Mina exhaled as she leaned against the top branch of an oak tree. The tide would be in three hours. There were bound to be a few smugglers or fishermen in the area willing to make a few thousand ryo. Not that she had much left. It was silly, really, to be sitting so close to Tazuna's house. Kakashi's shadow moved against the guest bedroom window. She didn't realize how much she missed sleeping with the pack; she'd been looking forward to at least one more night snuggled against the dogs with Kakashi on the other side.
The lights turned off inside the house, plunging the yard into darkness. Pulling her chakra in as tightly as she could, Mina jumped out of the tree into the night. She walked on the sandy banks that crisscrossed the island, needing to clear her head. The wind had a bite to it, sour from the briny coast. There was rot in the air, thick and fetid the closer she got to the town. Raw sewage, perhaps, mixed with the low tide. At times like these, she wished she had taken after her brother and adapted to wearing a mask full time.
When she reached the bridge, she hid underneath a bridge pillar. Hugging her knees to her chest, she dropped her head against the newly laid bricks and closed her eyes. Kakashi would be okay. He loved Team Seven, that much was apparent. He had a lover from Konoha, she'd seen them in the distance. Though, perhaps a bit aggressive, she wasn't one to throw stones. She certainly wasn't one to stay when they locked into each other's intimate embrace. That crossed a line, even for her.
A new scent drifted on the wind: brine and rosemary. Mina peeked from behind the pillar she was hiding and watched as Zabuza and Haku walked up the beach. With a small wave, she stood up and walked over.
"Nice night," she greeted.
Zabuza cocked a brow and crossed his arms over his chest.
Mina tried again, "Waiting for the tide?"
Haku answered, "Yes, it would waste chakra to walk to the Land of Fire."
"Smart kid," Mina commented mildly. "Though you could also swim it if you absolutely had to."
"Who are you running from, Kumo?" Zabuza asked. "Big brother get bossy again?"
"Who says I'm running? And he's not my brother."
He snorted and leaned against his sword. "I've been a nuke-nin a long time now. You think I can't tell who's running and who's not?"
"Couple of Konoha jounin. I'd rather not be a guest of the Hokage again. It was not a pleasant stay last time."
"I've heard of Kakashi's ruthlessness, but letting his baby sister get tortured. That's a special kind of ruthlessness."
Mina huffed, plopping down on the beach. "Again, he's not my brother—"
Zabuza interrupted. "I don't have much patience, girly. Stop trying to bullshit a bullshitter. Anyone who looks at you two together can tell. If not for the height difference, you'd be twins."
Mina threw a pebble into the sea. "Fine. Why do you ask, anyway?"
"Two hours 'till the tide turns. Don't have anything better to do than bother kunoichi from Kumo. Who are also from Konoha. How does that work exactly?"
She turned around and glared at him. "Aren't you just chattier than a Daimyo," she mumbled. "Don't you have a boat to steal or something? Isn't that what Kiri-nin do?"
"No. I won't, probably for the same reason you don't."
Mina grunted in response and threw another pebble. Stealing a livelihood from someone who was already impoverished did not sit well with her.
"Where're you going?" she asked as Haku walked up the beach.
Haku raised an eyebrow toward Zabuza. Zabuza inclined his head slightly. "To the top of the bridge. The moonlight reflecting off the water reminds me of my home."
"You're letting him go by himself? He's a kid."
"He's a capable shinobi. If I thought otherwise, that would reflect poorly on me, as his sensei."
"There're three Konoha jounin on this island not more than five miles from here," Mina reminded. "I think one of them is an Uchiha."
Zabuza glanced up at Haku, who was now standing on the bridge in the pale moonlight. He shifted on his feet, plucking his sword from the sand, and moved up the beach. Mina watched as the two stood side-by-side at the top of the bridge. The waves crashed against the shore, she frowned when she ran out of pebbles to throw into the sea.
An hour passed, and she briefly glanced up at the bridge. The wind blew across the wet sand, scattering refuse in its wake. Foam grew on the sea, reflecting the solemn light from the lighthouse on the north side of the island. It broke and crashed against the bridge pillars as the tide began to advance. Dawn would break in just under three hours. Hopefully, by that time, she would be back in the Land of Fire. Closer to more Konoha shinobi, perhaps, but further than the two with Kakashi.
The wind rushed past her, carrying a new note in the gust. Mina looked back to the bridge. Her heart pounded in her chest at the arrival of a third figure. Jumping to her feet, she rushed up the beach to Zabuza. Too late, Haku's body fell to the bridge floor. A bloodless kill, electricity was thick in the air.
Wind whooshed against the newcomer's navy blue robes. He wore an orange swirled mask with two eye holes visible. Red glowed from the darkness on the right side.
Mina unbuckled the top of her kunai pouch. "You're not with Konoha. Who are you?"
"Who I am is unimportant. As to why I killed the boy? I saved him from a lifetime of suffering."
"Bullshit!" Zabuza growled. His grip tightened on the hilt of his sword.
Mina's hands trembled. Killing intent flooded the bridge between Zabuza and the masked stranger. The smell of hickory smoke niggled at the edge of her memory. Orange goggles came to mind through the haze.
Metallic ringing cut the air as Zabuza swung down with his sword. It cut through the man as though he were a phantom. Zabuza swung again, swinging upward. Again and again, he struck out against the masked man, all the while the shinobi had yet to move.
"He's taunting you," Mina whispered. The man lazily pulled out a gumbai from his robes. "Zabuza. Retreat! He has a sharingan!"
She watched in horror as Zabuza was pushed back with a swift kick to his sternum as though he were no more than a paper doll. Her legs felt like they were frozen in cement as she watched him skid across the concrete tiles. She aimed a kunai at the stranger's mask, putting every bit of force she could muster behind the throw. It went right through his head, clattering uselessly to the floor.
Zabuza jumped to his feet, slashing with his sword. The stranger swiped him with a kunai, moving with immeasurable speed. Every time she was sure Zabuza would land a hit, the sword moved cleanly through the man's body. Zabuza's arm was covered in blood now, dangling against his side. The stranger unleashed a barrage of kunai against Zabuza. Mina countered as many as she could, throwing one after the other in rapid succession.
Sprinting toward the enemy, she kicked up at his head, avoiding eye contact. Her foot passed through him. She jumped behind him when she heard Zabuza's sword ring through the darkness. Unfamiliar with Zabuza's fighting style, she kept a distance away, trying to analyze the situation. The masked stranger was toying with Zabuza. That much was clear.
Her hands moved on their own, forming signs, as she sprinted back into the fray. Lightning sprung from fingertips, surrounding the stranger. He melted into the ground, thoroughly disappearing from the bridge. Petrichor filled the space, overpowering the sea's brine. In this moment's respite, she ran to Zabuza and held her hands up. His wounds were bleeding profusely now, iron was thick in the air.
"Medic," she whispered, approaching the last two steps slowly. "I'm a medic. You don't want to hurt me."
Any recognition Zabuza had evaporated into a glassy stare. He swung his sword toward her, and she neatly ducked backward, her hands scrapped against the rough cement. The sword's shadow lifted into the fog as he raised it again. Battering down, it cut through the gathering mist, scattering it into floating tendrils. The finesse he had shown in wielding it had disappeared, replaced by short jerky movements like a puppet on a string.
"Fuck. Sharingan genjustu."
Mina ran backward as he chased her with gusto, slashing at her the moment she was too close. He caught the loose sleeve of her shirt, ripping it open and tearing into her skin. Iron mixed with the salt of the sea and the rosemary oil from his sword.
"Snap out of it!"
Mindlessly, he attacked. Water crashed over the top of the bridge. Mist swallowed them whole, completely obscuring her vision. Rosemary whooshed through the air, and she quickly flipped back. Zabuza's sword scraped along the floor hard enough to carve into the surface.
Smoked hickory lingered in the wind, and she heard a kunai flying toward her. As she backed up, she was stopped by the side rail of the bridge. Using it as a springboard, she jumped up, trying to get clear of the mist. The sword itself was twice as long as she was tall—there was no way she would be able to reach Zabuza without being injured.
'Options, Mina. Think,' she thought, running along the opposite guardrail. 'The masked man is still here. He's watching.'
Another brace of kunai rang against the wind. Concrete cracked and shook as she erected a mud wall against the bombardment. Static danced along her spine, the impending sign of a lightning attack. She rolled out of the way, kicking blindly at the attacker. Her foot passed over fabric. A strong hand gripped her ankle and yanked her back into the air. Using his momentum against him, she gathered lightning into her hand. Jerking down, she reached for their head only to land on the floor.
The mist was beginning to thin as the wind picked up in the pre-dawn light. Mina jolted back as a kunai landed into her shoulder. There was a shadowy figure on his knees fifty feet away. Blue lightning streaked through and cut the mist. It electrified the air, making the hair on her arms stand on end. She knew that chakra knew it like the fog in a distant dream.
She sprinted toward the kneeling figure, ready to fight the stranger standing before him. Too late, Zabuza's heart had stopped under the electrical current. The water in the air intensified the lightning jutsu. The sword in his hand became a conduit he wasn't prepared for. His body jerked erratically as the remaining surge of electricity pulsed through him.
The orange mask seemed to float in the dark air, the eerie red of it glowing as dawn approached over the horizon. She could hear the high tide crashing against the pylons beneath the bridge. The rotten seaweed was slowly being covered underneath the water.
"Tsk, tsk," the stranger said, waving his finger in the air. "Two deaths, both by lightning. I wonder who could have done such a thing."
"What do you want?!" Mina yelled, backing up until her knees hit a crate. She slipped in a puddle and rolled onto her back on the crate. She landed on her elbow, scratching it against the rough cement floor.
"Nothing in particular," the man said, spinning a kunai around his index finger.
He flung it at her, she twisted to the side to avoid it. Her reactions were slowed. She carefully pulsed her chakra through her body to disrupt the genjutsu. Small bits of gravel loosened at the edge of the bridge, falling into the sea below. There was nowhere else to go but the water. The tides crashed against the pillars below; seafoam reflected the pink of the rising sun, churning just below.
She wasn't a strong swimmer. Never had a need to improve in the Land of Lightning. At the moment, it was looking more and more like her only option over dying at the hands of this masked shinobi.
"Oh, Mina-chan," the stranger sang.
A kunai broke the silent dawn, and she moved to the left to dodge it. The stranger materialized in front of her and she gasped out in surprise. Avoiding their gaze, she parried his kunai with her own. Every attempt to put distance between them was consumed by his speed.
'No. Not speed,' Mina thought as she bounded back to the center of the bridge. 'He's barely moving. He's—'
Zabuza's sword swooshed through the air, cutting the dense fog and aiming for her neck. She countered it, crossing two kunai and locking the blade. It slammed into her shoulder, deep enough to cut to the bone as she resisted it. Channeling lightning through her kunai, it ricocheted up Zabuza's blade into the stranger's body. Smoke rose up from his loose collar.
With a muttered curse, he lifted the blade again, ripping free of her shoulder, and swinging it down. It was unwieldy in his hands. His motions were jerky at best, it was clear he had never used such a large weapon. He lacked all the grace that Zabuza had possessed.
He was a cheap imitation, hacking away toward her even as she discreetly healed her shoulder. It bled sluggishly when she broke off her medical ninjutsu in favor of dodging his renewed assault. The sword clanged loudly, ringing into the scant daylight each time she parried with her kunai. He was toying with her now. Menace was steeped in his every step in the early morning fog.
She threw a kunai at his chest, hiding a second in its shadow aimed for his hand. Blood dripped to the floor when the second kunai made its mark.
'He's predicting my strikes and somehow making his body disappear at the instant of impact,' she thought, backflipping down the bridge and twisting away from every kunai he sent her way.
"Figure this one out, you son of a bitch," she muttered, rushing him, throwing kunai after kunai connected by ninja wire. A web formed in the air as the kunai made their mark against the crates lining the edge of the bridge. Blue lightning filled the web, catching him in the middle. His body twitched under the pressure of her element, fully trapped against the wire. He collapsed, further entangling himself in the improvised mesh.
Mina coughed. Warmth spread down her chin as she coughed again. Wiping at it with her fingers, crimson spread on her fingertips. She looked down, a kunai embedded into her abdomen. A gloved hand around the kunai twisted it. He cupped her cheek, bringing her gaze to his. Her breath became shaky, her abdomen burning like it was on fire. She couldn't move her own body as he pulled the kunai out with one hand and stabbed her over and over again, twisting the kunai each time. His gentle hand on her face caressed her temple, brushing the hair from her eyes as he watched the light dim.
Gone was the carefully created ninja wire web, as though it had never existed in the first place. She coughed again, blood spilled down her shirt.
She whimpered as pain blossomed from her wounds.
"Shh," he hushed, continuing to gently caress her face in a lover's touch.
"Why?" she brokenly whispered, holding his wrist with both her hands. Her feet broached the edge of the bridge again. Strength failed her as her fingers went cold against his grip.
"For a better world," he answered.
He stabbed her a final time, her body finally registered the pain, freeing her from his genjutsu. She thrust backward off his kunai, flinging herself into the roiling sea below. Her entire body felt like a raging inferno crept its way into every nerve ending, blasting her in an ungodly heat, by the time her head hit the water.
Swimming beneath the bridge, she hugged a pillar and precariously balanced herself on the inside of the bridge footing. Only an eighth of her chakra remained. She rested the side of her head against the pillar. The water was to her chin now, her blood steadily mixing with the sea and flowing out with the current. The salt stung against her wounds as she tried to focus on closing them. Black crept on the edges of her vision and she shook her head furiously to dislodge the incoming darkness.
It was a bad sign that she could barely feel the open wounds under the water. The shoulder would have to wait. She vaguely worried whether or not infection would set in. From the pillar, she could see her mission bag still laying on the beach underneath the bridge. Wet hair clung to her forehead from the sea spray. With a shaky breath, she entered the water and swam to the edge of the shore. Her pants weighed her down. Every stroke was made out of desperation borne from exhaustion.
Her mouth filled with the briny saltwater as she struggled from pillar to pillar. She clung to them desperately. Her body begged her to stop, her mind begged her to continue to shore. No matter how hard she tried to fight or prove otherwise, the little girl in her wanted to run to nii-san's protection, but she wasn't a little girl anymore. The two Konoha jounin that were currently with him would no doubt demand she be turned in for desertion. Kakashi wouldn't stop them, as he said, though he loved her, he didn't trust her.
Mina gagged the next time she came up for air. The water was down to her waist now. It dragged against her as she struggled to the sandy bank. By the time she made it to the dry sand on the beach, all she could do was lay there with her lower legs still in the water. Dawn had fully taken over the sky now, the sun was over the horizon.
'Come on. Get up,' she urged her exhausted body, shrugging on her mission bag. There was a small boat in the mangrove roots not far from her position. She grimaced when she realized she would have to steal the smuggler's boat in order to survive. Carefully slinking out from under the bridge, she dashed to the mangrove tree. The stranger was no longer in the area. His hickory smoke smell had faded almost entirely.
She pinned her remaining ryo to the bottom of the mangrove's root with a kunai. With any luck, the smuggler would be able to buy a new boat with that money and not lose his livelihood. Or even better, Kakashi's client would prove successful and build his bridge. As she dragged it across the sand and into the water, she held her breath. She didn't fully breathe again until she was far past the bridge and drifting on the currents of the open sea.
Salt had dried on her pants in thick lines, leaving the shinobi silk stiff and coarse against her legs. Her shirt was completely ruined, the smell of iron still thick on the loosely knit wool. Any hope of a shinobi alliance between Kiri and Kumo was dead in the water with Zabuza's death. Mina stopped rowing, laid down in the boat and closed her eyes against the high sun. The current would take her the rest of the way in.
"'In any post-combat situation, a medic should have priorities,'" Mina quoted aloud, mimicking S's gravelly voice. "'The first is safety, are you secure in your situation?'"
She paused for a moment before talking to herself.
"No, S. I am not secure. I have a masked madman (and dojutsu thief) after me intent on murder. I have Konoha ANBU after me wanting to throw me back at Ibiki."
She continued to quote, "'The second is to find sustenance. One cannot produce chakra without sustenance.'"
Running a rough hand down her face, she sighed, blowing a stray frizzed curl off her face. "Well, don't have any money. I have three ration packs in my bag."
Holding her pointer finger up, she continued to mimic her guardian and mentor, "'The third is to rest. The brain needs to clear itself of toxins and clutter from the day in order to better process and analyze the situation.'"
She released a bitter laugh, letting the boat rock from side to side. "Well, that's the best advice I've heard all day." Closing her eyes, she let the current drift the boat as she drifted into a fitful sleep.
AN: Thank you for reading! If you have time, please leave a comment 8) (Thank you to everyone who's commented so far, including our guest commenters. I try to write back, so check your inbox.)
I have about 120k written of this and counting. It looks like the story is going to close around 175k-200k. Right now I'm writing quite a bit of Darui/OC. Fun little bit about his character is that I wrote him as Itachi-lite. There just wasn't any source material I could fall back on so I took what I could from the anime and manga and aligned it with a close personality which happened to be Itachi. A not traumatized, laid-back version of fanon Itachi with a little Shisui thrown in for flair. At this point, though, he's definitely his own character.
Mina is basically Sakura, if we're all being honest. Though, her fatal flaw is pride. I think Sakura's is more insecurity. Actually, there's very little difference between my Sakura and Mina in writing. So if you like this story, you'd probably like ItaSaku or ShiSaku stories. I had this idea of writing a Darui/Sakura, but I'm not sure if there'd be enough interest in it to make it worth writing up and posting.
Sorry for the late-ish update, this heatwave is really kicking my butt. It was a heat index of 115 F (46.1 C) today. So humid it felt like I was swimming in the air.
I have a lot of WIP right now, including an Itachi/Shisui/Sakura that's a follow-up to the fic I orphaned a while back (Shadows of a Red Dawn). However, after I finish this story and Game of the Gods I will be posting exclusively on Ao3 and sometimes Tumblr. To all you authors out there, don't orphan your works. You'll regret it. I promise.
Beta'ed by: Cherryberry12