Rei slept restlessly that night, lost in a torrent of memory that had long been buried.
The Academy had gone into a lockdown when the Kaguya had attacked the Village Hidden in the Mist, once upon a time. Rei had been in her second year as an Academy student, and she had been preparing to make the short trek back to the orphanage that had been her home for so long when one of the sensei had pushed past her and thrown the thick double doors shut. He had turned to her and pointed back in the direction she'd come. "Back to the arena, now!"
She'd fallen in with the other low-ranking students, all of them racing down the darkened hallways towards the arena where blood from the day's sparring matches still dotted the floor. "What's happening?" one girl Rei had never seen before screeched. "Why are they sending us back?"
"Probably another big fight," an older girl had stated calmly, even while running. "There are more and more of them lately."
Over a hundred students were gathered into the arena, where the open windows just beneath the high ceiling let in snowflakes and frigid wind. Two sensei stayed with them, silent as stone at each door. The students chattered quietly, some even chuckling together. There was no way out of here for now, so why not have a little fun?
Rei had turned in a complete circle at least twice, looking for Risa. Where could she have gone? She lives here; it's not like she was on her way home when the sensei shut the doors.
She had finally set herself down cross-legged next to some girls who were telling their fortunes with thin sticks. "See the way that this one doesn't touch the long one? That means that you'll grow up old and alone."
Minutes passed so slowly. Some of the students eventually curled up in the bleachers or on the floor for a nap. The sensei still hadn't said a word. Then, as the sun had begun to fall, a commotion outside the Academy silenced everyone for a split second. A woman had screamed. Not a scream of pain or terror, but rage. The sensei suddenly abandoned them, running outside and locking them in.
Something was finally happening. Rei found herself swept up in the excitement, running with the other students to the wall, where two of the older boys ran up the surface with chakra to grab onto the window ledges, at least ten feet above their heads. "What's happening, Taiyo?" one of the girls yelled.
The boy swore loudly. "It's a fight. Looks like that crazy clan with the bones."
A few sighed in exasperation. "Man, that's it? Those people are always starting something."
"Uh uh," Taiyo had said, shaking his head emphatically. "This is way worse than the other ones. There's…" He fell silent, and the other boy spoke up after a second.
"God," he exhaled. "There's blood all over the place."
Rei could hear it. Screaming. Shouting. The visceral squishing of blade meeting skin. Crying.
"There's Zane Sensei!" Taiyo yelled, pointing out of the window. "He's cutting them down everyw-" Before he could finish his sentence, he flew backwards from the window, like he'd been struck by a sonic blast. When he hit the stone floor behind the rest of them, his head bounced with a hollow resonance, and he was instantly surrounded.
One of the girls cradled his head in her lap, but all Rei could see was the projectile that protruded from his throat. It was pale white, about the length of her forearm and maybe an inch in diameter, and it was so sharp that she imagined she'd cut herself just from looking at it.
The girl holding Taiyo's body grabbed the bone weapon and pulled it free from his throat, dropping it in horror as the blood gushed…and gushed…and then slowed. He'd been dead before he'd hit the ground.
The cries and crashes still sounded outside, and Rei had backed away from the group of her classmates, needing to put some distance between her and the blood. Her stomach contents were rising, and she'd have lost them right then had she not heard a familiar voice outside.
"Please! Don't come any closer!"
Without a thought, Rei scaled the wall where Taiyo had been perched, unsure if any chakra had been involved at all in her climb. She peeked over the edge of the window, searching desperately for Risa, but she saw everything else instead. The Academy had been built amidst many small shops, but it may as well have been in the middle of a war zone at that moment. Everywhere Rei looked, there were blue-vested Shinobi locked in battle with the Kaguya clan, the dark-haired heathens who kept showing up every few months to satisfy their bloodlust.
There were usually only a few of them in the village at a time, but this time, Rei couldn't count them all. Most of them held makeshift swords, and Rei watched as one tall Kaguya man stretched his arm and grew a bone sword straight out of his palm. It was every bit as sharp as the one that had killed Taiyo, and the man used his other hand to pull it free from his skin and slash it downwards on a villager who was basically already a corpse.
Then Risa screamed, and Rei looked straight down below the window. Her best friend was pressed against the outside wall of the arena, no weapon to protect herself, arms held before her defensively. And a Kaguya woman was advancing on her slowly, ignoring the pandemonium all around. "Do at least try to make it a challenge for me," the woman snarled, then pushed a bone from her hand in the same way that the man had a moment earlier. She charged.
But before either Rei or Risa could scream, a flash of blue and blonde cut the woman down from behind. Her sword fell into the blood-and-mud smeared snow, and Zane Sensei picked Risa up like a baby and ran her around the side of the arena. Rei took one last look out the window before she let herself fall back to the floor.
The Kaguya were pulling people from their homes: men, women, and children. They were stabbing at them with metal and bone weapons, leaving no one alive that they encountered. The Shinobi were doing all they could to slow the bloodshed, but it seemed to be a losing battle. Niko Sensei was locked in a showdown with three Kaguya men. One of them was able to find an opening and slashed open Niko Sensei's brow, but he shook the blood from his eyes and struck back.
Zane Sensei had opened the arena doors just wide enough to thrust Risa inside, then slammed it shut and locked it once again. Rei had thrown her arms around her friend, and she hadn't let go until they were released from the arena the following morning.
It had taken intervention from several of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen to put the attack down. Taiyo had been far from the only casualty. The Shinobi had gathered the bodies of the dead Kaguya and thrown them into a bloody pile in the center of the village. But before he was satisfied, the Mizukage had ordered that all other Kaguya who had stayed behind, who had not participated in the battle, be hunted down and exterminated. Later that afternoon, three of the Swordsmen had returned with a contingent of Shinobi, all of them carrying a murdered member of the Kaguya clan. Many of them were children.
With all the bodies in a pile, Lord Fourth had personally set their bodies to the flame, sending a message to the Land of Water that uprisings, that discontent, that kekkei genkai, would not be tolerated.
Rei blinked her eyes open. Even now, three years later, she could still smell the smoke. There was nothing else like it. Burning flesh, hair, and bone imprints itself on one's memory.
She wasn't sleeping any more tonight.
She crawled from the tent silently, and when she was sure she hadn't woken Yugao, she pulled on her vest and her boots and she walked. She didn't know where she was going, but she had to go somewhere.
Those heathens…those murderers…those people…had been her people.
Her hands quivered in the cold as she looked them over, still walking. Her bones would be staying on the inside, that much was certain.
After a bit, she came to a stop when she realized she'd walked right into a softly moving river. The icy water invaded her boots, caressing her toes with prickling little bites.
"You'll catch your death."
Rei hadn't been paying any kind of attention to chakra signatures, or she'd have noticed him long ago. She didn't speak; she couldn't. Her throat was closed tight.
"Come on," he coaxed gently from the shore. "We need to get you back to camp."
She was still staring at her hands when he came into the river after her, getting wet up to his ankles, and guided her back to land. She knew Lord Fourth was so wrong in insisting that Shinobi kill their emotions. But it would certainly make moments like this easier.
She landed on her knees in the snow, unable to move another step. Kakashi of the Sharingan knelt next to her and set a hand on her shoulder, trying to catch her gaze. "You need to talk," he said. He didn't ask, and he didn't make another move.
With heaving breaths, Rei clutched absently at handfuls of snow, relishing the burn. "I watched…my clan…die." Kakashi blinked, both eyes visible, one a startling red in the deep darkness of the night. He still crouched there next to her, quiet, waiting. "If I am a child of the Kaguya, then I watched my family, maybe even my parents, bleed and burn. We all watched."
The man nodded slowly. "We heard of the Kaguya massacre here, too. It's been…mentioned a time or two since the incident with the Uchiha."
"They weren't people I would have wanted to be raised by," Rei admitted out loud at the same time she admitted it to herself. "They fought for fun and killed for no reason. And they were destroyed for it." The sobs that she'd been consciously holding back rushed forward, and she found herself leaning on a Leaf Shinobi who probably wanted to be anywhere but here right now. "I just—didn't want—this to—be my truth," she choked out.
"Your people are brutal, Rei." She looked up at the mismatched eyes with the blurriest vision. "But you aren't. So let's finish this night, and tomorrow we'll meet back with your friends. Then we can decide what to do about the Mist Village."