against the tide - chapter 3
A/N:
This chapter is a bit angsty, so if you're down in the dumps, watch out ig :D
"Conceal it." His mother said, placing a hand over his head. "Don't press it down. Imagine changing the property of your chakra. Don't move it. Don't stamp it down, like how I taught you before. This is something more difficult, so even sensors can't sense you. Just imagine, you draw a screen over yourself. You're there, but to the world, you aren't."
His mother knew all sorts of things. She'd survived a war before. She taught him how she did so.
"Surviving isn't just luck."
She taught him how to salvage and plunder, how to use chakra for ways other than fighting, even how to eat human flesh. She taught him ways to kill and how to be desperate. She had been desperate. She still was.
"You must survive, Natsuo. Claw your way up. No matter what. Survive."
Even more so for the tiny, tiny child that she could only pray to some deity she didn't believe in to survive by some miracle.
There's chaos again, but its closer. It's at his heels.
"Why're the shinobi-"
"We aren't armed!"
"Spare us-" There's screams. So many screams-
Natsuo's head spun. His mother's grip on the back of his head was the only grounding thing, firm and warm. He could feel the impact as others shoved into his mother in the hurry to get away. (He burdened her.)
There were screams and noise, and he wanted it to stop, but he hated it even more when it did stop with a dull thud of a fatal blade.
When the begs don't work, they lessened their requests- "At least the children!"
Peals of high-pitched shrieks were cut off as well: the sound of potential nipped at the bud. There was no anger in Natsuo now- something he'd always felt somewhere within him before, but a deep-rooted fear. He closed his eyes and pressed his head against his mother's heartbeat.
He couldn't do anything. Worse, he didn't want to do anything. There was just fear and helplessness.
Perhaps that was why they attacked the civilians. If he survived this, because he had to survive this some way or another- Natsuo didn't know what kind of person he'd become.
(Years into the future, was this why the Uchiha civilians were killed as well?)
Natsuo noticed the moment his mother faltered. His chakra circulated through hers, mingling like a warm embrace. Her knees buckled once, then twice, and someone pushed past her. There was a disruption in chakra around her flank. A wound.
"K-Kaa-san." He whispered, unable to make a proper sound in his terror. His mother nonetheless heard him.
"I'm fine, Natsu-chan." She smiled and held him tighter. "You have to evacuate North. The Eastern front will be a complete battlefield soon."
Natsuo thought, panicked: ''You' not 'we'?'
"Isn't West safer?" North was close to the smaller cluster of Villages, whereas the West laid Konoha, who at the very least, won't hinder their safety.
"It's too far, and the shelter must be full." His mother murmured between pants. Her chakra was sluggish. What monsters they were, to use poison on the defenceless. "You must survive, Natsuo. You're a smart boy and fate has marked you with that eye… One way or another, you must survive. You will survive."
He wasn't even two years old yet. In another world- Or perhaps in this same world, but years into the future, he wouldn't even have to endure this sort of hell.
Nothing mattered in this moment. It didn't matter if he was reincarnated, if he used to be a genius- if he still was, if he had a mythical eye, if in the future he'd become an undefeatable god- This is what the purging was for.
Nothing could guarantee his survival.
"What about Kaa-san?" He asked frailly and his world narrowed to focus on her heartbeat and her staggered breaths and her soft voice.
Explosions and screams and the moans of dying innocents were a mere backdrop to a greater cruelty.
There was blood on the corner of her mouth. Tears shone in her eyes as her steps slowed. She yanked at her necklace and pushed it into his hand.
Then she grabbed at her wound with a wince and slathered blood over his neck and front. Then she pressed it over his eye. His abnormal eye.
He flinched at the warm stickiness and the stench of iron, still dazed in shock.
His mother tipped forward, falling onto her knees and her chin rested atop his head.
He glanced at what rested in his hand. It was a dog tag and two simple band rings on a silver bead chain.
She smiled again, forced but wide. "Natsuo, baby, Kaa-san and Tou-san… will always be w-"
Her head jerked again with the thud of a blade digging into her skull. Her body fell forwards and her weight rested over his body. Her chakra began to fade, and he could feel it disappear in the grasp of his own chakra like mist.
His mother's body was hollow of her spirit and her chakra, yet it was still warm, pressed upon him like a suffocating embrace.
Natsuo's mind was a scrambled fog.
…Just like that?
Just like that, his mother was torn from him?
The world was eerily lacking cries. There were a few groans of those slowly dying and the subdued sobs of resigned children.
"Our job's done."
"Let's just finish off the rest." There was a brief pause. "You know how tenacious they can be. Especially the Uzumaki."
Numb, Natsuo pushed all his thoughts and emotions away, and plunged into the depths of his hollowed mind. He cast a film over his chakra, and let it disappear with his mother's.
Conceal it.
Conceal, conceal, conceal-
"They're all dying or dead. I can sense it."
"The dying aren't dead." There was a playful lilt to that youthful voice. No- it was sadism.
There were a few more whistles followed by thuds. Then a few more thuds. Lives were snuffed out like pinching candlelight.
"Hmm, shall we let the last few wriggle?"
"Munashi-san, we don't have time for this."
There was a chuckle. "You shouldn't've been put on this mission, Chuukichi. Mizukage-sama must've wanted to toughen you up or something. Killing civilians aren't all that hard."
There was a rustle then a thump as they kicked a body.
"See?" There was a nonchalant pleasure in their voice. Not even excitement. Like they were used to it. "They're just like animals. Shinobi are tools and the rest are all animals."
"…We should head out."
"You're so uptight, it's not funny. It's not mercy, letting them slowly suffer to death like that, you know? Get off your high horse. Unless you like that too…?" There was another chuckle. "Well, if there's one difference, it's really gotta be-"
The pressure on his body suddenly was relieved as the shinobi yanked his mother's body up by her hair. Cool air rushed over him and he laid perfectly, perfectly still.
Dead still.
"It's gotta be the faces." They- He sneered and Natsuo was- Natsuo- "Their bod-"
"Munashi-san, we don't have time for this." The other, Chuukichi, spoke firmly. "Let us depart. Now."
"Hm." Munashi abruptly let go of the hair and Natsuo didn't twitch as the weight slammed back into him. "You may be older than me, but I still outrank you. Speak to me like that one more time and I'll use Shibuki. Fuck Mizukage's orders."
"…I apologise."
Natsuo didn't dare breathe, and the choking weight of his mother's body didn't let him, as if even her remains were willing for his silence and survival.
Only minutes after he heard nothing of the enemy did he dare to open his eyes and breathe. It was not so much breathing than gasping-
He scrambled out from under his mother, who was so much larger and heavier than he expected, begging for forgiveness as he pushed her body callously to escape.
"Kaa-san-" He whispered, then choked on a gasp. He gripped onto the dog tag and the two rings, too large for any of his fingers, with a white-knuckled grasp. "Kaa-san, Kaa-san, please-"
He snapped his jaw shut.
He knew she was dead. He knew it when her chakra had vanished, and her heartbeat had stopped. There was not a hint of life in her anymore. Even the warmth of her skin meant nothing.
He shoved the necklace into his shirt pocket and grabbed at the kunai at the back of her head, pulling with all his strength. When it came out, he fell backwards from the force, and he laid on the ground in numb defeat.
The weapons were poisoned. He stared at the edge of it and thought: one graze of this and he would die. He and his mother would be connected like this. Through this blade. Through death. His father too.
His mother was gone just like that.
And Natsuo- he had died before. What more was another? Wasn't this life just faulty anyway-
What was he meant to do now? There were only dead people scattered around him. He felt… consciously alive. Sickeningly.
His feelings were dampened and where there should be anger, there was a glacial sense of emptiness. Those shinobi- That Munashi in particular- How was it that Natsuo could feel more terror than rage towards them? How was it that he focused on staying still than dying to preserve the sanctity of his mother's fresh corpse?
How could he dare to-
How could he so simply choose to survive? And now, did he even want to?
This meaningless, shoddy, unnecessary life-
Even if his parents wanted him to live on… they were dead.
They wouldn't know.
He never believed in the afterlife after all. If his life would be met with constant torment. He'd rather it be met with nothing at all.
Then there was a wheeze.
What was he doing.
He froze, and the kunai dropped with a clatter. Natsuo let his gaze trail to the sound to see a child, probably a year or so older than him, panting weakly. He stared at his bloody hands, still chubby with baby fat and so frighteningly small.
A few glances around were all he needed to know: those above the age of prepubescent were all assuredly killed, but the younger were 'merely' left half-dead, either left to bleed out or become consumed by the deadly poison. He exhaled again and tried to find the flickers of life within this slaughterhouse of a shelter.
There were a few barely alive, but unsavable. Three? No, two now. Nevertheless, he still crawled over to the sound of the wheeze.
Natsuo sunk his chakra within the child- a boy about five years old. He could change the property of his chakra to be soothing. It was more instinctual than changing it to 'water' or 'fire' or 'wind'- but it was more useless.
Even if he'd mastered Mystic Palm, there was no way to heal a broken bone with a bandage. It would be like burn ointment on charred flesh.
"I-"
Natsuo felt his breath catch and he leant over to catch his barely audible whispers.
"I'm scared." A shaky breath. "…P-Papa?"
"Papa is away right now." Natsuo said evenly, feeling distant. "It's okay. I'll stay with you. Don't be scared."
"…'M scared." He whispered again, a rasp. "I don't wanna…" But Natsuo already knew what he wanted to say.
No one wanted to die, even if he didn't have a proper grasp on what mortality was.
('Then what was that, just now?' What had he been thinking?)
"It hurts."
Of course it hurt. There was nothing he could offer apart from a merciful swift death, or his meagre soothing chakra, or his presence, if it even meant anything to this stranger.
"It'll go away." Natsuo said steadily. He smiled, even though there was blood on his face and his mother's corpse was still cooling. He smiled as if he knew everything in the world, as if he was confident- as if he had any power in this god forsaken world- "The pain will go away."
"You can… do it? …Nii-san?"
It caught him off guard, but his expression doesn't waver. The boy's eyes are cloudy. He still smiles. It's much harder to fake, Natsuo realised, but he passed his act if the boy thought he was older than him. There's no such innocence in his voice, nor immaturity. There's no lisp.
"Yes." Natsuo replied and his chakra mingled with the child's as well, like he did with his mother. It was so he could feel Natsuo's presence, but it also meant that Natsuo could feel when his begun to fade. "I can make your pain go a…"
He let his words trail off as he felt the boy's chakra abruptly mute. He was gone now. Natsuo withdrew his chakra hastily, shaking off the chill of death. Somehow this felt worse than when he first heard the heartbeat flatline beep.
Natsuo wondered how old he was. Natsuo was nearly two. But how old was he?
What, was it late twenties? That didn't feel right. At this stature, this strength, this powerlessness this emotional incapacity-
Shouldn't he be… doing something right now? Anything?
How did he even survive? When he wasn't even anything worthwhile? He hadn't done anything. Was it just luck? His head spun.
He was meant to be doing something right now. He had to do something right now.
As a doctor, he…
("It's my job to help people. That's just what I do.")
As Natsuo, he-
"Survive-"
His mother's voice…
"You must survive."
He-
"You will survive."
He had to go.
Natsuo staggered towards the exit, tripping over a few limbs despite his efforts.
Survive, survive, survive…
He fell into a stone statue by the wall and yelped as he slammed his head against its paw? The necklace fell out of his shirt and landed between its paws. Natsuo hurriedly reached for it and clutched onto it- The paw was raised, perched atop a ball.
This was… a lion dog statue.
He hissed as he noticed he'd broken skin on his temple. It was a bad time to have a head injury.
Natsuo shook his head. He was getting distracted. He pushed off the statue and continued forward.
He had to go. He had to do something.
Where?
"North."
North.
He gripped the necklace tightly.
"Did that boy… just summon us by mistake?"
"Fate has its odd ways. How many years has it been? Who dares lay waste upon this sacred land?"
"I know not if this was the best or worst time to have been awakened."
"But that boy..."