"Unngh..."
Spots flashed in Fan's eyes as she struggled to reopen them. She felt dizzy and weightless, as though suspended in midair. Her ears rang from pressure, but as it slowly subsided, it soon changed to a low susurrus of voices. She blinked and squinted through the flashing spots, trying to see where she was. When she tried to rub her eyes, she realized she couldn't move her hands.
What...? Fan yanked at a hand, but found the wrist tightly locked in some sort of manacle. In a dazed panic she realized all her limbs were similarly locked, and that she was being held spread-eagled above the ground by some glowing contraption. All around her, the voices continued their chant, slowly increasing in volume until their foreign words buzzed horribly in her ears. She whipped her head from side to side and found dark-robed figures kneeling around a circular pattern which she was at the center of.
"Let me go!" she screamed, and pulled from her binds in frustration. If the figures heard her, they did not show it; their chants continued undisturbed. She pushed fire through her fists in an attempt to melt or cut the binds, or whatever she could do to free herself, but that proved fruitless as well.
Panic rose in her chest as a burst of flame suddenly erupted beneath her. She struggled to pull herself away, but the effort only exhausted her further. She shut her eyes helplessly as the fire rose before her in a raging column, drying her breath with intolerable humidity. Then it fell upon her, crashing into her tiny frame like an angry wave stirred by storm. Heat flowed through every pore, every vein, sparing nothing to the intensity of its wrathful course.
It was only barely that she registered the unlocking of her manacles and the spiraling descent to the ground below, before her consciousness sank into nothingness.
"Finally! After all this time, we've obtained a Vessel."
"Is it...truly? Or did we just kill a little girl?"
"Nonsense! You saw the Beast rise from the circle...Come, let's take her back and hope the others are as successful with the remaining Beasts."
They waited until the veil of flames subsided before daring to step beyond the boundaries of the summoning circle. Once a usable path was cleared, the Vessel's outline could be traced against the dancing light, standing pristine and still as though no such ordeal had ever occurred in the first place.
"So it did work," another one of them breathed.
"Didn't I say so? Now hurry up and–"
The Vessel's head perked up at the noise. Before they could say anything else, she suddenly opened her mouth and shot a blast of fire at two of their comrades. The men screamed briefly in agony as fire seared their flesh, and when it dissipated, there was nothing of them left but piles of ashes.
"Shit!"
The figures split apart to avoid being in the Vessel's direct path. Whirring shuriken spun at her, which she whirled away to dodge. She lowered herself into a fighting stance and punched another roaring blast that sealed the fate of another colleague. A second barrage of shuriken was sent her way from the trees, forcing her to fall and roll to avoid them. Turning sharply, as if scenting something, the Vessel shot up and ran in the direction of the shuriken, blasting the tree to fiery oblivion with an angry blow.
As the others attempted to flee or strike back, the Vessel targeted them with raging abandon, shooting them down with great whorls of fire. Precision and accuracy were nonexistent, the movements directed instead by blinded fury and recklessness. The dark clearing about them was soon ablaze with flame and smoke, which threatened to spill into the surrounding forest.
"What's going on!?" one of the remaining figures screamed.
"I don't know!"
"The Beast," another surmised through a cough. "It must be the Beast–"
Another fiery attack shot in between them, and reminded of the dire situation, they started taking more action. Jumping back into the perches of some tree branches, they focused the chakra in their stomachs to prepare for a counteractive jutsu.
Hand signs blurred frantically in the dark. "Water Release: Water Bomb Jutsu!" From three different mouths, jets of water gushed into the summoning circle. The Vessel turned at the sound of rushing water and swept an arm in retaliation, sending a thick wave of fire that met the water with a hissing splutter of steam. From the opposite side, another colleague had begun to do the same.
The clearing clouded up with steam, obscuring sight save for the faint orange glow of the embers in the circle. Once everything had grown quiet did they dare to release their water jutsu. With bated breath, they covered their faces as they waited for the steam to dissolve. Then they would go down to detain the Vessel before the Beast could rear its head again and be on their way.
But they realized with sinking stomachs that the summoning circle was dry.
In the midst of their surprise, the Vessel launched another devastating blast at the three hidden in the trees. As the leaves and branches crumbled away into ash, the last remaining figure turned tail and dashed into the forest, leaping from branch to branch to get as far away from the cursed clearing as possible.
The Vessel whipped around in his direction. She folded her pinky and ring fingers beneath her thumb, leaving index and middle pointed upwards. Forming her other hand in the same manner, dancing tendrils of electricity began to crackle at the tips. She lowered herself into stance, and with one arm extended behind her as a counterweight, she thrust a hand forcefully in his direction to let loose a screeching streak of lightning.
So...heavy...can't breathe...
Fan gasped as though choked and felt her body waver. Her heartbeats echoed in her ears, and as her blurred sight returned to her, she saw what looked like a bolt of light snaking through the trees. Crashing and hissing noises pounded faintly about her as her arms slumped to her sides and her knees turned to jelly. As the world continued to topple and burn, all she could do was give in to the compelling force that brought her face down to meet with the ground.
"Well, damn," Asuma swore. "This place looks like a disaster."
The only good thing about it, Kurenai supposed, was that it could be spotted from miles away.
Smoke from the aftermath still billowed in lazy puffs against the clear noon sky. If that wasn't enough of an indicator, the bright orange dot in the darkness from the night before had surely pointed them in the right direction.
"If it's erasing evidence this Veil cult wanted, then they've done a good job of it," Asuma remarked again. "Must've been something pretty freaky, though..."
Beside them, Inoichi Yamanaka paced into the ashen clearing and gave the place a sweeping glance. What once appeared to be a moderately sized clearing was now a gaping black hole, the trees reduced to darkened stumps and the ground blanketed with ash like dark snow. Kurenai and Asuma followed slowly behind him, keeping themselves on the alert for potential ambushes or other such traps.
"There," the Yamanaka clan head pointed. "A body."
Their eyes followed to the right and spotted a little shape lying prone on the black ground. Kurenai approached it while the men continued scoping the area. The approximate size of a pre-pubescent child, the body was dusted with soot but appeared otherwise unburnt. It was not the fire then, but the smoke inhalation that did it in. She knelt down beside it and flipped it onto its back to get a better look at the face.
So a female. Not much older than her genin, either. Kurenai wondered briefly what village she had come from; the clothes were a bit elaborate, but strange. She reached for a wrist and found the limb compliant; no rigor mortis. Then the warmth of the skin made death seem less plausible. To be sure, she pressed two fingers against the radial artery. "I have a pulse," she called out to Asuma and Inoichi. "She's alive."
"Good," Asuma called back. "We won't be returning empty-handed."
With a grunt, Kurenai hefted the child onto her back. "Found anything else?"
"A scroll," Inoichi replied as he approached, dusting off an ash covered hand. Within it was the aforementioned scroll, lightly dusted with soot. "Perfectly intact too."
Interesting. But it would be at least another day before they could make it back to Konoha. "Let's head someplace with fresh air," Kurenai said. "You'll want to extract whatever you can before we return; she's unresponsive and I don't feel much of a breath against my neck."
"Looks like we ought to hurry then," Asuma sighed.
Inoichi pocketed the scroll and turned to leave back down their line of travel; something caught his eye, however, and he swiveled back around with a frown. He squinted and pointed in the trees ahead. "Those scorch marks up there..." He traced the finger all the way back to the spot the girl had been lying in. "They align perfectly with her position."
Kurenai raised a brow and shifted the child's weight in her arms. "Well then, let's found out what she has to say about that."
They laid her against a tree and made themselves somewhat comfortable in the enclosure of a smaller clearing. Asuma sat on a fallen log inspecting the scroll, while Kurenai stood on watch and Inoichi seated himself across from the child to prepare for the Psycho Mind Transmission. With a steadying breath, he closed his eyes and performed the necessary hand signs before placing a palm to her soot-dusted forehead.
Now, first of all...who is she? And what village?
An image slowly materialized in his mind's eye, an expansive hall full of similarly red-clothed girls listening to red-robed women talking at a dais. "Zhao Fan," one of them announced, and he – or rather, the girl whose eyes he was seeing through – stirred in quiet excitement to the dais.
What is this place?
He sifted the images forward and back, catching glimpses of an elaborate traditional-style city walled by jagged volcanic stone. Capital City, was its name, whispered to him by the various voices of the girl's memories. Fire Nation.
What on earth...
He pushed further back in time, struggling to find any semblance of normalcy in this strange girl's mind. All he could see and hear, however, were places and things he'd never seen nor heard before; Earth Kingdom, Water Tribe, the war, Fire Lord, the Avatar, swallowgales, Sacora...
Suddenly, everything around him was no longer composed of reds and oranges, but the icy blues and whites of a snowy place. His height was considerably shorter too, and as he craned his neck back, he was met with the smiling face of a tan-skinned woman with braided brunette hair. "Sacora," she cooed, and reached out for a hug which he happily ran into.
He stopped rewinding then and played through the memories at a steady yet shifting pace. Sacora was her birth name; some place called the Northern Water Tribe was her childhood home. The loving woman and an older brother named Koda made it a small family of three. But the child was different from them. A handful of other children were like her, standing out with their bright amber eyes and jet black hair, their affinities with fire. Sometimes just children, other times bad omens.
Then a fight, an attack of fire and red armored men – they had killed her mother. One of them took her away, claiming to be her father. An angry, screaming struggle. Scary metal ship.
"You are Fan now," the man told her on the ship. "The Fire Nation is your true heritage. Forget your Mama; she is gone."
New clothes. New identity. Now in the Captial City, a new home.
Two new siblings, Xiuhua and Baojun. A new mother, too, who wasn't very motherly.
The cold face of Lady Yan. Thinking the child out of earshot, she snapped at her husband, "What is this? Why have you brought another child into our home?"
"She is of your blood, Yan – you recall that you have family living in the Shuyin colony. We passed by on our journey home and heard news of a rebellion. Her parents were killed in the attack; now she only has us. Would you think it appropriate to just leave her to the hands of those Earthen criminals?"
And now, a new lie. The answer was far from appeasing, but his tone was not to be trifled with. Yan, quieted, offered no more argument. But she would always look askance at the child when her husband was not present. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Inoichi thought to himself.
Rigorous education. Proper tutoring in the firebending arts, mostly to drive out the old Tribe habits and mannerisms, before sending her off to the Royal Fire Academy. Four years of study, discipline, and indoctrination. "Long live the Fire Lord! Praise be to his good name!" But never once a moment of forgetting Mama.
And then...a scroll. Looks like the one I picked up. "It contains the secret to redirecting lightning," spoken with schoolyard mischievousness. There followed apprehension, yet curiosity. The scroll is unfurled...Well! It was a jutsu scroll. She couldn't understand the hiragana, though, and neither could she read the kanji, most of which was old. Studying, studying, and multiple attempts...finally success, but with unexpected results. Elemental Veil? Inoichi wondered. Never heard of that technique before.
The jutsu apparently transported her into the clearing they'd just left. Locked down, unable to move, chanting people around a circle. The cult, he recognized. Then a blaze of fire, overwhelming heat–
And then nothing.
Inoichi's eyes snapped open, the chakra receding into his body as he cut the jutsu off. No more could be read from her mind, as she'd lost consciousness since. Rather disappointing, but he'd gotten quite the haul from her regardless.
"Well," Kurenai remarked. "That took a while. Did you get anything?"
"Yup," he grunted as he rose from the ground. "But it's all very...strange."
"No kidding," Asuma chimed in. "This scroll here is just..." He gestured vaguely with a hand before dropping it in defeat. "It's just plain weird. None of this should even work as a jutsu!"
Kurenai raised a brow and looked to Inoichi in confusion.
"Let's just say, it'll all make for one hell of a report," Inoichi concluded, and then signed for them to be on the move.
A warm, soothing touch brushed against her forehead, calming all her fears and worries. With a little stir, she coaxed her eyes open and blinked drearily at the blurry face before her.
"Mama?" she rasped, making out the vague shape of braided hair loops on the face. "Is that you?"
"Oh no, dear, I'm afraid I'm not your mother."
Fan blinked again and swallowed. Her throat stung, eliciting a cough. She lifted an arm, heavy as lead, to make a clumsy attempt at rubbing her eyes. As her sight slowly sharpened, she found herself facing a tiled ceiling lit brightly by a rectangular glass beam. "Huh...?" A sharp chemical smell reached her nose, causing her to cringe in revulsion. "Where...am I?"
"You're in the hospital, dear," the female voice supplied, and Fan turned about to find that it belonged to a woman dressed in off-white clothing and a funny looking cap. She was writing something on a clipboard, but looked up at the movement. When their eyes met, she brushed a lock of brown hair behind an ear and smiled. "How are you feeling?"
Fan blinked at the woman and then turned her head about. The room, a pale blue, was plain and slick and smelled disgusting, and was just...it just looked wrong. "Where am I?" she repeated, more frantic now. She rose from the sheets and found them coarse and stiff compared to the ones she was used to, then saw in horror a thin, snaking tube attached to crook of her arm by a needle not-so-subtly covered with gauze bandaging. "What is that!?" she shrieked, and clawed furiously at the bandages to pry it out.
"No, don't!" the woman scolded, pulling her hand away. "That's an IV line! We had to insert it to prevent dehydration–"
"I don't understand!" Fan jerked back. "Wh-who are you? Where am I? What's going on?"
"Just relax, dear, you'll get to know in a sec..."
"No! I need to go–" Fan's eyes widened when she remembered where she had to be. "My father's promotion ceremony–"
"Just...just hang on!"
Another capped head peeked through the doorway, curious and questioning. "Hmm? Something wrong, Miya?"
The woman turned from Fan to her colleague. "Go tell them she's awake," she instructed. "I'll prepare her in the meantime. She doesn't look like she'll take it well..."
The face beneath the cap made an uncomfortable grimace. "Oooh, okay. Good luck." Then the head disappeared and footsteps echoed down the hallway, leaving them alone again.
"Prepare me for what?" Fan demanded, feeling more frightened now than ever.
"You'll know soon, dear," the woman said with a smile. "Now please hold still, and I'll remove the IV..."
Notes
I'm not entirely sure if Inoichi had to use hand signs before performing the Psycho Mind Transmission, but it felt wrong to write him not doing it. Feel free to correct me if that's not the case.