Prologue - Part 4
Me sliding in after a Three months plus: /YQritq3
Fuyuko had started moving the second her son appeared, pushing past the freezing, graceless pressure that Satoru's very presence had heralded with his impossible reappearance, but she might as well not have bothered.
It's all over so quickly that, were it not for her own dojutsu, she might have missed it entirely.
One second, her son is extending a single palm out, eyes-burning, unearthly chakra strangling the very air with otherworldy malice so unnatural it couldn't possibly be human, and the next-
" Blue."
-The world tints in hues of sapphire, and their surroundings flicker a heartbeat before the nin implodes.
There's no other word for it - His form folds and twists violently, like a macabre origami display, and with her Byakugan blazing Fuyuko can see the very instant that his body is crushed inwards by inexorable force and reduced to an uneven and rapidly shrinking sphere of pulverized flesh and compressed gore.
Kami
Fuyuko only manages to latch onto Kanna and yank her clear of the carnage and just about loses her footing for it - which should have been an impossibility because her chakra is anchoring the soles of her feet to the earth beneath them like dead weight, Kanna's weight cradled in her arms virtually nothing to her strength, but in the split second that follows it feels as though her traction goes to shit and she's suddenly being drawn headfirst into a void she can't see but knows with instinctual certainty is deadly.
It makes her blood scream in her veins and her skin crawl in raiton-quick alarm even as she readies to flicker back -
Satoru finally seems to catch sight of them, radiant gaze unblinking.
- and then it's abruptly over.
The pull vanishes and the surging, heady power lacing the air surges and swells only for an instant before it sparks out of existence if it was never there at all. The ruined slop that had once been the enemy nin slips out of the air with it and hits the ravaged dirt with a wet, almost underwhelming thud.
Fuyuko stares at it blankly, long and hard, before she steadily lowers the equally silent Kanna to her feet.
Across from them, her son angles his gaze down to the utter mockery of a corpse he's left in his wake, tilts his head consideringly... and scoffs.
" Weak."
...
The next few seconds crawl by like centuries - still and silent and deceptively void of anything. A fool could even mistake the lull for serenity.
But there's nothing serene about any of this.
Fuyuko's fists clench, and it's the only tell she allows herself. Besides her, Kanna flitches, no doubt sensing the utter frothing maelstrom that her chakra has become in her veins, but there's jackshit Fuyuko can do to control that, because Satoru still isn't looking awayfrom the carnagehe's sown and the few feet between her and the child she loves more than she's done for her very life feel like an incomprehensible chasm.
She can't even bring herself to ask how.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, what the fucking fuck!?
"Satoru?"
Satoru's expression flickers - disinterested apathy bleeding into something far more attentive, far more human, and he starts as though only just remembering that he wasn't allowed.
Miyabi is still curled into Karin, hunched into the quivering older girl for safety and comfort both, but her skin is still two shades too pale and sallow and her eyes are so very wide with disbelief and terror.
(Later, Miyabi will understand - that the world can be an ugly, ugly place and that it often calls for more of the same. That her brother had only acted to protect her - that he would always act to protect her, and she'll know that she is loved.
But not now.
Now, Fuyuko's little girl stares at her beloved twin and fears.)
"What did you do?"
Satoru's expression crumples in uncertainty and the beginnings of confused hurt, and the sparking light in his eyes finally goes out.
"I-"
His voice breaks as the words die in his throat. Fuyuko feels her heart break with it, but the sensation is still enough to settle something inside of her.
Enough.
Her resolve hardens, the unmoored incredulity pushed aside in favor of cold, shinobi-grade practicality.
She could deal with this later - the way she always did - but right now, they needed to move.
Kusa nin had attacked them, and that wouldn't have come out of the blue. there were eyes on them now, and it wasn't safe to linger where reinforcements could swarm them - and they would.
The Byakugan and the rest of their collective gifts were a genetic lottery worth their weight in gold - and blood, and Kusa would spill rivers of it to get their hands on them.
Fuyuko would shed oceans more to keep her family safe.
Mission objective - get the hell out of dodge.
Her hands blur through familiar hand seals as she summons a pair of shadow clones with a familiar puff of smoke.
Satoru doesn't resist as she scoops him up into her arms, limp and unresisting, and Miya's much the same. She tries not to show how fucking relievedthat makes her feel even as her one of her clones seize Karin with her free hand and the other slings Kanna over her back entirely
"The children's things - the supply scrolls." Kanna murmurs, dazed, and Fuyuko purses her lips.
"I'll send a clone."
...
Her clone doesn't make the trip unaccosted.
There's an intruder in their home - an old man, gaunt and sallow-cheeked and with a posture that screamed former nin training - practiced, but long since rusted.
When he catches sight of her, he doesn't hesitate to draw a kunai and charge.
In response, Fuyuko disables him in five moves and grounds him with a sixth. She doesn't even bother with questions as he collapses, blood welling up in his mouth as he goes down.
"Monster." He gurgles hatefully, pale and on the verge of death.
"The worst of them all." Fuyuko's clone agrees dryly, and then raises her foot and crushes his skull like an egg.
Good fucking riddance.
Then she retrieves everything, sets the house that had been their home for years ablaze with a katon jutsu and joins up with the original and the rest of the family on the outskirts of the village.
From there, they make like bandits into the night.
...
It's late into the night - really on the verge of dawn - when Satoru finally speaks up again.
By this point, they'd left the town in their dust hours ago, and Fuyuko had set up a low campfire - risky and borderline amateurish, but she had seals to deal with the smoke and her byakugan was flared to its peak as she kept a lookout.
The idyllic years of peace had dulled her senses before, but nothing and no one was getting a drop on them again, and anyone with the balls to try would pay in blood.
Karin and Miya are attached to one another in their sleep, and Kanna is curled around the pair protectively - Not that there was much protecting she'd be able to do if an enemy managed to get past Fuyuko, impressive bloodline limit or no, but she supposed it was the thought that counted.
Her son hadn't slept. Instead, Satoru seems to content himself with staring into the campfire blankly, the crackle of flames reflecting off his cerulean eyes
Then he speaks up.
"Are you scared of me?"
It's as though someone's driven a kunai into her heart.
"No" He's in her arms almost faster than she can process the thought, unresisting face tucked into the crook of her neck "No, darling, no."
The very question is as ludicrous as it is agonizing.
Because of a power, she couldn't recognise? Because of a dead enemy nin?
She was from Konoha - ridiculous bloodline limits were her bread and butter, and the mangled corpse had made of the attacker was a far kinder fate than the one Fuyuko would have visited on them all.
It's not even an exaggeration. She would have readily, gleefullyslaughtered her way through his bloodline starting from immediate relatives and up to the most distantly related cousin if that's what it had taken to keep her family safe.
He doesn't try to break her hold, and his next words are muffled, but she still hears them loud and clear.
"It's okay if you are." He murmurs lowly. "I know Miya is."
"Your sister is scared, but not of you." It's half a lie, and she has the sickening feeling that they both know it, but it doesn't matter. "She'll understand what happened soon and she'll be all the better for it."
Not training the kids was a mistake, she can see that now. Hindsight is a vindictive, vengeful bitch.
None of the children had been prepared for the night - none of them should have been, a part of her thinks, but it's the sentiment talking.
She coddled them all too long, let them rest in a veneer of safety and peace - And it was all ripped away in an instant.
Never again.
"She'll never fear you," Fuyuko tells her son, discarding the thought for the moment. "You're her brother, and her protector."
"... Okay."
There's a pause, fraught with tremulous emotion.
"Satoru?"
"Mmh?"
She hesitates to ask - she's not even sure if she should.
"Do you know... how you did what you did?"
Do you know how you killed a man?
She doesn't have to elaborate - thank kami for that - because Satoru stirs in her grip and shifts in place.
"I just did."
Helpful, that.
"But do you know how?"
"No. It's my technique. My blue. I just knew. I always know stuff like that." He shrugs answer, utterly nonchalant and seemingly forever at ease. "Throughout Heaven and Earth, I alone am the Honored One."
It's not just words, she knows immediately. There's a certainty there, nestled in that... proclamation, and for the life of her, she doesn't know what to do with that.
"But what does that mean?
She's not expecting an answer, and that's probably for the best, because the one she receives is earnest in its lack of anything worthwhile.
"Mama, I have no idea. Isn't that cool?"
"… I suppose it is."
She makes no mention of how hollow the smile she receives is for all that it tears her up inside.
Another moment passes
"Mama?"
"Yes?"
"Who were those people?"
Just like that, she finds herself at a crossroads.
For just a second, she's tempted to lie, or misdirect, or give a half-answer. Whatever it took to stop herself from pulling the last of the wool from his eyes before she was well and ready and willing to.
Blue.
And then the moment of weakness passes when she remembers that it's already far, far too late.
"They were shinobi."
And then she tells him just about everything.
...
When all is said and done, she's expecting a litany of questions.
About the Hyuga clan. About Konoha.
Even just about her, before her children and the circumstances behind their birth.
All of those would have made sense.
So naturally, her son goes for the one farthest from expectations and the most painful to answer.
"But you're not a shinobi anymore. You've left that behind." He frowns. "So why can't they leave you alone? Why can't they leave us alone?"
And what exactly is she supposed to say in answer to that?
That greed was a staple of the world? That blood and suffering took first place in the race against? That any notion of individuality was wishful thinking at best, suicidal naivete at worst - at the most common?
"Because," she says with some grim finality "That's just the order of things."
It's the only answer she can give him that doesn't reek of despair - no more than the bare minimum.
...
The silence lingers after that.
But it doesn't last. Satoru doesn't let it last.
(It's about time Fuyuko learned the truth. That barring exceptional circumstances her son would never let sleeping dogs lie - and woe to anyone who got in his way)
"I refuse."
"Oh?"
She looks down in contemplative confusion, brows furrowed, and then she blinks in surprise.
Because her son meets her stare and grins wildly, and for the first time since this kami-damned ordeal began, she recognizes something distinctly unhinged to it.
"The order of things? Really?" His eyes light up. " Says freaking who ?"
And the die is cast.
...
Baby Satoru readying himself to square up against the entirety of the elemental nations.
/zy3vyKm
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