Halo
How are you? Doing great, I hope.
I've got another update for you.
But first, I want to give an extra special shout-out to Golden Wind God, valemp, Imperio Mirage, and SirMoe. I don't say it enough, but I truly, truly appreciate everything. Shout-out to everyone that's stuck with this story so far, new and old. I don't know why I've been so fortunate to encounter such nice people, helping me learn and grow, and I don't take it for granted. Thank you for being wonderful :)
Enough with this mushiness.
Enjoy…
CHAPTER 16
Valley of the End
Rin landed on the lake at the bottom of the valley. The water rippled as Itachi joined her, carefully speeding on the surface to Madara's side of the monument, until Rin held her hand a fist up and Itachi stopped, skidding to a stop beside her and dropping low as she fell into a squat, picking up an orange mask and passing it to him.
Itachi's sharingan flicked on and he stared at the orange, one-eyed mask.
"Is it for Shisui?" Rin asked her friend, since the only person they knew that used a one-eyed mask was their spymaster friend in Kiri. Itachi wasn't privy to all of the details of Crow's Feet missions, just that he was critically injured seven years ago and the Hokage assigned Shisui to take his father's Crow's Feet mantle, continuing the spymaster role outside of Konoha.
"It can't be for him." Itachi's sharingan spiralled steadily, sweeping his eyes on the mask and frowning. "No. I'm not seeing any of his chakra on it. I'm not seeing any chakra at all" Flipping the mask over so that the inside faced up for them to see, the two squinted at the blood painted inside. "Blood?"
The water had washed away most of the blood, but there were a few chunks of semi-solid blood stuck inside the grooves of the mask's interior.
"Smell it," he gave the mask to his present teammate and the girl threw a baleful look at him, and he shrugged. "Confirm whose blood it is."
"…You're confusing me for my brother," and her sister—Mikoto—for that matter. She collected the mask, inserting it inside a transparent, airtight plastic bag, sealing that bag into a storage seal and sliding the seal into a pocket inside her Jounin vest. When Naruto or Mikoto got a smell into their nose, blood or otherwise, they were like bloodhounds chasing down their target.
Itachi blinked, rinsing his fingers inside the water running beneath him. "Oh, yeah."
Both of them were seventeen years old and had been ninjas since they were eight, and this was the first mission they were going on together by themselves, without Naruto, Izumi, or any other ninja accompanying them.
Quite frankly, Itachi didn't hang out often with Rin. They spoke a few words at every family get-together or any clan festival since the Uchiha and Namikaze were two clans that branched off the same tree, but Itachi normally stuck beside his girlfriend, Izumi, or dragged Sasuke around to socialize with his family, or hung out with his friend, Naruto.
He was Naruto's rival/friend after all.
Itachi tried a smile, a wincing expression that made the lines of his tired face deepen, and Rin rolled her eyes and got back up, drying her hands in a handkerchief and walking past him. The boy palmed his face and suppressed a weary groan at not knowing how to properly respond to his distant cousin, several generations over.
This was exactly why he was anxious about going on a mission with Rin.
With Naruto, there would be some banter. Of course, Itachi wasn't the one to initiate the back-and-forth, but it helped lighten the atmosphere.
There was no such banter going on when Itachi went on black operative missions or missions with most other ninjas in the village; people were normally nervous being around an Uchiha as it was, he didn't expect them to be actively talking to him unless it was incredibly necessary.
He got up and rubbed his wet fingers on his pants, strolling to Rin as she waited at Madara's side of the valley.
"Is the bonfire here?"
Itachi's eyes looked at the foot of the disgraced Uchiha's statue and nodded, saying, "There's a bonfire trail leading into the waterfall," he pointed at the noisy waterfall, bellowing between the two statues. "The bonfire ends there. It's a handprint."
"Isn't it weird that the water didn't wash off the blood on the mask, but it did wash off the blood on Madara's statue?" Rin questioned aloud, strolling onto the water and balancing on the surface, squinting up to the top of the loud waterfall and shading her eyes from the sun.
Itachi observed her, trailing after her and going to the base of the waterfall, close enough for the spray of water to hit his face and have to speak louder over the din of the waterfall. "There wasn't a bonfire on the mask," he explained. "Uchiha bonfires use blood to fix themselves onto a surface, but the chakra evenly diffused through it is what keeps the bonfire alive."
Rin nodded absentmindedly and Itachi pursed his lips, facing away from her and tucking his hands into his pockets.
"I…probably shouldn't have explained that to you."
"Why?"
"Bonfires are an Uchiha secret. You're not an Uchiha."
"The first Namikaze was an Uchiha," she said, screwing her lips to the side and seeing the rockface behind the waterfall, where Itachi had said the bonfire was located. "Naruto is proof that my clan have recessive Uchiha genes." She shrugged, scuffing her heel on the water. "But that doesn't matter, really. I'm glad to be a Namikaze. Not being considered an Uchiha is perfectly fine by me."
Itachi turned to her, his eyes dipping apologetically. "That's not what I meant—"
"What did you mean?" she asked, raising her eyebrows but not looking at him. Her fingers were laced at her back and her right heel idly skimmed the top of the water.
"I meant…" he said deliberately, and Rin glanced at him with slanted lips, neither smiling nor frowning at his delayed words. "Even though we're cousins, our clans are entirely different. My clan has its own thing, and yours too."
"Then how come uncle Fugaku taught my brother how to make a bonfire? Since, given your words, Naruto isn't an Uchiha."
Itachi mentally cursed at himself. "Because Naruto has the sharingan."
"Does having a sharingan make him an Uchiha?"
"Well…not necessarily." He deactivated his sharingan.
"What about those in your clan that haven't activated their sharingan? Or those that can't activate theirs, are they Uchiha?" she fired right away, a smile playing at the corners of her lips but managing to keep her expression straight as Itachi's pursed lips deepened.
Itachi cursed again, flaring his nose as he exhaled, facing the roaring waterfall.
Rin cracked a smile and lightly punched his arm. "I'm not being serious, Itachi. Calm down."
He spied a quick look at her from the corner of his eyes, a small, trying smile on his pallid face.
"You know," she continued, motioning back and forth between them. She gave him an uneven look, smiling, frowning and straight at the same time. " We don't have to be friends just because your friends with my brother." Her hands laced behind her back and she rocked on her heels, smiling sunnily at her brother's best friend. "You don't have to be awkward around me."
Itachi exhaled from his nose with a quiet laugh. "You're not an easy person to talk to, Rin."
The girl smiled, her yellow hair and purple eyes sparkling with her bright expression as her eyebrows furrowed and she inquisitively tilted her head to the side. "Why's that?"
"I'm not sure you know this, but you're a very intimidating person, at least to me."
The smile on her face raced higher, along with her eyebrows. "Really?"
"Yes. More intimidating than your brother, believe me."
" Really?" she asked again, her hands on her hips and doubt in her eyes as chuckled. " I'm more intimidating than the Red Demon?"
"Yes," he said again, trying to explain. "With Naruto, you know what to expect; he's the strong, silent type. Doesn't talk much and likes quiet company." Rin visibly conceded with a nod. Itachi gestured to her. "You're friends with everyone and you can get along with anyone. Naruto even says you're the personification of the sun."
Rin's lips wiggled and a light dusting of red covered her cheeks at her brother's paraphrased words. "You're just being paranoid," she reassured him, flicking her left arm out to the waterfall and sending a blue kunai constructed from her chakra out of her palm. It flew through the waterfall and splintered against the rocky surface behind it. The sound it made was low, but the two were barely able to pick up the metallic noise the chakra kunai made on contact with the surface, before it dissolved. "I don't need to be a sensor to know that there's an illusion there."
Itachi's sharingan blinked on and he nodded in confirmation. "I don't see any seals on it. I can't say the same about what's behind the door."
"You think it's a trap?"
"I think we should be careful," Itachi replied. "Because an Uchiha made the bonfire doesn't mean we shouldn't be careful."
She nodded, saying as she formed the ram hand seal, "Shadow clone jutsu."
A doppelganger stepped out in front of her, barrelling forward and, throwing caution to the wind, slammed its shoulder into the door on the other side of the waterfall. The door flew open easily and the clone fell inside. It hastily got off the floor and dusted itself off, bashful at being caught unaware. It jogged further inside, and Rin and Itachi lost sight of it.
A moment later, Rin blinked. "The door wasn't locked," she hummed. "No traps either. Just a narrow hallway leading to a wall with another handprint on it."
"Did the clone see anyone in the hallway?"
"It's difficult to say. The door on the other end had a tough locking seal on it."
Without any more prompting, Rin took the lead and dove into the waterfall, Itachi leapt in after him, and the two sprinted down the hallway.
True to what Rin had said, a two-minute-long sprint down the slim path ended at a solid wall with a bloody handprint on it. This one was also a bonfire, crackling a dm shade of blue the more Itachi looked at it.
Itachi leaned past Rin, humming as he checked the wall with his sharingan, "Let me try something."
Rin pressed herself to a wall and Itachi shimmied past her, doing his best to look elsewhere as their faces neared, until the boy was faced with the handprint. He bit his thumb and pressed the bleeding digit to the rockface, near the handprint.
The rock wavered, resembling a desert mirage, and Itachi reached back for Rin's hand, pulling her inside.
Stepping through the illusion, Rin vibrated and muttered a Flash Step jutsu, holding up her left hand and unfurling it. Six palm-sized balls of light floated out of her hand, levitating over their heads and throwing shining light to every corner of the room.
It was a large, open space. The floor was made from smoothed rock and the walls were rougher, vaulted high and domed. The room could house the first two floors of the Hokage's tower.
The glowing bubbles of light floated slowly around the room.
Aside from the sheer scale of the room, the room would have looked unassuming if not for the evergreen tree that was slouching over a casket, its branches coiled over and around the casket.
Itachi let go of Rin's hand, and the two carefully approached the tree.
The trunk of the tree was about as tall as the two Jounin, bent forward over and looking to be lying on the casket, with a large cluster of branches and green leaves pouring over the casket. The leaves of the tree didn't litter the ground, and the roots were dug deep into the rocky ground.
Rin stepped to the tree and, guardedly, watching the heavy bushel of leaves for any sudden movements, she placed her fingers on the trunk of the tree, thrumming her chakra and concentrating.
Meanwhile, Itachi went around her and swiped away some of the branches from the casket, his eyes widening as he saw the person lying down inside.
"Rin Nohara…" he breathed, mystified.
The girl's corpse was unblemished, dressed in a black funeral gown with her hands daintily set on her abdomen. There was a lively flush to her pallid skin, as if any moment her eyes would jump open.
"But…you're dead…" Itachi muttered, his face scrunched up in amazement, marvelling at how maintained Rin's body was, free from decomposition and even glowing healthily, if not for the ignorable cracks of her bottom lip. His eyes confirmed that Rin was indeed dead, seeing without a shadow of a doubt that her chakra network was inactive and her reserves were vacant, and there was a gaping hole over the inactive section of her chakra network, on her heart, where Kakashi's Chidori reportedly impaled. "You're supposed to be dead," the boy repeated. "But you look so…alive."
"Itachi?" Rin called and the boy grunted, tearing his eyes off the miraculous sight. Rin Nohara's namesake still had her eyes closed, but a twisted frown marred her expression. "Someone's inside this tree."
"What?" the boy asked, bewildered.
Rin, keeping her fingertips on the tree trunk and facing Itachi with her confused expression, said. "There is a living, breathing human being inside this tree." Her eyebrows knitted. "And, I kid you not, they're using nature chakra to stay alive."
The only person in known history that could sustain their life with nature chakra was the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju.
The girl removed her fingers and held up her hands, admitting with a breathy voice, "I'm just as amazed as you."
"If you're amazed by that—"
Itachi's train of thought was broken by a tapping sound beneath them.
The two looked down at the casket, and Rin Nohara blinked up at them, confused.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Hidden Chill
Her mind swam, sloshing murkily in her head.
She wrinkled her brow and groaned, closing her hands into a loose fist and tugging up, huffing tiredly when she felt her wrists restrained to the bed, the same with her ankles.
She didn't know whether the voices she was hearing were in her head or from outside.
Kyuubi, she called, gritting her teeth as a sharp wave of pain flashed across her chest. She collapsed deeper into the bed and groaned again, wheezing through gnashed teeth. Kyuubi, you there?
She didn't get any response.
"Truly remarkable, don't you think, Lord Minato," a voice chattered. Mikoto's eyelid fluttered and, beneath her eyelids, her eyes slid left and right, settling on left to where she thought the voice had come from. The voice rattled excitedly, "Total cellular regeneration, and complete restoration of limbs and organs. I had heard rumours about the regenerative capabilities of jinchuriki, but I always had my doubts. For all the years I've known Kushina, we didn't go on many high-rank missions for me to confirm her regenerative abilities. This Kyuubi holder—" the voice stopped itself at a displeased grunt from another person, laughing nervously, "—I mean, Mikoto—is a specimen of her own."
"It doesn't make the situation better," another voice—Mikoto's father—grumbled, and a weight settled onto a wooden chair close to Mikoto's right, sitting down on the chair with an aching grunt. "If Rasa hadn't been proactive, the damage to your village would have been much worse."
"I don't see what you're worrying about, Lord Minato," the first voice said lightly. "My village has reserve cash in case something like this ever happens, and Lord Rasa already agreed to support rebuilding the station. You and Lord Rasa do not need to worry about who's to blame for what."
"That's the thing," Mikoto's father said in a strong voice. "A Suna shinobi attacked one of my people, and now she's in critical condition." A silent weight pressed down on the room, and Mikoto's closed eyes swirled to the right. Her father slumped into his seat. "Critical condition is putting it lightly. That poor girl might never wake up again, all because of a petty argument between children."
"I-In Mikoto's defence," the first voice stuttered hesitantly, breaking her father's spiralling train of thought. "Everyone is coming to your daughter's defence, even the Kazekage's older children." Her feet shuffled nearer to her father and sat down, speaking lowly. "Mikoto did not initiate this."
Mikoto's father didn't reply, and her face scrunched up at what she had heard.
Gaara's clawed fingers raced into Hinata's back, exiting with a burst of blood and viscera.
She jerked her hands up but the restraints kept her firmly lying down.
"Dad," she cried in a dry tone, her voice cracking and her eyelid lifted halfway. She saw the tormented look on her father's face as he looked back at her. "Dad, I need to see Hinata."
Minato swallowed and his lips pressed together into a tight line. The Chill Leader moved, her hands formerly clenching the Hokage's right wrist were now smoothing down the knees of her black tights. Mikoto could hear a jumble of other voices waiting outside of the hospital tent, scuffing the floor and pacing back and forth, or standing and fidgeting.
"Dad, please."
"Rest first," her father insisted, rising to his feet and placing a gentle hand on her brow. He smiled. One of his soft, kind smiles that lit up his expression, and Mikoto sagged deeper into the hospital bed with a sigh.
Falling back to a fitful sleep, her father's echoed words followed her into her dreams.
"I'm proud of you, kid."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Rasa stood over his children with his arms crossed. His turban-covered head was coolly expressionless, but his dark eyes stormed madly.
Kneeling at his front, Temari and Kankuro, stripped of all of their weapons and hanging their heads under their father's intense stare, kept their mouths shut.
Behind them was Gaara.
He was curled up in a ball inside a six-foot tall, three-foot wide reinforced-glass cylinder, reinforced with fuinjutsu; absorption seals to drain the boy of any useable chakra and storage seals to seal away any errant grain of sand that came off the boy, and that wasn't even taking into account the level eight barrier seals spotting the glass of the transparent cage.
Two minutes of turgid silence passed and Kankuro gulped heavily, opening his mouth—
"Did you know your brother would do this?" his father asked first. He spoke with dark finality, daring them to lie to him. "Speak."
"W-W-Well…" Kankuro mumbled shakily, wringing his hands and throwing a hesitant glance at his sister, who was blankly staring at the ground. Her shoulders were slumped and her head hung low, similar to a prisoner awaiting execution. Their situation didn't seem far from that scenario. "Not this. W-We thought…Gaara was just going to…r-r-rough the Namikaze girl up a bit."
The more he spoke, the angrier Rasa's stare bore down on them, exuding killer intent and flooding the entirety of the medical tent. Outside of the tent and safe from the brunt of the Kazekage's fury, the Suna shinobi stood guard, watching across them a long distance away at the Konoha ninjas clustered at the front of two other tents, Hinata and Mikoto's.
The Hyuuga boy stonily watched them.
They couldn't meet his glower.
"Do you understand the scale of trouble the three of you are in? The disgrace you have brought our village? That our alliance with Konoha is now potentially at risk?" Rasa swore thunderously. Temari and Kankuro's shoulders hiked up. "The girl, Hinata Hyuuga, is the Heiress of the Hyuuga clan and her father is not a forgiving man. Not only would he demand justice for his child, but he would also demand repercussions against our village. But I doubt either of you thought of that first."
He wasn't yelling but his words were deafening.
"There is no hope for her to wake up again, and if she does die, your brother would be tried for murdering an ally, and both of you will be considered accomplices."
"Father…" Temari said quietly, bringing her eyes up. "We didn't think he'd kill anyone."
"Is that supposed to be an excuse?"
Temari gnawed on her tongue and looked back down.
She didn't react when her father collected her forehead protector from her temple, but Kankuro wilted back on his knees, quiet tears trickling from his eyes.
"The best I can do is fight for neither of you to get the death penalty, serve your punishments in Suna as civilians for the rest of your lives without so much as touching another weapon. But as for your brother," he walked past the two older Sand siblings and stood with his hands at his back in front of the glass cylinder housing the Kazekage's son. The seized hitaite dangled from his clenched right fist. His shadowed eyes narrowed, and his mouth, under his turban, frowned with a simmering growl. "After this stunt, I'm not sure your life is worth jeopardizing Suna-Konoha relations. Decades of diplomacy, and cooperation, down the drain because of you." He leaned to the cylinder, and Gaara flinched in his foetal position. "Even I am uncertain if you will walk away from your punishment alive."
He leaned back and threw a baleful look over his shoulder, acknowledging Baki as he fell onto his right knee.
"What is it?" the Kazekage asked, drawing his killer intent back into himself.
"Lord Kazekage," Baki greeted, relieved at not being assaulted by killer intent. "Plans are being made by the Konoha delegation to take Lady Hinata to Konoha."
Rasa closed his eyes, grim.
"Kakashi informed me that Lord Hokage has called for a tribunal ahead of the Kage's Summit."
Tribunals were military court hearings. It was a universal concept in their world, whether concerning ninjas or samurai. Internal tribunals were usually headed by the leader of the hidden village in the presence of the council—if any—, judging the accused and solely rendering their judgement with the advice of the spectating council. Allied tribunals were a recent concept from after the Third Great War, given how more and more nations and villages of the continent reached out to each other for alliances and interrelating.
For the sake of being impartial and in hopes of sustaining the alliance after judgement had been rendered, allied tribunals were overseen by a neutral party that was allied to both parties, so that the judging party would also have something significant to lose if the alliance between the arguing parties fell apart. With alliances, there was always heads butting or disagreement that could escalate to outright battles, so only the parties immediately affected would attend and the trial wouldn't be televised. Any record of the judgement would be duplicated for both parties to possess, and the judging party would ceremonially burn their copy.
In Konoha and Suna's case, any major argument they had was presented to the Leader of Hidden Waterfall.
"From what I was able to glean off Kakashi, Lord Hokage won't bar Lord Hyuuga from attending the tribunal," Baki said scratchily, doing his best not to look at his Genin team.
"Take Toki and go to the Konoha delegation." Rasa face his cowering youngest child, curled into a tight ball inside the cylinder. "Tell the Hokage I would like us to speak."
"Yes, Lord Kazekage, sir," and Baki left the tent with a bow.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Minato met Rasa on the road between their tents, guarded behind at a distance by their respective shinobi.
The Kazekage exhaled, shaking his head at the steely stare levelled at him from his long-time friend, "Minato—"
"Before you begin," Minato shot a look over his shoulder and Kurenai narrowed her eyes, mutely gnashing her teeth and standing strong at ease before Hinata's hospital tent. Asuma set a gentle hand on her shoulder and the woman snapped her head to her, her red-ringed eyes tore up anew and her fiancé eased her away, pulling the others with him away to give the Hokage privacy.
Kakashi lingered, throwing a cautious eye to the Kazekage's side of the road, before he subtly nodded to his former teacher, Minato, and wandered off with his hands in his pockets. The Suna Jounin bowed to their Kage and marched off in the opposite direction the Konoha Jounin had gone.
"Brother," Minato addressed the Kazekage familiarly, placing both hands on the Kazekage's shoulders while the Sand leader set his hands on the Hokage's shoulders as well. "I know you weren't involved in this mess."
"I would never endanger our alliance with such foolishness," Rasa spoke strongly, the hard gaze he returned to the Hokage cracking ever so slightly. "But I understand the position you are in."
"I'm afraid our alliance will never be the same."
"Our villages can both still grow from this ordeal, brother."
Minato faintly smiled, squeezing Rasa's shoulders a little. "And here I thought I was the hopeful one."
Both of them knew what was going to happen if the tribunal didn't proffer a suitable resolution to the ordeal.
The Hyuuga would demand blood, Rasa would refuse. For the sake of his dead wife, Rasa would refuse to kill his youngest son. The Hyuuga would singlehandedly splinter the Konoha-Suna alliance by withdrawing their shinobi and resource support from Suna. Even if the other clans of the Leaf increased their support to offset this, it would lead to a massive Hyuuga revolt.
During the Third Hokage's time, an imminent Uchiha revolt that had been stewing and festering since the time of the Second Hokage had been successfully abated when Minato was named the successor, pacifying the Uchiha that a capable and accomplished distant relative of the clan was in the seat of power.
Minato was still very well a dictator, and he could order the Hyuuga clan to stand down, but that would only push the Hyuuga further away from the village and give them space to stew on their hatred. Hinata might not have been seen in such a good light by her father, that much Minato was well aware of, but she was still beloved in her clan.
Hiashi Hyuuga would fight for clan pride and his clan would bay for blood.
Losing Hizashi Hyuuga, Hiashi's twin, to Kumo without reconciliation nearly resulted in Konoha splintering if not for the tactful concessions Minato made to appease the clan.
Minato wasn't sure he could keep the Hyuuga clan calm for this one.
"I want us to settle this outside of the tribunal. Quickly," Rasa said in a strong voice, nodding to his counterpart. "Let us go into the Kage Summit on the same page and face Yagura, unified. If Kumo, Iwa and Kiri see the cracks between us, they will most certainly capitalize on it."
"What do you have in mind?"
Rasa faltered, shutting his eyes and tilting his head down.
Minato gave him a moment.
"…Temari and Kankuro are no longer Suna shinobi. They will no longer be allowed to bear weapons or go anywhere near a training ground."
Minato nodded, stoic. "For their safety, they won't be allowed to travel to Konoha, at least not for a long while."
Rasa agreed, nodding once.
"What about Gaara?"
"I cannot allow them to kill my son…and I cannot depower my village by providing them with the one tail…"
This one was more painful for the Kazekage to say.
Minato gave him another moment.
Then the Kazekage's shoulders became stronger and his dark stare clashed against Minato's cool eyes.
"After this matter with Yagura has been put to rest, and the safety of our villages is assured…the Hyuuga can have my head."
Authors note
Done.
The next chapter will be ready on Friday.
What are your thoughts on the development so far?
Tell me 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.
