Under the grey, almost timid light of a sun hidden by the clouds, the rain fell like the endless drumming of the fingers of a distracted god, while there was no wind to divert the trajectory of each drop of water, and the smoke of the houses of the small village was simply scattered into nothingness.
Karin was eating on her own in one of the abandoned houses of the village she had found herself in: since her return from the Summon Plane -and she felt a flutter of pride in her chest when she thought about how she had managed to gain the trust of Enma and his clan- she had been more or lest abandoned to herself.
For the first time since her first and only visit to the Capital of Hi no Kuni, she was on her own.
She had hunted or fished whenever she could for the first few days, only to seal away her new provisions in some scrolls in order to keep moving? Where to? Well, considering that she had appeared in the same area she had reverse summoned herself from, any direction was more or less the same.
A henge allowed her to keep hidden her distinctive red hair, but she wasn't any closer to finding Daiki than she had been when she first awoke prisoner of those... those... hollow-nin.
But where before she had been scared and immediately kidnapped, only to escape by her own merits, she now felt a different kind of strength in herself: truly, it was rather simple. Now she was the Summoner of the Monkey Clan, and she'd never be alone again.
So when she felt the same kind of hollow group of people approach, instead of fear, she felt only a ready fury threatening to bubble out of her: She had been unable to feel them the first time because she had been caught off guard, and her skills would not have helped her in fighting them off.
How did they find me? Three of them approached from the south of the village, while another six were arrayed in a spread-out line in a sort of semicircle that covered from east to west.
They differed from common shinobi in the same way a white and black image differed from a rich painting: they were real, of course, but there was also nothing to define them beyond the vaguest shapes that had been hammered onto their souls.
She quickly finished her rice with wild boar and immediately rose to her feet: her would-be attackers were approaching at a steady and controlled pace. This isn't going to be a sprint, but a long and drawn-out fight then?
Karin might be willing to fight and to not give in to fear: but summons or not, nine against one were odds acceptable only when you were a part of those nine, and this wasn't the case. She walked out of the abandoned house and she let the henge fade: her red hair quickly turned a darker shade as it grew wet under the rain, and her chakra churned violently in her gut.
She bit her knuckles and quickly smeared blood on her fingers: "I'm not alonethough."
She started with the necessary hand signs when the three shinobi approaching from the south vanished from her senses. The change was so sudden, so immediate, and with o transition from one state of being to one of ... not-being, that for a moment, she stopped.
And in that moment someone else appeared in front of Karin: someone she had felt before, back when she felt like she had just been forced between a rock and a hard place, and yet, someone that was completely different.
The shinobi in front of her wore a black cloud with a pattern of red clouds, and long dark hair framed a handsome face under a large straw hat that barely managed to hold back the rain: "Daiki sent me, padawan."
As Karin stuttered, her chakra briefly fluttering out of control while she took in the unmovable mountain of sharp ice that this shinobi was, the other six ninja that had been waiting for her fell in quick succession: during those seconds, the chakra of the newcomer didn't waver, and his expression didn't change.
Even so, Karin could tell that he felt somewhat irked at having to use such a term to make her trust him as an ally.
With a knowing smirk, she brought her hands to her hips: "Well, where is Daiki-sensei?"
...
( March 5th, 15 years After the Kyubi Attack )
"That's it?" Sasuke's dry voice cut through the ever-present rustling that covered the great forests characterizing Hi no Kuni: at fifteen years of age, he had spent what was left of his slaughtered childhood training until his knuckles bled, until his lungs were on the point of collapsing and his heart threatening to give out.
He had kept up all of his determination despite being able to slowly bring under control the unending rage that always coursed through him, he had survived, no, thrived in war, and now that he was at the peak of his strength, he was told that his target never existed.
There was no sadistic kinslayer to kill in order to avenge his family: only what was left of a desperate boy warped by a world at war and the manipulations of those too entrenched in deceit to understand just how much they were part of the problem to be actually trusted to be anything but warmongering bastards.
"I can think of nothing crueler." Itachi's stoic reply was still an honest one, at least from what Sasuke could tell, "To be warped into something he'd never be otherwise but never leaving those principles that he spent his whole life predicating."
The younger of the two Uchiha clenched his fists as he followed the kinslayer through the secret paths that led inside Konohagakure no Sato: from an otherwise anonymous stretch of forest the two walked into an unremarkable tunnel made of concrete, dimly lit by the occasional lighbulb.
Sasuke frowned as his eyes spun into red and he observed the path they were crossing: "How comes you're still able of using these passages? Haven't they had all the time and samples needed to exclude you?"
Itachi, innocent or not of mindless manslaughter, had never been one for explanations or long speeches, so he simply turned his head towards his brother, his impassible onyx-black eyes taking notice of the Sharingan that were burning so coldly into Sasuke's orbits. "They have."
Narrowing his eyes, the younger Uchiha focused more on the faint lines of ink that channeled chakra through the walls: Konoha's security system was exceptional thanks to the ancient allies that the Uzumaki had been and the unmatched Fuinjutsu genius of both the Nidaime and Yondaime Hokage. Still that Itachi could cross the boundaries without triggering any alarm was...
Only then he noticed it: focusing to the best of his abilities, Sasuke spotted the tiniest spark of his brother's chakra skittering along the seals that littered the secret entrance, and he understood. "How can you manage to put a seal under a genjutsu?"
Glancing once more over his shoulder, Itachi's eyes warped into the still unfamiliar shape of the Mangeyko: something that Sasuke had managed to witness only the night of the massacre of his clan.
But where before the slightly curved Triskelion was all that characterized those eyes, now the tips of that unnatural shapes were joined by thin, straight lines that cut perfectly the blood-red that otherwise surrounded the pupil.
"Daiki would call it Tsukuyomi-bullshit." Itachi returned to stare ahead as the two Uchiha walked towards their target, but the mention of that man was enough to send a light shiver running down Sasuke's spine.
The S-rank med-nin's explanation of the past events still felt like a punch to the gut coupled with a yoke made of stone, but the unending belief in his position and the self-imposed task had been what kept raised Sasuke's hackles.
The picture he had been presented while Itachi was off to run an apparently fundamental errand -the younger Uchiha was sharp enough to recognize that he'd have attacked his brother on sight had he been present before Daiki could deliver the actual truth- was simply too big to be digested in the few days that passed since his awakening.
"How did you end up working with him?" as they walked, with their senses peeled to spot any enemy, Sasuke carefully chose to not say 'working for him' as the Elephant Sage's words still rang in his ears 'If I did anything to you that could be seen as 'harm', Itachi would have killed me'.
Past a certain point, as it was the case, where levels of power were so close one to another, a partnership was the only possible label for whatever was going on between Itachi and Daiki.
"He conceived a word vastly different from ours." that would have been answer enough: with just those words, Itachi communicated that he shared the impossible dream that Daiki had tried to sell to Sasuke.
A heavy silence stretched between the two as they kept moving towards their target, but before the younger Uchiha could ask something else, carefully sidestepping around the multitude of bone-deep issues that remained between the brothers like a misshapen ball of razor-sharp needles, Itachi darted forward.
With his Sharingan still active, Sasuke couldn't help but immediately observe and internalize the perfect efficiency of movement: Itachi darted forward with his hands habitually hidden in his long sleeves, and as the first blank-masked shinobi realized his presence, a deep gash was already present in his carotid artery.
There was no splurt of blood: the cut was vertical and had been inflicted just before the heartbeat necessary to spike the pressure in answer to the presence of an intruder: the Root operative's life whimpered into nothingness along with his blood.
In the same movement, the kunai responsible for the wound had embedded itself into the eye of the following opponent, and while the first was slowly crumbling to the ground, Itachi grabbed the second one by the scruff of his neck and silently laid him on the ground, retrieving his weapon as he straightened himself.
...
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