Shadow
Tale of the Setting Sun
Chapter 11: "Confrontation of the Black Shadow"
October 10th, the day of Naruto's eight birthday and every birthday before that, was Memorial Day at Konoha. It was always a cold, dark and somber day, as though the skies themselves were in mourning. The sun hid itself behind its clouds, which loomed heavily and slowly over the village. The villagers, all garbed in black, gathered around the memorial marker for the fallen heroes of the day the Nine-tails attacked.
Even at the Academy, there was always a special history lesson to begin the day for every class. The year before, when Naruto had been in Iruka's class, the chūnin had recounted for them how the shinobi of the village had fought bravely, holding off the Nine-tails from the rest of the village as they waited for the Fourth to arrive. Then, they had a moment of silence, before they resumed normal class activities.
But Naruto had been transferred to a new class two years his senior, and he found this year that his new instructor, a chūnin named Mizuki, conducted the lesson rather differently. Glossing cursorily over what the ninja had done, the man seemed to relish in describing the Nine-tails in detail. According to him, it was a colossal leviathan and each lashing tail rained destruction on the world every time it was swung. It was an uncontrollable force of nature, with fangs as long as a grown man and eyes that seethed with the burning fires of hell. The Nine-tails was a roiling, churning ball of evil, with only one intention in mind: to destroy anything and anyone in its path.
A student raised his trembling hand and asked, "But the Fourth killed it, right sensei?" A murmur of uncomfortable agreement spread throughout the classroom. The students had all of course grown up hearing in their bedtime stories about the monster that had terrorized the prior generation, but they'd never had reason to fear it.
Because always, at the end of every story, their mother or father had finished the story by saying, "The Fourth Hokage, a hero who loved his village and who was loved by the village, was able to protect us. At the cost of his life, he defeated the Nine-tails so that the future generation...so that you, could in turn grow up to be fine shinobi and continue protecting Konoha." With a kiss to their forehead, and a click as the light turned off, they had always fallen asleep with smiles on their faces and dreams of becoming the next hero to save their village.
But a strange, sly smile stretched across Mizuki-sensei's face as he heard the student's question.
"Well," he said, "the Fourth certainly...dealt with it for us. And that is why he is today, a hero." The chūnin bowed his head downwards in a show of respect, and all the students automatically copied his gesture. However, just before Naruto obediently complied, Mizuki tilted his head and glanced in his direction. And for a moment, Naruto thought that the chūnin's eyes had lingered on him with a cold glint. But an instant later Mizuki's gaze moved on to look fondly over the students. After a moment's hesitation, Naruto thought it more likely the fault of his overactive paranoia: Mizuki-sensei had treated him fairly over the past year, and seemed to bear no ill will against him. It wouldn't do for him to poison the opinion of his instructor, when he had so little support as it was.
As he lowered his head, Naruto wondered briefly what Mizuki-sensei had meant by 'dealt.' He hadn't directly answered the student's question – could that mean that the Nine-tails was still alive and roaming the wilderness? Naruto's head hurt at the possibility, and he instantly dismissed it. The Fourth had been too great a man to have simply chased the beast away. He would have dealt with it in the best way possible for the village. And what else could that be, but to kill such an untamable monster?
Team Oboro, hailing from Amegakure, never even saw it coming. Their plan had been to wait to the midpoint of the exam, so that the strongest teams would have finished and the weaker teams would have worn themselves out. They were still in top-shape and pumped for action by then, and with their nearly-perfected strategy of genjutsu and clone techniques, procuring a plate from the first exhausted genin team – from Suna, as it were – that passed by had been like taking candy from a baby. Armed with the necessary plates and the intelligence that their allied Ame team had given them prior to the exam, they'd been on course to reaching the exit of the maze and passing the second exam with ease.
If they hadn't gotten so caught up in the elation of their seemingly imminent success, they might have lasted a few seconds longer.
Their first indication of danger was when Mubi dropped his umbrella on the ground with a clatter. The boy himself quickly followed after, convulsing uncontrollably on the ground as white froth bubbled out from the side of his mouth. Reacting instinctively, Kagari and Oboro jumped away from their teammate, just in time to avoid the two kunai that now embedded themselves harmlessly in the ground.
Kagari's and Oboro's hands both blurred: "Bunshin no Jutsu (Clone Technique)!" As several clones appeared around them with swirling clouds of mist, they rapidly continued to form seals in succession: "Doton: Dochū Eigyo no Jutsu (Earth Release: Earth Swim Technique)!" The earth below them turned fluid, and the two rapidly sunk below its depths, leaving behind their clones. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the tremors of unmistakable battle filtered through the earth towards them. Oboro turned to Kagari, who nodded back at him, his eyes narrowed from behind his rebreather.
The two burst back up to the surface, spinning in midair as their umbrellas rapidly spat out poison-tipped needles in opposite directions. All around them, as they stood back-to-back in their practiced stances, their sacrificial clones burst into mist. Oboro blinked at the dark clearing around them.
"Where are they?!" he hissed, looking around rapidly. Given that they hadn't even sensed their enemy creeping up on them, he hadn't expected to take them out so easily – but he hadn't expected the enemy to simply not be there. But all he could see was Kagari's anxious face besides his and – what was that small blue thing fluttering around above them next to that stalactite? Wait, was that a bird? This far underground?
Before he could even open his mouth to yell out a warning however, his remaining teammate dropped like a stone besides him, white froth creeping out from his orifices.
Oboro felt his heart sink as he remembered the promise he'd made to his younger brother before he'd left the village. Quickly making up his mind, he threw his umbrella down on the ground and raised his hands.
"I surrender," he said loudly. "Just let me and my teammates live and I'll give you our plates." Just as his eyes flicked down to his left pocket, he saw a flash of red above him. His heart thudded sickeningly. And then everything turned black.
Naruto didn't know what to think, and this – there were no other words for it – simply bewildered him. He was no stranger to pain, and over time, he had gotten into the habit of analyzing the cause of everything that hurt him. He reasoned that to minimize pain, he had to understand it. But what he was feeling now wasn't the usual kind of pain, which was sharp and obvious. Instead, what he felt now was a blunt axe that hacked away at the fraying edges of his mind, as a numbing sense of disbelief and something else he couldn't name spread throughout his body.
"So go tell your village and your Hokage. Go tell them that Takigakure's raising up a weapon, in order to become one of the five great villages. Come and destroy it for us."
Naruto had moved methodically to tighten the rope bindings around the two Takigakure genins, but his mind had already begun to race with the implications.
If Mushimi was telling the truth – and his body language and tone all supported that he was – then first of all, this meant that there was more than one tailed beast still roaming the world.
Naruto had tried once before to look up information about the Nine-tails in the Archive Library, as he was unable to dismiss the feeling of uneasiness he'd gotten during Mizuki-sensei's Memorial Day lecture. And he had managed to ascertain one thing before being chased out by the chūnin librarian: There was absolutely not even a single scroll on its origins, its known powers, or its fate. Granted, he didn't think that there could have been extensive research on such a colossal force of nature, but the fact that there was absolutely no information on it could mean only one thing – that it was classified, not to be disclosed even to the shinobi. It gave him a headache to think of it, and Naruto had decided that it must have been one of the village's top secrets, something to be handled only by the elite and the Hokage himself, and certainly not by lowly Academy students such as himself. And so, he had put his inquisitiveness aside.
But now, he found himself being forced back into a similar train of thoughts. And as fearful as the thought of tailed beasts in the plural was, the second implication in the genin's words was in Naruto's opinion, even worse – that these monsters of legend could actually be sealed away within people. He didn't know much about Fūinjutsu, except that it was a type of jutsu that sealed objects within other objects. He'd always assumed there was a limit to what could be sealed, and what could be done with what was sealed.
But if a tailed beast could be sealed within a person...and if that person could somehow harness the tailed beast's chakra, then such a person might very well be invincible. And Mushimi had said that Takigakure was raising up such a person – a jinchūriki, he'd called it – in order to become one of the five great villages. Did this mean that all of the great villages had a jinchūriki of their own? A weapon, that by all intents of nature, shouldn't exist? If that was the case, then could the Nine-tails not in fact have been destroyed by the Fourth Hokage? Could he have sealed it away instead? Inside a person? Maybe even a baby?
Naruto suddenly recalled that the Fourth had been a sealing master. He had found this out when he'd been trying to figure out what the black seal on his abdomen was. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen his seal in a long time. But that was because it only appeared when he nudged his red chakra. But why was he thinking of his red chakra now? He hadn't touched, or thought of it in years.
"Come and destroy it for us." Mushimi's hate-filled eyes flashed once more in his mind's memory. Naruto felt another headache coming. He knew those eyes very well. Where had he seen those kinds of eyes before? Hadn't they –
"Naruto!" He jerked in surprise, his hand automatically reaching for the tantō strapped across his back. Besides him, Rai blanched and took a step back; recognizing his teammate, Naruto immediately relaxed and let go of the blade's handle. Looking around, Naruto noted in surprise that the Takigakure genins were nowhere to be seen. In fact, they seemed to be walking somewhere.
For a split second, he couldn't remember where and why they were moving.
"What's up with you?" said Rai, eyeing him curiously.
Naruto hesitated.
"Nothing, I just spaced out," he finally said.
The rest of the second exam passed by quickly and easily, despite their increasing misgivings. Naruto's shadow clone found an Amegakure team with two plates that had let their guards down enough for them to be sneaked up on. Mayu's genjutsu incapacitated two of them with ease, and after Naruto took down the third with a simple chop across the back of his neck, they trussed up their second genin team to a boulder. With three plates now in their possession, they rested briefly before moving onwards, and after several more hours with no further confrontations, they finally reached the end of the maze.
They emerged out of the sloping dark tunnel to see that it was midday aboveground. They were somewhere in the desert away from the Suna village, and there was not a cloud in the sky. The strong sunlight seared their eyes after having spent days in almost constant darkness. Nevertheless, Rai flung himself on the hot sandy ground with a moan of bliss, soaking up the sunlight with his outstretched arms. Following him outside, a wide smile spread across Mayu's face even as her eyes squinted in pain.
Naruto on the other hand, remained tense, his eyes roving around as if looking for possible ambush spots.
Rai, seeing this, rolled his watering eyes. "Naruto, we're finally out of that hellhole. Lighten up."
Naruto ignored him, continuing his visual search. Rai sighed in long-suffering exasperation. But before he could say anything else, the sound of light footsteps alerted them to a Suna chūnin climbing up the hill towards them. His face was mostly covered with bandages and a face mask, and he wore the standard Suna flak jacket.
The man held his hand out. "Plates, please."
Immediately, Mayu began to reach inside the folds of her cloak – when Naruto flung out four shuriken from his holster. As the shuriken spiraled through the air towards the chūnin with a whistling sound, Rai let out a yelp of surprise – but instantly, the chūnin had his kunai out, and batted away the shuriken with ease. Mayu stared gapingly down at the shuriken embedded in the ground, and then back up at Naruto.
Slowly, the chūnin lowered his kunai, and leveled a sharp gaze at Naruto. "Attack an examiner again, and you'll be disqualified from the exam."
"What was that for?" Rai demanded.
Naruto didn't apologize. "For all we knew, you could have been another examinee trying to take our plates at the very last second."
It was difficult to tell the chūnin's facial expression from behind his mask, but Naruto could've sworn he saw something twitch. "My name is Tsubusa and I am one of the chūnin examiners for this year's Chūnin Selection Exam at Sunagakure. It has been exactly 29 hours and 44 minutes since the exam began. Congratulations on passing the second exam."
As Tsubusa led them back to the village, picking his way through a sandy path that only he seemed to be able to see, Naruto noticed several other entrances scattered around the ground. In the distance, he saw another worn out team emerging up to the ground as a Suna chūnin patiently waited for them.
"How do you guys know when to pick us up?" Rai piped up from behind him.
"Cameras," said Tsubusa. "Contrary to what some may have thought, the second exam was not meant to be an all-out battle royale, with the examiners being blind to its happenings."
"And you guys wanted to see what the future ninja of other villages have got up their sleeves, eh?"
"That too," Tsubusa admitted.
"So did you see that girl that attacked us?" Rai continued. "She creamed us." Naruto stopped short. At the same time, Rai let out a yelp of pain and stumbled forward; it appeared that Mayu had kicked him. "What was that f – oh..."
"We did not have a camera in every tunnel, so we may have missed that one," Tsubusa replied calmly.
Naruto's eyes narrowed. The pause before he'd spoken had been a millisecond too long; Naruto was certain that he was lying. And he would have bet his prized tantō that every single Suna examiner and official knew of Takigakure's jinchūriki. But for now, it seemed they would be feigning ignorance. The question was – had they found out from Mushimi's outburst, or had they known even before that? And if they had, why had they let her participate in their exam?
Naruto and his team were brought past the village gate and inside one of the circular clay buildings. Contrary to its heavy and dull appearance, it was cool and airy inside, and they gratefully removed their heavy cloaks. Mayu sniffed her sleeve and cringed, thrusting the cloak away from her.
To Rai's outrage, they were the second team once again to pass, this time having been beat out by Gai's team of rookies. The three rookies looked battered, but thrilled about their success; when Neji saw them enter, he gave them a cool smirk.
With three days left as the second exam continued, they were guided to separate quarters where they could clean up, eat, and rest. After taking a long refreshing bath, and saying good night to his teammates (Rai looked disappointed; he had been excited about going out to explore the village, but had been told by Tsubusa that they were not allowed to leave the building until the exam was over in order to prevent sabotage), Naruto turned in early and tossed and turned in his bed all night.
The next day, he rose early and was surprised to see that breakfast had been laid just outside his door. It was a tray of Suna cuisine, and nothing that he was used to: The meat was chewy and dry, and his soup, filled with something that looked like seaweed but tasted sweet. Nevertheless, as Naruto ate, he felt a touch of nostalgia, remembering back to the caretaker who had once prepared all of his meals.
Strangely enough, he had never seen her again after she left him, and for the first time in years, he wondered where she was. Naruto couldn't even remember her face; all he could remember was that she had been stern, and quick with her hand. He suddenly wondered why he'd been left with a caretaker, and not in the orphanage like every other child in Konoha who'd lost their parents in the war. He'd never thought too deeply of it before, but now, he wondered how he could never have questioned it before. And yet, each question raised even further questions.
After breakfast as planned, Naruto and his teammates assembled in the corridor that connected their rooms. Because their own clothes were dirty and being washed, they all wore the dark long tunics that was Suna's traditional clothing. While the clothes were surprisingly lightweight and cool, Naruto privately thought it made them all look lumpy and shapeless.
He hadn't noticed the night before because it had been too dark, but now that sunlight had crept into the hallway, Naruto saw that there was a small window that looked outside. Stepping forward and peering out, he realized that it overlooked the center of the village market. The sun was still rising, and hung low in the sky, but he could see the market was already beginning to bustle with activity.
"I wonder how many teams passed the second exam," said Rai, with a great yawn. "Since we ended with three plates instead of two, that means we took out two teams, right? What do you think the third exam will be?"
"Some kind of sparring match, probably," said Mayu, leaning against the wall. "My brother told me that's what most villages do for the third exam when they host the Chūnin exams." From what Naruto had been able to gather, Mayu's older brother was a chūnin who manned Konoha's village gates.
"Sparring, huh?" said Rai, scratching his nose. "I hope I'm paired with someone easy then. Someone like Tenten or one of those other rookies. And not...hm, let's see. Oh, I know. I really wouldn't like to go up against that – what'd they call her? That jinchūriki then. If she beat Naruto that easily, the rest of us wouldn't stand a chance." Glancing around the corridor to make sure it was empty, his voice nevertheless dropped an octave. "Is it even fair though, having her in the exam? We're just genins – even Naruto here wouldn't stand a chance against a tailed beast."
Mayu didn't respond.
"Assuming the third exam involves one-on-one sparring, it's not to say that you have to absolutely win your match to pass," said Naruto. "The first two exams were to weed out the weak; now that only the strong genins are left, they'll be wanting us to showcase our abilities. So even if you lose to your opponent, if you make a strong showing, you could still pass."
"That makes sense," said Rai seriously. And then, a sly smile spread itself across his face, his scar twisting as it did so. "Guess Tenten doesn't stand a chance then."
"Oh, this again. Just leave her alone! What do you have against her?" admonished Mayu.
"Everything," Rai shot back.
"Grow up!"
Tuning out the bickering voices of his teammates, Naruto continued looking out the window: This was the second village outside of his own that he'd ever seen in his life, and the similarities and differences he found were startling to him. The people of Konoha were more boisterous and familiar, greeting each other with wide grins and a slap on the back or a kiss to the cheek. The people of Suna on the other hand seemed much calmer and more reserved. As he watched, though people politely greeted each other good morning, there was always a certain distance between each other. Naruto wondered whether it was merely custom, or whether the extreme climates of the desert bred a certain kind of personality.
Yet at the same time, he thought, people here also woke up early to go to the market to buy food to put on the table for their families.
Suddenly, there was a loud banging noise just below his window. At the sound, Naruto reared back, his hand reaching for his tantō once more. There was a lull in the cacophony behind him, and striding over, Rai stuck his head out the window and glanced down.
"Someone just knocked something over, Naruto," he said, turning around. "What're you being so jittery for? You've been really weird lately."
"It's nothing," Naruto said. "I'm just tired."
Rai shook his head, but let it go. Stretching once more and saying something about looking for the kitchen to get more food, the genin shot off down the corridor. As soon as he disappeared around the corner, Mayu mumbled something about looking for something, and fled into her own room.
After a moment's hesitation, Naruto walked back to the window and looked down.
Pieces of a red clay pot were scattered on the ground. Though the contents seemed harmless, for some reason, everyone in the market was giving it a wide berth. Standing in the middle, paying no attention to the beans strewn around his feet, was a boy who looked Naruto's age, with spiky auburn hair. But that was where the physical similarities ended: He was much paler, and wore Suna genin attire. Naruto was fairly certain he hadn't seen him in the Chūnin exams; he knew he would've remembered someone like that in the exam. The boy was standing stiffly with his arms crossed, seemingly observing the flow of traffic that circled fearfully around him. Then without warning, the boy tilted his head back, and with wrathful black ringed eyes, glared hatefully back up at Naruto.
Naruto stepped back away from the window. Retreating to the opposite end of the corridor, where it was still dark, he leaned against the wall and slid down to the ground, massaging his temples. The blunt axe was back again, accompanied once more by that aching headache that prickled and lurked at the edges of his consciousness.
"I am..." he said quietly to the familiar darkness. "I am likely a jinchūriki."
2/4/17: Edited.