Note : Here is chapter 5 which is cut in half to stay between 10 and 20k words. This chapter and chapter 6 are 26k and 43k words respectively, so there will be several parts and will stop at points that I didn't anticipate when writing it at the time, which makes it feel like the chapter ends on a cliffhanger. But I'll try to post the second part soon.
Chapter size : 12500 words
Two Oceans
part 1
Jiraiya
October 11, 1000, 5 :00pm
Land of Fire
Perched on the huge branch of an oak tree, one leg dangling in the air and the other folded over the notebook he held in his hands, he placed his pen on the paper sheet.
"You kept your word, you came back." the young woman exclaimed tearfully, her hands crossed under her watery face, preaching to the face of the man kneeling before her.
"Did you doubt that I would come back, Himiko-chan? asked the man in a honeyed tone.
"I never did. I always believed in your return."
Stepping towards him, Himiko slid her phalanges under the man's chin, forcing his attention.
"Get up, Keisuke-kun, and don't call me that anymore. We made a promise to each other, have you forgotten?"
With a fevered look, Keisuke rose and contemplated the angel dressed in her white kimono. He then gave her a grin that he had not expressed for several years.
A smile.
"I have not forgotten, my queen."
"I am no longer your queen, from now on I am your wife."
Detaching his attention from the notebook and letting a perverse look distort his features, he dipped his hand inside his thin green jacket and red hoari and pulled out a pair of the latest binoculars.
Without hesitation and drooling slightly, he moved the object across his field of vision and scanned, more than a hundred meters from his illicit position, the steam of the famous hot springs of Nagoya, one of the largest cities in the Fire Territory, in the south of it.
"Oh, oh, oh! Here are some beautiful steep mountains."
Keeping on playing the mountaineer for long minutes, he finally took his eyes off the bouncing, disproportionate pair of mountains to dive back into his writing.
With a firm movement, Keisuke slid his hand down the spine of his queen and forcefully pressed her huge chest against her prominent breasts.
"From this day, I will be yours and you will be mine, Himiko-chan."
Blushing and struggling to breathe as her chest was compressed, the young queen could only turn away her shameful expression and tighten her soaked crotch.
"K-k-Keisuke-kun..."
"J-j-Jiraiya-sama!"
Completely immersed in his erotic writing and about to enter what was going to be the apotheosis of two hundred pages of waiting, the surprise of hearing the howling of his name below made him lose his balance on his perch.
As his long white hair twirled as he fell about ten meters, he swung his hand into the void in front of him, hoping, in an unexpected attempt, to clutch his inspiration. "Himiko... chan!"
His encounter with the ground raised a cloud of dust which, revealing his arm still stretched towards the top of the oak, dissipated as quickly as his disproportionate ideas.
"J-jiraiya-sama!"
Hatefully turning his gaze to the howl of his name, he watched, wide-eyed, the small yellow batrachian standing breathless, its two front paws respectfully held in his direction.
"Sorry to bother y..."
"Oi... Gamasuichi." he cut him off, still lying in the dirt. "Do you even know what you just did?" he said angrily, now sitting on solid ground.
Pointing at the mammal, he then let his anger explode.
"You just shattered the dream of millions of men across the peninsula, do you know how hard it is to reach that inspira..."
"Excuse me, but I don't have time to listen to your gibberish." cut him off in turn the so-called Gamasuichi, still trying to catch his breath.
Lowering his accusing arm as the batrachian's voice faded, he firmly grasped his thick green pants and glared hatefully at his young interlocutor.
"This better be important or I'm going to..."
"I'm here regarding the birth."
With a simple sentence, coming out of his gullet in the middle of the immense forest, the toad managed to immediately calm his ardor, making him forget everything that had just happened and even snatching him a cheerful smile.
The joy he felt wrinkled his eyelids, taking away a bit of his faithful messenger's sight.
"You should have said so earlier. Did he send you?" he asked, letting a curious look reopen his eyes. "It's two weeks before the announced date... but who cares?" he added, clapping both his hands in excitement.
"Tell me he has his mother's eyes. I fear he will never be successful with women if he takes after his father."
The smile on his face gradually faded before disappearing completely as he watched the toad's saddened expression. The yellow cheeks of this latter, inflating with the liking of its jerky breathing, left him hardly any doubt, removing him all cheerfulness.
In a last hope of being wrong, he allowed a form of impassivity to spread over his expression.
"Oi, Gamasuichi, why are you pulling that face?"
[...]
The red getas slammed on the fifty-year-old wood and stopped at the edge of the immense wall.
Sitting on the edge and letting his legs fall into the forty-meter gap of the palisade, he watched the sleeping, mourning village, respecting a curfew and recovering from a heavy debacle.
His attention wandered, miles from his elevated position, in contemplation of the fourth face carved into the rock that overlooked the village and the wall on which it was perched.
"What happened, kid?"
A sigh escaped from his being without response.
If, two months earlier, when he had gone back on the road, he had been told that this would be the last time he would share a meal with them, the last time he would observe their amorous airs, he would not have believed it. He would even have laughed at this fabulation.
Yet, one of the greatest and most valiant shinobi he had ever met and trained, as well as his wife, one of the most fearsome and loving kunoichis of this peninsula, had died. Together, at the same time.
In one night.
What should have been the happiest day of their lives had turned into their last.
This morbid story could have ended there. One tragic night. A final sacrifice allowing the village to prosper and putting an end to the offensive of a mythical predator. But, like any good disaster scenario, a layer had to be added.
To add a part of incomprehension.
Raising his sullen expression from the village surrounded by almost complete darkness, he placed it on the third face about twenty meters in diameter, also carved out of the mountain and overlooking an immense scarlet palace.
In the space of a single night, the two emblematic figures of the Leaf had lost their lives.
If the bodies of the Lord Fourth and his wife had been found not far from the battlefield where they had fought the demon, the bodies of the Lord Third and his unit were still missing to this day.
And, leaving aside the utopian possibility that they were still alive, this was, only one year after the end of the Third Great War and the arbitrary truce that had followed it, the worst possible scenario imaginable.
When a situation such as this occurred, when events followed one another without reason, without explanation, one always had to ask the right question and, for this particular scenario, it was as simple to conceive as the next decade on the horizon.
Who benefited most from the disappearance of the two greatest bearers of the will of fire, the representatives of the two Senju's learning?
For the second time, a sigh escaped from his being, but this time he had found the answer to his question.
Adjusting the huge red and white scroll he carried on his back, he placed the inside of his hands on the edge of the wall and the next moment let himself fall into the village. The friction of his fall with the air intensified the roar in his eardrums before he finally landed on the concrete roof of a large building.
Repeating his gesture, he stepped over the railing of the building and threw himself once again into the void below in order to touch the ground. His getas sank slightly into the earth as he began what he knew would be his last wanderings in the village that had seen him born.
He walked for several minutes through the empty streets and the wreckage, having traveled several hundred meters, before stopping in the middle of a dilapidated alley, lit only by the half-moon in the starry sky.
How could this birth have gone so wrong?
Kneeling in a crater with a strange shape, similar to the passage of a gargantuan animal, he placed the tip of his fingers on the packed ground and, comparing the depth of the print to all those he had just crossed, only one conclusion presented itself to his analytical mind.
He had not freed himself naturally. He had been invoked, right here.
His attention wandered for a few moments over the surrounding houses, completely gutted, even destroyed, before stopping on the cuts dating from several days and sinking, for the largest of them, at more than five meters deep, right into the wood, concrete, and soil.
How could this happen? Who could have been capable of such a feat? Who could have known about the birth?
Getting up, he set his sights on the northwestern part of the village, not very visible from its loss of altitude. One of the few places where light reflected off the Hokage Mountain, one of the few districts that did not respect the curfew and the authority of the stone faces that watched over them.
Leaving his suppositions behind him, he resumed his taciturn walk, observing this time, beyond the remains of the dwellings that surrounded him, the first two faces dominating in every way their successors.
The two Senju who had initiated this whole story.
Having, with gusto, spread ideals to the future generations, to the men and women they had trained, until reaching him at his youngest age. And who, in return for the learning he had received, had passed on the torch of their will to the generation that had succeeded him, to, in the end, reach this result.
Taking a deep breath, he stopped in front of the huge wooden doors of the scarlet palace.
It was sad to see.
With a simple leap, he propelled himself over the wood and concrete walls to land in front of the building entrance.
Opening the door without even denying to knock, he penetrated inside the building plunged in the half-light and, going through a hall and passing in front of a reception empty of any consideration, he climbed the steps of the immense spiral staircase under the noise of its getas proclaiming his arrival.
Perhaps this was the answer to his real question. Maybe this way of seeing things, of living, based on a system preaching economic and military superiority was not, in itself, the way to go.
This system would never bring peace, even if it succeeded in unifying the world.
The strange symbiosis of colors generated by the weak light of the lunar star passing through the many windows and reflecting on the beige walls of the enclosure, tinted his thoughts with an incomplete sensation. An emptiness within his thoughts.
A feeling of betrayal.
Climbing the last step and with a firm hand, he grabbed the handle of one of the many doors of the corridor and rushed inside the oval room. His attention was lost for a moment on the desk facing the entrance, where, laid out on the wood, a pile of paper was waiting for the return of his Hokage.
He then placed his melancholic airs on the windows that followed the curves of the wall and gave a splendid view of the mourning village.
Whatever may happen, whatever may occur, this system, these villages, benefiting the strongest and despising the weakest, always ended up generating radical, chaotic thoughts, ready to crush all the people standing in their way in order to make their ideal prosper.
In order to impose, in their own way, a lasting peace.
But, in order to have a winner, it was necessary to have a loser. Resulting in an endless cycle.
The melancholy on his face vanished in an instant, being replaced by an impassive and cold expression, as he examined the back of the man, standing next to one of the two cupboards in the room, observing, through the only open window, the landscape that it offered him.
"I was wondering when you were going to make your appearance."
Under the muffled echoes of the man's tirade and letting the atypical sound of his wooden gettas declare the movement of his legs, he moved to the edge of the rectangular desk and grabbed the small frame that decorated the furniture.
Standing for long seconds doing nothing but contemplating the two smiling faces on the photograph, he finally extracted the picture.
"I was hoping to find you here." he replied, placing the empty frame where he had found it.
Slipping the photo inside his thin green jacket and red hoari, he watched the man turn around in his direction and, dressed in a black and white kimono, gave in to him with the same expression he wore; an air mixing both contempt and admiration.
"And to what do I owe the attention of one of the Three Great Sannins?"
Slightly lowering his face covered with scars, the man, making one head less and approaching sixty, let his light brown eyes pierce his, black of hate.
"I don't know what you have in mind." admitted the Great Sannin in a calm voice, opposite to what the expression on his face was expressing. "But know that you will never get your hands on him."
As he had expected it, the threat that he hovered over the head of his interlocutor did not bother him, quite the contrary, it was only the instigator of the light smile that he let appear.
"You seem to be convinced by what you say." remarked the old man in an equally monotonous tone. "Does your honor have so little importance in your eyes? "
Moving slowly to the other side of the desk and accompanied by another question burning his lips, the man, under the slight movements of his black hair, brought his gaze back to his six-foot tall.
"Is a life as a deserter really what you want?"
He knew, even before answering, that he was going to fall into his game. A hobby with the sole purpose of keeping him out of his way, out of this village.
However, as if he had been waiting for this, he did not show anything and, with an aggressive tone of voice, indulged in this game.
"Moderate your words, you are not in a position to threaten me, no matter how many dogs you hide under your tunic."
A long silence followed his answer, during which the man in front of him, immobile, his hands and his cane arranged in his back, observed him without blinking, without expressing the least emotion.
It seemed that it had been a long time since anyone had spoken to him this way.
For the first time since the beginning of their exchange, the sixty-year-old let appears a form of annoyance.
"Out of respect for Hiruzen, for whom I have a deep admiration despite what you may believe, I will be magnanimous in response to your insolence." he announced, pausing for a moment before speaking again. "If you disappear from this peninsula and never come back here, he will live."
It was his turn to smile. A smile that made the inexpressive air on the other side of the desk reappear.
What he had just proposed to him reflected something that he knew humiliating, and this in spite of the straight and proud posture that the man in front of him externalized: he feared him more than what he let pretend.
But the smile which adorned his thirty-year-old face reflected especially the obsolete compromise having just been offered to him.
On the one hand, he would never respect his word, the stakes were much too high to let the child live. And on the other hand, to make an arrangement, it was necessary to be able to execute what was being proposed.
This was not the case.
A shadow, creeping through the open window to his right, came to a quick stop in front of the desk before kneeling in front of the white tunic.
"He disappeared."
As if it were a matter of pride, of ego, and despite what his subordinate had just said, the old man facing him continued to stare at him and, with a slight nod, the immaculate mask kneeling in front of the desk withdrew as quickly as it had arrived. Only then, and understanding that he was nothing more than a copy, did the man open his mouth to convey his message to the original.
"I withdraw, on this day, your title of Sannin and ninja. You will be, from this moment, considered as a traitor and deserter of the village. You will be chased and hunted day and night, without respite. This child, like you, will be an enemy of Fire and will never be safe, will never know peace, until the day he dies."
The expression under his long white hair remained unaffected despite the words.
As he had understood even before he entered her game, the impassive air on the other side of the desk had planned everything from the beginning. He had known that he would come and take the child away from him and, in the same way, he had known that his gesture would take him out of his path.
Leaving him free to reach his goal.
Understanding, in front of the silence that resounded in the oval room, that the powers belonging to the man had finished their monologue, he allowed himself to answer.
"Out of respect to my master who always kept you by his side, I will not spill your blood today, Shimura Danzō. But, in the name of Kushina and Minato, I will promise you something." he swore in the middle of his late student's desk.
"Maybe at this moment you think you have won, but know that you have just made the biggest mistake of your life, the one that will lead you to your ruin. Remember his face. When you will think that you are invulnerable, all-powerful, and on top of this peninsula, he will be there to make you understand the meaning of the word downfall. He will be the one to turn your dreams into nightmares. More than a country, more than a war, he will be the one you fear above all else. Take advantage of the place that fear and misfortune will offer you in this desperate village, while you still can. Not today, not tomorrow, but one day the mistake you just made will come back to haunt you and, take my word for it, on that day you will regret not making an attempt on his life when you still could."
His imposing six-foot presence vanished in a cloud of smoke, leaving his thoughts to join his creator already miles away from the gangrenous village.
Alone and standing still in the middle of the office, Danzō watched the two smiles on the photograph dissipate the ephemeral smoke and fall in several random stutters, before settling gently at his feet.
With a squinted look, he then observed the golden-haired face, beginning what he had just been advised.
[...]
A fly settled on the orange bark of a thousand-year-old tree and began several abrupt and random movements. Before it could take flight again, a tongue caught the fly inside the gullet of a creature wearing camouflage of wood.
Several chirps went up in the cool air, in perfect coordination with the howl of an infant that threw the wildlife surrounding the chameleon into complete silence.
Inevitably drawing his fearful, spinning eyes, the reptile observed the tiny window of a small house implanted in a giant red mushroom. A white hair shifted inside and moved towards a patched-up crib where the crying gradually faded, allowing the birds to chirp again.
The azure irises stretched their tiny arms toward the man who, slightly bent so as not to touch the ceiling, let the paltry strength of the newborn clutch his index finger.
"I know it's a lot to ask, but please take care of him."
Two small toads, standing in the middle of the dwelling, looked at the little human being with a tender expression on one side, and an accusing look on the other.
"Do you even know what you've just done, Gaki?" shouted the white-haired male toad, dressed in a dark gray cloth that covered his entire body except for his little green head.
A blow, orchestrated by his wife on his right, identically dressed and a few inches shorter that her purple hair counterbalanced, immediately silenced the old toad's laments.
"Don't worry, we will cherish him like our own child." she promised him.
A saddened smile materialized on the face of the thirty-year-old.
"Thank you."
The two batrachians approached the cradle and took a closer look at the infant. Then the soft voice of the wife spoke up.
"When are you going to come back?"
Sighing, the Sannin turned his attention to the only window in the house and observed the colorful flora.
"When this whole story has calmed down, when he can live safely by my side."
Walking over to the crib, the male toad met the look in the crib. A look he had seen here years before. The newborn's screams began again and, closing his eyes, he released the hand he had been trying to trap.
A second blow, on the back of the old toad's skull, echoed through the room.
"Oi! No need to hit me so hard old skin!"
"Can't you see you're scaring him old fart?!"
Smiling at the scene, he bowed to the two hermits, surprised by his gesture.
"I must go now, I leave him in your hands."
The two toads looked at each other for a moment, before returning their attention to the child.
"We will educate him as it should be, as his parents would have wanted."
Sakura
December 9, 1020, 7 :36am
Land of Fire, Konoha
Out of breath, she moved the kunai along her wrist to block the katana which struck her sharp protection without mercy. The sparks created by the clash of the two weapons raised several spurts of smoke on contact with the endless drizzle and only increased the rage on her face tenfold.
Dodging a volley of shurikens aimed at her vital points, she swung her foot at her assailant and hit his torso with full force, sending him flying into the rafters of a barn, which turned crimson red in a thud.
Continuing her progress through the narrow, smoky streets and burning buildings, her gaze rose towards the rain. The small black spot grazing the shadowy clouds, despite the distance that separated them, made her feel a kind of suffocation.
Jumping in a coordinated way on the walls of the alley immersed in the darkness, she landed on the roof of one of the many surrounding houses.
Her attention got lost for a fraction of a second on the thousands of browns, beiges, and green vests that clashed mercilessly and as far as the eye could see under the rain, before she began to observe once again, jaw contracted, the entity in the stormy sky.
Rushing to the edge of the roof on which she was standing while dodging as best she could the exchanges of blows and projectiles that were multiplying around her, she raised her fist which suddenly began to release a bluish glow as well as a light smoke.
With a raging scream, she threw herself as hard as she could into the street full of brown vests.
As soon as the black glove surrounding the fingers of her right fist made contact with the soaked earth in the midst of the enemy troops, the condensed chakra inside instantly spread to every square inch of the alley.
The next moment, a low-magnitude earthquake roared its fury and cracked the ground in a heave of dust that fractured into several dozen tons of rock and rubble.
Under the howls of terror heard in Tsuchi's ranks, the boulders fell back into the crater without warning, finishing to bury alive the few survivors.
Extracting herself from the dust that her offensive had raised, her breathing jerked, she landed in the adjacent alley before, once again, observing the sky with a worried look.
In a reflex that she had little control over, she swung over the pile of lifeless bodies to her right and watched as the huge fireball, some ten meters in diameter, swept down the alleyway before reaching the street next to it.
She watched helplessly as the Katon ended its trajectory in the rush of a green unit and the foundations of a wooden house that did not resist a single second. Getting up as quickly as she could, as the dwelling collapsed on many of her comrades in the street, her eyes widened in astonishment as she watched the blade slice through the air toward her inadvertence.
Grabbing the arm of one of the corpses that was wading in the bloodbath where she was lying, she did not, to her surprise, need to pray for the green-jacketed woman ulna to resist the sharp blade.
A smoky black-haired shadow took the paltry force of the katana with the small blade he held in his fist, before slicing through the teenager's windpipe with ease, causing him to bleed to death in a panicked choke.
Taking a few unbalanced steps, the brown vest collapsed against the wall of the alley in a scarlet trail.
"Have you seen my students around?" asked his savior, in his thirties and with a cigarette in his mouth.
Just as she had done several times in the seconds that had just passed, the man raised his attention to the drizzle that covered the sky. "I have a bad feeling about this."
Getting up with a slight limp, she noticed, with a grimace that tore the tension from her face, the kunai stuck in her thigh. The adrenaline gradually falling, she understood that she had thrown herself on it during her dodge.
The stabbing pain increased tenfold as she removed, with clenched teeth and a sharp blow, the blade deeply embedded in her flesh.
"I have no idea." she replied under the absinthe light that spread in the alley and on her leg.
The lie that came out of her lips did not go unnoticed by the man.
It was a half-lie.
She only knew where the body of one of them was.
"I see..."
The man stopped dead in his sentence, and with a surprised look on his face, as well as that of everyone else for miles around, he fearfully raised his attention to the heavens.
The rain had just stopped.
Under the strange lull and with a slow gesture, she stopped treating herself and in turn raised her gaze to what she thought was a hallucination.
The kunai that had just lacerated her must have been poisoned, there was no other explanation.
For the first time in three days, the sun's rays cracked the clouds and draped their gentle warmth over the desolation they had scattered across the battlefield, across Doroppu.
For the first time in three days and in the seconds that had just passed, no one died.
The remaining fifteen thousand shinobi, spread out for miles around, watched the sky, completely bereft.
As the man in front of her was about to speak again, their eardrums began to whistle, their noses to clog, and their jaws to clench, as if they had suddenly been thrown into a highly pressurized atmosphere.
The next moment, a strange gravity fell on their shoulders, partially immobilizing them.
The rubble, the dust, the walls of dirt, the flaming balls, the lacerating gusts and the watery pareidolia, gravitating in the air and visible from their hiding place, collapsed and rushed without explanation towards the mainland, generating thousands of successive explosions and annihilating hundreds of lives.
Despite the noise, no one moved. In fact, no one could.
"Wha... what.."
The force redoubled and forced her to kneel in the pool of blood.
She watched helplessly as most of the men and women on the soaked roofs went through the tiles and sheets that did not resist their weight.
Dozens of buildings began to creak and capsize, before collapsing in an uproar of dust, to the general incomprehension.
To the general terror.
She looked back at the man who had just helped her and was surprised to see him lying face down.
The heaviness she felt was much stronger than she had imagined.
The implausible silence that occurred in this confrontation of thousands of lives added a layer of opacity and supernaturalness to this strange force.
This one gained in intensity, tackling her in turn to the ground in an angry grimace.
"Tell them... that... I am... sorry..."
Pupils dull and dilated, she observed the still-lit cigarette on the soggy ground next to the man's face, using his last strength to turn his attention to the only chance she represented.
It was at this very moment, when everyone thought that the worst was behind them, that this strange heaviness was going to go away, that a divine voice rose over the restless anthill that they were, and that the cataclysm began.
A rumbling, emanating from the very core of the Earth more than a kilometer from their positions, generated a gargantuan pulse. Several times the size of the village, it engulfed the southern part of the battlefield in a fraction of a second.
The impulse raised in a tremendous roar a wall of eighty meters high formed by rubble, bodies, rocks, trees, houses as well as everything it could carry on its way, and swept absolutely all, leaving behind it only a clean and compacted ground.
Eyes wide at the phenomenon moving in their direction at the speed of sound, as thousands of screams and cries for help were heard all around them, she used a phenomenal amount of chakra to manage to reach her arm towards the man.
All she had to do was touch him.
A simple contact.
With his chin and body glued to the floor, he simply smiled back at her.
He knew.
He knew that she would be the only one to survive.
A beastly howl escaped from between her clenched teeth where drool, mixing with her tears, dripped from her lips.
A meter. Less than a meter.
With an immeasurable effort, she progressed a few inches in his direction, barely managing to crawl through the mud and blood.
"Thank you."
She stopped in her tracks, stunned and breathless, and watched with a livid look as tears fell down on the man's face.
The smoke of the cigarette emitted its final emanation and went out without a sound.
The walls of the buildings began to crumble under the ringing of her eardrums and the agonizing screams of her neighbors.
Muffling her own.
The pressurized blast pulverized the concrete structures and absorbed the blasts, which spread like wildfire inside the dusty, sonorous wave.
The ensuing earthquake made her lose most of her senses.
Then, only, the purple diamond on her forehead broke under the streaming of her tears.
The blow struck them without mercy. It charred the skin of her face, which reconstituted itself in an instant under the mauve stigmata spreading on her body, before making disappear the charred smile of the man facing her.
In turn, she got sucked into the hot air and the swirling concrete.
The startle that woke her from her sleep gave her an indescribable headache and prevented her from making the slightest movement for several seconds.
Concealing her emerald irises behind her eyelids surrounded by dark circles and a grimace of pain, she settled the palm of her hand on her sweaty forehead and her candy pink hair.
She straightened up painfully on her bed and opened her eyes in order to observe the luminous rays which came in through the half-open shutters of her room and which ended their race on her bare and wet chest, still under the shock of what she had just lived again.
She had this feeling of being in a washing machine drum sent at full speed, as if she was waking up from a monumental bender.
Taking a deep breath, she settled her second hand on her face to pull her hair back on her neck and raised her gaze to the heights of the room, hoping to calm the unbearable headache.
Yet she couldn't remember drinking a single drop of alcohol in the last eight months.
She threw a glance at the sun and, understanding the reason of her uneasiness, stretched in a grimace pulled by her migraine. She then removed the thick blanket which covered the bottom of her body before settling on the parquet floor of the room.
Perhaps it was because she had only slept two hours. Five if one counts the night before.
Like a routine that had set in and from which she could not escape, she grabbed the towel on the floor and crossed the darkness of her living room. The next second she grabbed the remote control on the leather of the sofa.
The images of the silent television in his back disappeared, throwing the room into darkness a little more.
Half asleep, she continued on her way and stopped at the kitchen counter. She bent over on her toes and opened the cupboard hanging over the coffee maker. Pulling out a cup and a small cylindrical box, she placed the cup on the machine before placing the coffee powder inside. She then pressed one of the many buttons and turned around as the machine whirred through the apartment.
Elbows behind her back, she leaned on the marble and observed the chair in front of her with a sigh.
Faintly lit by the outside light that seeped in through the kitchen shutters, it was the only chair pulled out of the wooden table.
She stared at it with fascination, as if she was waiting for it to speak to her.
The echoes of a sweet voice replayed in her thoughts. Reminding her of what, apart from her stupidity, had kept her awake part of the night.
Reminding her of what had disturbed her so much.
"Long before his disappearance, going against his commitments and oaths, Shisui secretly investigated the disappearances that took place during the fourth war."
With a simple sentence reaching her curious expression on the couch of her apartment, the little sound that remained from the television was silenced. Only the untimely light changes of the TV set continued to animate the two rooms.
"The disappearances, the deaths. During a war, this is not surprising. You get used to it, you accept it more and more easily. It's part of everyday life."
She could not express how true his words were.
The first time she had experienced death face to face, she was only eight years old at the time, and despite everything she had experienced since then, she remembered it as if it were yesterday.
Her class and a dozen others had been sent to Toyama village, west of Konoha, bordering Kawa the Land of Rivers, in order to get a taste of what a battlefield could be like. In order to prepare herself to become cannon fodder.
She had to admit that the learning was memorable.
An explosive scroll hidden in a cart from Kumo, not far from her position.
Fast, clean, efficient.
It had exploded in the middle of a group of aspiring ninjas, who had taken the blast before being scattered, allowing her to be where she was at the moment.
That day, she had lost the hearing in her left ear for several days, along with fourteen of her classmates. However, despite her hearing problem, she had perfectly heard the lamentations of the parents and, there too, she remembered their faces as if it were yesterday.
Strangely, she remembered very little of the second time she had seen death up close, and the same was true for most of the following ones, as if it was, in the end, nothing more than an ordinary event.
It was as if this was a part of everyday life.
"Despite this, he was convinced that these disappearances were not the result of the conflict. That they were related."
At first, she didn't really know what he was getting at, since these stories had not affected her directly, so she had kept very little memory of them. But, in the space of a few emergences of forgotten memories, many familiar faces came back to her, bringing up many reminiscences of her childhood as well as the sorrow of people who had been close to her.
"When a unit went missing or was found dead, inside the squad was always a man or woman from the same faction. And each time, the families of those particular victims would lay low. As if a threat was hanging over their heads."
She still remembered when she entered the academy as a six-year-old, two years after the war was declared. The repeated and prolonged absences of her classmates, mourning the death of their family members. The same children with whom she used to laugh and have fun and who ended up by not smiling at all.
These same children who had grown up, blossomed, and whose death she had learned about only several months after they had been killed.
"As was the case with Shikaku Nara and his recon unit, shortly after the war began. As well as those of Chōza Akimichi and Inoichi Yamanaka. All of them went missing without a single trace."
Her attention turned away from the silent announcers and sadly lowered to her fingers, playing awkwardly with the buttons on the remote.
She remembered that too. At least she remembered the day Shikamaru had told her about it.
She didn't know that day if it was anger or disappointment that the Nara felt when he spoke to her about his father. But one thing was certain, there had never been any question of a conspiracy in his words.
His father had died because of the war.
But now that she was hearing all this, knowing the Nara's faculty of pondering, she wondered.
If, like most of the shinobi in this village, he too was playing the game of ignorance.
"For many years, Shisui tried to find the reasons behind these deaths, or rather to find the evidence. Because he knew the reasons, it was enough to look into the subject to realize it. What few people dared to do. In the sixty-three units that disappeared, there were shinobi who shared the same ideals. Those going against the authority of their Hokage. Going against Danzō."
That's when the bomb dropped, and that's when she understood the reason for sealing her apartment.
Leaving her slumped position on the sofa, she straightened up slightly to turn her disillusioned gaze towards the kitchen.
"He started digging a few years before the war ended, taking advantage of every spare moment to search for answers. But he realized soon enough that there was no room for improvement. The seasons had already cleaned up the remaining sites of disappearance and the families were under constant and close surveillance. He could have used his eyes to get answers, but he knew he couldn't afford it, he couldn't let any chance of being traced back to him, to our clan. Our eyes are not infallible, recognizing the past effects of an interrogation belonging to our dōjutsu is not easy, but that doesn't mean it's impossible."
The Uchiha clan and their Dōjutsu. One of the two clans that founded Konoha. The family that did the most work on the battlefield during the last war, possessing one of the most dangerous pupils that this peninsula has to offer.
The sharingan.
And the man sitting with his back to her in the chair of her kitchen was one of its greatest users.
Uchiha Itachi.
Three sharp knocks on the door of her apartment in perfect coordination with the stop of the coffee machine behind her back pulled her out of her thoughts.
Covering her body with the towel she still held in her left hand, she grabbed the hot cup from the coffee pot before turning her stunned expression back to the darkened entrance.
It was sad to say, but in the eight months she had lived here, this was the first time the wooden door had sounded in her apartment, she had almost forgotten the characteristic sound of someone trying to start a conversation.
Besides the fact that very few people knew she lived here, except perhaps her parents who were too busy with their business to allow themselves to cross the village, she was just not the kind of person to expect visitors. On the contrary, she systematically avoided inviting people to her house, preferring to keep this place as a haven of peace, where she could forget all her problems.
Where she could breathe without being disturbed.
Lately, some people didn't bother and invited themselves. But she could understand them, after all, sneaking in behind her back was much easier than waiting for an invitation that would never come.
Watching the shadows dance across the light from the corridor that seeped in at the bottom of the door, she settled the outline of the white mug on her lip in order to take a sip of the coffee.
Who could it be? She had never sensed them.
Savoring what she considered the liquid that managed to keep her alive, she put the cup down regretfully on her kitchen table before crossing the room and stopping in amazement at her bathroom door.
The entrance was literally hammered with blows.
Whoever it was, he didn't seem like the patient type.
In a reflex, she tried to grab the key ring from her coat pocket hanging on the wall, but remembering that, as usual, she had not locked the door, she changed her mind and finally grabbed the handle to pull it.
Her emerald irises settled at first on the hand suspended in the heights of the corridor, about to violently hit the oak wood again, before settling on the six pairs of sooty eyes.
The surprised expression she had worn during her crossing only lasted half a second in front of the six men prostrate and gave way to a veil of distrust that fell on her face.
She looked at the traditional green and black Leaf uniform they were wearing, before staring at them one by one and coming to one conclusion: she didn't know any of them and, more importantly, they all looked more or less alike.
Only certain scars on their faces and the place where their headbands were attached differentiated them. On the forehead for four of them and on the leg and right shoulder for the last two.
But what she noticed most of all, and what made her realize that if she hadn't opened her door, it would certainly have shattered, was the fact that their black hair, short, straight or in spikes, couldn't hide the condescending expression they were proudly displaying.
That confident posture, making them feel above everyone else.
She knew, at the precise moment where they decided in unison to look at her attire, that they were not in the wrong apartment.
One hand settled on the doorway and pretending not to notice their misplaced gaze, she moved her emerald irises behind the imposing build of the man who had mishandled her entrance, where, hidden in the thin opening of the door of the neighboring apartment, the both frightened and desolate pupils of a young woman were watching the scene with fear.
Letting a false smile take possession of her features, she turned her attention back to the men gathered in the corridor.
She turned her attention back to the members of the Konoha police. The members of the Uchiha clan.
"Can I help you?"
After a few seconds of silence, only the man, being at less than one meter from her, ventured on the high part of her body to stop on her face. The five others, letting appear a sly smile under their black and unhealthy pupils, continued to leer without embarrassment the forms of her hips.
"Haruno Sakura?" asked in a distinct voice the one who seemed to be the head of the unit.
Stoic in front of this most rhetorical question, she did not answer directly, wondering, at first, what he was getting at.
Because, as she had guessed earlier, and leaving aside the fact that everyone in this village, without exception, knew her face or at least her hair color, it was clear that the famished expressions they displayed exteriorized only one thing: they knew what door they had knocked on.
So, what was the point of the question?
The answer came to her as quickly as the man's attention flashed to the towel that covered her breast.
A protocol.
They were there on a mission.
She was their mission.
"Yes, that's me. "
The men in front of her were part of a service whose purpose was to maintain order and security in the village, but, strangely and like her neighbor who had just closed her door as quietly as possible, she felt more threatened than protected by their presence.
It was no secret that since they had been granted this privilege by the second Hokage, Tobirama Senju, decades earlier, the clan had taken on a life of its own, allowing themselves to break the rules to enforce order with a masterful hand.
And, unfortunately for her at that moment, a master, they had finally found one.
Inviting the head of the Uchiha clan, Fugaku, to sit on the small council, Danzō Shimura had offered even more freedom to their pseudo-police and had gotten his hands on their every move. Allowing them to do all sorts of law breaking on his behalf. Proliferating his dominance in the ranks of his opponents, day and night, whether by outright threat, rape, beating or even assassination.
Sometimes all four.
Not all members of the Uchiha Police were like this, fortunately, but a few were always enough to make a reputation for a set.
It was not uncommon to hear that an entire family had disappeared overnight without anyone having heard or seen anything, or at least without anyone daring to talk about it. The rumors said that they had left, that they had deserted. But everyone knew that this was not the case. These rumors were only used to satisfy their good conscience, to reassure themselves so that their comfort level would not be affected.
There was only one truth, a truth that concealed the dictatorship that everyone was trying to forget: the Uchiha Police had become nothing more than common dogs serving Danzō. And, she had to admit, just like almost everyone else in this village she had defended, she had turned a blind eye to what had happened before, during, and after the war.
She had let the rumors proliferate.
The harsh reality was something difficult to digest, she knew.
She could pretend not to see it, to prevent it from reaching her daily life, her comfort. But she had always known that sooner or later it would come knocking at her door, and when it would, it would be too late to do anything about it.
The only canine that seemed to have the ability to speak in front of her and making an extra head, grabbed a small red scroll from the satchel he carried and held it out to her impassive expression.
Releasing the doorway, she grabbed the rolled-up paper and watched, accompanied by fearful thoughts, as the man's arm folded back into the hallway and resumed his haughty posture.
She knew deep down what the scroll contained, what she was expecting to read, but even so, she hoped she was wrong.
Unrolling the message, she could not hold back the grimace that materialized on her features as her eyes flew over the fresh ink.
Not bothering to read the whole document, understanding exactly what it was about, she rolled up the paper and trapped her Hokage's writing. Then, reluctantly and accompanied by her contracted jaw, she moved away from the entrance by opening it completely before stretching, in her turn, her arm towards the interior of her apartment.
"Make yourself at home."
With a smile as smug as ever on their faces and brushing past her in a single line, four of them entered her hallway floor before inevitably reaching the immaculate tiles of her kitchen, leaving the last two, including the man in charge of the unit, on her doorstep.
The latter turned then towards his younger colleague.
"It is your turn today." he declared with an authoritative tone while following the steps of his men who were waiting for him.
Sighing loudly at the regret that materialized on his face, the young clan member settled his pernicious gaze on her towel one last time before lingering on the shapes of her body, then, muttering an inaudible curse, he finally turned into the hallway.
Like a watchdog she had not trained, he began to watch the elevator at the end of it, ready to prevent anyone from crossing the entrance he was guarding.
She knew, as she closed the door and imprisoned herself in her own apartment, that the next time she came out, nothing would be the same.
Konohamaru
December 9, 1020, 9 :10am
Land of Fire, Konoha
His elbows resting on the counter, his chin pressed against the palms of his weary hands, he observed, from inside the small beige building in which he was, the huge open doors.
Under the continuous noise of the airstream produced by the sixth southern entrance, the almond green of the swinging doors reflected in his ebony irises, letting a feeling of deep boredom shine through.
With a sigh, he slumped a little more against the wood of the counter.
It had been weeks since the skies were tarnished, and he had thought that was the cause of the lack of tourism.
His weary gaze turned to the clear blue sky, with no clouds for miles around.
The southern gates of Konohagakure had rarely seen so little traffic.
"Stop sleeping and come help me."
With a smile, he observed, about fifteen meters from his immovable position on the other side of the south exit, the small beige building, similar to his own, where about thirty people were queuing.
Or at least, there were more people who wanted to leave than return.
Pressing the button on his earpiece, he tried to distinguish his companion through the crowd, to no avail.
"Sorry, but I have to remind you that I am not allowed to leave my position."
A long silence followed, before, under the exit of the village of a large family, the voice in his ear came again.
"You bastard."
The minutes passed without his smile fading and without, as he suspected, anyone showing up at his counter, leaving him sinking a little more into his torpor.
As his eyelids closed as the wind gained in intensity, making his short chestnut hair dance, his drowsy head slipped on his fingers and woke him up in a jolt, almost making him lose his balance and letting him stare at the opal gaze less than a meter away.
Straightening up as quickly as he could inside his tiny office, caught off guard, he bowed slightly to the white tunic and the headband holding back the long black hair.
"Hi, can you please present me your registration number?"
Staring at him without moving, the man facing him pulled the single strap of his black backpack and brought it to his chest to catch a small metal card inside and hand it to him.
He took the small object and, quickly observing the five numbers engraved on the plate, turned to the keyboard on his left to type the number meticulously.
He had been lucky, a little more and...
For the second time in less than a few seconds, he stiffened while observing the name written on the small screen present in the corner of the room. His pallid look shifted at a bewildering speed to the entity on his right, before swallowing painfully.
How had he not recognized them?
Pressing one of the two buttons on a small gray box next to the keyboard, a green light lit up above the shelter, drawing the attention of the two men stationed about twenty meters from the village entrance.
Typing a few words on the keyboard, his back stiff, he promptly bowed to the man and settled his card on the wooden counter before letting a tight smile distort his face.
"Welcome back, Hyūga-san."
Retrieving what belonged to him, the man did something unusual, something he had never seen before in his more than two years in this position. This had no other effect than to make his blood run cold.
He remained motionless in front of him for more than ten seconds, even though he had clearly told him that he could move.
The only thing that reassured him enough to alleviate his panic was the fact that the man was not watching him, he seemed to be obsessed with something behind his back.
After a considerable amount of time observing the white eyes, he decided to turn his frowning eyebrows toward what fascinated the man so much and, without really understanding why, he began to observe the poster on the wooden panel where about thirty others were stapled.
Green with pink glints, he stared at the young woman drawn on it, immediately putting a name on this face known by everyone.
The only explanation that the man's sudden admiration for the poster gave him was the beauty it released, since that was what he first felt, but, returning to his initial position to make sure of his deduction, he noticed with surprise the emptiness in front of him.
Collapsing on the counter, he let his arms hang outside the concrete shack and could not hold back an anguished look. For the second time, he opened his mouth to release an ephemeral fearful breath.
Had he disturbed him in his contemplation...? He always had to get in the way of important people... after the red eyes, here came the turn of the whites.
A continuous squeak tickled his hearing and inevitably drew the vigilance of his activity, putting an end to the slightest of his thoughts.
Raising his head as quickly as he could, he blinked several times as he examined the hunched back of the old man about ten yards away.
The latter, his eyelids almost closed and not paying any attention to the place where he was, with a gait revealing an extreme quietude, pulled his cart beyond the demarcations that delimited the entrance of the village.
"O-Oi! "
Clumsily grabbing the bunch of keys hanging from his leg, he took several seconds to open the small door to his right and, sending the keys inside the green vest that dressed him, he rushed toward the old man who continued to progress.
"Stop!"
To his great relief, the old merchant stopped almost immediately and slowly turned his attention to his gesticulations, not understanding why he was yelling at him.
Arriving at the level of the cart, he immediately raised an arm in the direction of the two guards about twenty meters away, observing the scene, who relaxed.
"Do you want to end your life acting like this?"
Settling his hands against his pelvis while catching his breath, the old man observed him with an outdated look.
"What are you talking about, young man?"
"A little more and those two men over there would've jumped on you." he explained to the old man with a nod toward the inside of the village, where the two green vests were located.
Turning his face as he squinted, the old merchant focused on the blur that showed up at his glassy pupils, even more lost than he already was.
"Who? I don't see anyone."
Realizing that he would get nothing out of it, he simply shrugged.
"Forget what I just said. Instead, give me the pass to the outpost you passed." he pleaded, holding out a hand in the direction of the old man.
As he had done from the beginning, the old man took several seconds to absorb the information he requested before finally letting out a hiccup of understanding.
"Ah, yes, your comrades gave me this."
Under the smell of the oranges he was carrying and still inside the wooden frame that allowed him to tow his supplies, the old man pulled a piece of paper from inside his pocket and settled it in the palm of his outstretched hand.
Closing it over the small sheet, he bowed slightly to the merchant.
"Thank you, stay here, I'll be right back."
Making his way back to the crossing point, he came to a complete stop in his maneuvering in the middle of the wide open sixth southern entrance. His surprised look settled on the back of the hooded being who was waiting in front of the small beige building and, without him knowing why, the mere sight of the black cloak sent a shiver of confusion up his spine.
Had they all passed the word around to make him feel what the believers of this peninsula liked to call karma?
Without needing to observe his companion in his back by imagining the smile which must have animated the face of this one inside his small building, he filled the way which separated him from his and pushed the door.
Memorizing the numbers on the paper, he started to do the thing for which he had come back, but, taken by his curiosity, he raised his eyes on the strange character.
Hidden behind his black glasses and his black hood, his hands in the pockets of his black coat covering his black pants and his black t-shirt, standing on his black sandals, the newcomer seemed, just like the man before him, obsessed by the picture in his back.
"How long has this poster been here?"
Surprised by not expecting to hear him speak, he blinked several times before swallowing painfully and, making sure for the second time in less than a minute that the subject of discussion was indeed the emerald pupils, he turned his attention back to the hood.
"Two days...?" he replied hesitantly as he tried to catch a glimpse through the opaque glasses, without success.
The enigmatic Leaf shinobi in front of him raised his hand below his inexpressive face and, watching in fascination at his movements, a winged insect, about the size of one of his fingernails, crawled out from inside his cloak before taking flight into the village grounds.
Once again, he blinked, but this time his gaze was directed at the flying bug that was moving away a little more with every bewildered breath he took.
Was this... legal?
With a sound that he characterized as impatient, he turned his attention back to the man in front of him who settled his registration card on the wooden counter, making it clear that he had no time to lose.
Stopping everything he was doing, he settled his hand on the metal card and slid it to his umpteenth forced smile of the day.
Doing what he does best, he entered the number and made sure that the return was correct. Reading the name on the monitor, he looked at the reason for the departure with a surprised look.
It was similar in every way to the opaline eyes that preceded him.
A diplomatic mission to Suna.
It was rare to come back separated from a mission of this duration, even for a minute. Had something happened on the way back?
Leaning slightly against the opaque glasses on the other side of the counter, he put back the card on the wood without uttering a word.
It was none of his business.
"Welcome back, Aburame-san."
The green light above the building went on, leaving the two guards to resume their one and only activity: observing the path and the forest that surrounded it.
As the black hood disappeared into one of the many aisles of the Leaf, he looked back at the small screen, and concern took over his expression.
After several seconds of doing nothing but staring at the screen, her eyebrows furrowed relentlessly.
That name... it sounded familiar...
Recalling what he had read in many books, he tried to remember the story of the Miracle Maker. And it was at that moment that everything came back to him.
Looking again at the poster on his back and admiring the beautiful portrait, he managed to put a finger on what was bothering him.
He had been her teamma...
"Oi, did you forget an old man? He looks like he's going to pass out from standing in the sun."
Panic-stricken, he turned his sorry look to the old man who was on the verge of sunstroke and, forgetting what he was thinking, he rushed out of his workstation.
"Sorry! I'm back!"
It seemed that karma had done its job.
All signs of boredom were gone.
Shino
December 9, 1020, 9 :24am
Land of Fire, Konoha
Placing a knee on the ground, he lowered his face for a second as a sign of respect, before raising it to the four people sitting behind the desk in a semicircle.
The first, in his fifties and to the left of his deference, was dressed in a white kimono that was covered by a thin and light green hoari. His square and impassive face revealed a few gray locks hidden behind a long and thick black hair that was highlighted by his rigid opaline pupils. These ones, waiting for him to deign to express himself, observed him without blinking.
The woman and the man in the center of the office, dressed in white and gray, expressed, for their part and behind their squinted eyes, a kind of expectation of what he had to report. Last veterans of the First World War and approaching eighty years of age, both of them exuded that confident and calm aura in front of which you could only feel a certain form of respect.
With his eyes closed and his arms crossed under his closed face that his brown hair surrounded, the fourth and last one, also in his fifties, was dressed in the traditional uniform of the Leaf which, highlighting the white and red fan sewn on his left shoulder, contrasted perfectly with what the three people sitting next to him were wearing.
And it was this latter, as he raised his being kneeling in the middle of the room, that broke the silence caused by his entrance.
"Where is your teammate?"
His black irises, hidden behind his opaque glasses, immediately settled on Uchiha Fugaku.
"He had something important to take care of."
The atmosphere in the room became heavy.
Opening his pupils as black as his glasses, the Uchiha clan representative turned his face to the man on his right.
"Do you hear that?" he asked, his arms still crossed under his impassive expression. "Is this the respect that the Hyūga clan preaches?"
The head of the clan bearing the same name turned his gaze to the fabulations on his left and, with no desire to reinvigorate the childish verbal jousting that the Uchiha liked to engage in, he turned his attention back to his person in the center of the room as he spoke again.
"With respect, my presence alone is more than enough. That is why he took the liberty of not showing up."
Having lowered his face during his tirade, he raised it again to accuse the haggard look of the Uchiha who did not have time to speak.
The voice of the only woman in the office stopped him from doing so.
"We are listening to you, so give us your report."
Bringing his attention back to the center of the office, he observed Utatane Koharu before nodding and starting what she had asked, under the attention of everyone present.
"We reached the meeting point with Suna three days after we left, as agreed, and they immediately led us to the reason of our mission, as agreed." he explained, placing his hands behind his back. "It is certain that these murders were orchestrated by the former Sand kunoichi, Makaori Pakura, as the fourth Kazekage had indicated."
Pausing for a moment, scanning the four pairs of attentive eyes and knowing what he was going to say, he immediately resumed.
"We managed to track her back to Kawa, where we lost her trail in the rivers and swamps in the north of the country."
The long silence that followed his voice gave way to deep questioning, all of which ended with the same name.
Pakura.
The heroine of the third Great War of the village hidden by the sands. The one who had slaughtered hundreds of ninjas from the Land of Water, was alive. She had survived the assassination attempt of Kiri in common arrangement with Suna and seemed eager for revenge against her country.
It was never a good thing to let a powerful free shinobi like Pakura roam freely. A person of her stature could easily become the instigator of a peninsular war if she was in the right place at the right time. And it was clear that in recent months, the time was not in favor of peace.
Another S-rank name had just been added to the bounty hunters' bingo book and it went without saying that this one would be hard to get hold of.
"So, you've come to report your failure?" asked Hyūga Hiashi, putting an end to the Leaf's thinking heads.
"That's right." he affirmed without the slightest hesitation, speaking for himself and his partner.
The frankness of his answer could have been perceived as provocation, but it wasn't. Everyone behind the desk knew the character of the man in the center of the room, and everyone knew it was only respect on his part.
Aburame Shino was not the type of person to make excuses.
"And what about the rest of the mission?" asked the old man next to the Utatane. with a curious tone.
Stopping staring at the Hyūga clan leader, he began to observe Mitakodo Homura, seeming much more interested in what he had yet to hear.
"Your doubts were well founded. The second son of the Kazekage mast..."
He stopped short, causing three surprised expressions on the other side of the desk, as well as a fourth one coming from Koharu, who didn't seem surprised at all by his change of aptitude.
A tiny winged insect, passing through the half-open window of the office, settled on his index finger raised in the heights of the room before going inside his coat.
It took him only a fraction of a second to stoop in front of the members of the Restricted Council.
"Forgive me, I will give you my report by hand." he apologized by raising his face and by turning back to the door without even waiting for their agreement.
"Where do you think you're going?" Uchiha Fugaku asked behind his back in a calm but authoritative voice.
Stopping in his movement, one hand resting on the doorknob, he settled his disrespect on the black irises before turning it back to the wood and, without taking the time to answer, opened the door in order to reach the corridor.
The four members of the Restricted Council of the Leaf watched the door close without any of them expressing anything until, inevitably, one decided to break the silence.
"I wonder what was brought to him to make him leave so prematurely."
All, in unison, turned their heads towards the Utatane who had just spoken.
"You should know, though, you who are usually aware of everything that goes on in this village." pointed out Hyūga Hiashi to her right.
With a smile drawn on her face, she observed the Hyūga leader.
"You flatter me my dear."
A wry chuckle followed by the scrape of a chair was heard from the other side of the desk, leaving Uchiha Fugaku to move towards the only exit of the room.
"And you, Fugaku-san, you don't know anything?" asked Koharu under the great attention of the two men at his side, understanding that her question was by no means harmless.
Stopping in the middle of the room, the Konoha police chief let a long silence linger, before once again letting out a sarcastic breath.
"Send the report to my office."
He left the room, inevitably causing Hiashi to make his first move.
"It was... enriching." he said as he rose from his chair without a sound.
Imitating the Uchiha who left the door wide open, he left the two septuagenarians alone.
Homura let out a long, tired sigh.
"You'd tell me if you knew anything, wouldn't you?" he asked a few moments after the door had been closed.
Turning her squinted eyes to her oldest friend, Koharu let yet another smile distort the features of her all-knowing look.
"Of course."
[…]
The tiles and other materials on which his chakra-laden feet came in contact imploded without the slightest resistance. Each of his animated impulses sent him a little further than his predecessors. The first one sent him leaping over a crowded alley, the second one sent him literally three blocks away.
In only twenty seconds, he crossed half of the village, and ten seconds later he landed on the roof of a two-story house, at the feet of a dozen buildings lined up along an upscale alley.
Throwing itself into the air, a cloud of insects replaced its body and began its ascent into the sky.
Followed by a shadow, the swarm passed at a bewildering speed above a wrought iron arch before rushing into the heights of the neighborhood, avoiding the branches of the many chestnut trees. The swarm then skirted the front of a building and entered the empty terrace of the fifth floor.
Remaining stationary as if it was scanning the interior of the apartment, the cloud of insects finally clumped over the shadow in the center of the balcony to take the form of one foot, then a second. A moment later, his entire body materialized on the orange tile floor of the fifth floor.
With a quick movement, he removed his hood and stepped on the broken glass of the double-glazed window overlooking the living room. His impassive expression settled on the chair leg deeply embedded in the false ceiling before inevitably observing the said chair next to the disemboweled couch from which came the feathers scattered on the immaculate floor.
Continuing his progress under the noise of the glass which crumbled under his feet, he threw a glance to his right in order to observe the open room where a bed, as well as a cupboard overturned on it, seemed to have undergone the same fate as the television torn off from its fixings and hung by its cable on the wall.
He walked further into the darkness and reached the kitchen. His attention was immediately drawn to the drops of blood at the feet of one of the many chairs. And he only needed to observe the position of the furniture to understand part of what had happened.
The angle that the chair in the living room had taken when hitting the ceiling left no doubt in his mind that at some point, the chair had faced the one overhanging the blood, before being brutally separated.
He walked past the red lace panties and the table cut in half that matched the floor covered with broken dishes and progressed down the hallway as well as toward the continuous sound not seeming to have noticed his arrival.
Walking on the bloody pieces of a mirror projected from the bathroom, he let his glance follow the scarlet traces which, passing at first on a white towel stained with blood on the tiling, brought him up to the origin of the surrounding noise.
Every thought he had stopped suddenly.
For the first time in months, as he stared at the blood-covered feet, the impassivity of his face vanished.
He observed the young woman in the shower cubicle, standing naked, relentlessly rubbing her inner right thigh to the point of bleeding.
Absorbing the fall of the icy water that flowed over the shards of broken and scarlet glass on which she stood, her candy pink hair was moving according to her repeated gestures.
Hate took hold of every single one of his features.