AN at bottom
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto
Warnings: T for swearing and violence
Reviewer replies:
lizyeh2000: You're welcome! I still have tons plotted for this family, bwahaha ;)
MadameGuillotineTheSeraph: Thanks for your consideration! Yup, the winds of change are coming...
Guest: Hahaha... read to find out?
Ellie: Oops... its been re-uploaded, thanks for telling me!
Karma: Its only gonna be more of a ride ;) (although this chapter is still a bit slow...)
Thanks for reviewing!
Chapter 8 Life Stops and Goes
I was not able to sleep again that night. As constant sounds of battle reverberated through my ears and bursts of chakra fueled wind rocked my hammock, I shivered in fetal position with a now tiny blue snake coiled around my shoulders.
What seemed like hours later, the screams finally died down, only to be replaced by an eerie silence. Like everything else that happened this night, the silence (not peace, never peace) was shattered by the first cry of grief. Like a contagious yawn, the dark treetops was then filled with yowls and hisses and grief weighed down by the unrelenting downpour.
Being the first time that I've ever seen battle in both of my lives so far, I sat in shock. But Dōsukēru, ever the soft-spoken one, wailed from her position around my neck. Even when under the influence of grief, she was able to think of my comfort and held her head above mine, crying in the way their kind can without the destruction of my ear drums.
Neither of my parents returned that night, instead, my obasan (poor unfortunate Yasu obasan), came up to my hammock after pulsing chakra to disable the seal, covered in blood and gore and lugging a sleeping Hikaru on one hip, his partner clenched tightly around his left bicep. When Yasu obasan gently eased herself into seiza in front of me, careful not to jostle her slumbering toddler. Her light purple and red scaled companion, Ume, peered at me from the curtain of hair around Yasu's shoulder's.
"The little ones are in shock," whispered the snake who was named after plumes.
Gee, thanks for stating the obvious, some distant corner of my no-longer sane mind drawled. My aunt gave no indication that she heard other than a twitch in her ear.
After a staring contest that lasted a full ten seconds, my aunt's eyes widened and lunged forward, startling me out of my stupor.
A jolt of chakra jolted my chest and suddenly I was breathing again. Along with stale air, words tumbled out of my mouth like a horizontal waterfall.
"Wherearetheywherearetheywhere-are-they?"
Evidently, she had experience with deciphering toddler speech and amidst the soft snores of Hikaru (how is he asleep?), she spoke softly. "They are with everyone else, I will take you there now." Her pronunciation was careful, articulate, as if the smallest of hitches would cause me to slide back into shock. Gentle as her voice was, there was no life in her chakra whatsoever. Not even her burning golden eyes did her spark of energy shine.
The brained housed by my skull brain, once my pride and joy, failed to notice my now real sixth sense and I only nodded dumbly before raising both my arms in the universal gesture of up.
My now sparkless pyro aunt slowly shifted into a crouch before shuffling over to me. I didn't notice that the bloodstains were still growing on her robes before I had latched onto her unburdened side. As she stood up with me carefully balanced on the hip opposing Hikaru, I rubbed my eyes with the back of a hand that had gripped her sleeve. To my dawning horror, I realized that blood, thick and slowly drying, coated the fingers.
Dōsukēru sensed my distress and squeezed a bit. I don't think she realized that it isn't all that comforting when you're in the aftermath of a carnage filled battlefield and something squeezes around your neck. It says a lot when I barely twitched, dying once and living again having taught me that life both is and isn't as precious as we thought. Not healthy, but whatever.
After clambering back to her feet unsteadily, Yasu obasan lurched forwards and jumped off the hammock. Without the protection of the barriers, all three of us were instantly soaked. Or rather, I was soaked while my aunt and cousin just regained all the liquid that they had lost during the brief period of time that they had spent on my families hammock.
I pinched shut my burning eyes against the onslaught of rain and buried my face into my aunt's mildly bloodied robes, furtively trying to pretend that the rain dripping down my face didn't taste salty.
LINE BREAK
Somehow, I must've fallen asleep on the trip to wherever my aunt was taking me, as when I woke up the sun was trying to fight its way out of a barrage of clouds. Outside a window that was located on a wall.
First of all, our clan lives underground most of the time we're moving around, with only a select few villages or such where we would choose to rent out an entire street of hotels/motels in advance. Somehow our budget can take it, a mercy that I won't question anytime soon.
This however, leads to the fact that when we are out of town, our clan compound is generally a series of interlocking rooms, chambers, tunnels, and whatnot below the ground. Windows on the sides of walls that let in sunlight would be an impossible feat, unless we for some reason decided to relocate to the side of a cliff.
Nobody's dumb enough to do that.
Hence the question, as I vividly recall my last memory in the waking world being stranded in the middle of the effin' rainforest on a hammock while the sky decided to drown us.
A soft sound of cloth rustling on the side caused me to tense, not a single adult that I know will make sound when they move.
"You awake, Suija-chan?"
The breathe that I had inadvertently started holding let itself out, as the voice belonged to the very familiar human aka my cousin Hikaru.
"Yesss, she is."
"Dōsukēru," I gasped out, "I can't breathe."
With a chortling laugh, my not-shrunk pal glided off of my chest, the perch that she had probably used the entire time I was asleep. "Like you need much air to begin with."
"I take offense to that!"
"May I enquire as to how Suijami-chan can use such sophisticated vocabulary?"
Shit. I let out a grumble as I sat up from my curled up position. Unlike Hikaru, his partner, Kuroryuu is as smart as they come despite being unfailing polite. Now, if only his intelligence included a brain filter that added tact…
Thankfully lovely little Dōsukēru came to my rescue, "her brain works best when she's lacking oxygen," my partner deadpanned at the duo. Ok, never mind. She's an asshole.
Kuroryuu looked at me as if I had grown a second head, back to Dōsukēru again, and shook his head in mock sadness. "This madness must run in the family."
Then he stiffened as if he said something he shouldn't and my brain backtracked.
Window on wall = not at home, then when you add only-in-company-of-young-cousin…
Dōsukēru must've noticed my distress once again, as she nudged my hand with a slim blue coil then gently curled her tail around my fist that had finally loosened its hold on the scratchy bedsheets. On second thought, I would recognize these sheets anywhere. Only the Shiro-Sakura hotel of Takumi would have sheets that looked like patchwork quilts sewn together with ninja wire. They take their work very seriously. Ok, maybe the white sakura flower present on nearly every inch of the quilt-like covering also has to do with my deduction, but still…
There goes the topic I was on.
Then I suddenly remembered the tension present in the room, the tension that was reflected in both of the snakes but barely present in Hikaru.
"Where are kaa-chan and tou-chan?" I questioned, a tilt to my head. It wouldn't do for Kuroryuu to be more suspicious than needed, a three-year-old toddler shouldn't need to be able to read the atmosphere or use sophisticated vocabulary, I only told Dōsukēru because I know that she will be by my side for the remainder of my life and reincarnation isn't something you can grow out of, or the extra teenage years that I had.
Truly a comparison against a cousin who's "only" eighteen months older than me and currently trying to find a way out other than the door.
I winced when the hold on my fist tightened unconsciously, the snake herself avoiding my gaze.
"Everybody is in the hotel," she hissed hesitantly, Looking out the window and gauging the time, she then continued: "or out searching for food and restocking up on weaponry…"
"Not everybody, just kaa-chan and tou-chan," a rock settling in my gut when Dōsukēru side-slithered out of the question.
As cliche as it would be, that was the moment that the seals around our room (humming and buzzing like a fly in syrup) went down. Or at least the moment where a temporary hole appeared and the door slid open.
"Kaa-chan!" She's alive, thank kami and all the existing shitstains above.
Something wasn't right however, her violet hair was falling out of the low ponytail that she had worn it in and there were large black bags under her eyes, threatening to eat up the rest of our combined sanities.
"Suijami-chan," shit, "you're finally awake." What?
Seeing my look of confusion, the violet-haired woman let out a sigh, smoothing her thumb over the great scaly head that was attached to the purple snake coiled beside her.
"Your aunt put you into a genjutsu," an annoyed curl of the upper lip, "but she sucks at the finer aspects of ying chakra control. That idiot overpowered the compulsion to relax and you kids were in a sleep for the past day and a half, nobody with enough control and chakra could be spared to wake the two of you up."
No wonder Hikaru was sleeping when my aunt picked me up after…
My eyes widened in horror as I processed the meager amount of information provided to me.
Yasu-obasan had stuck me, me, into a genjutsu with her child and nobody could break us out.
Tou-chan loved telling stories, and his favourite method was through realistic genjutsu.
Nobody with enough control and chakra could be spared to wake the two of you up.
"Mamoru oji-san is good at it though," no no no please don't answer… "why didn't he wake us up?"
My dear cousin, you complete and utterly useless Fool.
Courtesy of ninja training, my kaa-chan didn't cry, nor show any of the other too obvious tells. But to me, a teenager wearing a toddler's shell in front of a woman who didn't think that every little thing needed to be hidden from children, the miniscule hitch in breath and the slight dilution of slitted eyes said it all.
In three steps, or perhaps less (who's counting?), I was crushed into a rough embrace. Dōsukēru having twined herself around my arm, all three feet of her.
Only horror and guilt (so much damn guilt)could describe my emotions when I felt a wetness slowly soak through my hair, frizzed up as it is (chakra does nothing for bed hair).
"He's dead, your tou-chan is dead."
Sometime during the tear fest that started right around her blunt statement, our aunt had silently came to pick up Hikaru and Kuroryuu. In the same manner of time being relative, Manda had curled around the lot of us like an oversized comforter/scurf-thing. Even though he wasn't the largest fan of my dad (some alpha male thing, probably…), we were all family. Or was...
Some details will be spared, but after crying out the black, sniveling, goo of guilt that was stuck in my lungs and heart, kaa-chan told me the specifics. Not without resistance, however.
"How did it happen?" I swear Dōsukēru has more of a backbone than I do.
"You won't understand."
"Try me."
She heaved a sigh and when the two of wasn't deterred by her sighing, let out a genuine rasp of breath. Just as she was about to begin though, Manda interrupted with a tail in her face. After a heated argument via body language (lots of Manda flailing and kaa-chan trying to form signs and reaching poses that wouldn't suffocate me), my kaa-chan subsided and let Manda take the non-existent stage.
"Your delightful tou-chan got it in his head that we needed rescuing." I hid a wince, which probably was as evident as if I didn't. "The battle was in the dark, and apparently a group of missing-nin had found our hanging dens."
"How could a couple missing-nins do so much damage?" I questioned, horrified. Unless the Akatsuki had reincarnated ahead of their time period or something, missing-nin tended to travel solo or in doubles, rarely in groups large enough to attack an entire caravan(that had ninja protection), let alone a wandering clan.
"That is because… "the snake trailed off, looked at my kaa-chan for confirmation. Somehow he got his answer and the violet serpent huffed and leaned in as if telling a very cruel secret, by now I was seated in my mom's lap and facing the snake, the woman herself in a comfortable seating position in the same direction as I was in. "They weren't just missing-nin, there was also ninjas. Actual shinobis and kunoichi from villages." Wait, what? He pulled back a bit, his face grimacing in disgust and impossibly sharp fangs showing through the gaps, unsatisfied with what he was going to say next.
"They either wore crossed out hitai-ate or white masks. The masked ones are known as ANBU, the open-secret elite black ops that each village has. Unfortunately all of the ANBU bodies were destroyed or vanished before we could get a hold of any evidence pointing to a village," he leered, the scales around his eyes thrown into contrast and giving his slitted pupils a demonic slant.
"We however, killed every. Single. One. For as long as our clan prospers, as long as our clan lives, each one of us taken down will require ten of theirs to pay in blood and lives. If a pair of partners are separated by death, many, many more will fall. Mark my words and listen well Sui-chan, this clan is vain, yes, but we are proud. Proud of the intellect that so many shun, and the marks of our ancestors that prove a connection so deep that it's imprinted into our very blood and bones."
Wow he's dramatic. Annnnd he's good at changing the topic.
"Tell me 'bout tou-chan!" I demanded, interrupting his speech of our clan's gloriousness.
Thoroughly put off by my interjection, he scowled and muttered under his breath, something about eating disrespectful brats like usual I presume. Whatever it was, it earned him a cuff on the head with my mom giving a bare quirk of her lips in a semblance of a watery grin.
However long the good mood lasted, it did not survive long after Manda opened his jaws again.
"He died from an attack from behind." Of course he did, ninjas just don't play by rules, do they? "Mamoru had reached us at the crux of the fighting, and all the able-bodied had separated into sections that suited their styles the best. Meaning, we all went double, the humans and the snakes partnering up like what we always had.
"Your tou-chan didn't have the ability to do so however, his retiring from active service about a year before your hatching because his partner died."
I perked up, more attentive than ever. This, I never knew. Logically, yes I knew that sometime in his life tou-chan must've had a partner, they're sort of the physical and living mark of the Kinme clan. But to hear that he once had a partner that had died before I was even present, it really hit it in.
Then a breath of chill air washed over me, what if the cost of my existence was the partner of my dad? Around a year, so around the same time I was conceived? Or a couple months later when my soul was yanked over to this world of ninjas and sealed gods? I refuse to believe that my existence ended tha– the thought couldn't be completed, as something deep down tugged at me, something perhaps as deep as a soul.
Reincarnation was already proven in this world, such was the cycle of Indra and Ashura, despite their sibling rivalry. And didn't my little otouto delve into the researching of immortality for a chance of meeting our parents again? (A half of which he will never kn– down that path is madness.) Perhaps the snake just slithered through the cracks of the world and into another, much like yours truly. Hopefully.
" –that, his yang chakra ran out. Not enough balance between his own chakra and that of nature's caused his arms to solidify into stone, starting from his forearms." I think I missed something…
Manda elaborated on the solidification of my dad's arms!? without my needing to open my mouth to ask. Good thing too, I didn't think I could keep all the guilt bottled up.
"The snakes of the Ryushi cave can use tiny amounts of nature chakra, after it is channeled through our human counterparts. That's why everyone who is of age and is capable of using chakra to summon have scales, the petrification process is slow and only happens when the balance is off, which is generally when the children have just unlocked their own chakra and want to use it to let their partners unshrink to their actual size.
"If too much nature chakra is taken in, it results in the solidification, first into scales, then it will turn to rock. Mamoru didn't have enough of his own chakra left and Takeshi was long dead, so when he drew upon that of nature's," Manda winced, and I agreed with him wholeheartedly, "it resulted in his arms, you know how he had a collection of scales along his forearms?" When I nodded, I felt my kaa-chan's embrace tighten that much and Dōsukēru nestled her head into the crook of my elbow, unwilling to hear anymore of how her surrogate uncle died.
"They turned to stone. He's been off the battlefield and off the mission roster for years now, but even if he hadn't, the weight of his own arm turning into stone would've taken him off balance. As it was, we were close by but not close enough when the enemy decided to stab Mamoru through the back with a poisoned naginata. The poison wouldn't have been a problem, most of us trained shinobi have at least some measure of resistance, but he was stabbed through a lung and his experiments on himself has left him rather… receptive to outside chemicals.
"The poison was a fast-acting sedative. Adding in two growing arms of stone that can't channel chakra, nobody was able to reach him in time to prevent his attacker from finishing the job."
After a moment of silence, I heard kaa-chan speak up behind me, voice but a grinding whisper and her fingers audibly tightening over her blade.
"That bastard's dead, perforated by too many fangs and blades."
Yeah… she's still out of it.
I might need to hit something to get out of this damn shock too.
AN: Had to stop this chapter somewhere so sorry if it's a bit jerky, but I swear these things are growing. Second longest chapter and its actually on time!~ Go me~ (Still tell me about any errors I make though, I do want to improve my writing)
Anyways, school says they want essays so they get essays. After I finish procrastinating. *whistles innocently* Honestly, I already plugged out over 3000 words for physics, and now they want an extended essay? They're all jerks.
The next chapter might not be on time due to essays but I'll try! Hopefully more canon people will show up, this arc has dragged on for way too long.
So yeah, thanks for reading! Reviews are Love and Motivation!
~Cadriona Morningwing
Uploaded: September 30, 2016