning on his palm and giving his sister his entire attention.
His measured smile hadn't left his eyes, or face, since he had woken up.
There was a familiar look in his churning purple gaze too, and one Rin mirrored back to him with a growing smile.
"Hm?" he grunted, leaning down close to her face and grazing his lips against hers. "I hope you know CPR because you're taking my breath away."
The girl exhaled with a leer, gripping his shirt and leaning up to him, snatching another kiss and whispering in a breathy tone, "That's cheating, Naruto."
"I've got more," Naruto stated, grunting as Rin pressed deeper into him. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened to apologize, but he smirked widely and said, "It's fine. I can barely feel it anymore."
Rin couldn't help it. She chortled, "That's what she said."
It was Naruto's turn to laugh.
The carefree sound rose from Naruto's mouth and washed over the girl, making her flush with her wide grin. He didn't care if anyone heard him, and she didn't care if someone walked in on them right now.
Rin's chest swelled when Naruto tugged her close, sparing the hand in her hair and taking it down to her lower back, jerking her lower back to him so that their hips were flush against the other.
Since Orochimaru's poison had been removed from Naruto's body and he woke up from his week-long coma, he had been feeling so much less tense and sleep deprived.
As if their connection wasn't already unique enough, the removal of that bothersome poison and not being forced to constantly vibrate it inside his body, meshed the twins more than humanly possible.
"You're amazing, Rin," the boy confessed, placing his brow against hers and looking deep into the twisting purple pools of his sister's eyes. His adoring smile brought a new glow to his face, and Rin basked in it. "You know that, right?"
She pouted her lips jokingly, "I didn't know."
"You're amazing," he repeated. His breath smelt of a crackling fire and a toasty oven, and Rin loved it. She angled up and kissed him again.
Naruto groaned, anguished.
Half a second later, someone knocked on the door.
Rin winked coyly, pulling away and chuckling when Naruto rolled his eyes, calling over his shoulder, "Yeah?"
"It's me."
Naruto's brow knitted, trying to put a voice to a face. He concentrated his senses on the person's chakra, scrunching up his face a little when he saw that the person on the other side of the door possessed many chakra natures; lightning, fire, water, earth, yin, and yang.
And the controlled distribution of these chakra nature in their reserve meant that they were conscious of their chakra and had mastered their chakra to a fine, sharp point. Naruto and Rin had mastered quite a few of their latent chakra natures, but this person owned an air of age and experience, something the twins couldn't boast of yet.
Konoha might be a breeding ground for S-rank shinobi with a mastery of many chakra natures, but it wasn't commonplace for one person to have complete command of higher than two chakra natures.
"Can I come in or what?"
"Hold on," Naruto groused, searching for the remote attached to his hospital bed. When he found it, he pressed down on a button, and a third of the bed slowly elevated. The twins shifted on the bed, with Naruto's upper body propped up against the inclined section of the bed and Rin snuggled into his side, pulling a thin blanket up and covering their lower bodies. She idly ran a soft hand on Naruto's stomach, setting her head on his shoulder and casting her purple eyes to the door.
"Come in," she sang.
The door opened and Naruto's face hardened, the corners of his lips invisibly turning down in a frown.
"Well, if it isn't the Legendary Sucker herself."
Tsunade, wearing a white doctor's coat that was open at the front to show her usual clothes, closed the door after herself. She crossed her arms and raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "And if it isn't the Red Chicken himself."
Naruto's eyes widened and he hissed, speaking under his breath and ignoring his twin's giggling, "I told you that in confidence, old woman."
The woman snorted, strolling to his bedside and flopping down on the chair next to his bed, "It's been twelve years, brat. And you're a goddam Jounin now. You can't tell me you're still afraid of-"
A short burst of red mist pulsed from Naruto, flickering on his bed for a split second, with the outlines of his body blurring and a quick buzzing filled the room, until he grunted and his body stopped blurring, held back from lunging at the woman to cover her mouth by his sister. He threw a dirty look at Rin, and the girl in turn blew a raspberry at her brother, wrapping her legs tighter around his left leg and the hand on his belly reached further and held his other side.
All the while, Tsunade remained unflinching on the seat, knowing fully well that the boy had almost leapt from the bed to tackle her.
"Shush," Naruto hissed again. "Shut your goddam mouth, you old hag."
A tick throbbed on Tsunade's temple, crossing her arms in an attempt to not throttle her grandson. "Is that how you thank the person that saved your life? Ungrateful brat."
Naruto stubbornly crossed his arms. To the untrained eye, he would have looked as emotionless as the side of a mountain, but to the two females, they saw the boy's twisted frown. "Yeah, whatever. Thanks. You can go now."
"I just might," Tsunade stated, wearing a frown and sitting back on her chair. "But I won't. Not until I apologize-" she faltered when Naruto averted his eyes from her, looking ahead with a more visible frown. Tsunade chewed on her tongue, swallowing her pride and saying, "Look, Naruto, I'm sorry for hitting you-"
"Ha," Naruto scoffed, still not looking at her, or his sister. He directed his eyes to the muted television, playing an early morning news broadcast. "When was that? I can't remember."
Tsunade pushed on, "I was drunk, but that's not an excuse. It was my fault. I'm sorry, Naruto."
A glaze came onto Naruto's eyes, but he blinked it away and squeezed his face in distaste. He didn't reply to her, staring at the television.
"Did you hear me? I said I'm sorry."
"Yeah, I've heard you," Naruto snapped, whirling to her. His sharingan blinked on and off at the spike of emotion roiling beneath the surface. "Did you want me to soothe your aching conscience? Did you think we'd cry and make up?"
Tsunade screwed her lips to the side.
They had been close once, the twins and Tsunade.
Their mom was Tsunade's adopted daughter, entrusted to her by Mito Uzumaki the day Kushina arrived in the village. And very quickly, Tsunade realized that she loved her fiery, rambunctious, tomboyish daughter more than anything in the entire world.
The day Tsunade first met the twins, she realized that the boundless love she had for Kushina was dwarfed by the affection she had for the twins.
There was nothing Tsunade wouldn't do and no one she wouldn't punch through to make the twins happy.
She was their Granny Tsunade.
When Kushina died, a big part of Tsunade was buried alongside her daughter.
She drowned her soul in alcohol, and in a moment of insensibility, she struck her grandson when he lashed out at her. At the time, Naruto was lashing out against everyone and everything, except his twin, and even in her inebriated state, she knew from a medical standpoint that the boy was taking his mother's passing the worse.
He was five, and he watched his mother die in one of the worst ways possible.
Tsunade glanced past the boy to Rin, and the girl twin tried at a smile, a faint one. She nodded to the woman.
Tsunade cleared her throat, saying, "You know where I live, so feel free to stop by whenever you want." She didn't move to stand until Naruto nodded his head, once and still not looking at her. She moved to the foot of his bed, into his field of vision but he still didn't look at her, keeping his eyes up at the television. Tsunade squashed her irritation and retrieved a clipboard from a holder at the foot of his bed, flipping through it and mumbling, "We were able to get most of Yagura's Three Tails chakra out of you before it could do any real damage to your organs. You were able to get some kind of immunity against tailed beast poisoning from your mom, so right now, your cells are fighting the little tailed beast poison left in your body."
She scribbled something on the clipboard, flipping a page up.
"The wound in your side has healed, but it's still tender at the moment." She then scoffed, "Honestly, it's remarkable you're alive. The poison from both Orochimaru and the three tails was enough to kill twenty adult elephants."
"Yup," Rin chirped proudly. "My brother's a medical mystery."
"That he is," Tsunade snorted, returning the clipboard but not moving from the end of the bed. "We'd like to keep you here for observation. At least, until this evening. I'd advise you not to use your bloodline until I clear you, in case it aggravates your wounds. You've been in a coma for the better part of a week, so you have to take it slow for the time being. Give your body time to properly wake up. A nurse would come by later to guide you through some light mobility exercises, give you a massage-"
"That's fine," Rin interjected, briefly flaring at the thought of anyone, man or woman, massaging her brother. "I'll handle the massage."
Tsunade spoke slowly, "What if I say that the nurse is a guy?"
"Even worse. You don't know half of the thoughts that run through this pervert's head," Rin jeered, teasing her brother with a poke to his side. "Trust me, granny, I'll do it. I give great massages."
Naruto admitted out loud, "She's not wrong."
Whether he was acknowledging the kind of thoughts he had or that Rin gave great massages, or both, was up for debate.
"If you say so," Tsunade shrugged. "Don't go too far. I mean it."
"Sure, sure," Rin flippantly waved away her grandmother's warning, crossing her fingers underneath the blanket. "Absolutely nothing would happen, granny. You have my word."
Tsunade would sooner believe that pigs could fly, than trust Rin's oath.
The short twinkle in Naruto's eye and the laughing look the twins shared proved that whatever massage Rin was going to give him was not going to be a professional one.
Far from it.
The woman palmed her face, grumbling, "Kids, c'mon…"
"What? Nothing's going to happen," Rin doubled down.
"You know what? Fine. Fool around if you want; you're only putting your brother's health at risk," she waved away her grandchildren's moaning and griping, making promises that they were going to break the very second Tsunade stepped out of the room. Tsunade wore a half smile when she saw that Naruto was contributing his oath. She brought the mood down by holding up both hands. "Rin already reported on her mission last week. Your priority, Naruto, is getting back on your feet and back on the field. Right now, we need all of our strongest ninjas healthy and ready for anything."
Naruto's brow lowered and his face became serious. "What happened?"
"Your dad called for a Five Kage Summit concerning the Mizukage's erratic actions. The meeting's scheduled to hold in a few days in Iron country," a country neutral to all five major hidden villages. The neutrality of the meeting ground was important, especially if the five leaders wanted to have a fair and unbiased discussion of global matters. "But Konoha's source in Hidden Mist," Crow's Feet, the twins filled in, "Says that Kiri is making some strange internal movements. Gathering up his shinobi and fortifying the village ahead of the summit. We can only assume the Mizukage has outside allies defending his atrocities and supporting his village."
Kumo and Iwa immediately sprang to mind.
Coincidentally, one was Konoha's greatest enemy and the other was Konoha's shakiest neutrality pact.
"A war's coming," Naruto finished.
His words hung over the room like a foreboding cloud.
He looked from his sister to Tsunade, asking, "Where's father now?"
"Hidden Chill," Tsunade supplied. "The Leader of Chill is giving an investor update on her village's Medical Institute, ahead of the summit. Minato and the Kazekage went to attend."
Suna was the continent's foremost authority on medicine and all things medical technology, so when the Hokage had invited the Kazekage with him to Chill, the Leader of Suna was curious enough to follow. Chill, being a close second source of remarkable medicine, was an investment both Konoha and Suna took seriously, and they had been steadily funnelling funding to Chill for as long as two decades.
With Tsunade's arrival to the village, she was also made to be part of the council. She was returned to the shinobi half of the council and reinstated as the Head of Konoha's Medical department.
She also had twelve years' worth of updates from the former Head of Konoha's Medical department.
"Then there's the thing where the Mizukage's genocide in Hidden Rain, might be trying to poison Konoha's water system, and that Mikoto and her team were attacked by Kiri ninjas on the way back from Zyouki city," Tsunade sighed, shrugging. "A lot happened last week."
That wasn't mentioning how Rin had come back from Kiri with Samehada, an Uchiha bonfire had been located at the Valley of End, and that the Aburame had successfully implanted a praying mantis queen into one of their own.
Yes, a lot happened the other week.
Rin would have to catch her brother up to speed.
"Heal quickly, brat. There's solo a mission waiting for you at the Hokage's office." Tsunade began walking to the door.
"Who requested it?" Naruto called after her.
Stopping at the door, Tsunade gave her grandson a wry smile from over her shoulder. "You won't believe me if I tell you."
"Try me."
"It's from Kitsuchi, the Tsuchikage's son."
And with that, Tsunade left the hospital room.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Hidden Chill village used to be a research facility.
The First Raikage took notice of the expanse of the nameless frozen land north of Kumo and sent a sizeable group of scientists, researchers, and discoverers to find out if there was any use for the land for Kumo. But two weeks after the expedition had been sent to the frozen lands, the adventurers were wiped out by the elements.
The First Raikage pushed again, sending a second expedition.
The then-unnamed stretch of frozen wilderness was situated far north of Kumo, sitting at the northernmost part of the continent that could only be accessed by either passing through Hidden Lightning or navigating the continent on water, having to use special ships to push through the ice and frost. It was too large to be deemed useless.
A decade into the endeavour, the second group sent to the icy land were able to build a large aboveground base, where they weathered the harsh storm, stored their equipment, and studied the unforgiving terrain for any gems. Losses were counted and replaced by Kumo, funded in abundance for them to dig into the snow and break through ice to uncover some kind of purpose for the frozen land. The researchers sent out into the cold, barely returning alive and with all of their digits, shook their heads when they were asked if there was anything noteworthy across the land.
Nothing but some clustered polar bears, and ice cliffs populated with snow foxes, penguins and seals.
For the researchers and discoverers, the area was dubbed the Land of Ice.
In official Kumo records, the land was designated Land of Nothing.
Then the First War slammed into Kumo, dragged in by its affiliation with the warmongering Demon country, and the First Raikage dropped the adventurers of the land of ice from his list of priorities, no longer directing funding and troops to the war effort. Until the midpoint of the war, when a small representative group from the land of ice came to Kumo to remind the Raikage of their existence, only to find out that the First Raikage had died in battle and was replaced by his son, the Second Raikage, who had long since been against the expedition to the land of ice but hadn't had a say in matters because his father believed in the land of ice.
He ordered the expedition group to abandon the land of ice and bring their crew back to Kumo, where they would be hailed as heroes, compensated heavily for their ten-year effort, and were going to be given other benefits if they so choose to continue working for Kumo throughout the war.
The leader of the representatives relayed this option to his people in the land of ice but returned to Kumo alone and quietly retired to a mountain reserve at the eastern mountain range of Kumo.
He would go on to say that leaving the land of ice was his biggest regret.
His comrades in the land of ice refused to believe that the decade they had spent toiling and dying in the land of ice was for nothing. They persevered in the terrible cold, ice and storm, digging into the frozen ground and holding fast for as long as they could.
It was in this digging underground that the expedition in the land of ice that they uncovered healing herbs and plants hundreds of metres under the ground, discovering a lush terrain of healthy soil, and an ancient tunnel system from a forgotten clan that stretched the entire expanse of the land of ice, deep underground and away from the howling of the frigid winds.
The expedition celebrated their discovery with weeping jubilation, muffled by the constant storm screaming aboveground.
The Land of Nothing was now the Land of Something.
Deservedly spiteful, a new gathering of representatives from the land of ice did not go to Kumo with their discovery, they went to Kumo's then-enemy, Konoha.
And now Konoha, for several decades, was the land of ice's greatest benefactor and ally.
Hidden Leaf, during the Third Hokage's reign, went as far as to push the land of ice to be officially recognized as a sovereign territory, untethering the last few strings of connection it had to Kumo.
The land of ice became the Village Hidden in the Chill.
Hidden Chill spanned the entirety of the frozen landscapes underground terrain, carefully and diligently utilizing the funds supplied to it by Konoha to develop itself, growing crops, rearing animals and gradually taming the landscape, devising ways for their people—and people of Konoha—to better survive the climate. They had known suffering and had survived times when supplies were next to nothing, Chill was not going to waste this opportunity. They focused on their talents, science and discovery, and began developing their medical field using the available resources underground, and building technology to excavate these resources and also to make daily life in Chill easier.
With the Third Hokage's support, Chill established the Hidden Chill Medical Institute, to both train medics of the future and to serve as the area where medical breakthroughs were primarily discovered.
In recent times, under the Fourth Hokage, the Konoha investment in Chill attracted the attention of Suna, a close ally of Konoha. Hidden Sand reigned in the continent's medical field, standing head and shoulders over any competition, including Chill. Though Hidden Sand was still a village abandoned by their Daimyo, so they were more close-handed in their monetary support of Chill.
Suna couldn't match Konoha's monetary or military investment, but they could share some of their knowledge on medicine with Chill, so the Chill-Sand research wing of the medical institute was established.
There was a constant Konoha and Suna presence in Chill, watching Kumo while Chill focused its resources on growing medics and furthering the field of science.
Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage, breathed out appreciatively when a Kakashi helped him out of his thick parka, rubbing his gloved hands together. He wore a navy-blue turtleneck sweater, black pants and dark boots. Nodding his gratitude to his youngest daughter, Mikoto, he swept on his Hokage's cloak, gripping the cap in his hands.
The Hokage had gone on this excursion to Chill with some of the recent graduates of Konoha's Academy, teams Seven, Eight, Ten and Team Gai. In turn, the Kazekage came with some of his village's Genin, and right now they were also shrugging off their heavier winter clothing elsewhere. They were going to meet up soon.
If war were to break out, Minato wanted his younger ninjas to be familiar with Konoha and Suna's route to Hidden Chill, since the Leaf village would more than often be running missions to and from Chill.
Aside from the Hokage, Mikoto and Kakashi, the other Konoha Genin removed their winter coats outside the Hokage's designated room. Kakashi exited the room first, having not worn anything other than his normal gear and a brown sweater over his Jounin vest, leaving the father and daughter pair alone in the room.
Chill was a minimalist nation by way of their history, so there wasn't anything special about the room; the walls were carved out from light blue rocks, frozen to their core till they took that shade of colour, there was a threadbare chair in one corner of the room and a pair of heaters in two corners of the room, humming red and exuding warmth throughout the room. Neither Hokage nor Genin was able to find the source of light for the well-illuminated room; they were about fifty meters underground, so the thin beams of light that could pass through the whiteout might have been lighting up the underground room.
It wasn't likely, but it was a theory.
Minato marched to the door and his daughter paced after him.
"Dad." She intercepted his path before he could open the door, standing in his way with both arms open. She gave him an uneven, nerved smile and slowly asked, "You're…not still mad about Zyouki, right?"
The man levelled her with a plain look, lowering his eyelids into a dull glare and, after some seconds, Mikoto whimpered and stepped aside.
He opened the door and Mikoto followed him out to where the other Genin were, saying in a hushed voice, "Granny was just asking to get punched. At least I didn't do actual jail time."
He stopped and gave her another glare, a narrower one, and again the girl backtracked away from him and lowered her eyes with a simpering groan.
Minato had given her a thorough chewing out for getting herself thrown into Zyouki's holding cell, and for the past week, Mikoto had been penitent.
The man grunted and proceeded through the bubbling junior ninjas, who gingerly kept to the man's back while their teachers walked at their backs. For many of Genin, this was their first time so far from Konoha, and in such a mystifying place too. Each of their Jounin-sensei emphasized that they brought along boots they could manoeuvre in, or at the very least wore thick socks under their shinobi sandals, so the heavy footfalls of the hallway echoed with the chattering whisper of the Genin.
Sakura looked to be the happiest of them.
She skipped next to Mikoto, clutching the straps of her backpack and biting her bottom lip, hardly able to bottle up her frothing excitement. She barely took notice of Sasuke, wearing his Chunin vest and carefully examining the path they were walking in, too eagerly listening to Kurenai give a last-minute lecture on Chill etiquette.
"Chill doesn't take well to gifts, giving or receiving," she said, keeping any condescension from her address. "They've worked for everything they have. Receiving something without earning it through hard work or fair trade is unacceptable here by their moral standards, or by any Chill citizen anywhere."
"Well, that's weird," Ino remarked, keeping her hands inside the pockets of her coat. "Who doesn't like gifts?"
"That's how things are done here," Kurenai shrugged. "You have to understand that Chill's history is steeped with not receiving handouts. Gifts are taboo here."
"Kurenai-sensei," Sakura chirped, sticking her hand up for a question. Sasuke rolled his eyes, and Asuma was almost tempted to share the gesture with the boy. "Does that mean, even as guests, we have to work hard to earn a place to sleep?"
Kurenai smirked, glad for the question, "No. Our group is an official delegation from Konoha to Hidden Chill, and as so, our hosts are obligated to find us a good place to sleep. It's a case where global norm overrides traditional norm."
The hallway opened up into a wider space with a circular floor space and a dome-shaped ceiling, where the Suna delegation and the Chill representatives waited for them to arrive.
A wide smile stretched across Minato's face as he strode to them. "I'm sorry for our tardiness. Some of our huskies tripped. It was a whole ordeal."
A blue-haired woman in a buttoned-up lab coat, black tights, black socks and low-heeled shinobi sandals gave the man a slanting smile, reaching her left hand forward and collecting Minato's handshake. She replied, her honeyed voice silkier than silk, "Well, that's a new one, Lord Minato." She had thin black eyebrows, a small nose and thin red lips. She was the kind of person that was effortlessly attractive, doing the bare minimum in terms of make-up and still being breathtaking. Her expression, though pale from living in the cold since she was a child, wasn't in the least bit cold. Rather, her half smile lifted a little as she raised an eyebrow, asking the Hokage in her smooth, airy tone, "How long did it take for you to think of that excuse?"
Minato chuckled nervously, scratching the back of his head with his right hand, clasping a firm handshake with his left from the Kazekage, patting the Suna leader's shoulder familiarly. "The whole trip…?"
Familiar with Yumi Chou since before he was a Genin, Minato didn't fall prey to the Chill Leader's allure. It was more difficult to fall for Yumi's bloodline, in Minato's case, especially since the man had been present for Yumi's awkward emo phase.
Yumi's bloodline tended to work more on some people than others, exhibited in the Chunin exams when her allure didn't petrify the Leader of Hidden Marsh or any member of the Hyuuga clan.
The general rule of thumb when conversing with Yumi was to not look directly at her. Even without her bestowing her crystalline blue eyes on someone, one look at her and the person would immediately be petrified.
The others, both Konoha and Suna, weren't so skilled.
Kakashi and Asuma pointedly averted their gaze from the woman's shimmering smile, Kurenai was speaking to Baki and two other Suna Jounin-sensei.
Minato felt a sweatdrop at Yumi's antics.
The Genin—or Chunin, in Sasuke's case—were a mix of spellbound and petrified. A line of drool leaked from the corner of Kiba's mouth, Tenten's mouth fell open and her shoulders were slumped, Sakura was still, eyes wider than dinner plates, and Ino was the same. Shino was stunned in place, buzzing from his gut.
They were all struck by the woman's graceful charm.
Except for Mikoto and Gaara.
The two Jinchuriki stood on opposite ends of the gathering, yet their dark looks cut through their teammates and clashed. Gaara crossed his arms and Mikoto pushed her hands into the pockets of her white hoodie, glowering.
Their eyes flashed, one red and the other yellow.
Mikoto started to Gaara, until she felt a tug at the back of her hoodie, halting her approach.
"Mikoto, stop it," Hinata whispered, pulling again when a rumbling snarl rose from the back of Mikoto's throat, never once taking her eyes off Gaara. Hinata's whisper lowered and she dipped her head close to Mikoto's, saying, "Everyone's watching."
Mikoto's eyes snapped up, switching back to blue. Her brow raced up when she realized everyone was looking at them, her and Gaara.
The group was still, looking from the glaring One Tail holder to the Nine Tails Jinchuriki.
The girl's eyes darted to her father.
The man screwed his lips into an unseen frown and subtly shook his head.
Yumi's brows knitted, specifically observing Mikoto.
Then the Chill leader clapped her hands together, a sharp sound that echoed in the featureless area. It served to dispel the lingering cloud of her allure and also jerk their attention back to her, this time not subjecting them to her bloodline.
"So…let's get to Hidden Chill."
The guards with her ushered the Konoha and Suna delegations away, giving Yumi a wide berth. Her fingers flicked through three dozen hand seals and she slammed her palms to the ground. Inky black lines raced from the contact, webbing across the floor and reaching the very edges of the round area, passing under the feet of the visiting delegations. The fuinjutsu ran up the length of the room, curving along the dome-shaped ceiling and meeting once again at the top.
"Descend."
The room rumbled and steadily began to descend.
Authors Note
A big sidenote from here on is that Gaara still has the one tails. The Akatsuki never got around to unsealing it from him, given that they're eradicated early on in the story by Yagura. Even before he was introduced in the Chunin exams, Naruto was among those that helped fix Gaara's seal (whereupon Red Demon Week was soon first experienced in Suna). Gaara is stable, but that doesn't mean he doesn't hate Mikoto for putting him in critical condition after their Chunin exam match.
Mikoto's got her reasons for not liking Gaara. Can you guess what it is?
I've also got one last thing to say. I'll be taking two weeks off from this story so that I can focus more on my WIP (I'm thinking of calling it Ticker). I'm nearly done writing the first draft, and I want to start digging into the second draft of Ticker as soon as possible. I've been procrastinating finishing the last few chapters of my WIP for weeks now, with this break from Red Demon, I won't have any excuses anymore XD
Expect the next story update to be in two weeks.
It'll feature a certain incident that happens in Hidden Chill, Naruto's mission to Iwa, and the Five Kage Summit.
But for now, what do you think of this chapter?
What do you think of the story so far?
Let me know what you think, would you so kindly. Stay happy and stay safe, wherever you are in the world.
I'll see you when I see you.
Foy.
